Global Research

Little is known about the interests of the doctors, scientists, and academics on whose advice the UK government relies to manage the pandemic. Attempts to discover more are frequently thwarted, finds Paul D Thacker

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As the number of UK deaths caused by covid-19 reached 50 000 in early November, England enacted a second national lockdown to control the epidemic. Boris Johnson’s government put these measures into action after months of controversial and sometimes confusing policies, including the “rule of six,” regional tiered controls, and directions to “stay alert.” At the same time, the government has faced mounting questions about procurement decisions, from personal protective equipment to testing kits, from vaccine deals to the services of logistics companies.

Calls for greater transparency around such decisions have included those bodies focused on science and health, such as the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), as well as taskforces charged with advising on vaccines and testing. Although Downing Street has become more transparent in disclosing the advice of SAGE, it has kept members’ financial conflicts of interest unpublished and shown little concern that advisers to the coronavirus Vaccine Taskforce have financial interests in pharmaceutical companies receiving government contracts. When The BMJ sought further information on these bodies, such as lists of members’ interests, the information was denied or requests were unanswered.

Information withheld

What would the United States look like if we lost half of our small businesses?  The reason I ask that question is because approximately half of all small business owners in the entire country believe that they may soon be forced to close down for good.  Not even during the Great Depression of the 1930s did we see anything like this.  The big corporate giants with extremely deep pockets will be able to easily weather another round of lockdowns, but for countless small businesses this is literally a matter of life and death.  Every day we are seeing new restrictions being implemented somewhere in the nation, and the politicians that are doing this are killing the hopes and dreams of countless small business owners.  According to a recent Alignable survey, 48 percent of U.S. small business owners fear that they could be forced to “shut down permanently” in the very near future…

Based on this week’s Alignable Q4 Revenue Poll of 9,201 small business owners, 48% could shut down permanently before year’s end.

In fact, this number jumped from 42% just two months ago, demonstrating how several factors have converged to devastate small businesses: COVID resurgences, forced government reclosures, elevated customer fears, and a surge in online shopping at Amazon and other national ecommerce giants.

When a small business with only a few employees closes down forever, it never makes any national headlines.

But the truth is that small businesses are the heart and soul of our economy, and we are losing more of them with each passing day.

Here are some quotes from actual small business owners that took part in the Alignable survey…

• “COVID has raised its ugly head again. I’m a caterer and I’ve had no work in November and my clients are cancelling for Dec. This is so sad. I have worked so hard to build my business the last 14 years. My business has gone from half a million to not even 200,000. This is devastating for any business.”
• “COVID closings are killing this country! My business is on hold — no art walks or gallery openings, and I can’t even open my studio. Everything’s online.”
• “Because therapeutic massage is so ‘up close and personal,’ I have only come back to about 40% of my previous clientele. I am afraid that the governor will shut us down again, which will be the end of my business. I also believe the ‘ruling elite’ does not care about small businesses.”

How would you feel if you spent years putting everything you had into a small business in order to make it successful, only to have the politicians come along and completely destroy it?

And every time a small business has to let workers go, it just makes the unemployment crisis in this country even worse.

On Thursday, we learned that another 853,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…

First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 853,000, an increase from the upwardly revised 716,000 total a week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting 730,000.

I have been warning that the new lockdowns would make the numbers worse, and that is precisely what is happening.

And one expert that was interviewed by CNBC says that this is just the beginning…

“It looks like the unemployment losses are starting to stack up for the economy. It’s not going to be a good month,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank. “You’re starting the first week of the month on a bad note, and it’s probably going to be all downhill from here. It feels like the lockdowns are intensifying. It’s closer to reality for those forecasts that look for the economy to go negative in the first quarter.”

It is also important to remember that there are many Americans that have been unemployed for so long that they are no longer eligible to receive benefits.

One of those long-term unemployed workers is 35-year-old Sarah Groome…

For six months, she received unemployment benefits from the government – but those payments shrank as the programmes wound down this summer. Since October, she’s received nothing.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do financially,” she says. “I’m applying to jobs and I’ve probably applied to over 100 at this point and I’ve had one interview.”

“It’s scary,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

What do you say to someone in her position?

It’s heartbreaking to hear stories like that, and more people are being laid off with each passing day.

And as our new economic depression gets progressively deeper, an increasing number of Americans are becoming very desperate.

In fact, many have already become so desperate that they are turning to shoplifting…

Shoplifting is up markedly since the pandemic began in the spring and at higher levels than in past economic downturns, according to interviews with more than a dozen retailers, security experts and police departments across the country. But what’s distinctive about this trend, experts say, is what’s being taken – more staples like bread, pasta and baby formula.

“We’re seeing an increase in low-impact crimes,” said Jeff Zisner, chief executive of workplace security firm Aegis. “It’s not a whole lot of people going in, grabbing TVs and running out the front door. It’s a very different kind of crime – it’s people stealing consumables and items associated with children and babies.”

Everywhere we look, our society is starting to break down all around us.  Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits more than 70 million times this year, the number of homeless in New York City has reached an all-time record high, and civil unrest continues to erupt all over America.

No matter what happens politically, conditions are going to continue to deteriorate as we head into 2021.

Of course the mainstream media is boldly proclaiming that the new vaccines will pull us out of this tailspin and that life in America will soon return to normal.

You can believe the mainstream media if you want, but in the end the “hope” that they are promising will turn out to be a complete mirage.

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Michael Snyder’s brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. He has also written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. He has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News and are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. 

On September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks took place on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon allegedly orchestrated by Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden, and subsequently blamed it on Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party and then the war on Iraq began.

The Middle East became the prime target of increased Western and Israeli conflicts and interventions. Guantanamo bay, Cuba became a torture center.

Surveillance of the Muslims became normalized, then so did surveillance of the entire world. That was phase 1 of Western-led global tyranny, now on to phase 2, with a new disease, the Corona Virus aka Covid-19, appeared on the world stage. 

Medical bureaucrats from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) including the longtime medical bureaucrat-in-charge, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Big Tech billionaire nerd, Bill Gates along with the rest of the establishment view everyone as a potential carrier a danger, therefore, they must vaccinate everyone to fight this new disease with an emphasis on treating the situation as a national security threat so Operation Warp Speed was announced. 

At the same time, the U.S. government and its allies are fighting continuous wars that they themselves start on the rest of the world and on top of everything else, the world’s global economy is on the brink of the Greatest Depression along with a collapsing global reserve currency, the U.S. dollar.

Just imagine this sometime in the near future, you wake up one morning, you brush your teeth and then you turn on the television and on the screen is the ‘emergency broadcast system’ flashing in red, alerting people about new Covid infection rates spiking in your area and it’s declared a red zone.

With a disarmed populace in place who has no rights to self-defense, military personnel in hazmat suits wearing masks will be making door to door visits with mandated vaccines in hand, and if you resist, well, you can paint a picture for yourself. The streets are empty and businesses you once visited are now permanently closed making it increasingly difficult to get your basic necessities.

Public and private schools are open on the condition that each child is fully vaccinated under government mandates regardless of the health risks associated with the vaccines and in many cases if a child is not vaccinated, the school nurse will do it for you without your permission.

Those who have jobs will have no choice but to get vaccinated or they lose that weekly paycheck they depend for their food and other expenses.  Then you look outside your window and you see the same breadlines in government-approved centers with people wearing facemasks, patiently waiting for their next meal as long as they have their vaccination card in hand.  Crime is out of control with no police protection because a couple of years earlier, major cities and towns across the U.S. decided to defund the police.

They now have social workers and civilian patrols resembling the actions of the Nazi’s who had the useful idiots known as the brown shirtssafeguarding the streets from a spread of a disease that cannot be controlled by whatever ridiculous mandates they impose, making sure that the people have facemasks and their government issued vaccination cards readily available for inspection. The internet is also heavily regulated. Depression and suicides increasing by the day, yet, no resistance by the population, just slaves under a medical dictatorship that makes Nazi Germany look like a walk in the park.  That is a dystopian future.

That same old ‘New World Order conspiracy theory that many people laughed about is now unfolding before our eyes. For decades the people were warned, yet they are still blinded by the mainstream media’s fear mongering nonsense and blatant lies that it becomes comical at times.

Yet, people are living in extreme fear.  Across the globe, new Covid-19 outbreaks are rising due to false positives detected by the unreliable RT-PCR tests. Countries around the world are waking up to this fact including Portugal who according to the Off-Guardian.org reported that “an appeals court in Portugal has ruled that the PCR process is not a reliable test for Sars-Cov-2, and therefore any enforced quarantine based on those test results is unlawful.” Why? Well the article summed up what the study had found:

Most notably this study by Jaafar et al., which found that – when running PCR tests with 35 cycles or more – the accuracy dropped to 3%, meaning up to 97% of positive results could be false positives. 

The ruling goes on to conclude that, based on the science they read, any PCR test using over 25 cycles is totally unreliable. Governments and private labs have been very tight-lipped about the exact number of cycles they run when PCR testing, but it is known to sometimes be as high as 45. Even fearmonger-in-chief Anthony Fauci has publicly stated anything over 35 is totally unusable

It is well-known that high-risk groups with already life-threatening ailments are the ones at risk, even if there was a severe flu season in effect, they will still be at risk regardless.  Covid-19 lockdowns and mandatory facemasks and the possibility of forced vaccinations in various U.S. states and a number of countries is becoming part of everyday life, the “new normal” it seems.

The Hill reported that government-issued vaccine cards will be distributed to everyone in the US population ‘Details emerging on vaccine cards that will accompany inoculations.”  The report said that the federal government will hand-out cards with your name on them which will list what vaccines you have received and which ones will be due,

“Everyone will be issued a written card that they can put in their wallet that will tell them what they had and when their next dose is due,” Kelly Moore, associate director of the Immunization Action Coalition, said Wednesday, according to CNN. “Let’s do the simple, easy thing first. Everyone’s going to get that.”

Then clinics and hospitals will send your vaccine report to the federal agencies-in-charge which will basically track and trace individuals of all ages:

Moore added that clinics providing vaccinations will also report what vaccine is administered to state immunization registries. Numerous clinics will also give patients the option to provide their phone numbers so they can be sent a reminder to take their second dose of the vaccine 

The world we once knew is dramatically changing, a coerced society that’s is constantly living on the edge of fear, facing lockdowns every few months when Covid-19 cases spike while the establishment continues its early stages of total global control over society.

They already control the people through mandated facemasks and lockdowns while Big Pharma is pushing a handful of vaccines so that people can travel, buy food, or for their children to attend school under the “new normal” rules once they get their vaccines.

People are acquiescent to authority, accepting the establishment’s recommendations as law as they walk around confused with facemasks, avoiding people at length. One time I was walking down one of the main avenues while I was in New York City as a woman was trying to avoid a group of young girls without facemasks, she immediately hoped into traffic to avoid them and right behind her was a city bus narrowly missing her by an inch, this woman was obviously so fearful of contracting Covid-19, she almost got herself killed by an incoming city bus, and to be honest with you, I closed my eyes because I thought she was history.

This is the state of the world of paranoia and fear we are living in. There are even people who have not even been outside their homes since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 an international pandemic. Fights are breaking out everywhere between those who refuse facemasks versus the slaves who listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci and the rest of the medical establishment who claim that wearing facemasks is about protecting yourself and respecting others, so people are policing themselves and “snitching” on each other, a dream come true for those who rule.

Normalcy in society has completely changed for the worst. People are less human today because of what the establishment has pushed upon us with their absurd ideas to control the population to prevent an over-exaggerated disease from spreading.  Yet, suicides, depression and loneliness is killing more people by the day because of these unnecessary lockdowns.  The people are on the edge of insanity. The normal life already seems like a long time ago as new trends became normalized over the years before the corona virus ever existed like humans having relationships with sex robots and life-sized dolls.  Humans having sex with robots and dolls and in some cases, even marrying them seems pretty bizarre to me. I am pretty sure that both men and some women are purchasing sex robots and dolls at a higher-rate since the pandemic begun although a handful of people have been interested in this new phenomenon has been introduced to the public. In ‘The Age of Sex Robots: The pros and cons in this emerging sexual age’ by David W. Wahl, PhD in Psychology Today wrote:

Sex robots are here. It’s not just a gimmick of science fiction. Granted, the artificially intelligent sex robots of such films as “Ex Machina” and “AI” are not here yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Most sex robots now are little more than slightly animated sex dolls. Perhaps the most advanced sex robot that we know of is “Samantha.” A creation of Synthea Amatus, Samantha is designed to be capable of enjoying sex. 

But Samantha is not all about sex. She can also talk about science and philosophy. She can even tell jokes (although hopefully not while you are having sex with her). Consent is even an issue with Samantha. If you are too rough with her or she doesn’t like your behaviors, she is programmed to go into “dummy mode” and completely shut down. Currently, robotic partners can go for prices in excess of $10,000

That is incredible and frightening. What if they created another doll  down the road where “dummy mode” can turn into violent mode, but that will probably take another generation or so. I hope most people won’t fall for these types of futuristic relationships, but the point I am trying to make here is that this is where humanity is headed and this is not normal but it falls into the hands of the establishment technically speaking since in a way can reduce population growth.

What has society morphed into?

Now a Great Reset is upon us and make no mistake, it is real despite what The New York Times has falsely claimed that it does not in an absurd article they published titled ‘The Baseless Great Reset’ Conspiracy Theory Rises Again’, it’s real and we need to ask ourselves, will we except this insane idea? The World Economic Forum (WEF) is pushing ‘The Great Reset’ agenda since last May with calls to rebuild the global economy, social engineer society and enforce environmental sustainability rules and regulations to improve capitalism for basically major corporations, bankers and the ruling establishment.

The corporate-technological alliance will be controlled by a powerful consortium of the pharmaceutical, financial, communications, defense industries and other major corporations with the government enforcing their dirty deeds with help from the mainstream-media continuing their propaganda. The Great Reset is being promoted by the United Kingdom’s very own, Prince Charles and WEF’s founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab who reminds me of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers who is also a former member of the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group which is behind the many changes the ruling establishment has envisioned for society.

Life for humanity seems like it will never be the same. The Great Reset is a plan to foment corporate control over the entire economic and social landscape. They want control of the world’s natural resources and to expand their world government’s surveillance grid to unprecedented levels that fascist dictators from the past including Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet could have only dreamed about.

What is happening to society has been predicted for a long time by many, including one of the most famous names in science fiction, George Orwell, the 1984 author who wrote and predicted a future dystopian police state. Orwell’s dire predictions of what we face in the near future was an early warning to all of humanity. However, I believe that many people are not simply going to accept this way of life as the new normal, some will, but many will refuse to obey such absurd demands from the establishment and this is the start of a revolution, a revolution of the mind and the establishment is afraid of that.  The masses will rise and will demand its freedoms it once had. People around the world already disobey lockdowns, face mask mandates, oppose continuous wars, oppose government tyranny and every other human rights abuses they face.  We are not, and I repeat, we are not at the point of no return, there is hope.

This lockdown madness will destroy people’s livelihoods and in some cases, will kill more people than the disease itself.

How far can the establishment push us?  We are at a time where we need to make a critical decision that will change our lives forever because a group of powerful and politically connected people who are government bureaucrats, or people who are closely associated with Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Tech, the Military-Industrial Complex, bankers, Wall street, the elite families and so on, you know, the ones we have been warning about called the establishment or the ruling elite for some time are trying to change the structure of society, to control human nature.

The year 2020 has been turbulent to say the least, 2021 will be chaotic and that is guaranteed. What is happening now is what George Orwell’s 1984 warned us about more than 70 years ago.  At this point in time, it will be up to all of us to resist, because that’s what it will take, and when that happens, people like George Orwell will finally rest in peace without rolling in his grave knowing that the world’s human spirit is alive and well, after all, that’s what he ultimately hoped for.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Before the 23 of January 2019, Juan Guaidó was an unknown entity. He acquired notoriety due to a series of coincidences … and decisions made in Washington. The practice of annually rotating the National Assembly’s presidency among the parties holding the majority meant that in 2019-2020 it was the turn of the extreme right-wing party, Voluntad Popular (VP); unfortunately, all VP’s key figures (Leopoldo López, Freddy Guevara) were under arrest or were fugitives of the law for their participation in seditious and violent acts against the Venezuelan state. Guaidó happened to be the next in line making him rightfully president of the National Assembly.² In a bold move he (and Washington) decided he would proclaim himself “interim president” of Venezuela. His self-proclamation that was to catapult him into the world’s media limelight was part of Washington’s “regime change” strategy.

Mr. Guaidó’s “interim presidency” lacks constitutional or legal bases and his self-proclamation occurred in a public square in Caracas, in front of a small group of supporters. Guaidó has never been elected president of Venezuela nor has he ever stood as a presidential candidate for any election. His claim that his “interim presidency’ rests on the Venezuelan Constitution’s Art 233 is thoroughly false; the article reads: The President of the Republic shall become permanently unavailable to serve by reason of any of the following events: death; resignation; removal from office by decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice; permanent physical or mental disability certified by a medical board designated by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice with the approval of the National Assembly; abandonment of his position, duly declared by the National Assembly; and recall by popular vote.³ President Maduro is alive, has not resigned, has not been removed from office, is not physically or mentally incapacitated, has not abandoned the Presidency, and has not been recalled by popular vote. Additionally, the notion of ‘interim presidency’ does not exist in the Venezuelan Constitution. This ought to have been sufficient for European governments to never extend recognition, whatever they may think of President Maduro’s government.

The recognition of Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela by European governments violates all basic principles informing political legitimacy, and should have never been awarded. The decision to award recognition is the result of political blackmail. Pedro Sánchez warned the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, on the EU’s behalf, that unless presidential elections, preferably without President Maduro as a candidate, were held within 8 days, the EU would have to recognise Guaidó. On this shaky, arrogant, and calculating basis EU governments proceeded to toe Trump’s line of elevating Mr Guaidó to the fictional position of “president” of Venezuela.

Ever since Jan-Feb 2019, Mr Guaidó has behaved abysmally.

In February 2019, Guaidó in complicity with the Colombian government, narco-paramilitaries, and the US government (Mike Pompeo), on the pretence of a concert at the Colombian border, tried to violently push ‘humanitarian aid’ into Venezuela by military means. The plan was sinister; it was naturally expected that Venezuela would oppose the illegal and violent action and it was intended to charge President Maduro with refusing to allow aid to his people, followed by serious military confrontation.

Guaidó made it to the concert through Colombian territory where he received military protection from the Los Rastrojos criminal narco-paramilitary gang, who Guaidó took several selfies with. The intensely anti-Chavista UK newspaper, The Guardian (14/09/2019) wrote: “Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan politician fighting to topple Nicolás Maduro, is facing awkward questions about his relationship with organised crime after the publication of compromising photographs showing him with two Colombian paramilitaries.” It was revealed later that one truck was set on fire, by Guaidó supporters. The media had blamed President Maduro. The episode did not merit comment from European governments: was their silence forgiveness?

On 30^th April 2019, Juan Guaidó led probably the most televised coup d’état in the history of Latin America. One wonders which features of this illegal, unconstitutional and armed action to violently overthrow President Maduro’s government – with incalculable consequences in human lives – are the European governments not prepared to condemn? The scandalously bland statement by the EU and European Parliament was inconsistent with the intense harshness and speed with which they are prepared to condemn the Maduro government. Euronews reported “Guaidó defiant after failed coup attempt.”

Mr Guaidó was complicit with the UK’s right-wing government in setting up a secret “Unit for the Reconstruction of Venezuela”. Records show that Guaidó and his entourage were prepared to offer oil and infrastructure contracts, and the restructuring of Venezuela’s debt, whilst his ‘ambassador’ to the UK, Vanessa Neumann, was reportedly prepared to surrender the Essequibo region in exchange for political support from the UK government. In short, Guaidó and his ‘team’ were ready to betray their nation on almost everything.

In May 2020 Guaidó contracted US-led mercenaries to launch an attack (‘Operation Gedeon’) against his own nation and to assassinate President Maduro and high officials in the government, followed – as stated in the contract – by a Pinochet-style purge aimed at the thorough eradication of Chavismo from Venezuela. Here again, the European governments either pretended the event did not happen or they confined themselves to lame and soft generalities, a far cry from their unforgiving criticism of the Maduro government.

Guaidó has deliberately complicated the Venezuelan government’s access to 31 tons of gold in custody in the custody of the Bank of England on the ‘merits’ of his ‘interim presidency’. The gold is needed for the purchase of food, medicine and vital health inputs in order to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, through the UN Development Programme (UNDP). The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV)’s appeal led the UK Appeals Court to annul a first verdict giving Guaidó access to the gold.

It is preposterous to imagine Guaidó having the capacity or the will to make good use of those resources. In Venezuela he has no control whatsoever, and given his obsession with imposing more sanctions on his own country, it is doubtful that he would spend money on the people of Venezuela. His lack of interest in paying the legal costs of the case (US$529,000) confirms he is not interested in complying with the law and is not desperate to obtain the gold to help the people of Venezuela.

Guaidó has made repeated calls to the military to wage a coup d’état to topple President Maduro, and has repeatedly (more then 20 times) organised a “final march” on Miraflores, Venezuela’s Presidential Palace, seeking to create a pretext for violent confrontations. In line with US and EU policy, he has repeatedly opposed the right of Venezuelans to vote in elections. The EU has at best commented on these flagrant undemocratic and seditious acts with deafening silence and at worst welcome them with enthusiastic approval.

Guaidó is not only a willing accomplice in aiding the US to illegally confiscate his own nation’s assets but he and his closest associates are also deeply involved in corruption. Through the protection of Trump, Guaidó and Co have been lining their pockets with hundreds of millions of US dollars resulting from the US illegal confiscation of Venezuelan assets ‘legalised’ by the ‘interim president’. On 24 January 2019 the US State Department gave US$20 million to the ‘new government’; a 2015 Citibank loan to Venezuela was unilaterally settled in advance and the saved difference (US$340 million) – with US government support – was given to Guaidó; in May 2020 OFAC gave Guaidó’s “government” US$80 million for the “liberation” of Venezuela; USAID gave Guaidó US$128 million to assist Venezuela migrants who have not seen one penny; and Guaidó was instrumental in Trump’s illegal confiscation of Venezuela state, US-based, gasoline distribution company CITGO, valued at about US$8,000 million. Venezuela has incurred US$11,000 in losses due to the freezing of assets. There is more but you get the picture. Europe has been the continent of colonial pillage so, is this ‘historic affinity’ maybe the reason they recognise Guaidó?⁴

In fact, European governments and the EU itself, de facto work with and recognise the Bolivarian government of President Maduro, by not only not recognising Guaidó’s appointees as “ambassadors” but by also sending ambassadors to Caracas who present their credentials to President Maduro in nationally televised public ceremonies. This sublime duplicity should end by the formalisation of a perspective of constructive engagement with the Bolivarian Government.

There is no justification whatsoever for European governments to continue their untenable policy of recognising Juan Guaidó as ‘interim president’ of Venezuela when in reality, he is totally bereft of any legal, political, or constitutional legitimacy for his self-proclamation, and especially since his thoroughly undemocratic and criminal credentials have been irrefutably proved. An unconditional withdrawal of his recognition is long overdue.

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This article was originally published on Public Reading Rooms.

The UK’s governing Tory party is dishonestly flouting the rules of free and fair competition for Coronavirus related procurements, by unfairly selecting commissions, awarding contracts to class allies instead of the best or cheapest service provider.

The party frequently uses cliches like “all in it together” or “get Brexit done” to fake solidarity with the working class. But the talk has been matched by relentless attacks on quality of life and civil rights.

Recently the government has faced criticism for its rampant nepotism and cronyism in awarding coronavirus related contracts to personal connections, and faces legal challenges over its misallocation of public funds.

Certainly some will not be able to look past beyond the paradox that a government that asks its citizens to bear austerity, privatisation, cuts is also granting huge sums of public money to its friends.

Jolyon Maugham QC, director of Good Law Project, said:

“What we know about the government’s procurement practices during this pandemic gives real cause for concern.

“Huge sums of public money have been awarded to companies with no discernible expertise. Sometimes the main qualification seems to be a political connection with key government figures.

“And I have seen evidence that government is sometimes paying more to buy the same product from those with political connections. We don’t know what else there is to discover because the government is deliberately keeping the public in the dark.

“We are left with no option but to push for transparency through the courts.”

Additionally, a researcher has invited citizens to look at “My Little Crony,” an interactive map that shows just how tightly related Tory MPs are with the firms they commission. This includes firms who had been in existence for mere weeks, with no portfolio, being handed vast sums of public money.

Dissenting MPs assessments have provided a forensic analysis of the corruption at the heart of Westminster. Green MP Caroline Lucas has fiercely attacked the government’s procurement process, additionally criticising their lack of transparency in hiding the details for over 3bn in contracts from the public.

Giving lie to the myth that capitalism is a fairer system, the Tory party have perpetrated and perpetuated the same corrupt tactics in public administration as the Soviet state.

The credibility of the government has been shaped by two dominant issues: coronavirus and Brexit. In both spheres the legacy of institutional elitism weighs heavy.

As a breakaway from the tempering power of a strong opposition, the Tory party emerged victorious in the 2019 general election. Its strong commons majority has liberated it to pursue its free market fundamentalist agenda, with the obedience of Keir Starmer to government policy indicating that opposition is scarce.

Assaults on the independent judiciary were particularly prominent in the formation of Brexit, with the government arguing, against a constitutional system of checks and balances, that it should be able to determine the terms and conditions of Brexit unilaterally. Hard right rags collaborated, publishing venomous attacks on members of the judiciary who sought to make sure Brexit was legal. This overt repression was but a new manifestation of old fascist tactics.

The Tory party’s attempts to act unilaterally with minimal opposition come as no surprise. They have often acted with contempt for the sovereignty of parliament and the people.

Tory government failure has been met with sympathetic and sycophantic media coverage. A pliant press is staffed with journalists who are content to forfeit fourth estate integrity to be mere stenographers of power.

Thus, public accountability is missing in this latest version of Tory rule. The government is not attempting to honour democracy, is even wilfully subverting it, despite the fact it won an election on a manifesto of restoring popular sovereignty. And they’ve inaugurated the power of unelected bureaucrats like Dominic Cummings over policy.

A pandemic should not be an excuse for profiteering. Britain’s progressive wing must reclaim its place in power and defend the many rights under attack from this corrupt Tory government.

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Megan Sherman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Perfecting Tyranny by Mumia Abu-Jamal & Stephen Vittoria is a window into the soul of a nation from one of its most respected and feared captives. Getting this book to print took enormous resolve. We now turn to you to help us bring it to life in the world.

Perfecting Tyranny joins Vincent Harding’s There is a River, Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, and Nick Estes’ Our History is the Future in the canon of revolutionary historical texts. Like those other renowned authors, Abu-Jamal and Vittoria give voice to communities who have always lived in resistance, and seldom been heard.

“Poetic, biting, fiery, accessible, and utterly undeniable, Murder Incorporated roots this nation in its true history of empire, revealing the Dorian Gray portrait America has worked so hard to hide away. Reading this book and its framework is literally a matter of life or death.”—Walidah Imarisha, author, educator, activist, poet.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was already a notable and gifted radio reporter in Philadelphia in the early 80’s when he was shot, beaten, arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to death. He was denied visits and phone calls for eight years, and he lived in solitary confinement on death row for 28 years. In 2014, the PA legislature passed a law to take away his phone calls and his pen.

Although off death row and with hard-fought access to pen and paper, Mumia is now in his 39th year of a life sentence.

Swaths of this 1,500-page trilogy were handwritten with the cartridge of a ballpoint pen. Throughout his research of this definitive text on United States history, Abu-Jamal was threatened with cell restriction and a loss of phone and visits if he had more than 7 books and too much paper in his cell at a time.

Prison Radio and Stephen Vittoria persisted in making sure Mumia had the tools and communication necessary to write. It’s been an uphill battle every moment. Even now, Abu-Jamal is allowed no computer access. He composes his work by hand and on a plastic typewriter. He has access to an email tablet, but is restricted to 2000 characters and cannot print or save the messages. All of his physical mail is routed through and scanned in Florida: he never sees or touches the original.

For years, enslaved Black people in the United States were forbidden to read and write. Fighting back against centuries of repression of Black intellectual thought, Mumia’s literacy and his unfailing truth telling seek to forge a path to freedom for all of us.

Mumia Abu-Jamal & Stephen Vittoria chart a course with this important investigation, sifting the truth from the propaganda of United States “democracy.” Stephen Vittoria’s voice will be found in this work in its wry and blunt descriptions of a reality that is often breathtakingly painful. Thank you Stephen for accompanying Mumia on this long and often difficult task.

Prison Radio is proud to be the publisher of Perfecting Tyranny, and to be a part of its groundbreaking history. We’re thankful for the foreword by Angela Davis that centers this work in the abolitionist tradition.

At Prison Radio we have always organized around the principle that honoring the humanity of Mumia, and of all of our family inside, requires we listen and amplify their voices, and we work for their freedom. We know that their incarceration also holds those of us outside in bondage. As we fight to liberate their voices, their voices liberate us.

Click here to order the book.

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On Friday, the Supreme Court declined to hear arguments in what may be remembered one day as the most significant political dispute in US history.

Texas et al v. Pennsylvania et al was the judicial equivalent of Hollywood’s Godzilla v. (King) Kong.

The 1962 horror film was bad fiction. Friday’s Supreme Court action was real life horror, stating the following:

“The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution.”

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

“All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”

The US Constitution’s Article III defines judicial branch and Supreme Court powers.

There’s no ambiguity about brazen election theft for Biden/Harris over Trump.

Arguments presented by Texas AG Ken Paxton were powerful and convincing — supported by constitutional law.

Instead of correcting what he called “a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election,” an egregious’ affront to the rule of law, the High Court let it stand — permitting election grand theft instead of reversing it.

Election 2020 was defined by brazen fraud. Yet the Court legitimized what’s illegitimate.

Its nonruling/ruling set a precedent.

Henceforth, US elections decided by brazen fraud will be deemed acceptable as long its ruling class wants their results to stand.

By declining to hear the case, Election 2020 is virtually decided. Injustice triumphed over the rule of law.

On January 20, losers Biden/Harris will be inaugurated.

Trump will move on to other endeavors, his tenure over on that date.

What’s coming next is unclear. A statement by the Texas GOP said the following:

“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 US congressman, has decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law.”

“Resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences.”

“This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable.”

“This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic.”

“Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”

Trump’s legal advisors Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said they may file new lawsuits in US district courts following the Friday SCOTUS decision not to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania arguments.

Calling its move a “terrible mistake,” Giuliani added:

“Basically the courts are saying they want to stay out of this.”

“They don’t want to give us a hearing.”

“They don’t want the American people to hear the facts.”

“These facts will remain an open sore in our history unless they get resolved.”

“They need to be heard. They need to be aired, and somebody needs to make a decision on whether they’re true or false.”

“And some courts are going to have to have the courage to make that decision.”

“The case wasn’t rejected on the merits the case. (It) was rejected on standing.”

“The answer to that is to bring the case now to the district court by the president, by some of electors alleging the same facts where there would be standing and therefore get a hearing.”

According to Ellis, a “line of attack” going forward remains.

Trump’s legal team can continue challenging Election 2020 results until Congress affirms Electoral College votes on January 6.

That’s the line in the sand after which no further challenges may be legally made.

Ellis slammed the High Court’s decision for failing to uphold constitutional law on what one day may be remembered by historians and jurists as inaction at a time when it was vitally needed.

Hearing, seeing, and speaking no evil, 7 of its 9 justices buried their heads in the sand by ignoring brazen election fraud. See below.

Letting it stand affirmed its triumph over an open, free, and fair process — judicially gone by Friday’s coup de gras.

A Final Comment

Justices Alito and Thomas disagreed with Friday’s decision, Alito saying:

“In my view, we do not have the discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction,” adding:

He would have denied the Texas request to halt election certification.

“In my view, we do not have the discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction.”

Trump’s three appointed High Court justices — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett — failed to stand with him on this monumental issue.

Regardless of what steps Trump’s legal team pursues ahead, it’s virtually over. The postmortems alone remain.

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

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

“Politicians have not put forward any persuasive evidence that lockdowns have actually saved lives. At the same time, there is no question that lockdowns have caused grave harm to millions of Canadians suffering unemployment, poverty, cancelled surgeries, suicides, isolation and the loss of their liberty.” – Allison Pejovic, Staff Lawyer for the Justice Centre, after filing action on COVID measures in Court in the province of Manitoba. [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

On Monday December 7th, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented a Christmas gift to the country with a major announcement. Canada had secured an agreement to receive 249,000 doses of the COVID vaccine produced by the Pharmaceutical firm Pfizer. [2]

The shipment of the first round batch is already on its way. Canadians should begin inoculation as early as December 14. With many cities struggling after three quarters of a year of devastation wrought by the pandemic, many Canadians are looking at the prospect of the chosen few receiving the magical elixir in their arms as a signal that there will be some relief in the year ahead. [3][4]

Health authorities are concerned as they see a vaccine as the last, best hope for ending the threat of the virus. The Canadian government is concerned because, among other reasons, they have invested over $1 billion dollars toward “ the biggest immunization in the history of the country.”[5][6]

Yet, there is some hesitancy about the solution. A recent poll put out by Radio-Canada and Ipsos found that while 63 per cent of the population intend to get the vaccine, 16 per cent said they definitely would not and 21 per cent, more than one in five, were unsure. [7]

One volunteer body, Vaccine Choice Canada, formed in response to growing parental concerns surrounding the safety of vaccine programs and acting as a “watchdog” society over government and health officials breaching informed consent. Their website lists several points on its website questioning the companies’ pledges for safety and efficacy. [8]

They are currently challenging the Governments of Canada and Ontario, the Municipality of Toronto, several public health officials, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on the grounds that the measures introduced in response to the COVID situation are violating several rights of Canadians. [9]

The organization’s lawyer is Rocco Galati, and he is our guest on this week’s Global Research News Hour.

Rocco not only goes through listing the concerns about this vaccine, he also questions the social distancing, lock-downs, masking, shutting down of faith communities, the terrible agenda for children denied schooling and the censorship of scientific facts and expert opinions in mainstream narratives. He calls these measures “the biggest example of misinformation and lies on a global scale that we’ve seen.”

He also indicates the legal actions tabled against Trudeau and his actions, as well as the cost of the COVID course for Canada and the world.

Here is a video sample of the talk on December 10, 2020.

Rocco Galati has been a constitutional lawyer for 32 years. He is the Executive Director of the Constitutional Rights Centre Inc. In the past he won multiple suits against the government. Galati was named twice by Canadian Lawyers’ Magazine as one of Canada’s top 25 lawyers.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 299)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Notes:

1. www.jccf.ca/justice-centre-files-legal-action-against-manitoba-lockdowns/
2. Trudeau says 249,000 vaccine doses to arrive in Canada by the end of the year | CBC News; www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-announcement-otoole-vaccine-motion-1.5830938
3. Sandrine Rastello (Dec. 12, 2020), ‘Canada Ready to Start Vaccination as Doses Make Way From Belgium’, BloomburgQuint; https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/canada-ready-to-start-vaccination-as-doses-make-way-from-belgium
4. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/poll-finds-majority-of-canadians-open-to-getting-covid-19-vaccine-but-many-want-to-wait-1.5824067
5. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-vaccine/art-20484859
6. A closer look at Canada’s homegrown COVID-19 vaccine candidates | CBC News; www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canadian-vaccine-candidates-covid-coronavirus-1.5764874
7. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/poll-finds-majority-of-canadians-open-to-getting-covid-19-vaccine-but-many-want-to-wait-1.5824067
8. COVID-19 Vaccines – Vaccine Choice Canada; vaccinechoicecanada.com/resources/covid-19-vaccines/
9. vaccinechoicecanada.com/resources/covid-19/

President Nicolas Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) are celebrating today, after a clear victory in yesterday’s National Assembly elections. The elections, boycotted by many major right-wing opposition groups, but still participated in by over 100 political parties, ended with the PSUV and its allies receiving an estimated 67.6% of the votes cast, meaning they will control a two-thirds supermajority of the 277-seat National Assembly, the only major body that was controlled by anti-government forces.

“We have recovered the national assembly with the majority vote of the Venezuelan people,” Maduro said in his victory speech. “It’s a great victory without a doubt for democracy,” he added, also announcing that the government had delivered the 3.3 million houses for the needy that it promised when it launched the Great Venezuelan Housing Mission program in 2011.

Self-declared opposition president Juan Guaidó, a former leader of the National Assembly himself, did not see the result in the same way, seemingly calling for another coup on Saturday. “The rejection of the regime and its fraud united us, now we must respond in the street. December 12 will mobilize us like the immense majority of us who want to choose their future,” he announced on social media.

Yet even his backers in the Western press fear the result has neutralized him. The Guardian, for example, wrote that yesterday’s events “deal a further blow to Guaidó’s flagging crusade,” quoting bitterly anti-Maduro figure Phil Gunson, who said that “the coalition around Guaidó is really crumbling.”

Corporate press cast a noticeably despondent tone in their coverage of the election

Turnout in the election — 31% — was considerably lower than the PSUV was hoping for, although perhaps understandable, given the continued boycott of much of the opposition (meaning the outcome was barely in doubt), the COVID-19 pandemic, the crippling U.S. sanctions — which included those imposed on opposition figures that defied U.S. instructions not to participate in the election. Nevertheless, pro-government figures will be disappointed with the figure.

What is not in doubt is the veracity of the election itself, which, according to TeleSUR, “is being monitored by 1,500 observers and 300 representatives from 34 countries worldwide,” including many former heads of states, including Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Jose Luís Zapatero of Spain. “Here in Venezuela nobody can doubt the electoral system,” said former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, who agreed with former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya’s assessment that the process was “transparent and peaceful.” Other official observers included MintPress contributors Professor Adrienne Pine and Dr. Margaret Flowers.

Despite this, the United States government had already decided that the process was a fiction. “Venezuela’s electoral fraud has already been committed,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “The results announced by the illegitimate Maduro regime will not reflect the will of the Venezuelan people. What’s happening today is a fraud and a sham, not an election.” Zelaya — who was overthrown in a coup supported Pompeo’s predecessor, Hillary Clinton — fired back, claiming that the U.S. had “no moral high ground” to criticize events in Venezuela. “They ought to be here as observers,” he added.

Venezuela's electoral fraud has already been committed. The results announced by the illegitimate Maduro regime will not reflect the will of the Venezuelan people. What's happening today is a fraud and a sham, not an election.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 6, 2020

Corporate media, who reflexively take the U.S. government’s side on Venezuela, did their level best to undermine confidence in the process when reporting on it. “Maduro consolidates power in Venezuela, dominating election boycotted by opposition,” ran the Washington Post’s headline. “Venezuela’s Maduro tightens grip as opposition boycotts elections,” wrote the Wall Street Journal. Human Rights Watch’s Ken Roth, who supported the far-right coup in Bolivia last year that removed Maduro’s democratically-elected ally Evo Morales, also rejected the election as “a theater piece meant to lend a veneer of legitimacy to the government of Nicolas Maduro.”

Venezuela's election Sunday is "a theater piece meant to lend a veneer of legitimacy to the gov't of Pres Nicolás Maduro, who has spent the last 7 years jailing opponents, tearing apart opposition parties & using extrajudicial killings to stifle dissent." https://t.co/rWx4EJWvum pic.twitter.com/tr33xsECix

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) December 6, 2020

Media was also not above simply printing demonstrably fake news, either. Local opposition outlets insisted that turnout was below 20%, a canard reprinted in major Western sources. One-upping them, Geoff Ramsay of the pro-coup Washington Office on Latin America, perhaps Western media’s most quoted “expert” on Venezuela, claimed that turnout was only 15%. Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s Venezuela Bureau Chief Patricia Laya went furthest of all, insisting that participation stood at only 10%. A similar phenomenon of attempting to wish something into being by lowballing turnout occurred in the 2018 elections, also boycotted by much of the opposition.

From 23 de Enero to Petare, voting centers remained largely empty across Caracas on Sunday. Staff stood idly, with participation near 10% at most centers we visited: https://t.co/cgbdZ7I5s4 @AlexVasquezS

— Patricia Laya (@PattyLaya) December 6, 2020

Concern over low participation rates appeared not to extend to U.S. ally and NATO member Romania, however, the Eastern European state also held elections yesterday, finishing with a turnout of 30%. Unlike with Venezuela, there was no outcry from the White House, nor any condemnation from corporate media, suggesting that the response had more to do with who was winning the elections, rather than what turnout figures say about the quality of democracy.

Ultimately, however, while turnout was relatively low, the ruling socialist party has gained a supermajority in the one body the opposition-controlled, handing them a clear victory and the U.S. government a defeat. Added to the return of democracy to Bolivia in October and a leftist election victory in Guyana earlier this year, 2020 has not been a good year for Washington in Latin America.

Correction | This article originally stated that the elections were overseen by 4,500 international election observers. In fact, it was reportedly overseen by 1,500 election observers. The original figure was based on a social media post by one of the election observers and has since been corrected.

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Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

Questo documentario statunitense mostra, attraverso filmati originali e testimonianze di politici ed esperti, il vero volto del democratico Joe Biden, prossimo presidente degli Stati Uniti, che ha svolto un ruolo determinante nello scatenare la seconda guerra contro l’Iraq, innescando una reazione a catena di sanguinosi conflitti.

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PANGEO AT DAVERO TV 

In collaboration with Global Research

https://www.davvero.tv/pangea/videos/il-ruolo-di-joe-biden-nella-guerra-contro-l-iraq

NATO Is Determined to Find Threats and Challenges to Justify Its Existence

By Brian Cloughley, December 11 2020

Government and media propaganda has firmly convinced most of the citizenry of the West that Russia invaded Crimea, and the truth has dissolved in the swirling miasma that the anti-Russia movement has dubbed as history.

What Happens if Something Goes Wrong after You Receive a COVID Vaccine?

By Dr. Meryl Nass, December 11 2020

The bottom line is that if you are injured by a vaccine or other “countermeasure” designated by the DHHS Secretary as intended for a pandemic or bioterrorism threat (Covid-19, Pandemic Flu, Anthrax, Smallpox) your options for receiving any financial benefit are very limited.

Video: Thailand: US Openly Backs Anti-Government Mob

By Brian Berletic, December 11 2020

US Senators Bob Menendez and Dick Durbin introduced a resolution openly siding with the anti-government and anti-monarchy mobs in Thailand.

Melinda Gates: “We Hadn’t Really Thought Through the Economic Impacts”

By Jeffrey A. Tucker, December 11 2020

In a wide-ranging interview in the New York Times, Melinda Gates made the following remarkable statement: “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.” A cynic might observe that one is disinclined to think much about matters that do not affect one personally.

Six Dead from Pfizer Trials: Shares Down, Pfizer CEO Makes a Killing

By John Goss, December 11 2020

Yesterday BioNTech shares were down more than 4% at the close. Pfizer shares were down by nearly 2%. Less than a month ago the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, dumped 60% of his shares in Pfizer at its highest trading point, denying insider trading while praising the vaccine. Do you think he knows what’s coming?

Saudi Arabia Sends Joe Biden Mixed Messages

By James M. Dorsey, December 11 2020

Saudi Arabia appears to be drawing lines in the sand as the kingdom prepares for a new era in relations with the United States once President-elect Joe Biden assumes office in January.

“Elephants in the Room”: Scary ‘R’ Us: The Exaggerated Threat of Terrorism

By Rod Driver, December 11 2020

This is the sixth in a series entitled Elephants In The Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what’s really going on in relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.

ICC Drops Probe into Alleged UK War Crimes in Iraq Despite ‘Reasonable’ Evidence

By Middle East Eye, December 11 2020

Despite finding “reasonable basis” for allegations of war crimes against British soldiers in Iraq, an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor dropped a preliminary investigation, citing the UK’s own efforts to investigate the conduct of its troops in the war.

The Approaching Crunch in US Policy Towards China

By Dennis Argall, December 11 2020

An attempt to tear China down will be unsuccessful. To follow paths to antagonise China will eventually reap hostile responses and darken global affairs at a time when global cooperation is essential.

My Take on the US Elections: Voting for Corporate Figureheads is not Democracy

By Alfred de Zayas and Thomas Kaiser, December 11 2020

In a democracy the citizen must demand genuine policy choices and a right to shape that policy. Interview with Prof. Dr. iur. et phil. Alfred de Zayas, international law expert and former UN mandate holder.

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Visit our Asia Pacific Research website at asia-pacificresearch.com

Providing coverage of the Asia-Pacific Region

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Nuestro sitio web en español, globalizacion.ca

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Establishment media are at the forefront in promoting potentially hazardous to human health covid vaccines they should be advising caution about instead.

The NYT headlined: “FDA Advisory Panel Gives Green Light to Pfizer Vaccine,” saying:

Approval “pave(s) the way for health care workers (and nursing home residents) to begin getting shots next week.”

Comprised of 22 medical/scientific advisers, only four FDA profile-in-courage panel members voted against mass inoculations with Pfizer’s experimental covid vaccine that may prove hazardous to human health.

Among US major print media, the Times is at the forefront of promoting what no one valuing their health and welfare should permit entering their bodies.

Ignoring the reality of what’s going on, the Times also promoted the false hope of “return(ing) (the US) back to some semblance of normal, maybe by summer (sic).”

Made-in-the-USA covid was and remains all about engineering economic collapse to enrich privileged interests.

It’s part of the greatest wealth transference scheme in world history.

It caused unprecedented human misery from mass unemployment, food insecurity and hunger, growing poverty, widespread deprivation and despair — with no end of it in prospect.

The worst of what’s going on likely lies ahead, media disinformation part of the diabolical plot.

On Thursday, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) called for “further study of Pfizer’s covid vaccine” before approving its use.

CHD “rais(ed) significant concerns based on the briefing released for the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting,” adding:

“Less than 2.1% of the safety study cohort had been followed for over three months as of the Nov. 14 cutoff date.”

“This is inadequate to determine any (adverse) long-term effects of the vaccine.”

CHD called for “intense study, (especially for) the elderly and” African Americans before approving emergency authorization use — when no public health emergency exists.

Major media-promoted Big Lies falsely say otherwise, along with largely ignoring the potential hazards of Pfizer’s inadequately tested/rushed to market covid vaccine.

On Tuesday, the Times deceptively headlined: “Pfizer’s Vaccine Offers Strong Protection After First Dose.”

Toxins in Pfizer’s experimental vaccine are hazardous to human health.

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) warned that everyone “with a history of a significant allergic reaction to a vaccine, medicine or food” should not be injected with Pfizer’s covid vaccine.

It also stressed that vaxxing should only be at facilities with resuscitation capabilities.

Straightaway after Britain approved use of Pfizer’s vaccine, severe reactions were reported.

UK healthcare professionals warned against pregnancy and breastfeeding for two months after taking the vaccine because of possible harm to the fetus or child, as well as unknown fertility impacts.

A veteran UK doctor, under the pseudonym “The Covid Physician,” warned of government overreach in dealing with the issue that threatens personal liberty.

In an article titled “A day in the life of the Covid Physician, he said the following:

“The post-Covid pseudo-medical order has not only destroyed the medical paradigm I faithfully practiced as a medical doctor last year, (it’s been) inverted…”

“I do not recognize the government apocalypse in my medical reality.”

“The breath-taking speed and ruthless efficiency with which the media-industrial complex have co-opted our medical wisdom, democracy and government to usher in this new medical order is a revolutionary act.”

“A medical tyranny transition(ed) to a technocratic totalitarianism.”

Comparing covid to seasonal flu, he explained that the survival rate exceeds is 99%. For individuals up to about aged-20, it’s virtually 100%, he said.

When ordered, mask-wearing, social distancing, and lockdowns are forms of state-sponsored oppression by preventing normality in our daily lives.

Mass vaxxing with experimental drugs, known to contain toxins, is playing Russian roulette with our health, welfare and lives.

Physicians and scientific experts who diverge from the official narrative risk being censored or worse in the West where profits matter most, regardless of high risks to human health.

Describing what’s going on as a form of “communo-fascism,” the Covid Physician added:

The “Nuremberg Code, medical ethics, and patient choice” have been abandoned.

“I cannot believe how disproportionate the massive political response is to the relatively small magnitude of the (covid) medical problem (that’s) bring(ing) the world to its knees.”

In the US, Britain, other Western states, and elsewhere, ruling authorities are diabolically manipulating the public mind with an invented health emergency that doesn’t exist to exert greater control over our lives.

That’s how police state totalitarianism works.

“Abandon hope all ye who (reside) here.” A dystopian future already arrived.

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

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image source

Saudi Arabia appears to be drawing lines in the sand as the kingdom prepares for a new era in relations with the United States once President-elect Joe Biden assumes office in January.

In doing so, the kingdom is seemingly signaling that it is willing to go only so far in seeking to get off on the right foot with a Biden administration.

Saudi Arabia seems to be betting that Mr. Biden will be cautious not to rupture relations with the kingdom despite criticism he expressed at times in strong language during the US presidential election campaign.

The Saudi bet is not unreasonable.

US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Samuel D. Brownback echoed this week what is US policy and could well be the attitude adopted by a Biden administration.

Asked why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave Saudi Arabia a waiver even though his department designated the kingdom in its recently published annual religious freedom report a Country of Particular Concern under US law for its failure to respect freedom of religion, and apostasy and blasphemy laws that include the death penalty, Mr. Brownback said:

“Saudi Arabia is a country that the administration and prior administrations have deemed as having a strategic interest… It’s the major, obviously, Gulf state country.  It’s a major source of trade… We have a great deal of frustration at times in what Saudi Arabia does… But there’s also a national interest here, and that’s something that you’ve always have to weigh back and forth in diplomacy. And in this case, the Secretary weighed it that we needed to provide the national interest waiver.”

Recent events indicate the parameters of the Saudi bet.

The kingdom seems prepared to accommodate both outgoing President Donald J. Trump as well as Mr. Biden by engaging with US and Kuwaiti efforts to lift the 3.5-year-old Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar.

Mr. Pompeo, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in law and Middle East negotiator, and other senior US officials have travelled to the Gulf in recent weeks to push for a breakthrough in the Gulf stalemate as well as Saudi recognition of Israel in the wake of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UAE, Bahrain and the Jewish state.

Kuwaiti, Saudi and Qatari officials have said they were progressing towards a resolution as Gulf leaders gear up for a summit later this month of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups the region’s monarchies. The UAE, alongside Bahrain and Egypt who joined the boycott, indicated their support for an end to the dispute.

At the same time, recent Saudi actions send the message that recognition of Israel and human rights constitute red lines that the kingdom, at least for now, will not cross.

Saudi Arabia last week, shortly after the visits by Messrs. Pompeo and Kushner, sentenced Walid A. Fitaihi, a Harvard University-trained doctor and dual US Saudi citizen, to six years in prison for allegedly tweeting his support of the 2011 popular Arab revolts and for obtaining US citizenship while studying in America.

Mr. Fitaihi was released from pre-trial detention in 2017 but, together with his family, barred from travelling abroad.

The Trump administration has repeatedly raised his case with Saudi authorities, including during the recent high-level US visits

Similarly, Saudi Arabia transferred to a terrorism court the case of Loujain al-Hathloul, one of 12 women’s rights activists, accused of conspiring with foreign organizations hostile to the kingdom, on the eve of last month’s virtual G20 summit of the world’s largest economies hosted by King Salman.

The move came amid a groundswell call for their release in advance of the summit.

The court’s first hearing in Ms. Al-Hathloul’s case was held last week on the day designated by the United Nations as International Human Rights Day.

At about the same time, a campaign on Twitter, believed to have been instigated by the government, accused detained former crown prince and interior minister Mohamed bin Nayef of plotting to topple his successor, Mohammed bin Salman.

The campaign was in response to concern expressed by British parliamentarians and Mr. Bin Nayef’s lawyers about his circumstances.

Saudi Arabia’s moves contrast starkly with those of the UAE that appears geared towards anticipating expected changes in US foreign policy once Mr. Biden takes office.

Having already taken a lead that pleased both the outcoming and incoming US president by becoming the first Arab state to recognize Israel since 1994, the UAE this week said that it was launching a review to strengthen its human rights framework.

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said the review would focus on women’s empowerment, humanitarian aid, religious tolerance and workers’ rights. The official made no mention of political rights such as freedom of expression, the media and assembly that are one focus of criticism of the UAE by human rights groups.

By contrast, in what appeared to be another shot across Mr. Biden’s bow and rejection of Trump administration pressure, former Saudi intelligence chief and ex-ambassador to Britain and the United States, Prince Turki bin Faisal, launched a blistering attack on Israel.

Speaking days before Morocco and Israel announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between their two countries, Prince Turki described the Jewish state as “the last of the Western colonizing powers in the Middle East.”

He charged that Palestinians were “incarcerated in concentration camps under the flimsiest of security accusations — young and old, women and men, who are rotting there without recourse to justice.”

It was not clear whether Prince Turki’s remarks reflected not only King Salman’s sentiment but also that of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who reportedly met recently with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

A recent public opinion poll suggested that Saudis are divided in their attitudes towards relations and commercial and cultural exchanges with Israel.

Forty-one percent of those surveyed in September saw relations with Israel as a positive development while 54 percent were opposed. Yet, the percentage of those who favored commercial and sports exchanges jumped substantially to 37 percent compared to nine percent in a poll three months earlier.

Prince Turki made his remarks as the kingdom was seeking to lower tensions with Turkey, a major challenger of Saudi leadership of the Muslim world, and like the kingdom, uncertain about its relationship with the US once Mr. Biden takes office.

If Saudi moves to draw a line in the sand implicitly acknowledge that relations with the United States could become rocky, rapprochement with Turkey suggests that Riyadh and Ankara see virtue in seeking common shelter. That could prove to be a fragile structure in a part of the world where the sands shift continuously.

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A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.

China’s new development paradigm of dual circulation is not a repudiation of its prior BRI-driven model of globalization, but is actually complementary to it. Observers shouldn’t forget that many of the hundreds of billions of dollars of BRI-related loans are for long-term infrastructure investments.

Porous face masks offer no protection from minuscule covid spores.

Extended wearing is potentially hazardous to human health.

Mass vaxxing could be catastrophic if ordered.

Covid is a form of seasonal flu/influenza.

Protection comes from good health habits, including proper diet, regular exercise, a daily vitamin/mineral supplement with enough vitamin D, zinc, and plenty of vitamin C.

It does not come from mask-wearing or vaxxing. Both practices risk potentially serious harm to human health.

Defying reality, Biden called mask wearing “a patriotic act (sic),” adding:

“My first 100 days is going to require…I’m going to ask for a masking plan…everyone, for the first 100 days of my (regime), to wear a mask.”

“It will start with my signing an order on day one to require masks…”

Saying it’s “the single most effective thing we can do to stop the spread of COVID” defies science.

Everyone should practice what benefits human health, not what may harm it.

Will 100 days of mask-wearing lead to 200, 300, then making it permanent?

Seasonal flu/influenza shows up annually like clockwork, affecting millions in the US and abroad.

Until this year, it’s been unaccompanied by fear-mongering headlines and mass hysteria.

Mandated mask wearing has nothing to do with protecting human health — everything to do with social control.

Mass vaxxing with harmful to health toxins may be a diabolical depopulation scheme by inducing infertility and greater numbers of deaths among the elderly with weak immune systems.

Resistance is the only option. The alternative would be like Dante’s Inferno.

Abandon all hope henceforth — wrapped in the American flag.

PCR tests are a fear-mongering scam. They mostly result in false positives.

Dr. Pascal Sacre and other medical/scientific experts consider them a diabolical scheme to lock down society.

It’s also a mass surveillance scheme by collecting human DNA, as well as a way to restrict free movement.

The result is clear. For 38 straight weeks since March, over a million working-age Americans applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits.

What’s happening throughout most of 2020 is unprecedented in US history — with no end of it in prospect.

For the week ending Thursday, 853,000 Americans sought UI help.

Another 428,000 applied for  Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — 1.3 million in total.

Economist John Williams said “US economic collapse (keeps) hardening…”

Real US 2020 inflation is 8.8% through November, not the phony official 1.17%.

Real US unemployment is 26.3%,  not the misleading BLS reported 6.7%.

For ordinary Americans, economic conditions are dismal.

Heading into the new year, they’ll likely worsen — with scant federal help at most when far more is needed.

On Thursday, the Economic Collapse blog (TEC) reported that 48% of US small businesses fear they’ll be forced to shut down “permanently” before yearend for lack of enough revenue to keep operating.

Layoffs are rising, not leveling off or declining.

The above data come from an Alignable survey of small businesses.

Largely local operations nationwide, they comprise “the heart and soul” of US private enterprise.

When they go down in unprecedented numbers like now, scant job opportunities remain for their let go workers.

When unemployment benefits expire, jobless Americans need federal aid in new forms.

Without it, they’re unable to pay for food and other essentials to life.

According to the Epoch Times, “New Yorkers will no longer get to decide if they will receive a COVID-19 vaccine if a bill calling for…mandatory (vaxxing state-wise) gets approved.”

Introduced on December 4, it calls for administering mass vaxxing of state residents by New York’s health department.

If enacted into law, it’ll have nothing to do with “protect(ing) health,” nothing to “ensure (that New York) residents are safe and protected against further spread.”

It’ll be a social control measure with inadequately tested experimental vaccines that may risk great harm.

Will other US states and the federal government follow New York’s example?

We’re in uncharted territory, a brave new world unfolding in real time beyond what Orwell and Huxley imagined.

Huxley noted that “(p)eople will come to love their oppression, to adore technologies that undue their capacities to think.”

Orwell said “(y)ou must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.”

Is this where things are heading in the US, West, and elsewhere?

Will ordinary people resist or accept control by a higher power, losing precious freedoms?

In the US, Republicans and Dems are on the same page in wanting to force-feed the above to unsuspecting people.

Covid is the vehicle — a form of seasonal flu/influenza falsely promoted as a potentially deadly andromeda strain to scare us into submission to members of the nation’s ruling class.

It’s for their benefit at our expense if we yield to what demands resistance.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is by Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

There is a good old Russian word “yerunda” which I’ve started using instead of “nonsense” and “bullshit” to describe the scaremongering COVID-19 narrative blasted at us from morning to night, not because it says anything different but because it gives me an extra synonym in my arsenal in fighting the nonsensical war waged upon us by super-rich controllers of world economic systems.

Keep watching the BBC, and other mainstream channels alone, and you will never know what’s going on in the world. Remember when the buzz-phrase “herd immunity” was all the rage? Remember when it was Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock’s early remedy for COVID-19? Now we’ve all got herd immunity you don’t hear the phrase any more.

Instead, those stupid enough to be tested, may very well test positive because of exposure (herd immunity) and add to the “alarming” figures as presented by the UK government to get people locked down, and vaccinated with the Pfizer BioNTech witches’ brew concoction which has already killed six people in US trials. Two died from the vaccine, four from the placebo. This prompts the question: what is in the placebo? Pfizer BioNTech have not even revealed what is in the vaccine.

Yesterday BioNTech shares were down more than 4% at the close. Pfizer shares were down by nearly 2%. Less than a month ago the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, dumped 60% of his shares in Pfizer at its highest trading point, denying insider trading while praising the vaccine. Do you think he knows what’s coming?

As well as herd immunity another item we hear little of these days is COVID-19 deaths. That is because nobody is dying from the virus. Now, because of herd immunity, people who die, only need to have been tested positive for the virus, to be recorded as COVID-19 deaths, whatever they actually died from, regardless of what caused their admission to hospital. I covered that topic here.

So there you have it in a nutshell. There is no pandemic. The spin-doctor, Matt Hancock, is more like a witch-doctor. He will spin a story one way, as with herd immunity, then another way, to lock you down eternally, to get you all vaccinated with an experimental vaccine for a virus that long since left the building. No wonder I call this yerunda out for what it is.

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes told an aviation conference Wednesday that Asian countries may soon demand that anyone crossing their borders has received a Covid-19 jab.

“I foresee in Asia, anyway, I think they won’t let anyone in without a vaccination,” Fernandes said at the CAPA Centre for Aviation event.

“It’s not up to the airlines to decide,” he added, explaining that “It’s for governments to decide. It’ll be the country that’ll decide if they will allow people to come in if they are not vaccinated.”

Fernandes’ comments echo those of Todd Handcock, the Asia Pacific president of Collinson Group, which owns Priority Pass airport lounges.

Handcock said recently that “We believe that vaccinations will be required for entry to many countries in the future. And for a period of time, parallel requirements of (being) vaccinated or pre-flight negative tests.”

Air Asia has already implemented a digital ‘health pass’ called Scan2Fly which is being used on routes from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, Surabaya, and Jakarta.

The app, use of which is voluntary at this stage, allows passengers to upload medical certificates when checking in online. The app also details entry documentation required by the destination country, including Covid-19 related data.

Screenshot: Air Asia’s Scan2Fly app

The airline expects the technology to eventually be rolled out to other Air Asia destinations.

The developments come after multiple other airline chiefs and transport executives have commented that so called ‘vaccination passports’ are coming.

The president of travel company Acendas, Brent Blake, told Fox 4 News that he believes the immunity documents will be introduced, requiring anyone who wishes to board a plane to be vaccinated.

Lance Gokongwei, President and CEO of Cebu Pacific, the largest budget airline in the Philippines, recently said

“I think we have to work on a single, global COVID passport so that each country respects the passport.”

“That has to be the number one priority: to get vaccines in the hands in as much of the global population as possible, and then connecting this to a COVID passport,” he further urged.

Korean Air has also said there’s a “real possibility” airlines will mandate passengers take a COVID-19 vaccine before being allowed to travel.

The CEO of Qantas Airlines also announced in November that the COVID-19 vaccine will be mandatory for anyone boarding his flights and that this will become the norm for all international travel.

Testing of the passports has already begun in airports all over the globe.

In addition, the world’s largest air transport lobby group is developing a global ‘COVID travel pass’ app designed to link vaccination status and coronavirus test results to a person’s travel documents.

Another ‘COVID passport’ type system known as the CommonPass, sponsored by the World Economic Forum, is under development.

A further ‘COVID passport’ app called the AOKpass from travel security firm International SOS is currently undergoing trials  between Abu Dhabi and Pakistan.

Hundreds of Tech companies are scrambling over themselves to develop these COVID passport systems.

Anyone still labelling this a ‘conspiracy theory’ is either wilfully ignorant or just plain uninformed.

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Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

In a wide-ranging interview in the New York Times, Melinda Gates made the following remarkable statement: “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.” A cynic might observe that one is disinclined to think much about matters than do not affect one personally. 

It’s a maddening statement, to be sure, as if “economics” is somehow a peripheral concern to the rest of human life and public health. The larger context of the interview reveals the statement to be even more confused. She is somehow under the impression that it is the pandemic and not the lockdowns that are the cause of the economic devastation that includes perhaps 30% of restaurants going under, among many other terrible effects.

She doesn’t say that outright but, like many articles in the mainstream press over this year, she very carefully crafts her words to avoid the crucial subject of lockdowns as the primary cause of economic disaster. It’s possible that she actually believes this virus is what tanked the world economy on its own but that is a completely unsustainable proposition.

Further, her comments provide a perfect illustration of the core problem all along: most of the people who have been advocating lockdowns in fact have no actual experience in managing pandemics. To many of these, Covid-19 became their new playground to try out an unprecedented experiment in social and economic management: shutting down travel, businesses, schools, churches, and issuing stay-at-home orders that smack of totalitarian impositions.

Here is what she says:

You can project out and think about what a pandemic might be like or look like, but until you live through it, it’s pretty hard to know what the reality will be like. So I think we predicted quite well that, depending on what the disease was, it could spread very, very, very quickly. The spread did not surprise us.

What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts. What happens when you have a pandemic that’s running rampant in populations all over the world? The fact that we would all be home, and working from home if we were lucky enough to do that. That was a piece that I think we hadn’t really prepared for.

There are plenty of specialists who have lived through pandemics in the past and managed them by maintaining essential social and economic functioning. A major case in point is Donald A. Henderson, who as head of the World Health Organization is given primary credit for the eradication of smallpox. He wrote as follows in 2006:

Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.

Melinda together with her husband Bill have been the major funding source for pro-lockdown efforts around the world, giving $500M since the pandemic began, but also funding a huge range of academic departments, labs, and media venues for many years, during which time they have both sounded the alarm in every possible interview about the coming pathogen. Their favored policy has been lockdown, as if to confuse a biological virus with a computer virus that merely needs to be blocked from hitting the hard drive.

We can look at how this disease traveled around the world and see that the countries who locked down first, they’re doing better. Many African countries saw it coming and locked it down early. Their replication rate just never got as high as many other countries. And that is a good thing.

While it is true that Africa is an odd outlier, the claim that this is due entirely to early lockdowns has no support. Those who have looked at the anomaly in Africa point to the very young population (just 3% are over 65), cross immunities with other coronaviruses as the main reason for the low death rate, and stronger overall immunities. Indeed, the demographics alone could account for nearly the whole of the mortality difference with Europe and the U.S. In addition, Melinda says here what Bill has said for years: the only solution to a virus is to suppress it and develop a vaccine – the previously untested experiment that has brought poverty, death, and despair to the entire world. Africa in particular was devastated by lockdowns.

It’s still a good thing that she is opening up to the New York Times so that we can gain better perspective on her outlook. There will be a reckoning in the coming year concerning why and how all this happened to us. There will be no chance of suppressing the reality of what has happened. Indeed the center-left press is already starting to admit what AIER has been saying since March 2020.

Consider this roundup from just the last several days:

What Has Lockdown Done to Us? By Drew Holden (New York Times):

Some researchers worry that the social isolation has inflicted damage to mental health that will outlast even the worst of the pandemic. We may not have a full accounting of the consequences for years to come….There will be significant long term consequences from school closures as well. About half of the country’s school districts held remote classes, either exclusively or partially, at the start of the year. This approach has meaningfully reduced educational quality, particularly for children of color.

These losses don’t even take into account the direct effects of the lockdowns on the economy. Small businesses have closed their doors at very high rates as the American economy sputtered in response to stay-at-home orders. One study estimates that 60 percent of the millions of jobs lost between January and April were a result of the lockdowns, not the virus itself. The economic uncertainty caused by unemployment comes with its own health risks….

These tragedies have become an ambient backdrop to everyday life: present but forgotten, real but ignored. Perhaps America has simply gotten comfortable ignoring the quiet suffering of others.

“The Problem With Underestimating How Much People Want to Be Together” by Julia Marcus (The Atlantic)

When a public-health approach isn’t producing the desired outcome, it’s time to try something different. Instead of yelling even louder about Christmas than about Thanksgiving, government officials, health professionals, and ordinary Americans alike might try this: Stop all the chastising. Remember that the public is fraying. And consider the possibility that when huge numbers of people indicate through their actions that seeing loved ones in person is nonnegotiable, they need practical ways to reduce risk that go beyond “Just say no.”

“Covid used as pretext to curtail civil rights around the world, finds report” (The Guardian)

The state of civil liberties around the world is bleak, according to a new study which found that 87% of the global population were living in nations deemed “closed”, “repressed” or “obstructed”…..A number of governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to curtail rights such as free speech, peaceful assembly and freedom of association, according to Civicus Monitor, an alliance of civil society groups which assessed 196 countries.

The parental burnout crisis has reached a tipping point by Anna North (Vox)

Lack of child care is likely a big reason more than 850,000 women dropped out of the workforce in September — more than in any other month on record except for this April, Covert reports. Overall, moms have borne a bigger share of the pandemic parenting burden than dads, with 80 percent of mothers of kids under 12 saying they are responsible for the majority of distance learning in their homes in one April survey. And single moms have been the hardest-hit of all: The share of unpartnered moms in the workforce dropped from 76.1 percent in September 2019 to 67.4 percent in September 2020, a significantly larger drop than those seen among partnered parents or single dads, according to a Pew analysis.

“Many aren’t buying public officials’ ‘stay-at-home’ message. Experts say there’s a better way” (Los Angeles Times)

Health officials are up against a fatigued public, as well as a number of people who don’t believe in the danger of the virus, (Dr. Monica) Gandhi said. But she is also part of a growing number of experts who think there’s a better way to engage those who do want to take the pandemic seriously — by taking a lesson from the public health strategy known as harm reduction.

Finally, it’s tremendously gratifying that the last column of the mighty genius Walter Williams specifically named the Great Barrington Declaration as the answer:

What about the benefits and costs of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic? Much of the medical profession and politicians say that lockdowns, social distancing, and mask-wearing are the solutions. CDC data on death rates show if one is under 35, the chances of dying from COVID-19 is much lower than that of being in a bicycle accident. Should we lock down bicycles? Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, biostatistician, and epidemiologist, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University and an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician and epidemiologist were the initiators of the Great Barrington Declaration. More than 50,000 scientists and doctors, as well as more than 682,000 ordinary people, have signed the Great Barrington Declaration opposing a second COVID-19 lockdown because they see it doing much more harm than good.

The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration never had any doubt that eventually most everyone would come to see that the traditional principles of public health prevail over the previously untested and now failed policy of lockdowns. They spoke out when they did as a means of forcing the issue, and their courage will long echo in the annals of history. Now if we could only get Melinda Gates to see it.

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Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email.  Tw | FB | LinkedIn

Featured image via AIER

In “This Week,” Mary and Polly discuss the latest COVID vaccine-related headline news, including the rollout of Pfizer’s vaccine in the UK, concerns about vaccinating the elderly … and more.

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• This week marked the “landmark” rollout of the Pfizer COVID vaccine in Britain, starting with healthcare workers and the elderly. (After this interview was filmed, news surfaced that two healthcare workers suffered severe allergic reactions to the vaccine — read CHD’s response).
• An article in the Los Angeles Times raised questions about the wisdom of putting the elderly, whose immune systems are notoriously weak, first in line for the unlicensed mRNA vaccines.  “There’s no reason to believe these will be safe for the elderly, as they weren’t included in the clinical trials.”
• Pfizer and Moderna claim their COVID vaccines are “more than 90% effective,” but people should know that those claims are based on inadequate testing. “They just used PCR tests, not the gold standard for testing which requires following up those PCR test results with genetic sequencing.”
• “We’re headed toward requiring an electronic COVID pass.” There’s great concern that people won’t go back for their second shot, because of the side effects from the vaccine. So countries are talking about issuing “vaccine cards” that will be available only after the second shot.
• Given the trillions of dollars invested in these new vaccines, how seriously can we expect the medical establishment and governments to track injuries — which will look different than what we’ve come to expect from other vaccines?
• A Tennessee lawmaker proposed a bill to prohibit authorities from forcing COVID vaccines on anyone against their will. Texas and Florida have said they won’t mandate the vaccines, but New York is flirting with the idea.
• “We’re getting so many emails from military personnel, even people who would normally take a vaccine, who don’t want this vaccine. It’s tragic that we’re using the military as clinical trials.”
• Vaccines are being aggressively marketed, by celebrities, by people dressed in scrubs and stethoscopes, politicians who promise to take the vaccine live on TV — there are even books for children about how Santa got his COVID vaccine. “If the vaccine is really so good, why do we need this marketing campaign?”
• The Guardian reported that “high-value” travelers (rich people and journalists) may be exempt from 2-week quarantine. This isn’t only hypocritical, but just another moneymaker.
• Claiming that he’s merely trying to “fill in the funding gaps,” Bill Gates is pumping more money into COVID vaccine development and distribution.

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Full transcript of the video below. Recorded by Mark Taliano

[00:00:00] He spoke in Toronto yesterday?

[00:00:07] Oh, our lawful excuse for being here is for safeguarding the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Human Rights Code. I’m going to repeat my lawful excuse for being here is for safeguarding the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Human Rights Code. The police have been asked many times to safeguard the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Human Rights Code. This is Section 1.2 of the Police Services Act. It’s the  duty of the police.

[00:00:43] So either you the police or the Lieutenant Governor and Premier are committing reckless endangerment of children, child abuse, elder abuse, healthy people abuse things, an innocent civilian populations, bodily harm, failing to obey a statute, and torture.

Click here to watch the video. (Mark Taliano’s website)

[00:01:07] Over 30 institutions and offices around the world have been queried from through Freedom of Information request for records containing proof that the alleged Sars-cov-2 virus in fact exists. The responses have yielded internal no records. Ontario public health officials have zero legitimate evidence to support their story of a Covid-19 virus, let alone a Covid-19 pandemic. The virus is unproven and purely theoretical. They have committed fraud on a population.

[00:02:02] I’d like to bring to the attention of the police Section 83.01 (b) at 83.231 (1) of the Canadian Criminal Code, domestic terrorism and hoax regarding terrorism.

[00:02:19] The Lieutenant Governor and the Premier did cause public intimidation with regards to its security, including economic security, causing persons to do or refrain from doing any act such as freedom of assembly, freedom of the right to the gaining of a livelihood, freedom to not breathe in one’s own carbon dioxide, among other things. This recklessly endangered the lives of children, elderly, the vulnerable and the healthy segment of the population.

[00:02:53] Lieutenant Governor Premier also caused serious disruption and interference of essential services. The Lieutenant Governor and Premier never supplied sworn records or sworn proof of the criteria for a Declaration of Emergency and never disclosed which resources or which circumstances existed in Section 7.0.1 (3) subparagraph 2. Yes, it is deemed to be a hoax without such sworn under oath. Demonstrably justified proof required by Section One of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Lieutenant Governor and Premier acted with intention and wanton and reckless disregard for the lives of the population, causing severe hardships, reckless child endangerment and suicides. The report on the 129 day Declaration of Emergency did not divulge the criteria and circumstances for the Declaration of Emergency, nor was it ever divulged under oath to the population at any point. It can easily be said that the resources in Section seven point zero point two and three No. two were staples or paperclips. The Lieutenant Governor and the Premier failed to disclose sworn records containing proof that the alleged Sars-cov-2 virus, in fact, exists. The Ontario website also states deaths are included whether or not covid-19 was determined to be the contributing or underlying cause of death. There’s no police here, ask the police to detain to question the Lieutenant Governor and Premier for violating Section 83.01(1) bracket b and 83.231(1) for domestic terrorism and hoax regarding terrorism.

Thank you. Thank you.

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The bottom line is that if you are injured by a vaccine or other “countermeasure” designated by the DHHS Secretary as intended for a pandemic or bioterrorism threat (Covid-19, Pandemic Flu, Anthrax, Smallpox) your options for receiving any financial benefit are very limited.

First, everyone involved with getting the vaccine to you has had their liability waived under the PREP Act.  This includes everyone from the government planners of the vaccine program down to the doctor, nurse or even pharmacy intern who injects you.  None can be sued in federal or state court, unless they wilfully tried to harm you.  And it is virtually impossible to show wilfull misconduct.

Congress did create a program to compensate some victims, but it is much less generous than the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). (And no one ever accused the NVICP of being generous.). It is called the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

It is entirely administered within the Department of Health and Human Services, the same agency that sponsored the vaccine program.  There are no judges.  If you are dissatisfied with the decision, the only appeal is to DHHS, where your case is reviewed by different employees.  DHHS is the payor, too.  DHHS therefore essentially acts as the judge, jury, and defendant.  Unsurprisingly, only about 9% of people who applied to the program received any funds.  Of the 446 claimants to the program, 407 were denied.

Unlike the NVICP, the CICP does not pay any attorney fees, expert witness fees or costs associated with filing a claim.  When I spoke to Dr. Caserta, the program’s prior director, the maximum payout, even for a death or permanent disability, was $250,000 per person.

Dr. Caserta told me the CICP was a “payor of last resort”–which meant that if the claimant had other sources of funds, such as from insurance policies, that CICP would only pay the difference.  In other words, if you had a disability policy that paid out $150,000, that amount would be deducted from the maximum payout you could receive from the CICP.

The CICP has a one year statute of limitations.  This has been very tough on claimants, because most people are unaware the program exists, and therefore have been barred from filing because more than a year has elapsed since they were injured.

And there is another big problem with claims for injuries from Covid vaccines:  nobody knows exactly what the serious injuries are, nor how to identify them with certainty. DHHS is responsible for defining what types of injuries may be caused by each product.  Will they acknowledge that the injury you suffered could be caused by the vaccines they sponsored?  Will they do it in time for that one year statute of limitations?  Will they ever do it?

If you become injured after receiving a designated “countermeasure” vaccine, do not anticipate that you will get help from the government nor from the manufacturers.  Please inform yourself of the benefits and risks beforehand.

The Congressional Research Service explains the way the system works in detail, focusing on the “sweeping” liability immunities that characterize the program, in a booklet published in September, titled, “The PREP Act and Covid-19: Limiting Liability for Medical Countermeasures”

Let the buyer beware.

UPDATE:  On December 7 I got a call back from Mr. Dale Mishler at the CICP.  He would not tell me if there was a specific cap on benefits, nor the maximal amount that has so far been paid out for an injury.  He told me I would have to FOIA for the information, although the CICP website was under design and in several weeks I could probably find the information there.  (It is known that the average benefit paid to 39 recipients since 2010 has been $146,000.)

Mr. Mishler also told me that the CICP now follows the Public Safety Officers Benefits program managed by the DOJ. The PSOB appears to provide a maximal benefit of $370,000 for those injured on or after October 1, 202. However, the description of the program on the PSOB website is vague.

According to Reuters:

An HRSA spokesman said the CICP denies claims for a variety of reasons, including the legal requirement there be “compelling” scientific evidence that a vaccine directly caused injury. CICP only covers medical costs and lost income not covered by others, such as private health insurance.

Isn’t it ironic that experimental vaccines rushed out under emergency use, with extremely short clinical trials, are unlikely to yield the “compelling” evidence of vaccine causality within the one year statute of limitations?

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Credits to the owner of the featured image

This is the sixth in a series entitled Elephants In The Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what’s really going on in relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.

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“Naturally the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” (Hermann Goering, Hitler’s 2^nd in command(1)).

Terrorism is scary enough to work as an exaggerated threat to serve as an excuse for war. Almost any violent action by any group anywhere in the world can be portrayed as the act of terrorists, thus justifying military intervention, arms sales, repression and crackdowns on opponents of the government. One commentator suggested:

“terrorism is maybe the best excuse that has ever been invented for unlawful government action”(2).

The intelligence analyst, Edward Snowden, (who became a whistleblower when he revealed the extent of US government spying on US citizens) has explained that terrorism is what analysts call ‘cover for action’. This means that it convinces people to allow government actions that they would not normally allow.(3) The ‘war on terror’ is a propaganda term to justify invasions and overthrowing governments. Such a ‘war’ has no definable end, and the whole world is potentially the battlefield.(4)

The US and Britain Train, Arm, Finance and Protect Terrorists 

Beginning in 1979, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain’s MI6 worked with Pakistan’s intelligence services and Saudi financiers to train terrorists in Afghanistan. Their role was to de-stabilise Afghanistan in order to draw the Russians into a long war, which has been described as ‘Russia’s Vietnam’.(5) During this training, recruits learned not only how to fight, but were also indoctrinated in the most extreme forms of Islam. That war ended a decade later when the Soviet Union collapsed. Some of these fighters went on to become the terrorist group known as al-Qaeda.(6) Many of the terrorists involved in attacks around the world, such as the World Trade Centre bombing in 1993, were veterans of these training programs. Over time, al-Qaeda funded other groups, split into different factions, spread into other countries and developed into organisations such as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).(7) These religious extremists fought in different parts of (what was) Yugoslavia. First in Bosnia, then in Kosovo and Macedonia. US and British support for terrorists overseas has continued to the present day. More terrorists were used to overthrow the government in Libya, and the terrorists trying to overthrow the government of Syria received weapons and support from Britain and the US.

A few years ago there were regular discussions about the Finsbury Park mosque in London, because it was associated with terrorist recruitment. Preachers at the mosque, such as Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri, had been trained at CIA-backed training camps in the 1990s. They travelled to central Asia with the support of the British intelligence agency, MI6. These people then train and radicalise others, including the four people who participated in the July 2005 attacks on the transport system in London. Britain operated what was known as a ‘covenant of security’.(8) This was an informal agreement that extremist preachers would be tolerated, provided that they did not preach violence against Britain. Their usefulness in recruiting for wars abroad was considered more important than the violence that they incited. British attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq brought this covenant to an end, so Britain then became a target. Terrorist attacks in Britain and the US, triggered by our policies abroad, are sometimes called ‘blowback’.(9) The bomber who carried out the 2017 Manchester bombing had previously travelled to Libya, in order to participate in terrorism there, with the assistance of the British Intelligence agency MI5.(10) The bomber who killed 49 people in the 2016 attack on an Orlando nightclub claimed that it was in response to US bombing in Iraq and Syria. The former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, correctly pointed out in 2017 that

“British invasions abroad provoke terrorism back home.”(11)

On various occasions the FBI wanted to investigate individuals who would later be involved in the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11^th 2001, but they were told by other US government agencies not to question them.(12) The security services of other countries have found these policies to be very frustrating, because attacks in their countries were carried out by terrorists formerly working with the US, or incited by preachers in Britain. Egypt has denounced Britain for protecting the killers who were involved with a massacre at Luxor in 1997. Macedonian intelligence complained that US interference was the biggest obstacle to dealing with extremists in 2001.(13)

A closer examination of US policy reveals further hypocrisy about terrorism. America has actually provided a safe haven for large numbers of international terrorists for many years because those same individuals have carried out the CIA’s bidding in other countries.  Florida has been described as the retirement home of choice for mass murderers, torturers and assassins from Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Chile, Argentina, Honduras, Somalia, Indonesia, Iran and South Vietnam. This includes Cuban exiles, Luis Posada Cariles and Orlando Bosch, who blew up a Cuban passenger airliner in 1976 and killed 73 people. Documents indicate that US intelligence agencies knew that such an attack was planned, but did not inform the Cuban authorities. Many other terrorists have been flown to alternative countries, known as safe havens, where they are unlikely ever to be charged for their crimes.(14)

State-Sponsored Terrorism – Governments Are The Most Dangerous Terrorists 

Terrorism is the use of violence and fear to achieve political goals. Many US invasions and CIA crimes, discussed in earlier posts, involved extreme violence, were intended to create fear, and were intended to achieve political goals, and thus should be labeled terrorism. When the US government described their strategy in Iraq as ‘shock and awe’, they made it clear that their intention was to terrify the Iraqi population.(15) In other words, modern warfare is simply terrorism carried out by governments. Despite this, the terms “state-terror” and “state-sponsored terrorism” rarely appear in the media to describe violence by Western governments.

Governments try to distinguish their violence from terrorism by saying that they do not deliberately target civilians. This is propaganda, because the governments concerned know that many of their actions will inevitably lead to huge numbers of civilian deaths. As one commentator noted, from the point of view of a civilian being blown up:

“there is little moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons”.(16)

The US and Britain have close ties to some of the world’s most repressive regimes (some of them discussed in earlier posts). They provide support for these governments in order to maintain control of trade and resources. Each time the US or British government provide weapons, military training, finance or other assistance to a repressive regime, such as Saudi Arabia, they help to create circumstances where the repressed population will correctly blame the US and Britain, and might fight back.(17) These unpopular governments frequently commit state terrorism against their own populations. A study that analysed the motives of suicide bombers concluded that they are overwhelmingly aimed at foreign occupiers (such as US soldiers), and that when the occupiers leave, the suicide attacks tend to decrease significantly.(18) 

Governments Like To Exaggerate A Threat… 

In Britain we were repeatedly warned that there were as many as 2,000 terrorists in the UK ready to strike at any moment, yet since 2005 there have only been a handful of incidents and a small number of successful prosecutions. In fact the statistical threat of terrorism to people in the US or Britain is minimal. Calculations for the US show that you are more likely to drown in the bathtub than to be killed by a terrorist.(19) In 2005 the FBI admitted that they had not identified a single al-Qaeda sleeper cell in the entire United States.(20) In 2007, the Director of Public Prosecutions openly stated that “there is no war on terror in the UK”.(21) In 2009 the CIA admitted that the total number of al-Qaeda in both Afghanistan and Pakistan was less than 100.(22) The number of terrorists operating overseas has increased dramatically in the last decade, as the US and Britain have poured weapons into the Middle East to destabilise multiple countries and overthrow governments, but this does not appear to have increased terrorism at home.

…to justify state crimes 

Ordinary people have struggled for hundreds of years to develop laws that protect us against corrupt governments, but the supposed crackdown on terrorism gives the government an opportunity to create oppressive laws at home. The US government has manipulated the legal system since 2001 so that it can carry out activities that are, or should be, illegal. This includes secret surveillance unregulated by courts, arrest without trial and indefinite detention.(23) Former President Bush effectively legalised torture and kidnapping by the state. Intelligence agencies have been given special powers, people’s freedoms have been restricted without any crime having taken place, and courts now use secret evidence. US laws would place all government power in the hands of the President in the event of a catastrophic emergency.(24)

Amnesty International released a report in 2017 explaining that European countries had:

“rushed through a raft of disproportionate and discriminatory laws… eroded the rule of law, enhanced executive powers, peeled away judicial controls, restricted freedom of expression and exposed everyone to unchecked government surveillance… dismantling hard-won human rights protections……EU governments are using counter-terrorism measures to consolidate draconian powers … and strip away human rights under the guise of defending them. We are in danger of creating societies in which liberty becomes the exception and fear the rule.”(25)

The US and British governments have tried to convince us that there are huge numbers of fanatics around the world who have different beliefs, and who want to slaughter anyone who does not agree with them. The truth is that the number of people who think like this is small. There have always been some people with extremist beliefs, but these few people are unlikely to be a serious threat unless they have the support of the population. If we continue with our existing policies, where we invade other countries for oil and support repressive regimes, leading to the deaths of large numbers of people, then the number of those who hate us will grow, and terrorism will continue. If we seriously want to end terrorism, the following steps are necessary(26) 

• Stop invading other countries and committing terrorist acts ourselves
• Stop supporting other nations that commit terrorist acts and repress their populations
• Stop training, funding, arming and harbouring terrorists
• Deal with terrorists like ordinary criminals
• Attend to the grievances of people everywhere

As one commentator noted: 

“The irony of the ‘war on terror’ is that the US can win it only when it finally stops fighting it.”(27)

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This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda. 

Notes

1) Gustave Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, cited at www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm

2) Susan George, ‘Responses to the Table of Free Voices Event’, December 2006, at https://www.tni.org/my/node/11360

3) Edward Snowden, ‘How We Take Back The Internet’, 22.09, TED2014, 18 Mar 2014, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVwAodrjZMY

4) David Swanson, War is a Lie, p.215, 2011 

5) Former CIA director Robert Gates and US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski have admitted to the US role in funding religious extremist terrorism in Afghanistan, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone 

6) Michael Chossudovsky, ‘“Revealing The Lies” on 9/11 Perpetuates the Big Lie’, May 27, 2004, at www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO405E.html 

7) Daniel L. Byman, ‘Comparing al-Qaeda and ISIS: Different Goals, Different Targets’, 29 April 2015, at https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/comparing-al-qaeda-and-isis-different-goals-different-targets/ 

8) Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, excerpt at http://markcurtis.info/2016/10/05/londonistan-britains-green-light-to-terrorism/ 

9) Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The costs and consequences of American Empire 

10) Mark Curtis and Nafeez Ahmed, ‘The Manchester Bombing as Blowback: The latest evidence’, 3 June 2017, at http://markcurtis.info/2017/06/03/the-manchester-bombing-as-blowback-the-latest-evidence/ 

11) Jeremy Corbyn, cited in Craig Murray, ‘That Leaked Labour Party Report’, 20 April 2020, https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/04/that-leaked-labour-party-report/

12) Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism’, 2005 

13) Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War On Truth, pp.42-45

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry, 2006

14) William Blum, Rogue State, 2000, pp.106-116

‘Luis Posada Carriles, The Declassified Record’, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153, May 10, 2005, at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/index.htm 

15) Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present, 2004, p.198

16) Expression usually attributed to Tony Benn, Question Time, 22 March 2007, BBC, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tony_Benn

17) Dale Watson, ‘The Terrorist Threat Confronting The United States’, congressional testimony of Dale L. Watson, Feb 6, 2002, at https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/the-terrorist-threat-confronting-the-united-states

18) Robert Pape, Dying To Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, 2005, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win 

19) John Mueller, ‘Reacting To Terrorism: Probabilities, Consequences and the Persistence of Fear’, 6 March 2007, at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228400183_Reacting_to_Terrorism_Probabilities_Consequences_and_the_Persistence_of_Fear

20) Sherwood Ross, ‘Is the terrorist threat another Bush-Cheney fabrication?’, Sept 16, 2007, at www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6793 

21) Ken Macdonald, cited in Clare Dyer, ‘There is no war on terror in the UK, says DPP’, Guardian, Jan 24, 2007, at  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/jan/24/uk.terrorism 

22) Richard Esposito, Matthew Cole, Brian Ross, ‘President Obama’s Secret: Only 100 Al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan’, at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16389 

IISS (International Institute of Strategic Studies) report, 2010, stating that the al-qaeda threat had been exaggerated, discussed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/07/al-qaida-taliban-threat-afghanistan 

23) Phyllis Bennis, ‘And the name for our profits is democracy’, in Achin Vanaik, (ed.) Selling US Wars, 2007, p.228 

24) Marjorie Cohn, ‘The Unitary King George’, 1 June, 2007, at www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5853

25) Amnesty, ‘EU: Orwellian counter-terrorism laws stripping rights under guise of defending them’, 17 Jan 2017, at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/01/eu-orwellian-counter-terrorism-laws-stripping-rights-under-guise-of-defending-them/ 

26) Noam Chomsky, ‘“The evil scourge of terrorism”: reality, construction, remedy’, 23 March 2010, at http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20100323.htm 

27) ‘Jemima Khan: The things you say sound great Mr. President, so why do you end up disappointing us?’ Independent, June 25, 2011, at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/jemima-khan-the-things-you-say-sound-great-mr-president-so-why-do-you-end-up-disappointing-us-2302561.html

Like other corporate predators, Big Pharma prioritizes profits over human life, health and welfare.

Corporate America buys politicians like toothpaste, buying influence, assuring their interests are served over the public welfare and rule of law.

Everyone willing to be vaxxed for hoped for protection against covid will be playing Russian roulette with their health, well-being and lives.

All rushed to market Pharma entries in the covid vaccines sweepstakes are extremely hazardous.

Ahead of FDA approval of what should be banned, the agency issued damning news about Pfizer’s experimental covid vaccine.

It reported two deaths straightaway after being jabbed.

Four other unwitting victims developed face-paralyzing Bell’s Palsy.

Four more receiving Pfizer’s so-called placebo also died. It’s unclear what’s in the substance that proved fatal.

According to one report, the so-called placebo given AstraZeneca test subjects got the hazardous to human health meningitis vaccine that’s polar opposite what a placebo is supposed to be.

So far, at least six deaths resulted from covid vaccines. Unknown numbers of others were harmed.

Establishment media suppressed what’s vital for everyone to know — operating as Big Pharma co-conspirators against public health and welfare.

On Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-headed Children’s Health Defense (CHD) commented on “news of (the) life-threatening reaction to Pfizer’s covid vaccine” as follows:

“Instead of expressing concern over clinical trial participants’ welfare,” Moderna’s prospectus cares only that this issue “could materially harm (its) business, financial conditions and prospects.”

The company and its scientists are well aware of “unacceptable health risks or adverse side effects” to anyone receiving its covid vaccine.

Yet its management’s only concern is over a possible “unfavorable benefit risk ratio could inhibit market acceptance” and the company’s bottom line.

Pfizer’s hazardous to human health covid vaccine risks severe “anaphylactic reactions” to individuals taking it.

The same goes for Moderna and AstraZeneca entries.

According to CHD,

“(w)hile vaccine manufacturers and federal agencies providing oversight on COVID vaccine development are quick to point out that the clinical trials did not identify safety concerns with the vaccine, they fail to mention the fact that the trial participants were excluded from the study if they had a history of severe allergic reactions and those in the trial were never screened for PEG antibodies” that can cause adverse reactions when vaccines are administered, adding:

“(L)ife-threatening adverse events are occurring after widespread use of the vaccine has begun.”

“A finger needs to be pointed squarely at the vaccine manufacturers and regulatory agencies who buried their heads in the sand to legitimate safety concerns in their rush to approve a COVID vaccine.”

“Unfortunately, the public is now left to bear the burden of exposing these lapses in safety.”

Separately, CHD expressed concern over whether mandated vaxxing against covid is coming, saying the following:

Taking this unacceptable step would breach the 1947 Nuremberg Code, international, federal and state statutes, “and the 2005 UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (that) establish(ed) the necessity of informed consent.”

Forced mass vaxxing would violate the integrity of our sovereign bodily rights that no outside power has a legal or ethical right to challenge.

The US “flawed and corrupt regulatory process enables vaccine safety shortcuts and fraud,” CHD explained.

Fast-tracking development of hazardous to health covid vaccines is Exhibit A.

Big Pharma is liable for the safety and efficacy of its drugs with one glaring exemption — their vaccines, as a previous article explained.

Even though HHS is obliged by law to investigate harm from vaccines, improve their safety, and report biannually to Congress on this issue, “it has never once done so in over 30 years,” said CHD, adding:

Despite the state of medical science today, “American children have never been sicker.”

“Over half (54%) of American children now develop at least one chronic health condition, and many have multiple health challenges.”

“COVID-19 vaccines include gene-altering and inflammation-promoting technologies that may create genetic changes that may pass to future generations.”

“Lawyers must not provide cover for liability-free medical interventions that carry profound unknown, de facto experimental risks.”

Ask yourself the following:

Are you willing to be a guinea pig subject for mass vaxxing with a rushed to market/inadequately tested, highly suspect experimental covid vaccine that could be adversely life-altering?

It’s your body and your choice. Don’t let any higher authority interfere with your sovereign rights.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Natural News

Despite finding “reasonable basis” for allegations of war crimes against British soldiers in Iraq, an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor dropped a preliminary investigation, citing the UK’s own efforts to investigate the conduct of its troops in the war.

In a statement released on Wednesday, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda acknowledged the fact that the probe did not lead to the prosecution of any suspects, but stressed that the outcome of the investigation does not mean war crimes did not occur.

“There is a reasonable basis to believe that members of the British armed forces committed the war crimes of willful killing, torture, inhuman/cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape and/or other forms of sexual violence,” Bensouda said.

“The Office [of the Prosecutor] has identified a confined number of incidents to reach this determination which, while not exhaustive, appear to correspond to the most serious allegations of violence against persons in UK custody.”

The ICC statement also refuted claims that legal proceedings made on behalf of Iraqi victims of alleged war crimes were all “vexatious” or spurious, as stated by former British Prime Minister Theresa May and her successor Boris Johnson.

“The Office has found untenable the proposition that these various processes all arose from vexatious claims,” the ICC prosecutor said in her statement, adding that the lack of prosecutions “has deprived the victims of justice”.

The UK’s Service Prosecution Authority threw out hundreds of claims brought on behalf of Iraqis against the UK Ministry of Defence for alleged abuses.

Rupert Skilbeck, director of legal firm Redress, which brings legal cases on behalf of victims of torture, said:

“Survivors of torture and ill-treatment will be profoundly disappointed that the ICC Prosecutor will not now be pursuing her investigation against the UK.

“The prosecutor is clear that there was strong evidence of war crimes – including the use of the ‘five techniques’ [of physical and psychological abuse] – and identifies numerous concerns with the UK investigations, not least that there were no prosecutions despite such a large number of accepted claims.”

‘Shoot to kill’

Middle East Eye has previously reported damning evidence of alleged abuses by British forces in Iraq including:

• How the British Army relaxed the rules of engagement while soldiers were stationed in Basra in 2007 to sometimes allow them to ‘shoot to kill’ unarmed civilians
• How the British Army deployed interrogators to the US-run Abu Ghraib prison despite being aware of reports that detainees were being tortured
• How British and US forces ran secret desert prisons in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, concealing detainees from Red Cross inspectors

In August, MEE reported in a story cited in the ICC report that the Ministry of Defence could not say how many millions of pounds it had paid to thousands of Iraqis who had lodged complaints of mistreatment by British forces because it would take weeks for civil servants to collate the figure.

In Wednesday’s ICC report, the prosecutor detailed alleged incidents committed by UK armed forces against “civilians or hors de combat” at detention facilities in Iraq between 2003 and 2009.

The report speculated that the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) and later the Service Police Legacy Investigations (SPLI) – which led internal UK probes – did not press charges against soldiers because of a lack of evidence or because they were not confident in securing convictions.

The report justifies the ICC’s decision to drop its inquiry by emphasising that the court can only act when the country of origin of the suspects is demonstrably unable or unwilling to investigate alleged atrocities.

“As the court has emphasised, the ICC is not a human rights body called upon to decide whether in domestic proceedings the requirements of human rights law or domestic law have been violated,” it read.

“Rather it is tasked with determining whether it should exercise its own competence in a criminal case, in place of the primary duty which belongs to a state.

“To do so, the court must be satisfied that no relevant proceedings have been undertaken, or if they have, that those proceedings were not genuine, either because the state is unable to undertake genuine proceedings, or because the state is unwilling to do so in the sense that it has taken steps to shield perpetrators from criminal justice.”

The report’s release comes with the UK government currently pushing legislation through parliament to shield soldiers from prosecution for any acts of murder or torture committed after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Overseas Operations Bill has been criticised by parliament’s human rights committee, human rights groups and former soldiers who argue that the proposed new protections are dangerous and demeaning.

‘Ugly double standard’

Bensouda’s office had previously probed whether the UK’s own investigation was genuine.

“The office will seek to ascertain whether the allegations of a lack of genuineness can be substantiated in order to enable it to come to a final determination with respect to the preliminary examination as early as practically possible,” a report said in August.

The UK was the chief partner of the US in the invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Both American and British forces have faced accusations of abuse during the conflict, which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Earlier this year, Washington imposed sanctions on top ICC officials, including Bensouda, over investigations of US abuses in Afghanistan and Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch voiced disappointment in the ICC’s decision to terminate the case.

“The UK government has repeatedly shown precious little interest in investigating and prosecuting atrocities committed abroad by British troops,” said Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at HRW.

“The prosecutor’s decision to close her UK inquiry will doubtless fuel perceptions of an ugly double standard in justice: one approach to powerful states and quite another for those with less clout.”

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Featured image via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”

– William Blake, Eternity

Great songwriters, like great poets, are possessed by a passionate melancholic sensibility that gives them joy in the telling.  They seem always to be homesick for a home they can’t define or find.  At the heart of their songs is a presence of an absence that is unnameable. That is what draws listeners in.

While great songs usually take but a few minutes to travel from the singer’s mouth to the listener’s ears, they keep echoing for a long time, as if they had taken both singer and listener on a circular journey out and back, and then, in true Odyssean fashion, replay the cyclic song of the shared poetic mystery that is life and death, love and loss, the going up and coming down, the abiding nostalgia for a future home.

Kris Kristofferson’s songs keep echoing in my mind.

My very old mother, as she neared death, would often tell me, “Don’t let me go.”  I would tell her I was trying, knowing my efforts were a temporary stay and that through our conversations we were building what D. H. Lawrence called her “ship of death”:

Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.
And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.

***

We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.

***

And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into her house again
filling the heart with peace.

In those days she also used to ask me: “Now that you have lived more of your life in Massachusetts than in New York City, where do you say you are from and which do you consider your home?”  I didn’t know what to say but would wonder where I would like to be buried, as if it mattered.  I would be dead.  Home.  I don’t think so.  Not underground, so why does it matter where.  Home isn’t a place for permanently sleeping.  It’s the place from which we launch our ships out into the world.  The place that we discover when all our sailings are done.

Where was the lightning before it flashed?

Kris Kristofferson, who is now an old man in his mid-80s, is an astonishing songwriter, a man of faith and conscience, and a humorously devilish performer with an on-stage persona of a spiritual satyr.  He has written and performed some of the finest songs in the American songbook.  A man’s and a woman’s man, he has written songs of exquisite passion and sensitivity and rough rollicking freedom that only an emotionless zombie would fail to be moved by.  And in the last 10 or so  years he has fearlessly confronted his mortality, writing many brave songs that bookend his earliest hits, such as Help Me Make It Through the Night.

I have loved and listened to his music for a long time and have wished to honor him for years.

This is my small tribute to a great artist.

Counterpose what is perhaps his most well-known song, Me and Bobby McGee, first made famous by the rocking swirling twirling wild dervish Janice Joplin, a former lover so I’ve heard, with his lilting poem that is little known: Shadows of Her Mind.  Two meditations in very different song styles on love, loneliness, searching, loss, and the secrets of one’s soul – a magician at work. Whether partly truth or partly fiction doesn’t matter.  Secrets are secrets.

Kristofferson broke barriers when he found success in Nashville’s country and western scene in the early 1970s. He made explicit the sexuality and the yearning for love that underlay traditional country music. The endless yearning that never ends. Its secret. Not just sex in the back room of a honky-tonk, but the “Achin’ with the feelin’ of the freedom of an eagle when she flies,” as he sings in Loving Her Was Easier. Something intangible. True passion for love and life.

He was an oddball. Here was a man whose inspiration for Me and Bobby McGee was a foreign film, La Strada (The Road), made by the extraordinary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. Not the stuff of movie theaters in small Texas towns. In the film, Anthony Quinn is driving around on a motorcycle with a feeble-minded girl whose playing of a trombone gets on his nerves, so while she is sleeping, he abandons her by the side of the road. He later hears a woman singing the melody the girl was always playing and learns the girl has died. Kris explains:

To me, that was the feeling at the end of ‘Bobby McGee.’ The two-edged sword that freedom is. He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him. That’s where the line ‘Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose’ came from.

Not exactly country, yet a traditional storyteller, a Rhodes scholar and a former Army Captain, an Oxford “egghead” in love with romantic poetry, a sensitive athlete, a risk-taker who gave up a teaching position at West Point for a janitor’s job in Nashville to try his hand at songwriting, a patriot with a dissenter’s heart, he is an unusual man, to put it mildly. A gambler. A man who knows that heaven and hell are born together and that the body and soul cannot be divorced, that all art is incarnational and meant to be about ecstasy and misery, not the middle normal ground where people measure out their lives in coffee spoons. He’s always wanted to tell what he knew, come what may, as he sings in To Beat the Devil:

I was born a lonely singer, and I’m bound to die the same,
But I’ve got to feed the hunger in my soul.
And if I never have a nickel, I won’t ever die ashamed.
‘Cos I don’t believe that no-one wants to know.

What do people want to know?  A bit here and there, I guess, but not too much, not the secrets of our souls. Not the truth about their government’s killers, the lies that drive a Billy Dee to drugs and death and the hypocritical fears of cops and people who wish to squelch the truths of the desperate ones for fear that they might reveal secrets best buried with the bodies.  Secrets not about the dead but the living.

There are only a handful of songwriters with the artistic gift of soul sympathy to write verses like the following, and Kris has done it again and again over fifty years:

Billy Dee was seventeen when he turned twenty-one
Fooling with some foolish things he could’ve left alone
But he had to try to satisfy a thirst he couldn’t name
Driven toward the darkness by the devils in his veins

All around the honky-tonks, searching for a sign
Gettin’ by on gettin’ high on women, words and wine
Some folks called him crazy, Lord, and others called him free
But we just called us lucky for the love of Billy Dee

Like William Blake, one of Kristofferson’s mentors – “Can I see another’s woe/And not be in sorrow too?/Can I see another’s grief/And not seek for kind relief?” – Billy Dee captures in rollicking sound more truth about addiction than a thousand self-important editorials about drugs.

Kristofferson joins with Dylan Thomas, the Welsh bard, another wild man with an exquisite sense for the music of language and the married themes of youth and age, sex and death, love and loss, home and the search, always the search:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

Although most of his songs lack overt political content, such concerns are scattered throughout his massive oeuvre (nearly 400 songs) where his passion for the victims of America’s war machine and his respect for great spiritual heroes like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and John and Robert Kennedy ring out in very powerful songs that are not well known.  Note his use of the word they in They Killed Him, surely not a mistake for such a careful songwriter.

And in The Circle, a song about Bill  Clinton killing with a missile an Iraqi artist and her husband and the wounding of her children, his condemnation is powerful as he links it to the disappeared of Argentina in a circle of sorrow.  Of course no one is responsible.

“Not I” said the soldier
“I just follow orders and it was my duty to do my job well”
“Not I” said the leader who ordered the slaughter
“Im saddened it happened, but then, war is hell”
“Not us” said the others who heard of the horror
Turned a cold shoulder on all that was done
In all the confusion a single conclusion
The circle of sorrow has only begun

As everyone knows, songs have a powerful hold on our memories, and sometimes we learn ironic truths about them only years later.

When I was young, my large family, consisting of my parents and seven sisters and me – Bronx kids – would go on vacation for a week in the late summer to a farm called Edgewater.  We would pack our clothes in cartons weeks in advance and would load into the car like sardines layered in a can.  On the trip north to the Catskill mountains, in our wild excitement we would sing all sorts of happy songs, many from Broadway shows.  As we approached the farm, we would go crazy with excitement and sing over and over the repetitive song we had learned somewhere: We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here.  To us it was a song of joy; we had arrived at our Shangri-La, our ideal home, paradise regained.  To this day, the name Edgewater is like Proust’s madeleine dipped in tea for many of us.

What we didn’t know was that the song we were singing was the sardonic song that WW I soldiers sang as they awaited absurd and senseless death in the mud and rat-filled trenches of the war to end all wars.  Sardonic words to them and joy to us. They were there because they were there and it was meaningless.  We sang it out of joy.  So Blakean:

Man was made for joy and woe
Then when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul to bind.

To listen to Kris Kristofferson’s vast oeuvre is a confirmation of that Blakean truth.  It is to realize that all those songs he has written and sung have been his way of fulfilling the words of another Romantic poet who was Blake’s contemporary, John Keats.  Keats called life “a vale of soul-making,” meaning that people are not souls until they make themselves by developing an individual identity by doing what they were meant to do.

In Ken Burns’ fascinating documentary series, Country Music, Kris answers the question of why he took such a radical turn early on and gave up his military road to success for a lowly job as a janitor in Nashville where he hoped to write songs.  He said:

I love William Blake…. William Blake said, “If he who is organized by the divine for spiritual communion, refuse and bury his talent in the earth, even though he should want natural bread, shame and confusion of face will pursue him throughout life to eternity.

When he answered this call of the spirit and took such a dramatic turn away from the conventional road to success, his mother wrote him a letter essentially disowning him (“dis-owning” – an interesting word!).  When Kris showed it to Johnny Cash, Cash said, “Isn’t it nice to get a letter from home?”

Not devoid of humor, Kristofferson wrote Jessie Younger, a catchy tune that no doubt concealed his pain while sharing it, an example of his extraordinary ability to use words in paradoxical ways.  A close examination of so many of his lyrics leaves me aghast at his talent.

There are just a handful of songwriter/performers who can match the art of Kris Kristofferson. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen come to mind, men whose work also contains that deep spiritual questing for home.  Both have been greatly celebrated in recent years, Dylan with the Nobel Prize and Cohen with accolades after his death.

Kris Kristofferson may have been “out of sight and out of mind” in recent days, so I would like to bring him back to your attention and salute him.

Thank you, Kris.  You are an inspiration.  Blessings.

Encore: The Last Thing to Go

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

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies

Author: Edward Curtin

ISBN: 9781949762266

Published: 2020

Options: EBOOK – Epub and Kindle, paper, PDF

Click here to order.

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We have have been discussing how writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. The erosion of free speech has been radically accelerated by the Big Tech and social media companies. The level of censorship and viewpoint regulation has raised questions of a new type of state media where companies advance an ideological agenda with political allies.  The state media criticism was never more compelling than in the announcement of YouTube this week that it would now remove videos that question the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.  The election is over but YouTube will now scrub away any dissenting views that the election was marred by fraud. It now appears to be protecting history itself from things deemed disinformation — the ultimate calling of the corporate censor.

YouTube (which is owned by Google) announced “We will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election.” The company used the end of the “safe harbor” period for counting votes to justify censor those with lingering doubts or those who want to post explanations of why the count remains suspicious, including presumable an array of members of Congress who have called for investigations.

For free speech advocates, the move is a raw example of corporate censorship but Democrats and many liberals applauded the action. Indeed, the Columbia journalism dean has lamented that these companies are not cracking down on free speech to a greater extent and blaming their own greed for not being greater censors.  It appears that Big Brother is now being embraced as a protector of truth.

Like the “false facts” removed by China’s censors, the Biden victory is treated like a state fact that cannot be challenged or questioned. As someone who has stated for weeks that Biden is the president-elect and criticized conspiracy theories, I do not subscribe to the view that the election was stolen. However, millions of votes — both Republican and Democrat — hold that view. Indeed, some polls show up to 90 percent of Republicans believe that election was not fair and honest.  Roughly half of the country voted for President Donald Trump and many of them hold this view.

The best way to address such views is to expose them to debate and challenge. That is the value of free speech. Otherwise, you end up on a slippery slope of censorship of any views that you deem harmful or misleading.

This action notably occurs just weeks after companies blocked discussion of the Hunter Biden story. It was only after the election that the CEOs then said it was a mistake.  Biden is now under federal investigation and the laptop and its disturbing emails now appear to be legitimate.  Yet, Democratic Senators demanded more censorship as the CEOs were apologizing for spiking a legitimate news story that was damaging to Biden. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal declared that he was “concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.” Accordingly, he demand an answer to this question:

“Will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including fact checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead?”

YouTube has eagerly embraced the call for censorship by Blumenthal and others. It is now protecting not the election but history from what it considers disinformation.  It is the very Chinese model embraced directly or indirectly by some American academics and journalists.  We are watching free speech drain away to the applause of those eager for less freedom.

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The Republican and Democrat leaders of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have issued a joint statement of intense hostility towards China. This posture is a threat to Australia’s national security… and the world. An attempt to tear China down will be unsuccessful. To follow paths to antagonise China will eventually reap hostile responses and darken global affairs at a time when global cooperation is essential.

As I write on 7 December, there seems to have been no mention in Australian media of a joint statement by the acting chairman Rubio and deputy chairman Warner (Republican and Democrat) of the Intelligence Committee of the US Senate on 4 December, attacking China. It is couched in terms of support for an opinion piece in the (Murdoch) Wall Street Journal on 3 Decemberby the Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe was nominated to that position in 2019 and his nomination was swiftly withdrawn because as a little known rural Texas Trumpist congressman his slender bio was padded and because even among many Republicans he was seen as too conservative. Trump nominated him again and secured approval in May 2020. Ratcliffe’s opinion piece was accompanied by an anticommunist video. The WSJ article is partly paywalled. A summary was published by The Hill. Ratcliffe’s opinion piece reads like a personal opinion. He will not be intelligence chief after Biden is sworn in.

The statement by Senators Rubio and Warner is remarkable in several ways. There is no acknowledgment that there is an incoming Democrat Administration. There is no divergence between the Republican and the Democrat. Is Warner talking for Biden or shaping confrontation in the Democratic Party? Is it a price for nominations to new cabinet posts to be approved by the Senate. The language is extravagant, and religious in its fervid hostility to communism and China. Ideological is hardly an adequate attribute.

This is the joint statement as released by Senator Rubio. Because it is important I quote in full.

“Dec 04 2020

“Washington, D.C.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Acting Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) released the following joint statement regarding the challenge posed to the United States by the Chinese government and Communist Party:

“We agree with DNI Ratcliffe that China poses the greatest national security threat to the United States. Our intelligence is clear: the Chinese Communist Party will stop at nothing to exert its global dominance.

“Beijing’s infiltration of U.S. society has been deliberate and insidious as they use every instrument of influence available to accelerate their rise at America’s expense.

“Our democratic values are threatened by China’s attempts to supplant American leadership and remake the international community in their image. The Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian leaders seek to threaten our free speech, politics, technology, economy, military, and even our drive to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Unfortunately, the United States’ challenge with China is not unique as Beijing seeks to infiltrate and subvert other nations around the world, including our allies.

“This is our watershed moment and we must stand our ground. The United States must not and cannot accept Beijing’s quest to exert dominance, while dismissing international legal norms and committing egregious human rights abuses to further their goals.

“We have made considerable progress in rebalancing the U.S.-China relationship and laying a clear marker for U.S. policy going forward, and we will not stand idly by as the Chinese Communist Party attempts to undermine our economic and national security.

“The message to Beijing and the world is that China’s behavior will not be tolerated and will be contested by democratic values, in close partnership with our allies and partners.”

China could probably write a declaration reading much the same, about the United States, should it wish to do so. But there is no sign that China wants war with the United States. What do these American gentlemen mean when they bluster: “This is our watershed moment and we must stand our ground.” Australia must make clear, especially to those two Senators, that we will not support aggressive activity directed at China. (To which the reader here might reasonably comment “aren’t we already doing that ourselves?”)

It would be normal for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now to be drafting, in collaboration with the Washington embassy, a high level message to the incoming US Administration, a message of warmth and support, also expressing the view that Australia has its views to advance especially on regional affairs. This is an opportunity to influence not just agree with US policy… The role of a really helpful ally.

Australia cannot support a view of us-or-them as regards China. Nor can we deny the reality of China’s growth and power. We see that in parity purchasing power China is now the biggest economy. China (or Japan, or India) will be different in character and power expression and expectations. These are realities to recognise. An attempt to tear China down will be unsuccessful. To follow paths to antagonise China will eventually reap hostile responses and darken global affairs at a time when global cooperation is essential.

It is important that we restore ruptured multilateralism. It is particularly important that the US and China collaborate on public health, environment, climate, arms control and war avoidance. That is the only way in which the United States might regain leadership—by engagement and collaboration. Without the US and China working together there will be no solutions to the global climate crisis. Without US-China collaboration, the COVID-19 pandemic will not only continue to kill and kill, it will destabilise developed and developing countries and create more wars.

We need to end wars that have ceased to have strategic value and are not being won. We have to avoid ‘waiting for the right moment’.

Australia has entered into a quadrilateral understanding for security consultation with the US, Japan, and India. It is not clear how this will proceed given the diverse views and interests of the participants. As framed it appears to be anti-China. It would be sensible also to engage with China. Japan and South Korea will inevitably and separately lean towards China. So should Australia… and there is nothing to be gained from military clashes between China and India.

Nothing in the business of building friendship, understanding and commerce need diminish national security. In all our countries there are piles of angry people ready to shout at China, shout about China. We should not be pushed by the loudest and most angry.

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Dennis Argall’s degrees were in anthropology and defence studies. his governmental work in foreign, defence and domestic departments and for the Australian parliament. His overseas postings included Beijing as ambassador, and Washington. He regrets the extent of his personal experience with disability but it has perhaps sharpened his desire that the future be a better country.

Featured image: Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in a file image. Image: Youtube

Government and media propaganda has firmly convinced most of the citizenry of the West that Russia invaded Crimea, and the truth has dissolved in the swirling miasma that the anti-Russia movement has dubbed as history.

In March 2014 the ethnically Russian province of Crimea declared itself to be separate from Ukraine. There was a referendum on sovereignty by its 2.4 million inhabitants, and there was not a single case of bloodshed in the entire process. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was asked by the government of Crimea to send representatives to monitor the referendum but refused to do so, and the development was strongly condemned by the United States. 90 percent of the inhabitants of Crimea are Russian-speaking, Russian-cultured and Russian-educated, and they voted to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another” in order to rejoin Russia. It would be strange if they did wish accession to a country that not only welcomes their kinship, empathy and loyalty but is economically benevolent concerning their future.

Nevertheless, the surge of propaganda continues, and the most recent waves have been created by an intriguing policy paper titled NATO 2030; United for a New Era, which makes it clear that the U.S.-Nato military alliance is now intent on:

“Strengthening NATO’s political role and relevant instruments to address current and future threats and challenges to Alliance security emanating from all strategic directions.”

This wide-ranging objective opens the gates for Nato to meddle even more deeply in the affairs of nations that have nothing to do with the North Atlantic and continue its confrontation of Russia by intensifying the military build-up around its borders and escalating provocative operations by land, sea and air.

There is prominent assertion in the “United for a New Era” paper that “NATO stands as history’s most successful alliance” which deserves comment and mirth. This is the military grouping that is now stumbling and fumbling its way out of Afghanistan where it has achieved precisely nothing in the way of establishing stability. On November 17 Secretary General Stoltenberg tried to put the best face on the shambles of Nato’s humiliating retreat by declaring “We now face a difficult decision. We have been in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, and no NATO ally wants to stay any longer than necessary. But at the same time, the price for leaving too soon or in an uncoordinated way could be very high.” What he didn’t say was that President Trump had not spoken with him or any Nato member about his decision to initiate precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops and that the country is, as noted by the Council on Foreign Relations, in a state of civil war that is “worsening”. The place is approaching anarchy, with, for example, The New York Times recording that in the period 22-26 November, “At least 19 pro-government forces and 33 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in the past week. The deadliest attack took place in Bamiyan, considered one of the most secure provinces in Afghanistan, killing 18 people and wounding 59 others in blasts in the provincial capital. In Kabul, the capital, 10 civilians were killed and 51 others were wounded when 23 rockets were fired by a small truck. The rockets hit different areas all over the city.”

And Stoltenberg boasts that Nato is “history’s most successful alliance encompassing nearly a billion people and half of global GDP”. But after twenty years in Afghanistan it can’t stop a few bands of raggy-baggy guerrillas from firing rockets at the nation’s capital city.

Later in the 67-page Nato 2030 there is a reference to Libya. And it is notable that it mentions the country only once in the entire document, stating that “Instability in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan continues to generate illegal migration that is felt acutely throughout Europe, but especially by those Allies bordering the Mediterranean.” While this is certainly true, there is no mention made of how and why Libya became unstable, and what part Nato played in destroying the country and thus generating the massive suffering now being experienced by countless innocent people in the region.

On March 19, 2011 the United States and other Nato nations (Germany refused to join the jamboree) began their blitz of aircraft and missile strikes against the government of Muammar Gaddafi. In the seven months until Gaddafi’s revolting murder on October 20 there were 9,658 air attacks on the country which then dissolved into civil war. It may be recollected that a pair of ninnies, Ivo Daalder, the U.S. Permanent Representative on the NATO Council from 2009 to 2013, and Admiral James G Stavridis, the U.S. Supreme Allied Commander Europe (the military commander of NATO) in the same period, informed the Atlantic Council and the world in February 2012 that “NATO’s operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention. The alliance responded rapidly to a deteriorating situation that threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians rebelling against an oppressive regime. It succeeded in protecting those civilians and, ultimately, in providing the time and space necessary for local forces to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi” (which interpretation of his assassination is some what at variance with the giggling observation by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that “We came; we saw; he died”).

According to the independent online media organization Fanack, the situation in Libya at the moment is that “ . . . the country is disintegrating. Libya is becoming a mosaic of stateless regions, city-states, and tribe-controlled areas. The country is also a base for the smuggling of weapons and human beings, narcotic traffickers, and other outlaws . . . For the European Union, Libya, once attractive for its abundance of natural resources, is now a major concern because of the possibility of attacks on European ships or coastal cities, the risk of infiltration into the continent’s countries, and the prospect of massive waves of refugees — Arabs and Africans alike — making their way through Libya to the south of Europe and beyond.”

Thank you “history’s most successful alliance” for reducing a country to a state of anarchic mayhem. What can we expect next in the Nato playbook?

Russia and China, of course.

The Nato 2030 travesty alleges that “After the end of the Cold War, NATO attempted to build a meaningful partnership with Russia” without mentioning that in 1999 Nato added Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to help surround Russia. Then in 2004 came Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. To increase the net-drawing round Russia’s borders, Albania and Croatia were added in 2009 and lastly came the jokes of Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in March this year. Stability, anyone?

The world has been warned that although the U.S.-Nato military conglomerate has been an incompetent and calamitously destabilising force in its military fandangos, it is searching for threats and challenges to justify its existence. It won’t find them — because they don’t exist — but that won’t stop it looking and blustering, and thus creating even more instability around the globe while Nato stands “United for a New Era.”

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Brian Cloughley is a British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan.

Featured image is from public domain

Interview with Prof. Dr. iur. et phil. Alfred de Zayas, international law expert and former UN mandate holder

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Thomas Kaiser: Zeitgeschehen im Fokus Professor de Zayas, you are an American citizen. What do you think about the course of the election and Joseph Biden’s victory?

Prof. Dr. Alfred de Zayas: First of all, I would like to say that I have been a member of the Republican Party since 1968. At that time I was a student at Harvard University, and my political persuasion aimed at a social, ethical market economy. Times have changed, and of course I am no longer a “Republican”, although I have not formally abandoned my membership in the Republican Party. I no longer feel any necessity to “root” for any political party. In my opinion, the 2020 campaign was undemocratic, undignified, and spiteful. It was accompanied by a very high level of disinformation, fake news and skewed media coverage. It resembled a football match – and I mean American football (rugby) and not European football (soccer).

TK: What is your position on the Republican and Democratic Party today?

AdZ: I am beyond both – beyond right wing or left wing. Sometimes I agree with the Republicans, sometimes with the Democrats – and often I am enough against the policies of both. I am happy Donald Trump lost. I am not at all excited about Biden’s victory. The next four years will be Obama redux, a disaster in the making. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks – and here I include the whole Democratic Party Old Guard.

TK: Did you participate in the 2020 election?

AdZ: Yes, I voted – but not for Trump, whom I by no means consider a true Republican – nor for Biden, whom I consider incompetent. I consider Kamala Harris to be extremely dangerous. I took the opportunity to vote for a “write-in candidate” – as provided for on the ballot itself.

TK: Who did you vote for then?

AdZ: Actually for a female Democrat – member of the House of Representatives for Hawaii – Tulsi Gabbard, who is genuine and speaks her mind. That is why the mainstream media marginalized her.

TK: With this you have expressed something…

AdZ: …yes, I wanted to express my dissatisfaction with the two-party system and with both candidates. I took a similar approach in 2016, when I voted for neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton. I am tired of the fact that our “democracy” only allows for a choice between plague and cholera.

TK: What do you expect from a Biden/Harris presidency in terms of foreign policy?

AdZ: A continuation of many of Trump’s policies. In fact, Trump and Biden converge on the essential points – both advocate militarism, unilateralism, big banks, economic sanctions against rivals, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and blind support for Israel. Biden will hardly bring the US Embassy back to Tel Aviv. And the unjust treatment of the Palestinians will continue.

TK: What will the relationship with Russia and China be like?

AdZ: I expect as much agitation and war propaganda against China and Russia as during the Trump administration. We will be served with 4 years of vulgar xenophobia, Putin-bashing, Xi-bashing. I also expect even more corrupt of borderline corrupt actions that will enrich the president and his cronies. Joe Biden and his son were already involved in an affair in Ukraine and have (corrupt) relationships there. Further provocations, aggressions and “false flag” productions (for example, first staging the fake use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army and then using this to justify an illegal bombardment) against the governments of Syria, Lebanon and Iran are also to be expected. Let us hope that there will be no major military interventions like in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, and hopefully no flagrant “regime change” aggressions or coup d’états in Latin America like in 2019 against Bolivia, and the ridiculous 2019 “Guaidó riots” in Venezuela. Nevertheless, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) will no doubt continue financing opposition parties in countries where the US wants regime change and will continue subverting and destabilizing other countries. Maybe the danger of a third world war has become a little smaller, but we will see.

TK: What do you expect in terms of domestic policy?

AdZ: I fear even more corporate corruption, white-collar crime and leftist populism, especially in socio-political developments. I expect a deterioration of the situation regarding freedom of opinion – also in the universities, a systematic domestic indoctrination on socio-political issues and total intolerance towards traditional values, Christian ethics, the family and the Catholic Church. The power of the mainstream media will grow, and Orwellian National Security Agency’s citizen monitoring will be intensified. We remember Edward Snowden and his warnings of 2013. His book, Permanent Record, published in 2019, reminds us of our slippery slope into the arms of Big Brother.[1]

TK: Where do Trump and Biden differ?

AdZ: Trump is an elephant in a porcelain shop. He pursues a personality cult – narcissistic, impulsive, megalomaniac. Biden is more moderate and boring. Trump thought he could afford to break several international treaties, to advocate blatant militarism. Biden – like Obama in his days – does imperialist politics with a smile. But under Biden, the exploitation of the world by the US will certainly continue. Only not as blatant and brazen. The “default position” among Trump and Biden is imperialism. Biden will continue meddling in the internal affairs of other states, will continue bullying trade “partners”, try to impose US products on Europe, sabotage Russia’s Nordstream 2, will continue building pipelines through indigenous territory, fracking, etc.

TK: What else can we expect from Biden except a continuation of imperialist policies?

AdZ: In Biden’s case, political correctness in the USA will reach truly Orwellian levels and lead to a weakening of the traditional values and ethical foundations of Christian culture. Censorship practices with Google, Twitter and Amazon will be intensified. Self-censorship will become the “New Normal”. Biden also wants to continue the war against whistleblowers in general – not only against Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

TK: If you take stock, can you see anything positive in Trump’s policy?

AdZ: His fight against the mainstream media, which he has lost, was an important signal against the omnipotence of the media. They get away with everything, even cutting off a president’s microphone in a discussion. Today people know more about the manipulation by the press. Many in America today know that CNN, the “New York Times” and “Washington Post” are spreading fake news and suppressing crucial information – only few people dared to say this before Trump took on the media. This is certainly something that can be seen as a positive development. He has also placed three excellent judges on the Supreme Court and helped expose the corruption in the “woke” word, including at “Planned Parenthood”.

TK: Where do you see Trump’s biggest foreign policy mistakes?

AdZ: He has continued and even intensified the inhumane and illegal practice of imposing crippling economic sanctions on countries where he wanted “regime change”. Here we should mention the severely affected states such as Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and Iran. But also against Russia and all companies that cooperate with these mentioned states. It is a terrible weapon that Trump operated with. Sanctions kill people! And judging by the hundreds of thousands of victims in the world, this clearly amount of crimes against humanity for purposes of article 7 of the Statute of Rome of the International Criminal Court.

TK: How do you judge his Middle East policy?

AdZ: It is much influenced by the disregard for all international legal foundations and UN resolutions concerning the Middle East. The absurd “Deal of the century” between Israel and the Palestinians – which must therefore be rejected – as well as the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights are part of Trump’s arbitrariness, just like the new treaties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel – whereby the rights of the Palestinians are completely disregarded. The so-called “Abraham Accords” or “normalization agreements” are anything but benevolent.

TK: With Trump and his predecessors of every hue we have seen that democratic principles are hardly respected. How could this respect be achieved?

AdZ: The citizens must demand the right to have greater control over policies, such as budgetary priorities, the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, the sanctions policy, etc. The Swiss state model is much better – the people have the right of initiative, and they practice it, as well as the right of referendum on federal and cantonal laws and projects. This can be introduced without changing the US Constitution. Unfortunately there is no direct democratic tradition in the USA. A referendum culture would first have to be developed, at the municipal and state levels, before it could be introduced nationwide.

TK: Shouldn’t we also change something about the electoral system?

AdZ: We should finally abolish the so-called “Electoral College”. The election should be direct. It was hardly democratic when, for example, Al Gore had many more votes than George W. Bush, and yet Bush became president. The same happened in 2016, when Hillary Clinton had more votes than Trump.

TK: One has the impression that many wars were fought in the last decades of the US presidency. – Is this true?

AdZ: Yes, both parties are militaristic and interventionist. For example, two Democratic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, are responsible for the Vietnam War. The aggressions against Grenada and Nicaragua are on Republican Ronald Reagan’s conscience. The Republican George H.W. Bush pushed the “regime change” in Panama, killing 6,000 civilians and staged the 1991 war against Iraq with at least a hundred thousand deaths among the overwhelmed Iraqis. The Democrat Bill Clinton carried out the aggressions in the Balkans, especially the NATO attacks against Yugoslavia, and the mainstream media helped with disinformation and fake news. The Republican George W. Bush is responsible for the genocidal aggression against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The Democrat Barak Obama has his hands full of blood because of Libya and Syria, the “regime changes” in Ukraine and a constant drone war against “terrorists”, which countless civilian have fallen victims to.

TK: Were there no American presidents in recent decades who wanted peace?

AdZ: Although the system always strives for hegemony, some presidents have also tried to promote peace. On the Republican side, President Dwight Eisenhower stopped the aggression of England and France against Egypt in 1956. Eisenhower also recognized the danger to democracy in the “military-industrial complex”. In fact, in his farewell address to the nation in January 1961, he formulated the dire warning and thus coined the term we all use today.[2]

TK: With the Democrats there was none?

AdZ: On the democratic side, Jimmy Carter tried to enable a just peace between the Israelis and the Arabs. He also wrote two books about this: “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land” and “Palestine Peace, not Apartheid”. The fact that he was not 100% on the Israeli side probably cost him re-election in 1980. I have had the opportunity to discuss many international law crises with Carter personally at the Carter Center in Atlanta. I consider him ethically the best US president in the last 100 years.

TK: What kind of policy would a president of the USA have to pursue?

Image on the right: Jimmy Carter and Alfred de Zayas. “I consider him ethically the best US president in the last 100 years.” (picture zvg)

AdZ: He should adhere to Christian ethics and fundamental Christian values, the US Constitution, the UN Charter and international treaties. In terms of foreign policy, this means reviving multilateralism and working with the UN to protect future generations from constant wars, as stated in the preamble of the UN Charter. He should respect the sanctity of life, not instigate wars, but resolve conflicts peacefully through negotiation and compromise. The inviolability of treaties must also be upheld. And when treaties become obsolete, they should be replaced by international negotiation.

TK: Which treaties do you have in mind?

AdZ: This is particularly important in the case of the treaties on the limitation of nuclear weapons. In fact, this applies to all military programs, including conventional weapons. In 2013 the US signed the UN “Arms Trade Treaty”, but never ratified it. In 2019 President Trump rescinded the US signature. What we need is a treaty to limit the production of weapons, not just their sale. We need to revive START, the Open Skies Treaty and other agreements that Trump threw in the bin. We need total nuclear disarmament and general disarmament so that life-enhancing policies can be pursued, especially in the health sector. In the USA we were totally unprepared for the Covid 19 crisis, partly because the budget priorities in the USA were wrong and research funds were spent on the development of terrible weapons, the so-called lethal autonomous weapon systems or “killing robots” etc. In contrast, research on pandemic prevention, hospital modernization, etc., lagged behind.

TK: What kind of policy would Europe have to adopt towards the USA?

AdZ: Europe itself should not pursue imperialist or neo-colonial policies in the world. Europe should adhere more to the UN Charter and international law. It should stop applying international law selectively and arbitrarily, stop provoking Russia, stop financing “color revolutions” and stop trying to integrate Ukraine or Georgia into NATO. Europe should lift its own sanctions against Russia, Belarus and Syria. If Europe does so, it will have more credibility in advocating retortion against the USA. Europe should take retaliatory measures if the US presumes to apply US laws extra-territorially, if German or Swiss companies are threatened or punished by the US when doing business with Russia or when building Nordstream 2.

TK: What role can international organizations play here?

AdZ: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) should issue one or more Advisory Opinions on the illegality of US and EU sanctions policies under international law, and on the responsibility of the US and EU to make reparation to the victims. A resolution would first have to be adopted in the UN General Assembly (according to Article 96 of the UN Charter). The questions of international law must finally be clearly defined, and one must act accordingly.

TK: What possibilities do you see with regard to sanctions policy that is contrary to international law?

AdZ: The International Criminal Court should initiate an investigation in accordance with Art. 7 of the Rome Statute to ascertain that the economic sanctions against Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Syria and Venezuela constitute crimes against humanity because they have already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths – through a lack of food and medicine and through the weakening of the health systems of these states, especially today with regard to Covid-19.

TK: This is a loss of all human foundations…

AdZ: Yes, these economic sanctions can be compared to the murderous siege of cities during the Thirty Years War or the Nazi siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944. President Biden should properly finance and participate in good faith in the multilateral activities of the UN specialized agencies including the World Health Organization, Unesco, etc. And the United States should return to the Human Rights Council – because we need the voice of the United States, too. Trump wanted to “make America great again” – I say: To make America respected and maybe even loved again, one would have to revitalize the initiatives and examples of Eleanor Roosevelt and adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are enough decent human rights activists and experts in America – including Professors Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs, Dan Kovalik, John Quigley, Francis Boyle, among others – but they are not likely to be consulted and certainly not appointed by Biden. I expect “business as usual” – or continued exploitation of the world by Biden and his neo-conservative or neo-liberal team.

TK: You nevertheless see possibilities to improve the coexistence of the peoples?

AdZ: Yes, that is why the UN and the special organizations were established. Humanity has created countless instruments that could guarantee peaceful coexistence among peoples. We only have to implement them and bring them to bear, and then we could move into a more peaceful future. Europe and the USA have a responsibility to promote and adequately finance these bodies.

TK: What can Trump do until the end of his term?

AdZ: To make a dignified exit, Trump could immediately stop the persecution of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers. An amnesty for all whistleblowers would be the Christian thing to do. I cannot help but think of Richard Strauss’ opera “Der Rosenkavalier” (The Knight of the Rose with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal), where in the third act the scandalous Baron von Lerchenau loses everything and must exit empty-handed. There the Marschallin tells him: “try to keep your dignity and leave quietly … only thus can you remain a person of rank  — so to speak.”

TK: As an independent UN expert for the promotion of a democratic and just international order, you have worked hard for a more peaceful coexistence of peoples. Your speeches before the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council were received with applause, which is highly exceptional. What personal feedback was there from States, and how did the USA, your country of origin, behave?

AdZ: When I was Special Rapporteur (2012-2018), I was in constant contact with many ambassadors in Geneva, especially ambassadors from Latin America, Africa and Asia. There was a mutual, even friendly exchange of ideas and initiatives, and I always insisted on my independence. I constantly tried to inform my ambassador from the United States, and regularly provided the US Mission in Geneva with reports and suggestions. I also tried to maintain good contacts with the European ambassadors as well as with the ambassadors of Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, etc., among others at social events and panel discussions. It was clear to me, of course, that the European Union did not quite appreciate my independence. They would have liked me to sing their song.

TK: What were the reactions when your mandate ended?

AdZ: After I had ended my mandate, I was encouraged by many ambassadors to make myself available for other UN assignments. I did this twice, my candidacy was put on the first short list, I was interviewed by 5 ambassadors for 50 minutes each time. The interviews went well – but I was not appointed. This is understandable, because I am not a “blank slate” anymore and my reports to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have not only garnered applause. Of course I remain closely attached to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, where I entertain many friendships, and I am ready to serve the cause again. But, as I said, the independence of the experts is hardly in demand in many states.

TK: Professor de Zayas, thank you for the interview.

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2009 H1N1 Vaccine Caused Brain Damage in Children. Dr. Anthony Fauci on “Vaccine Safety” Issues

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 10 2020

A lawsuit against the Trudeau Government for its handling of the COVID-19 Crisis has been launched. What is at stake is the violation of fundamental rights of Canadians.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD): Life-Threatening Allergic Reactions to Pfizer COVID Vaccine

By Lyn Redwood, December 10 2020

In August, CHD asked regulators to investigate the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in COVID mRNA vaccines, which could have caused the severe allergic reactions reported this week by two of the first UK recipients of Pfizer’s vaccine.

A Nasty Shot in the Arm: RT-PCR Kits and Vaccines Unlicensed by the MHRA

By John Goss, December 10 2020

Aware of the forthcoming vaccine roll-out aimed, it is said, to protect against a disease (COVID-19) that reached its apex almost nine months ago, I emailed the MHRA (Medical and Healthcare Regulatory Authority) on 20 November 2020. The response was mind-blowing.

Will Joe Biden “Revise” U.S Agenda in Syria? Use Terrorism Pretext to “Keep Boots on the Ground”?

By Ahmad Salah, December 10 2020

The mayhem of the presidential elections left the American policy-makers locked in heated arguments about the future of the US domestic and foreign policy alike. One of the most pressing issues on the agenda is the Middle East developments, especially the U.S. role in Syria.

Biden’s Defense Secretary Pick Shows the Revolving Door for Military Contractors Remains

By Sarah Lazare, December 10 2020

All three top con­tenders for the posi­tion — Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion alum Michèle Flournoy, for­mer Home­land Secu­ri­ty Direc­tor Jeh John­son and Austin — have direct finan­cial ties to the mil­i­tary indus­try, and none can be described as even nom­i­nal­ly pro­gres­sive on for­eign pol­i­cy. Austin, arguably, is not the worst among them.

Net Worth of US Billionaires Has Soared by $1 Trillion to Total of $4 Trillion Since Pandemic Began

By Americans for Tax Fairness and The Institute for Policy Studies, December 10 2020

The collective wealth of America’s 651 billionaires has jumped by over $1 trillion since roughly the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to a total of $4 trillion at market close on Monday, December 7, 2020.

The Blockade: Qatar and Saudi Arabia Approach Historic Breakthrough

By Steven Sahiounie, December 10 2020

On December 2, Doha News reported that a breakthrough was impending and that it was “understood that Saudi Arabia will open its air space for Qatar Airways flights, and there are some reports that Riyadh may even open its land border.”

Lawsuit Filed to Halt Voter Suppression in the Runoff Senate Elections in Georgia

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 10 2020

After the third certification of the results of the presidential elections in the state of Georgia, efforts are underway to ensure equal access to the franchise leading up to the pivotal race to determine the composition of the United States Senate.

Israel’s Honeymoon with the United Arab Emirates Is Grotesque

By Belén Fernández, December 10 2020

Since normalizing relations in September, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have teamed up to do what both do best: trample on democratic freedoms, commit atrocities, and whitewash occupation.

Palm Oil Giant Wilmar Unfazed as Watchdogs Cry Foul over Papua Deforestation

By Hans Nicholas Jong, December 10 2020

An area of natural forest the size of 1,500 football fields has been cleared since January in an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua by a company that ultimately supplies major traders and global brands.

 

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Providing coverage of the Asia-Pacific Region

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A lawsuit against the Trudeau Government for its handling of the COVID-19 Crisis has been launched. What is at stake is the violation of fundamental rights of Canadians.

“The mass and indiscriminate containment of citizens, the restriction of access to parliament, the courts, medical and educational services, the destruction of local economies and livelihoods, and the requirement to physically distance, along with the forced use of non-medical masking are extraordinary measures that have never before been imposed on the citizens of Canada.”

“Vaccine Choice Canada has made numerous formal requests of the Government of Canada and various provincial governments to provide evidence that justifies the declaration of an emergency, the imposition of unscientific and unwarranted measures, and the violations of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to no avail.”

The Lawsuit against the Federal and Ontario governments is now in the Ontario Superior Court.

Canadians should support this legal initiative, which has barely been acknowledged by the mainstream media.

Remember the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic. It turned out to be Fake. Lots of people in Canada fell sick after receiving the H1N1 ArepanrixTD vaccine.

And that vaccine killed a little girl called Amina Abu, which then led to a ten year lawsuit against GSK. That legal procedure is still ongoing.

It was a criminal undertaking on behalf of Big Pharma. There was ample evidence of corruption at the WHO and at the highest levels of government.

Today’s COVID-19 pandemic is far more serious. Governments are using the virus as pretext to close down a large part of the global economy, with devastating economic and social consequences.

Politicians are either stupid or totally corrupt. They believe in their own lies. And the lie has become the truth. That’s worse than the Spanish inquisition.

The legal action against the Trudeau government is not an object of media attention.

Let us not be under illusions. The lockdown, the fear campaign, social engineering not to mention “corrupt science” and “fake data” constitute a criminal undertaking which has resulted in mass unemployment, poverty, famine, and despair. And much more.

Let us be under no illusions. Things are not going to “go back normal” unless people across the land, nationally and internationally confront the architects of this diabolical project (including the governments, the financial elites as well as the WHO).

Michel Chossudovsky, July 15, 2020

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In 2009, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci was firmly in support of a multibillion dollar H1N1 vaccine project

Today he is an avid supporter of  a COVID-19 vaccine. 

What he fails to acknowledge is that the 2009 H1N1 Vaccine caused brain damage in children.

It was developed by Glaxo Smith Kline which today is at the forefront of the COVID-19 vaccine initiative. 

Dr. Faucy addresses the H1N1 Vaccine Safety Issue in this video (starting at 6′.5o”).

Scroll down for the reports on H1N1 vaccine scam.

NIAID Director Fauci supported the H1N1 2009 vaccine which turned out to be a multibillion dollar scam.

According to  International Business Times UK in a 2014 report

Patients who suffered brain damage as a result of taking a swine flu vaccine are to receive multi-million-pound payouts from the UK government.

GSK’s H1N1 PandemrixTD vaccine

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Glaxo Smith Kline was involved in developing the H1N1 Pandemrix vaccine:

3. To date, how many people/children in Canada have reported developing narcolepsy after getting vaccinated with Arepanrix? What provinces do they reside in Canada?

GSK reports all cases of adverse events which the company is aware of in accordance with national and regional regulations. We respectfully defer to the Public Health Agency of Canada to address this question in more detail.

4. We read that there is currently a Canadian study sponsored by GSK to assess the risk of occurrence of narcolepsy following the administration of Arepanrix – Why did you sponsor that study? When will the results of that study be published?

We are currently supporting a study that is being conducted in Quebec where Arepanrix™ (H1N1) was used. Further research is needed to evaluate the potential association between GSK`s adjuvanted H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine and narcolepsy in a country where a similar vaccine to Pandemrix™ (H1N1) was used, and where a more robust assessment of the potential association could be conducted, using a design aimed at limiting the impact of biases. The preliminary results of this study are anticipated to be published by early 2014.

 

Flash Forward to 2020

GSK Was ordered to Withdraw its PandemrixTD Vaccine in the UK.

The same companies involved in 2009 are at it again.

“Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.” (Official Statement of Obama Administration, Associated Press, 24 July 2009).

“The U.S. expects to have 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October”, (Associated Press, 23 July 2009)

Wealthier countries such as the U.S. and Britain will pay just under $10 per dose [of the H1N1 flu vaccine]. … Developing countries will pay a lower price.” [circa $40 billion for Big Pharma?] (Business Week, July 2009)

But the H1N1 pandemic never happened.

The H1N1 pandemic was a scam endorsed by the CDC and the NIAID headed by Dr. Fauci

There was no pandemic affecting 2 billion people…

Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine had been ordered by national governments from Big Pharma. Millions of vaccine doses were subsequently destroyed: a financial bonanza for Big Pharma, an expenditure crisis for national governments.

There was no investigation into who was behind this multibillion fraud. 

Several critics said that the H1N1 Pandemic was “Fake”

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared that the “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” (Forbes, February 10, 2010)

According to the British  Medical Journal:

The World Health Organization’s handling of the swine flu pandemic was deeply marred by secrecy and conflict of interest with drug companies, a top medical journal said Friday.

The British Medical Journal, or BMJ, found that WHO guidelines on the use of antiviral drugs were prepared by experts who had received consulting fees from the top two manufacturers of these drugs, Roche and GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK.

In apparent violation of its own rules, the WHO did not publicly disclose these conflicts when the guidelines were drawn up in 2004, according to the report, jointly authored by the London-based non-profit Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The WHO’s advice led governments worldwide to stockpile vast quantities of antivirals, and its decision to declare a pandemic in June 2009 triggered the purchase of billions of dollars worth of hastily manufactured vaccines.

Much of these stocks have gone unused because the pandemic turned out to be far less lethal than some experts feared, fueling suspicion that Big Pharma exerted undue influence on WHO decisions.

The report also reveals that at least one expert on the secret, 16-member “emergency committee” formed last year to advise the WHO on whether and when to declare a pandemic received payment during 2009 from GSK.

Announcing that swine flu had become a global pandemic automatically triggered latent contracts for vaccine manufacture with half-a-dozen major pharmaceutical companies, including GSK. The WHO has refused to identify committee members, arguing that they must be shielded from industry pressure. “The WHO’s credibility has been badly damaged,” BMJ editor Fiona Godlee said in an editorial.

AFP June 4, 2010 (emphasis added)

 

Aware of the forthcoming vaccine roll-out aimed, it is said, to protect against a disease (COVID-19) that reached its apex almost nine months ago, I emailed the MHRA (Medical and Healthcare Regulatory Authority) on 20 November 2020. My main concern is that people will unwittingly subject themselves to an experimental vaccine that has not been licensed by the MHRA, the ingredients of which have not been made public. Diagnosis of COVID-19 is made on the basis of a test, the RT-PCR test, the results of which are frequently flawed. I questioned if the MHRA had approved the RT-PCR test and copied in a medical doctor friend of mine.

“Since the reliability of the RT-PCR test has been questioned . . . it is important to know that the MHRA has done its duty in protecting the public from potentially harmful health-care products. Please reassure me that procedures have been followed and that this product the (RT-PCR test) has been approved by the authority. Thank you.”

The response was mind-blowing.

“There are literally 100s of CE marked Covid RT-PCR tests available on the EU market.

Such tests require a self-declaration process undertaken by the manufacturer with no review of performance data by any EU Government Body or Notified Body and that MHRA does not approve such products.

However, I can confirm that all PCR kits used by government laboratories or their subcontractors have been subject to rigorous validation by them before use.”

How can anyone possibly confirm that rigorous validation has taken place if these tests are not monitored? It raised an alarm to think results from all the “100s” of RT-PCR tests which the UK government, and other governments of the world, use in checking for COVID -19 are reached using kits that are self-regulated “by the manufacturer”. It is more than disturbing. There is no authority reviewing the tests and no authority reviewing results from the tests. It was necessary to delve further.

“Who is checking how positive tests are arrived at? How many amplifications are being used in tests? Is this consistent across all testing stations?”

The answer, which did not address the questions, raised even more concerns, including the competency of the MHRA.

“There is no relation to vaccinating human volunteers and the use of an RT-PCR test.

I can also confirm that trials of the vaccines was approved by the normal rigorous processes.”

Whether intentionally, or through ignorance, both these sentences are blatantly false.

Within the last week the Assets Publishing Service of the UK government issued a document to Healthcare professionals on how to administer the PfizerBioNTech vaccine.

It quite clearly states that there is now, and since trials began always has been, a relationship between “vaccinating human volunteers and the use of an RT-PCR test.” In section 5.1 which discusses results from trials it explains the two criteria which were, and still are, being adopted:

“Confirmed cases were determined by Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and at least 1 symptom consistent with COVID-19 disease*.

*Case definition (at least 1 of): fever, new or increased cough, new or increased shortness of breath; chills, new or increased muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, diarrhoea or vomiting.”

As to confirmation that vaccine trials were “approved by the normal rigorous processes” the whole document disproves any such claim. Approval has been granted on the basis of a measure only normally used in extreme emergencies, for example during the spread of “pathogenic agents, toxins, chemical agents or nuclear radiation.” It is called REG 174 (Regulation 174) a regulation which has recently been updated. Right at the start of the Assets Publishing Service document it states that:

“This medicinal product [REG 174] does not have a UK marketing authorisation but has been given authorisation for temporary supply by the UK Department of Health and Social Care and the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus in individuals aged16 years of age and over.”

Whatever it is, it is not “normal rigorous” procedure. This vaccine is being rushed through in a process that can normally take up to ten years to complete. Even today no approved vaccine exists for SARS-COV from the 2003 epidemic, and indeed, no approval exists for any of the SARS/MERS family of viruses.

What is happening is a human experiment with a vaccine that has had minimal testing, of which the full recipe of ingredients is being kept secret.

That, in itself, ought to raise alarm – but the only alarms being raised seem to be of the nature whether people are wearing masks, obeying lockdown restrictions, washing their hands and social distancing.

We should really be really worried about the PfizerBioNTech vaccine, and other vaccines, which contain ingredients designed to sterilize volunteers or change our DNA in a government-promoted scheme, the adverse results of which may not be known for decades.

Thanks to a GlaxoKlineSmith whistleblower whose evidence was presented on the David Knight Show (taken down by YouTube) we know that GKS was (is?) planning to use an ingredient in its COVID-19 vaccine, an anti-human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) antigen, which causes infertility in women and in men. In men their testicles shrink, testosterone levels fall, the sperm is chemically attacked and dead sperm goes on to make women infertile too. In women. it:

“. . . produces antibodies which combine with HCG to render it biologically inactive . . . Out of 63 women they ][GSK] tested with HCG 61 of them became infertile. . . “

It would seem also that Pfizer BioNTech’s vaccine has life-threatening contents.

The last email I received from the MHRA confirmed my suspicion that this is a sensitive subject which the MHRA chooses to nip in the bud.

“I am sorry John but I do not have the time to deal with repeated communications with you as I am dealing with 100s of emails a day. This will be my last email to you.

The trials regarding vaccines have not been rushed through in terms of the MHRA’s involvement and we have applied the same level of scrutiny as it has historically done so for others.

The evidence that the vaccine is working or not depends on how many people contract the virus who have had the vaccine to those who have not been given it.”

His last sentence took me back full circle to my initial question about the reliability of the RT-PCR test which the MHRA has consistently neglected to monitor for accuracy, and which, despite assurance to the contrary, is being used in vaccine tests. The whole process reminded me of the plight of Daniel Doyce from Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit.

Doyce was an engineer who tried to get his invention patented. For years he went backwards and forwards to the Circumlocution Office being sent from department to department without ever being given any constructive advice. Unable to make progress Doyce eventually took his creation abroad where he and it were a success. The trouble is with today’s regulatory authorities there is nowhere abroad to take our worries since the European Medicine Agency (EMA) is as complicit with Big Pharma’s aims as our own MHRA.

As the employee at MHRA did not have time “to deal with repeated communications” I emailed back to see if there was somebody else who could address my concerns. Previous correspondence had been answered quickly but it is two weeks now since I had a response to my last and I am not expecting another. When members of the public are worried about the safety and accuracy of medical products it is the MHRA’s duty to act.

Attempts to elicit the truth can be frustrating. It is in the interests of our families and friends, and their families and friends, to find out why the MHRA is not doing its job with regard to the RT-PCR test. Without doubt my questions have rattled the authority’s cage. Although it refuses to engage with me further I like to think there are others, concerned enough for their families and friends’ welfare and future on this beautiful planet of ours, who might wish to know why the RT-PCR test has not been given full scrutiny.

Close ties between big pharmaceutical conglomerates and their regulatory authorities raise suspicions as to their impartiality. In its questions and answers section the MHRA attempts to put these suspicions quietly to bed.

8. Why does the MHRA accept money from pharmaceutical industry? Isn’t this a conflict of interest?

Companies have to pay a fee for their marketing authorisation but we don’t seek business from them. Any complex licensing decisions are referred to the Agency’s independent advisory committees. These members must register any interests they have in the industry. They must declare any specific ones and take no part in discussions on that subject.

The agency’s independent advisory committees are another matter altogether and serious concerns have been raised as to how independent they really are. For example, in a June meeting of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the minutes of which are still in draft form, we note that the Medical Advisor is Professor Jonathan Van Tam – a recent spokesman on the BBC promoting the virtues and safety of Pfizer BioNTech’s new vaccine while at the same time attempting to ameliorate public concern that these untested vaccines might indeed be dangerous.

Unlike most of the others on the committee Van Tam provides no conflict of interest details that are specific to COVID-19 vaccines. That does not mean he has none and contravenes a basic tenet of the MHRA’s dos and don’ts. University of Oxford Senior Associate Tutor, Tom Jefferson, exposed in 2017 the revolving door nepotism which saw the promotion of figures like Professor Van Dam and Sir Patrick Vallance to their present positions. Van Tam is one of three Deputy Chief Medical Officers to Professor Christopher Whitty, and it is not unusual for him to play down or choose not to mention his connections with pharmaceutical groups. As Jefferson notes: “Professor Van Tam’s track record as an ex-employee of Roche, Aventis Pasteur MSD and SmithKline Beecham (now GSK) has been excluded from the official DH press release . . .”

The “independent” CEO of the MHRA, Dr. June Raine, issued a statement on 19 November 2019, espousing the virtues of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine trials.

She outlines the two routes available in approving a vaccine for use, namely, the emergency route (REG 174) which is now being made operational and the proper route which normally takes years. In these “new normal” days the MHRA has committed itself to “rigorously assess the data in the shortest time possible, without compromising the thoroughness of our review” regardless of which route is adopted. She fails to mention the RT-PCR test which is being used to determine results.

In the dangerous and untested vaccine experiments the unmonitored RT-PCR test is possibly the MHRA and the government’s weakest link. Interested parties can email the authority in the first instance at: [email protected]

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, All the Goss.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

On December 4, Russian border guards prevented an attempt by 3 armed men to cross the Russian border from Ukraine. The gunmen resisted detention and opened fire on Russian personnel. As a result of the armed clash, one of the gunmen was eliminated, while two others fled back to Ukraine.

So far, the Border Service of the Russian FSB has provided few details of the incident. However, the intercepted group was likely a subversive reconnaissance unit affiliated with the Ukrainian (and thus Western) intelligence services. The neutralized unit was well equipped and, according to reports, received fire support from the territory of Ukraine during the incident. Over the past years, Ukraine with help from its ‘’democratic partners” has repeatedly tried to stage terrorist and sabotage attacks in Russia.

Russian media revealed some details of the armed clash indicating that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces continue to  plan and conduct active operations (even if they are not very successful) on the territory of Russia.

In particular, according to the version shared by Russian media, the armed clash erupted during an attempt by the Ukrainian unit to kidnap a Russian citizen from the territory of Russia. The report claims that the target of the operation was a former member of the self-defense forces of the region of Donbass – Denis Kharitonov.

The kidnapping attempt was reportedly a continuation of the SBU provocation that led to the temporary detention of Russia-linked private military contractors (some of them were previously members of the forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics) in Belarus. At that time, the SBU staged a provocation luring this group of people onto the territory of Belarus, as a supposed transport point under a fake security contract to protect Rosneft facilities in Venezuela. At the same time, Kiev informed Minsk that these people were allegedly preparing to stage an armed coup in Belarus and after their detention, requested their extradition. The operation failed, when the entire SBU plot was revealed due to multiple contradictions in the version of events provided by the Ukrainian special services.

This development was just one of an entire series of SBU attempts to kidnap or eliminate people on the territory of Russia. Just in August 2020, the FSB already prevented an SBU plot to kidnap one of the leaders of the Eastern Ukraine’s people’s militia in Russia and to take him to the Kiev-controlled part of Ukraine.

Additionally with multiple other reports about the increase of SBU attempts to conduct aggressive actions on the territory of Russia, these developments demonstrate the new trend. The special services of Ukraine with support from their NATO partners are not even hiding their active planning and employing of sabotage and other activities against Russia. This activity has slowly but steadily become a permanent factor of life in the Russian border regions. So far, SBU-sponsored plots have successfully been repelled by Russian special services. However, in the long run, this threat will continue to grow.

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In October, British Education Secretary Gavin Williamson ordered universities in the country to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism. They are to do so by Christmas or face government sanctions.

It is worth remembering that when the Tories passed the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act in 2015, it mobilised funding bodies to implement Prevent in schools, universities and across the charity sector. Opposition from campaigners, students and academics about this assault on freedom of speech, civil liberties and academic freedom fell on deaf ears.

The comparison might seem surprising, yet the parallels are striking. Indeed, the adoption of the IHRA definition will do little in the fight against antisemitism – in fact, it will likely harm the ability of anti-racist campaigners to fight back effectively – while instead targeting Palestine activists and delegitimising opposition to Zionism.

Limiting criticism of Israel 

The IHRA’s non-legally binding working definition – this exact status is often forgotten, yet it shines an important light on its nature – is extremely vague, describing antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”. Its danger lies in the 11 accompanying examples, such as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” or “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”.

This is an extraordinary definition of antisemitism, attempting to impose specific limits on the discussion of Zionism and Israel’s crimes in Palestine. For the millions of Palestinians expelled during the creation of Israel in 1948, besieged in Gaza or under military occupation in the West Bank, or for those who live within Israel’s borders and are targeted by more than 65 discriminatory laws, the idea that Israel is a democratic nation is, at best, laughable.

In an academic context, the imposition of a definition that describes these facts about the history of Zionism in Palestine as antisemitic is a direct assault on the academic freedom of those working on these issues, as well as on the civil rights of all those campaigning for solidarity with the Palestinian people.

While Israel is further institutionalising its structural racism and the second-class status of its Palestinian citizens through measures such as the 2018 nation-state law, the IHRA’s working definition is attempting to silence international criticism.

Widespread condemnation

The IHRA definition has been widely condemned, with 122 Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals recently publishing an open letter noting that it undermines both the struggle against antisemitism and the right of Palestinians to name their oppression and fight against it. Even the original author of the working definition, Kenneth Stern, has made similar arguments about how the definition has been weaponised.

This past July, Professor Rebecca Ruth Gold published an excellent overview of the debate surrounding the IHRA definition. She cites the opinion of an eminent jurist who believes that universities who apply the definition to censor speech critical of Israel “may find themselves in breach of UK and EU laws pertaining to academic freedom”.

Given all of the above, it should not come as a surprise that the definition has also been criticised for being an ineffective tool in the struggle against antisemitism. David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, wrote in 2016 that the definition was “bewilderingly imprecise” and failed to link antisemitism with other forms of racism. He recently reiterated his criticisms, saying the government should not impose a “faulty definition” on universities.

In fact, the definition does much to disarm the struggle against antisemitism in any institution where it would be used. It fails to identify structural factors that impose and reproduce it, focusing instead on interpersonal relations. This ignores the centrality of identifying and challenging both structural and institutional power in the struggle against racism.

The Health Minister of Ontario in Canada has stoked controversy by suggesting that people who do not take the coronavirus vaccine will face restrictions on where they can travel and spend time.

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When asked by reporters about how the government intends to go about convincing people to get the vaccine, Health Minister Christine Elliott warned that those who refuse it will face difficulties reintegrating into society.

“That’s their choice, this is not going to be a mandatory campaign. It will be voluntary,” Elliot said, but adding that “There may be some restrictions that may be placed on people that don’t have vaccines for travel purposes, to be able to go to theatres and other places.”

When another reporter asked if the government would be introducing ‘immunity passports’, or proof of vaccination cards, Elliot said

“Yes, because that’s going to be really important for people to have for travel purposes, perhaps for work purposes, for going to theatres or cinemas or any other places where people will be in closer physical contact.”

Proof of vaccination will be "essential for people to have" – Health Minister, Christine Elliott pic.twitter.com/F40QhdwynM

— CrasHTalk (@CrasTalk) December 9, 2020

1/Ontario Health Minister @celliottability: “If people choose not to get the vaccine they may not be able to do certain things, but that will be their choice”@fordnation govt is HIGHLY unethical/unlawful—violating Nuremberg Code in UN’s international lawpic.twitter.com/K1F1hZzJMs

— Your Ontario Doctors (@OnCall4ON) December 7, 2020

Following up on Elliot’s comments, The Toronto Sun spoke to her press secretary, who confirmed that the government is exploring several options for vaccine “tracking and surveillance.”

“This includes exploring developing tech-based solutions while also providing for alternative options to ensure equitable access to any potential ‘immunity passport,’” Alexandra Hilkene said.

Sun reporter Brian Lilley notes “That phrase will set off alarm bells and it should, not just for anti-vaxxers, but for anyone who is concerned about Charter rights and governments running roughshod over them.”

Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams has also said that a COVID-19 vaccine may be required for “freedom to move around”.

“What we can do is to say sometimes for access, or ease, in getting into certain settings, if you don’t have vaccination then you’re not allowed into that setting without other protection materials,” Williams said.

The comments of these Canadian officials add to the litany of other governmentand travel industry figures in both the US, Britain and beyond who have suggested that ‘COVID passports’ are coming, in order for ‘life to get back to normal’

In an essay in The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden noted that he expects the so called ‘immunity passports’ will come into widespread use despite any ethical, legal or operational challenges, and despite the fact that it hasn’t at all been determined whether the vaccine equates to immunity.

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Since normalizing relations in September, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have teamed up to do what both do best: trample on democratic freedoms, commit atrocities, and whitewash occupation.

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Back in 2010, the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman issued the following complaint: “Destructive critics dismiss Gaza as an Israeli prison, without ever mentioning that had Hamas decided — after Israel unilaterally left Gaza — to turn it into Dubai rather than Tehran, Israel would have behaved differently, too.”

Never mind that Israel never “left” Gaza — or that even if Hamas had managed to transform the diminutive Palestinian coastal enclave into the capital of Iran, international law would not have authorized the Israelis to then convert it into the “world’s largest open-air prison.” It’s also unclear how any territory could be turned into Dubai while under siege and frequent bombardment, or how Gazans would go about building malls with ski slopes — or building anything, for that matter — when Israel intermittently blocks construction materials from coming into the narrow strip of land.

Now, courtesy of the September normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates — the culmination of a long-standing clandestine love affair — it seems the Palestinians will finally get to experience a taste of Dubai. (And Emirati alcohol consumers will get a taste of Israeli-made wine from the illegally occupied Golan Heights.)

In a recent CNN dispatch titled “The UAE and Israel’s whirlwind honeymoon has gone beyond normalization,” correspondent Ben Wedeman writes of the “mutual enthusiasm” infecting the Israeli government and the federation of Arab sheikhdoms, so much so that the UAE “appears to have dropped, in practical terms, any objections to Israel’s occupation of Arab lands.” That’s no accident. Disappearing the occupation is a primary function of normalization, fitting right in with the Friedmanite approach to Middle East peace, which posits that, if the Palestinians would just stop bitching about being occupied and massacred and get on with their lives, they, too, could be Dubai — the equivalent of telling a person in a burning house to simply ignore the flames.

Wedeman catalogues the perks of the overzealous Emirati-Israeli honeymoon: mutual visa exemption, the aforementioned wine, an excursion to the UAE by Israeli settler leaders from the West Bank, direct flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi scheduled to start early next year, and an arrangement where the UAE will “finance with the US and Israel a project to ‘modernize’ Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank used to control and monitor the movement of Palestinians.”

Presumably, “modernization” does not mean that Israeli soldiers will stop beating, killing, detaining, and otherwise abusing Palestinians at checkpoints. But perhaps the Emiratis can help install state-of-the-art mobile maternity wards to deal with the Palestinian women forced to give birth there.

To be sure, it’s not like the checkpoints aren’t “modern” enough already. As NBC News reported last year, Microsoft has “invested in a startup that uses facial recognition to surveil Palestinians throughout the West Bank, in spite of the tech giant’s public pledge to avoid using the technology if it encroaches on democratic freedoms.”

That’s no turnoff for the UAE, where democratic freedoms are entirely absent and the slightest criticism of the government is grounds for detention, torture, or disappearance. And what do you know: Emirati-Israeli collaboration regarding surveillance far predated the official unveiling of amorous bilateral relations. In 2015, a Middle East Eye article quoted a description of Abu Dhabi’s Israeli-installed mass civil spying system: “Every person is monitored from the moment they leave their doorstep to the moment they return to it. Their work, social and behavioral patterns are recorded, analyzed and archived.”

Call it modern barbarism — a right-wing neoliberal dream where basic rights are supplanted by skyscrapers, artificial islands, the annual Dubai Shopping Festival, and other distracting obscenities built on the backs of a migrant work force toiling in “virtual slavery.”

For their normalization efforts, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Perverse, unless you recall that former US president Barack Obama, the man who ordered the dropping of at least 26,171 bombs on seven Muslim-majority countries in 2016 alone, also received the prize. “Peace,” meanwhile, is not currently an option for Palestinians, Yemenis, and other regional inhabitants whose lives are sacrificed in the interest of arms industry profits and similar fixtures of “modernity” — all with US backing, and an imperial narrative that insists Iran is the one causing all the trouble.

So the honeymooners are getting off scot-free, whether for killing 2,251 people in Gaza in a matter of fifty days or for helping oversee the sexual torture of Yemeni detainees and mass starvation of Yemeni children as part of the Saudi-led coalition. And as normalization forges ahead, it’s nothing short of terrifying that anyone finds this normal.

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Israel is making hay while the sun of the Trump administration continues to shine. Fearing incoming President Joe Biden will not be as tolerant as his predecessor, Israel is busy creating unreported facts on the ground in Palestine as well as those well publicised faits accompli in the diplomatic realm.

Last week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke of a “a deep sense of worry about the grim realities” faced by Palestinians, notably in Gaza. His remarks followed a report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which stated that Gaza’s economy is on the brink of collapse. In a report to the UN General Assembly, UNCTAD estimated the cost to Gaza at $16.7 billion due to Israel’s imposition of a strict blockade in 2007, when Hamas seized control, through 2018.

By 2017, the strip’s poverty rate had soared to 56 per cent due to the blockade and three Israeli wars. UNCTAD said,

“The result is the near collapse of the regional Gaza economy while trade is restricted from the rest of the Palestinian economy and the world.” Lifting the blockade is necessary to “restore the right to free movement for business, medical care, education, recreation and family bonds. Only by fully lifting the debilitating closure, in line with Security Council resolution 1860 (2009), can we hope to sustainably resolve the humanitarian crisis”.

UNCTAD described the situation:

“Effectively, nearly 2 million people are mostly confined to a 365 square kilometre enclave with one of the highest population densities in the world. The entry of goods into the Gaza Strip has been reduced to only basic humanitarian products.” UNCTAD points out that Israel’s military assaults on Gaza have “resulted in the destruction of the productive base, while the ensuing severe crisis has transformed [it] into a humanitarian case and condemned it to profound aid-dependency”.

UNCTAD continued,

“The vast majority of the population has no access to clean water, electricity or a proper sewage system, and the Gaza Strip experiences major environmental deterioration.”

The UN has repeatedly predicted that if conditions are not reversed, Gaza would be unlivable in 2020. This year has come and gone and there has been no pressure on Israel to ease the blockade of Gaza’s vulnerable population. This policy amounts to “collective punishment” which is a crime in under international law.

Conditions have been made worse by COVID. The authorities in Gaza contained the spread from March, when travellers brought it to the strip, until it ballooned in August. World Health Organisation director in Gaza Abdel Nasser Soboh told Al Monitor, “The infection rate in the Gaza Strip exceeds the health-care system’s capacity, as it needs a lot of external support in order to be able to provide the necessary services.” Gaza has reported more than 14,000 cases and at least 70 deaths among 2 million people.

The economy of the West Bank and its 2.8 million inhabitants has been hit hard by the Palestinian Authority’s boycott of Israel and the US following Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, shift of the US embassy to Jerusalem, cancellation of funding to UNRWA, the UN agency that cares for Palestinian refugees, and legitimisation of illegal Israeli colonisation which continues apace and without international intervention.

Due to the global preoccupation with COVID, Israel has escalated its violations of Palestinian rights, accelerated colonisation and deepened its military occupation while the virus has swept through Palestinian communities and stunned the weak economy of the West Bank.

Due to the Palestinian Authority’s refusal of Israeli-collected tariffs and taxes in protest against US and Israeli policies, the cash-strapped government has been forced to halve salaries of 180,000 civil servants struggling to make ends meet while COVID has locked down cities, towns and villages. Although Israel last week released the accumulated $1 billion in funds, the shortage of cash from March through November has harmed the economy.

Israel has continued its crack-down on Palestinian protests and demolitions of Palestinian homes and rural shelters in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Jordan Valley. Israel has also stepped up its land grab in the West Bank by legalising the reclassification of Palestinian private land as public land so that settler outposts can be declared legitimate. Until now, outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law as well as international law.

Israeli settler organisations are exerting pressure to force out Palestinian residents of the strategic Silwan neighbourhood in East Jerusalem and Middle East Eye reports that the Israelis are trying to close down and clear Palestinian shop keepers from Bab Hutta, near Herod’s Gate and the entrance to the Haram Al Sharif, the mosque compound. Israeli income, property and value added taxes have been levelled on shops and intelligence, police, the Environment Protection Authority and the Consumer Protection Agency have made simultaneous moves against the traders. This pressure has been stepped up, allegedly, because Palestinian youths have harassed settlers living in or passing through the quarter.

In the rural West Bank, Israeli settlers, protected by armed Israeli soldiers, have continued to rob olives and uproot olive trees in Palestinian orchards. During the first 11 months of 2020, 919 Palestinians have lost their homes, in comparison with 677 during 2019. This is a four year record during a pandemic, reported Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem. Just ahead of the November 3rd US electons, Israel destroyed the shelters of the community of Khirbet Humsah in the Jordan Valley. B’Tselem called this action, seen as a tool of Israel’s policy of forcible transfer, “The largest demolition in a decade”. The aim of this effort is to force Palestinian herders and farmers off their land, out of their villages, and into the West Bank’s isolated urban centres where they have no roots, no employment and no future.

In B’Tslem’s view, Israel’s recent retreat from formal annexation of the West Bank following an international outcry does not count. Israel long ago de facto annexed the West Bank where 400,000 Israelis dwell illegally in 250 colonies in violation of international law. “By engineering the space, Israel has radically changed the map of the West Bank to suit its interests, creating contiguity for the settlements and pushing Palestinians into scores of isolated, crowded enclaves.”

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Featured image is from Just World Educational

A presentation by the chief of the US military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and a report drafted by the US Army War College’s chief expert on Latin America have been issued back-to-back in the last two weeks, both making dire warnings of growing Chinese influence in the region. Together, they amount to a brief submitted to an incoming Biden administration, arguing that Washington must escalate its drive to assert imperialist hegemony over the lands to its south as part of its preparations for a global confrontation with China.

The head of SOUTHCOM, Admiral Craig Faller, told Pentagon reporters Wednesday that US imperialism’s “competitive edge [in the region]…is eroding, particularly when it comes to the Chinese influence.”

Faller presented this challenge largely as a matter of China’s failure to “play by global rules,” by which he means the rules imposed over the course of the 20th century underpinning US global hegemony.

“I think what they’re doing [in the region] matches what they’re doing globally. It’s a full court press to have China become the world’s dominant power,” said the admiral.

“They’ve come in with the same type of infrastructure deals, loans, that they have used globally to gain influence,” he said. “[T]hey come in with deals that no one can compete with because US industry has to compete fairly by law.”

Who does he think he is kidding? US corporations have used criminal methods to dictate terms to Latin American countries—and helped overthrow governments that failed to accept them—since the beginning of the last century, from the United Fruit Company in Guatemala in 1954, to ITT and Anaconda Copper in Chile in 1973, to the role of Big Oil and US finance capital today in the drive for regime change in Venezuela.

Faller acknowledged that, while four years ago only one government in the region had signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative—Beijing’s huge global infrastructure program aimed at linking China’s markets to Eurasia and beyond by land and sea—now, 19 have.

China has become Latin America’s foremost lender and investor and is poised to overtake the US as its chief trading partner. It is already the number-one partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and is the second largest for many other countries

Total trade between China and the region has increased from $17 billion in 2002 to almost $315 billion in 2019. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the recovery of China’s economy has led to a continuation of this growth, even as trade with the US, Europe and Japan has fallen off sharply.

In addition to insinuating that the growth of China’s economic influence in Latin America could be chalked up to fraud, bribery and extortion, Admiral Faller insisted that Beijing’s primary interest was in developing “seaport infrastructure” and “deep water ports,” noting that China had “signed 40 commercial port deals in SOUTHCOM’s area of operations.” These deals, he charged, were primarily of military significance.

“What does it look like if China has a strategic control of the Strait of Magellan, or the Panama Canal, the approaches to the Gulf of Mexico through a Caribbean port? What does that look like in a global conflict?” Faller asked. “The Panama Canal is a significant global choke point. We were concerned as we watched China working port deals on either side of the canal.”

“Certainly in a global Chinese fight, that would be one of the key considerations: how do we defend that canal?” Faller said.

The SOUTHCOM commander also denounced the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for providing Latin American armed forces “free equipment, free gear and free training with no strings attached.” He took particular umbrage at the PLA’s failing to provide human rights training, “the things important to us.”

What hypocrisy! US “human rights training” did nothing to stop the Colombian military—granted $448 million in US aid this year alone—from murdering tens of thousands in its so-called “false positive” campaign of deliberately targeting civilians and then claiming that they were armed insurgents. Over the past half century, similar crimes and worse have been carried out across Latin America with the direct aid of the Pentagon.

“We’ve even found them teaching a course on why the US is not a partner of choice for the military taught by the PLA to partner nation militaries here in the hemisphere,” Faller added. “That I find alarming and shocking.” Shocking! As if the Army’s School of the Americas did not offer decades of courses in anti-communism, reinforcing and legitimizing the fascist ideology of Latin American military officers who led CIA-backed coups and murderous dictatorships.

An even more chilling expression of the way in which the Pentagon perceives Chinese influence in Latin America was provided by the US Army War College’s expert on the Western Hemisphere, Evan Ellis, in a paper published two weeks after the November 3 presidential election by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank with close ties to the US military and intelligence apparatus.

Ellis placed the question squarely within the context of the Pentagon’s preparations for a new world war between the US and China, both nuclear-armed powers.

“In the context of large-scale hostilities with the United States…PRC military relationships in the region would likely be used in all stages of the global-scope campaign necessary to wage that conflict,” Ellis writes.

He continues:

“In the event of a prolonged fight in Asia, the PRC could persuade or intimidate one or more actors in Latin America to permit the PLA to use its ports, air fields, or other facilities in support of operations against the United States. Although difficult to imagine today, such permission could be less unthinkable in a future scenario in which the continuing growth, quality improvement, and operational experience of the PLA causes some Latin American and Caribbean governments to question the ability of the United States to prevail or to sustain a costly conflict. … If some Latin American governments decided to ‘bet against the United States’ and permit the PRC to use their facilities for military purposes, the accumulated PLA knowledge of Latin American military leaders, forces, organization, infrastructure, and operating environment would increase the speed and effectiveness with which it could establish a wartime presence to conduct operations against the United States.”

Underlying this grim perspective is the protracted attempt by US imperialism to offset the erosion of its global hegemony by means of escalating militarism. This drive will only continue under an administration led by Biden and the Democrats, who campaigned against Trump on the basis that he has been too “soft” on Russia and China.

The Pentagon sees Latin America as a battlefield in a coming World War III and is preparing accordingly. It is seeking to shore up its ties to the region’s armed forces, including, as in the 1960s and 1970s, through the promotion of military coups and dictatorships to confront the rising revolutionary challenge from the working class.

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The mayhem of the presidential elections left the American policy-makers locked in heated arguments about the future of the US domestic and foreign policy alike. One of the most pressing issues on the agenda is the Middle East developments, especially the U.S. role in Syria.

After his ultimate defeat in the national vote Donald Trump handed down his successor a controversial legacy of multiple unresolved issues coupled with the badly damaged image of the White House. This is true especially for Syria, where despite repeated claims of total victory over ISIS, the terrorists continue to carry out sporadic attacks throughout the eastern part of the country Syria. The activity of sleeper cells became a pretext for rejecting the idea of a complete U.S. military withdrawal from Syria.

It is widely believed that the Biden administration intends to make use of the terror threat to keep boots on the ground in Syria in order to ensure the security of oil and gas fields. Indeed, the fight against international terrorism constitutes the basis of Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East. However, the U.S history in the region has shown that the White House primarily regards terror groups as an opportunity to benefit from seizing previously inaccessible resources.

In pursuit of economic and political goal human rights are sidelined, as is the case in Al-Hawl camp, where refugees suffer from miserable conditions living side by side with captured ISIS terrorists. The camp that was initially established in 1991 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for Iraqi citizens fleeing from the Persian Gulf War, started to host ISIS terrorists and their families in late 2018. The camp originally designed for 11,000 people currently counts about 70,000 – more than six time over of its capacity – the majority of whom are women and children of various nationalities. Camp dwellers blame the overcrowding and poor management for a shortage of water, lack of food and inadequate medical care.

The American leadership persistently ignores this humanitarian catastrophe, a byproduct of the neglectful approach to the civilian population applied by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). By doing this Washington possibly violates the Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949, under which the U.S. is obliged to ensure the safety of civilians in northeast Syria.

Another worrying tendency is the increase in cases of riots and escapes from the SDF-controlled prisons that hold around 10,000 detainees. The most serious incidents of this kind took place in October 2019, when several hundred prisoners broke out of the Ain Issa jail. The Americans did not pay sufficient attention to these developments and chose not to investigate human trafficking networks used to smuggle militants out of jail and ultimately out of Syria despite the risk of reappearance of armed groups and rise in subversive activities. This deliberate ignorance will persist until the armed groups pose a threat for U.S. military bases located in the energy-rich areas of Hasakah and Deir Ezzor provinces.

This is yet another reminder that the U.S. is not a reliable ally for the Kurdish autonomous administration. As Ankara continues to strengthen its positions in the region there has been growing speculation about Turkey planning another military operation in northern Syria. Earlier, the Turkish leadership had abused the buffer zone agreement with the SDF that was brokered by the U.S. to evict the Kurds from these areas. Back then the Turks faced no obstacles in implementing their plan as the American troops withdrew from the buffer zone on the very eve of the Turkish Peace Spring operation. During the Turkish offensive a number of massive escapes that let dozens of terrorists out of SDF jails took place. Keeping in mind the U.S. practical approach to its geopolitical interests, the new American administration will likely prefer not to obstruct its NATO ally and the Kurds will be again hit by the Turkish artillery and UAVs.

The U.S. foreign policy under the Donald Trump’s presidency has been dominated by the pursuit of economic benefits under the pretext of promoting democracy and protecting civilians, a perfect representation of the “world leader’s” disregard for the interests of any state, be it ally or enemy, whose resources fall in the White House’s sphere of interests. Double standards have become a defining trait of the international relations with civilians whose interests are supposedly protected by the U.S. military reduced to a bargaining chip.

The upcoming transition of the U.S. leadership and the inauguration of President Joe Biden have to determine whether the United States is capable of being a guarantor of security and stability, or Washington’s economic ambitions come first.

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Ahmad Salah is a freelance Syrian journalist focused on the Middle East, especially the Levant.

Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden has tapped retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III for the pow­er­ful role of defense sec­re­tary, news out­lets revealed Decem­ber 7. Spec­u­la­tion over who Biden would pick had been brew­ing for weeks. All three top con­tenders for the posi­tion — Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion alum Michèle Flournoy, for­mer Home­land Secu­ri­ty Direc­tor Jeh John­son and Austin — have direct finan­cial ties to the mil­i­tary indus­try, and none can be described as even nom­i­nal­ly pro­gres­sive on for­eign pol­i­cy. Austin, arguably, is not the worst among them: Flournoy comes with an espe­cial­ly hawk­ish record, the most mil­i­tary indus­try ties, and an ide­o­log­i­cal pro-war gus­to that sets her apart. But it’s dif­fi­cult to breathe a sigh of relief about the advance of a retired gen­er­al who over­saw wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq and Syr­ia, and who is on the Board of Direc­tors for the pow­er­ful weapons com­pa­ny Raytheon.

Austin is still list­ed by Raytheon, one of the largest weapons com­pa­nies in the world, as a mem­ber of its board. Raytheon is a major sup­pli­er of bombs to the U.S.-Saudi coali­tion that began wag­ing war on Yemen dur­ing the Oba­ma-Biden admin­is­tra­tion (a war Austin over­saw), and the com­pa­ny has aggres­sive­ly lob­bied against any curbs on U.S. weapons sales to the coali­tion. In just one exam­ple, an Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al report deter­mined that Raytheon man­u­fac­tured the bomb that killed six peo­ple, chil­dren among them, at a home in Yemen’s Ta’iz gov­er­norate in June 2019. Mark Esper, who served as Don­ald Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Defense before he was fired last month, was a for­mer lob­by­ist for Raytheon — a record for which he, right­ly, attract­ed con­sid­er­able flak.

But Austin’s mil­i­tary indus­try ties don’t stop there. As was first report­ed by The Amer­i­can Prospect, Austin — along with Flournoy — is also a part­ner at Pine Island Cap­i­tal Part­ners. Here’s how the New York Times described the firm in an arti­cle pub­lished on Novem­ber 28: ​“Pine Island Cap­i­tal has been on some­thing of a buy­ing spree this year, pur­chas­ing the weapons sys­tem parts man­u­fac­tur­er Precin­mac and a com­pa­ny until recent­ly known as Meg­gitt Train­ing Sys­tems and now known as InVeris, which sells com­put­er-sim­u­lat­ed weapons train­ing sys­tems to the Pen­ta­gon and law enforce­ment agen­cies.” The same day, The Dai­ly Poster report­ed that the com­pa­ny has boast­ed that its team’s inclu­sion of for­mer gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary offi­cials will help boost profits.

Austin, who served in pow­er­ful mil­i­tary roles under Oba­ma, is known for not hog­ging the spot­light, and fol­low­ing orders (like­ly war crimes among them) when Oba­ma dealt them out. In a world of larg­er-than-life, pro-war per­son­al­i­ties like Jim Mat­tis and Stan­ley McChrys­tal, this has caused some to hope he is not the most harm­ful option. But when it came to his actu­al posi­tions — things that mat­ter when you’re sec­re­tary of defense — Austin often found him­self to the right of a pres­i­dent who, despite his 2008 cam­paign trail image, was no dove. In 2010, as the top com­man­der of U.S. forces in Iraq, Austin advised Pres­i­dent Oba­ma against with­draw­ing troops from Iraq, and said he should instead leave 24,000 troops in the coun­try (there were about 45,000 at the time). Oba­ma, how­ev­er, over­rode this rec­om­men­da­tion, and Austin end­ed up pre­sid­ing over a sig­nif­i­cant troop with­draw­al. As head of Cen­tral Com­mand, which over­sees the Mid­dle East, Austin would go on to rec­om­mend in 2014 that Oba­ma send a ​“mod­est con­tin­gent of Amer­i­can troops, prin­ci­pal­ly Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces, to advise and assist Iraqi army units” in the fight­ing of ISIS, as para­phrased by the Wash­ing­ton Post. Oba­ma also ini­tial­ly reject­ed this rec­om­men­da­tion, deploy­ing 475 troops, osten­si­bly to pro­vide train­ing, intel­li­gence and equip­ment, and ini­ti­at­ing an air war on ISIS that con­tin­ues to kill civil­ians to this day.

Austin would pre­side over an expan­sion of this war, which by his retire­ment in 2016 saw 3,600 U.S. troops deployed to Iraq, and U.S. Spe­cial Forces to Syr­ia (although this did not pre­vent him from being crit­i­cized from the right for not doing enough to esca­late mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia). He led Cen­tral Com­mand dur­ing the war in Afghanistan, as well as when the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion ini­ti­at­ed U.S. par­tic­i­pa­tion in the war on Yemen, which erupt­ed under his charge into a full-blown human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis that has esca­lat­ed under Pres­i­dent Trump.

And then, of course, there is the fact that Austin is a retired gen­er­al who has been tapped to over­see an agency that is sup­posed to be run by civil­ians (although, when oth­er can­di­dates are so close­ly tied to the mil­i­tary indus­try, the line between civil­ian and non-civil­ian is blurred across the board). Because Austin has only been out of the mil­i­tary for four years, he will need a con­gres­sion­al waiv­er to serve in the role of defense sec­re­tary, as did Mat­tis, the first defense sec­re­tary under Pres­i­dent Trump. If approved, Austin will be the first Black defense sec­re­tary in U.S. history.

That Austin was cho­sen to head the Pen­ta­gon shows that the U.S. polit­i­cal imag­i­na­tion around war and mil­i­tarism remains trapped with­in Washington’s revolv­ing door of weapons indus­try con­trac­tors and gov­ern­ment offi­cials. And it shows that the sta­tus quo of the Oba­ma years — which brought us drone wars around the world, pro­tract­ed occu­pa­tion in Afghanistan and cat­a­stro­phe in Yemen — lives on with the incom­ing Biden administration.

It’s worth also tak­ing note of the oth­er top con­tenders who, even though they didn’t make the slot, nonethe­less are close to the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and are almost cer­tain to con­tin­ue exert­ing some influ­ence. For­mer Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Jeh John­son is on the board of direc­tors for weapons com­pa­ny Lock­heed Mar­tin. Like Raytheon, Lock­heed Mar­tin has prof­it­ed con­sid­er­ably from the U.S. war in Yemen, even as the war has fall­en out of favor among the main­stream of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. That com­pa­ny infa­mous­ly man­u­fac­tured the bomb that killed 26 chil­dren when it struck a school bus in north­ern Yemen in August 2018.

Under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, John­son presided over a sig­nif­i­cant esca­la­tion in raids and depor­ta­tions, as well as the prac­tice of incar­cer­at­ing chil­dren in immi­gra­tion deten­tion cen­ters. In an open let­ter writ­ten to John­son in August 2016, 22 moth­ers held with their chil­dren at the Berks Fam­i­ly Res­i­den­tial Cen­ter in Penn­syl­va­nia plead­ed for their free­dom. ​“Our chil­dren, who range in age from 2 to 16, have been deprived of a nor­mal life,” they wrote.

But it is Flournoy whose record attract­ed the lion’s share of con­cern from many anti-war activists. In addi­tion to Pine Island Cap­i­tal Part­ners, she is also on the board of mil­i­tary con­trac­tor Booz Allen Hamil­ton, which ​“paid her about $440,000 in the last two years, much of it stock awards,” accord­ing tothe New York Times. She also cofound­ed Cen­ter for a New Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty (CNAS) — a hawk­ish cen­ter-left think tank that receives sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing from the weapons indus­try, includ­ing Raytheon and Lock­heed Mar­tin, where Austin and John­son are respec­tive­ly affil­i­at­ed. Flournoy is also co-founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of Wes­t­Ex­ec Advi­sors, a con­sult­ing firm that includesmil­i­tary con­trac­tors among its clients. Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for sec­re­tary of state, is also one of WestExec’s cofounders, and the orga­ni­za­tion is a ​“strate­gic part­ner” of Pine Island Cap­i­tal Partners.

Beyond these defense indus­try ties, Flournoy’s hawk­ish track record has earned her sig­nif­i­cant ire from anti-war activists. While this record can be traced back all the way to the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, it was the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion where she exert­ed con­sid­er­able influ­ence, as Under Sec­re­tary of Defense for Pol­i­cy from 2009 to 2012, as well as through her role at CNAS. Flournoy pushed to esca­late the war in Afghanistan, strong­ly pressed for the 2011 mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Libya, opposed the com­plete with­draw­al of troops from Iraq, and as recent­ly as 2019 opposed a ban on sell­ing weapons to Sau­di Ara­bia. In a recent let­ter to Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden, pro­gres­sive groups, includ­ing the Yemen Relief and Recon­struc­tion Foun­da­tion and Yemeni Alliance Com­mit­tee, stat­ed, ​“We are con­cerned that Ms. Flournoy has a record of ill-advised for­eign pol­i­cy posi­tions that have often con­flict­ed with your own, and has an opaque his­to­ry of pri­vate-sec­tor activ­i­ty — includ­ing ​‘shad­ow lob­by­ing’ for mil­i­tary con­trac­tors — which has raised ques­tions about poten­tial con­flicts of interest.”

Flournoy has her defend­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly among ​“nation­al secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als” who cel­e­brat­ed the poten­tial high-lev­el advance­ment of a woman, infu­ri­at­ing the anti-war fem­i­nists I spoke to. And some groups that con­sid­er them­selves lib­er­al or pro­gres­sive on for­eign pol­i­cy expressed ret­i­cence about oppos­ing her. Although she did not get the posi­tion, it will be impor­tant to keep an eye on Flournoy, who will no doubt con­tin­ue to exert influ­ence from CNAS.

If one believes, as I do, that the U.S. mil­i­tary is not a force for good in the world, it is doubt­ful that there is such a thing as a ​“good” sec­re­tary of defense. There is, how­ev­er, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of reduc­ing — even mar­gin­al­ly — the harm the U.S. mil­i­tary inflicts across the globe. The field of poten­tial nom­i­nees was, from an anti-war per­spec­tive, dis­mal: None of Biden’s picks for sec­re­tary of defense were going to be pro­gres­sive, even accord­ing to Washington’s stan­dards. His occa­sion­al rhetoric around end­ing ​“for­ev­er wars” aside, Biden nev­er real­ly gave us any rea­son to think he’d steer a course that veers very far from the wars and inter­ven­tions he sup­port­ed — either overt­ly or tac­it­ly — dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, not to men­tion dur­ing his long polit­i­cal career before that. While one must not flat­ten dif­fer­ences between can­di­dates, it is also impor­tant not to sound a note of tri­umph when the absolute worst is avoid­ed but an unac­cept­able sta­tus quo remains, as some have done with respect to the president-elect’s oth­er appoint­ments. Espe­cial­ly when it comes to for­eign pol­i­cy — where the pres­i­dent has the most pow­er to act with­out Con­gress, and where Biden’s appoint­ments have uni­form­ly avoid­ed mean­ing­ful con­ces­sions to the Left — sug­ar­coat­ing real­i­ty is ill-advised.

It’s not too much to ask, at the very least, that ​“pub­lic ser­vants” ele­vat­ed to the high­est ech­e­lons of pow­er not take over agen­cies that reg­u­late and patron­ize the cor­po­ra­tions they were well-com­pen­sat­ed board mem­bers of weeks before tak­ing office, and will like­ly be again once they leave office in a few years. Even set­ting aside ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­si­tion to U.S. empire or the iner­tia of vio­lence that defines U.S. mil­i­tarism across the globe, basic good gov­ern­ment types can see the inher­ent con­flicts of inter­est in the revolv­ing door between indus­try and gov­ern­ment. This revolv­ing door was sim­ply tak­en for grant­ed in Biden’s defense sec­re­tary sweep­stakes. Cer­tain­ly, there has to be some­one in the ​“nation­al secu­ri­ty” world not drown­ing in the largesse of Raytheon, Booz Allen or Lock­heed Mar­tin. And if there isn’t, what does this say about the fun­da­men­tal nature of the U.S. war machine and who it serves?

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Sarah Lazare is web edi­tor at In These Times. She comes from a back­ground in inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism for pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing The Inter­cept, The Nation, and Tom Dis­patch. She tweets at @sarahlazare.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Pro-Yemeni activists hope that Biden will stay true to his prior promise to stop funding the GCC’s War on Yemen, but even if he does what’s arguably the morally right thing, he’ll probably be doing it for geopolitical reasons even if he tries to pass it off as a matter of principle for soft power sake.

In August, CHD asked regulators to investigate the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in COVID mRNA vaccines, which could have caused the severe allergic reactions reported this week by two of the first UK recipients of Pfizer’s vaccine.

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Media outlets are reporting that two individuals who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine developed severe anaphylactic reactions following the injection.

England’s National Health Service (NHS) warned Wednesday that people “with a history of a significant allergic reaction to a vaccine, medicine or food” should not be given the COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech. UK’s Medical and Health products Regulatory Agency, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, reminded health-care workers that vaccinations should only be carried out in facilities where resuscitation measures are available.

These warnings came after two National Health Service employees who were part of the first tranche to receive the vaccine on Tuesday suffered adverse reactions.

NHS England said in a statement that both of the medical workers who experienced anaphylactoid reactions to the Pfizer vaccine had a “strong past history of allergic reactions.”

According to these news reports, documents published by the two companies showed that people with a history of severe allergic reactions were excluded from the clinical trials.  Therefore, this life-threatening adverse safety signal did not appear in their clinical trial safety data.

On Aug. 26, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) sent a letter to Dr. Jerry Menikoff, director office for Human Research Protections Dept. of Health and Human Services regarding the Phase III Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine. The letter requested the Office for Human Research Protections investigate the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in Moderna’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, which also uses mRNA technology, also contains PEG.

Approximately 8% of the U.S. population has highly elevated levels of anti-PEG antibodies. The concerns we laid out in our letter about the Moderna vaccine were related to the fact that injecting a PEG-containing vaccine into individuals with pre-existing PEG antibodies could lead to life-threatening anaphylaxis.

Such was the case with a member of CHD, Harold Gielow, a retired military Lt. Col USMC who suffers with severe anaphylactic response to polyethylene glycol. In fact, the last time Gielow was exposed to an injected drug that contained PEG, he went pulseless, requiring an injection of epinephrine. His PEG allergy was diagnosed by Johns Hopkins.

Gielow has voiced outrage that PEG is classified by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as biologically inert/inactive.

“It is anything but that,” Gielow said. “The incidences of hypersensitivity reactions to PEG are, understandably, increasing, although many with PEG hypersensitivity go undiagnosed, thus presenting an unreasonable hazard to administering these vaccines to a population, the vast majority of which is proven by science to have anti-PEG antibodies.”

In fact, investigators who once assumed that the polymer was largely “inert” are now questioning its biocompatibility and warning about PEGylated particles’ promotion of tumor growth and adverse immune responses that include “probably underdiagnosed” life-threatening anaphylaxis. These undesirable responses have, on occasion, halted clinical trials. As a result, some scientists argue that it is time to develop alternatives to replace PEG. American and Dutch researchers declared in 2013:

“[T]he accumulating evidence documenting the detrimental effects of PEG on drug delivery make it imperative that scientists in this field break their dependence on PEGylation.”

Dr. Menikoff recommended that our concerns be sent to Dr. Steven Hahn, director of the FDA and Dr. Marks, director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. On Sept, 25, the letter was sent and included with a cc to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National  Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

On Dec. 2, we received a response from Dr. Hahn and Dr. Marks with a recommendation that we reach out directly to the mRNA vaccine manufacturers regarding our concerns with the use of PEG in their vaccines.

What is concerning about the response is the fact that in the letter we acknowledge that we had already reached out to Moderna’s scientists regarding the use of PEG and lack of informing vaccine trial recipients about the use of PEG in the vaccine, soliciting a history of PEG allergies and testing blood antibody levels to PEG.

Did the FDA officials actually read the letter?

CHD’s concerns about PEG stem from the fact that PEG-specific immune responses can actually reduce the efficacy of vaccines and increase the occurrence of adverse events.

A 2016 study in Analytical Chemistry reported detectable and sometimes high levels of anti-PEG antibodies (including first-line-of-defense IgM antibodies and later stage IgG antibodies) in approximately 72% of contemporary human samples and about 56% of historical specimens from the 1970s through the 1990s. Of the 72% with PEG IgG antibodies, 8% had anti-PEG IgG antibodies > 500ng/ml., which is considered extremely elevated. Extrapolated to the U.S. population of 330 million who may receive this vaccine, 16.6 million may have antibody levels associated with adverse effects.

The researchers confessed that the results were entirely unexpected. The authors concluded that:

“…sensitive detection and precise quantitation of anti-PEG Ab levels in a clinical setting will be essential to ensuring the safe use of PEGylated drugs in all target patient populations going forward.”

On July 28, Gielow wrote to CovPN citing the 2016 study’s conclusions and asked the following question:

“As Moderna’s mRNA-1273 candidate vaccine uses a PEGylated LNP vector, what procedures are included in the trial to mitigate this risk?”

The response from CovPN was as follows:

“Thank you so much for this scientific question. I consulted with several of the physician scientists working on the Moderna study, and they have provided me with this response to send on to you:

“Pre-existing antibody levels, along with various genetic polymorphisms, may impact the safety profile of a biomedical intervention in a variety of populations. If there are significant safety signals from the CoVPN clinical trials, all efforts will be made to understand the mechanisms that may have contributed to these signals. Pre-screening populations based on hypothesized biomarkers, such as anti-PEG antibodies, is not a strategy currently employed in our clinical trials.”

While the Moderna scientists allege that PEG antibody development is purely hypothetical, the scientific literature clearly documents that the immune system can and does form antibodies against PEG (anti-PEG Abs) in both animals and humans. The existence of anti-PEG antibodies threatens patient safety through possible anaphylaxis reactions and re-exposure to PEG-containing drugs may greatly increase the chance for adverse effects due to B cell memory of anti-PEG Abs. Thus, screening for and monitoring the levels of anti-PEG antibodies in blood before and during treatment with PEG-containing drugs are of particular importance to improve safety and maintain therapeutic efficacy.

The 2016 Analytical Chemistry findings and other studies indicate the widespread occurrence of anti-PEG Abs in the general population due to daily exposure to PEG-containing products. The population’s increased exposure to PEG-containing products makes it “natural to assume” that anti-PEG antibodies will continue to be widespread.”

If high-titer anti-PEG Abs are present in blood, even people without known allergies may have severe hypersensitivity reactions when receiving PEG-containing therapeutics for the first time.

Moderna documents and publications indicate that the company is well aware of safety risks associated with PEG and other aspects of its mRNA technology. In the corporate prospectus supporting Moderna’s stock market launch in late 2018, the company was frank that its technical approach has numerous risks.

Specifically, Moderna acknowledged the potential for its proprietary lipid nanoparticles and PEG to produce “systemic side effects,” given the scientific literature’s documentation of these types of side effects for other LNPs. In comments not generally seen by the public, Moderna stated (p. 33):

[T]here can be no assurance that our LNPs will not have undesired effects. Our LNPs could contribute, in whole or in part, to one or more of the following: immune reactions, infusion reactions, complement reactions, opsonization reactions, [links added] antibody reactions . . . or reactions to the PEG from some lipids or PEG otherwise associated with the LNP. Certain aspects of our investigational medicines may induce immune reactions from either the mRNA or the lipid as well as adverse reactions within liver pathways or degradation of the mRNA or the LNP, any of which could lead to significant adverse events in one or more of our clinical trials.

Instead of expressing concern over clinical trial participants’ welfare, that section of the prospectus concluded that any one of these problems “could materially harm [the company’s] business, financial conditions and prospects.”

As the excerpts from the Moderna prospectus illustrate, Moderna scientists are fully aware of PEG-related safety concerns. In the prospectus, Moderna admits that “unacceptable health risks or adverse side effects” could make it difficult to recruit or retain clinical trial participants and also that an “unfavorable benefit risk ratio could inhibit market acceptance” if their product proceeds to market.

Addressing the efficacy side of the equation, a mid-2019 study by authors who “are or have been employees of Moderna, Inc. and receive salary and stock options from Moderna, Inc.” further admitted that anti-PEG antibodies “present significant challenges to the clinical efficacy of PEGylated therapeutics and will require strategies to overcome [their] effects.”

In light of the recent acknowledgement of anaphylactic reactions to Pfizers’ PEG-containing COVID-19 vaccine, CHD continues to have grave safety and efficacy concerns about the use of PEG in vaccines due to the high percentage of the population having preexisting antibodies to PEG. While it’s unlikely that everyone with pre-existing PEG antibodies will have a severe reaction to a vaccine containing PEG, it is dangerous to assume that none will.

While vaccine manufacturers and federal agencies providing oversight on COVID vaccine development are quick to point out that the clinical trials did not identify safety concerns with the vaccine, they fail to mention the fact that the trial participants were excluded from the study if they had a history of severe allergic reactions and those in the trial were never screened for PEG antibodies.

Multiple previous studies regarding the prevalence of anti-PEG antibodies in the population have stated that pre-screening should be done prior to any administration of a PEG-containing medication. Screening  is likely to be even more important in the case of a vaccine intended for parenteral administration to as many people as possible that contains a substance to which the majority of the population unknowingly has antibodies.

Not characterizing trial participants’ adverse reactions in relation to anti-PEG antibody presence and levels eliminates insights into these interactions is a missed opportunity to prevent harmful adverse events.

Now we are left in a situation where life-threatening adverse events are occurring after widespread use of the vaccine has begun. A finger needs to be pointed squarely at the vaccine manufacturers and regulatory agencies who buried their heads in the sand to legitimate safety concerns in their rush to approve a COVID vaccine. Unfortunately, the public is now left to bear the burden of exposing these lapses in safety.

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Lyn Redwood, R.N., M.S.N., is a Nurse Practitioner who became involved in autism research and advocacy when her son was diagnosed with autism.

Featured image source

Well planned in advance brazen fraud decided US Election 2020 — not voters.

The manipulated outcome for Biden/Harris over Trump was the latest example of US fantasy democracy, the real thing prohibited throughout the country’s history by its ruling class.

Throughout new millennium years, Grand Theft Elections have been facilitated by corporate owned and controlled electronic voting machines.

Cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore earlier explained that they’re “brilliantly designed (to) steal elections.”

Losers can be declared winners and not just for president.

Time and again, US dark forces get away with election theft because corporate-controlled establishment media conceal it.

The 2020 process was a fantasy election, a coup d’etat by other means — losers Biden/Harris selected over winner Trump to deny him the second term he won.

When losers are declared triumphant over winners, democracy is a mirage, the real thing nowhere in sight.

Make no mistake. If it ever emerged for real in the US, it would be banned.

As long as corporate-controlled electronic voting machines are used in the US, dark forces will decide elections, not the will of the people.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued swing states Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the US Supreme Court.

Calling results in these states “unconstitutional,” he argued that these states “flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.”

They “destroyed…trust in the integrity of (the) election” process in their states by unlawful shenanigans.

They breached “statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution.”

Rules governing absentee ballots were changed by “non-legislative actors.”

By so doing, they “preclude(d) knowing who legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections.”

Paxton called on SCOTUS “to correct this egregious error (aka brazen fraud)” by ordering the above scofflaw states to suspend their electors until nine High Court justices rule on this issue.

Seventeen (17) states joined the Texas lawsuit: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.

When disputes between or among states occur, SCOTUS has original jurisdiction to rule on them under the Constitution’s Article III, Section 2, Clause 1.

It gives the Supreme Court exclusive judicial power to rule on “controversies between two or more States…between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States…between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.”

The Texas complaint argues that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar “without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated” PA statutes that require “signature verification for absentee or mail-in ballots.”

The same complaint applies to Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

SCOTUS original jurisdiction power is why it accepted the Texas lawsuit without first having to be ruled on at the district and appeals court levels.

According to Paxton, the above four states breached  Constitution’s Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 — the Electors Clause.

It vests “state legislatures with plenary authority regarding the appointment of presidential electors.”

Other state political and judicial officials have no constitutional authority to circumvent legislatively enacted state laws.

The Texas complaint also accuses the above four states of treating voters in their counties differently.

It states that “more favorable treatment (was) allotted to votes (in areas) administered by local government under (Dem) control.”

In so doing, Paxton argued that these states breached the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled for Bush over Gore, citing the 14th Amendment that “prohibits the use of differential standards in the treatment and tabulation of ballots within a state.”

In addition, the one-person, one-vote principle “requires counting valid votes and not counting invalid votes.”

In its High Court complaint, Paxton argued that Texas was damaged because in “the shared enterprise of the entire nation electing the president and vice president, equal protection violations in one state can and do adversely affect and diminish the weight of votes cast in states that lawfully abide by the election structure set forth in the Constitution.”

Paxton also claimed that the above four states breached “substantive due process” requirements, saying:

They “fail(ed) to follow state election law(s)” enacted by their legislators.

“(U)unauthorized acts (were engaged in) by state election officials and their designees in local government (to the extent) of patent and fundamental unfairness.”

The states “acted unconstitutionally to lower their election standards…with the express intent to favor their candidate for president.”

Their unconstitutional actions changed Election 2020’s result by circumventing their own laws.

The Texas suit joined by 17 other states calls on the High Court to order the above four states to “conduct a special election to appoint presidential electors.”

If already appointed in one or more of these four states, the Texas lawsuit calls for the Supreme Court to order their legislatures “to appoint a new set of presidential electors in a manner that does not violate the Electors Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, or to appoint no presidential electors at all.”

Paxton’s lawsuit is unprecedented in US history, his arguments strong and persuasive.

As things now stand, it appears that nine High Court justices will have final say over Trump v. Biden in Election 2020.

Will they uphold the rule of law or swim with the tide, most always following the latter practice.

Momentum at this stage favors leaving things as they now stand, regardless of how unfair and contrary to the rule of law.

If a High Court majority rules for Trump over Biden/Harris — and by its action changes the election’s result — perhaps a national convulsion could follow, what the justices clearly want avoided.

At the same time, failing to reverse brazen fraud will virtually assure that open, free and fair US federal elections no longer exist.

As things now stand, that’s the disturbing reality about US fantasy democracy — the real thing prohibited.

Election 2020 is Exhibit A.

A Final Comment

I’m not encouraged about what’s likely coming.

My sixth sense suggests no change in longstanding dirty business as usual, no High Court ordered reversal of brazen election fraud.

I surely hope the rule of law will triumph over the illegitimate Election 2020 result.

Explaining long odds against things turning out this way, Law Professor Jonathan Turley said the following:

Trump is “running out of runway.” Turning things around in his favor would be like successfully “land(ing) a jumbo jet on a postage stamp.”

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Since June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia ordered a land, air, and sea blockade on Qatar and severed diplomatic ties, along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Bahrain. The self-styled “Anti-Terror Quartet” issued Doha 13 demands, including closing media outlets like Al Jazeera, ending ties with Iran, reducing military cooperation with Turkey, and severing ties to terrorist groups, which are following the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood ideology. Qatar denies support for terrorism. 

President Trump supported the blockade, tweeting on June 6: “During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar…”

On December 2, Doha News reported that a breakthrough was impending and that it was “understood that Saudi Arabia will open its air space for Qatar Airways flights, and there are some reports that Riyadh may even open its land border.”

Qatar was able to use its deep financial reserves to keep the economy moving, and with orders of foods and other necessities from Iran, was able to manage the blockade for three years since Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) crisis. Qatar has also strengthened its ties with Turkey, increasing trade and air traffic.

Qatar statements

Qatar’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Mohammed Abdur Rahman Al-Thani, said Friday that the solution to the Gulf crisis must be comprehensive, denying any link between resolving the crisis and normalization with Israel. He added, “Normalization with Israel at the present time will not add any momentum to the Palestinian cause.”

Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed said on a videoconference on December 4 that Qatar is very optimistic about resolving the Gulf crisis and is positive about any initiative to achieve peace in the region.

Kushner’s trip

Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to US President Donald Trump, and US Special Envoy to the Middle East met Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha on December 2. On what may be his last trip to the region, Kushner worked to bridge the divide between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, following talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in Neom on December 1, the site of the November 22 meeting between MBS, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah thanked Kushner personally for his recent efforts in mediating the process of talks between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

US media said that the visit was aimed at “reaching more diplomatic agreements in the Middle East before leaving the White House next January.” Kushner had tried to make the “Deal of the Century” between Israel and the Palestinians, but the deal fell flat.  To ensure added security for Israel, Trump and Kushner are pushing for Arab nations to normalize relations with Israel, and ending the blockade of Qatar makes the region more secure and unified in the face of Iran.

Trump wants the Qatar blockade to end

On December 3, The New York Times reported that Trump’s administration wants to resolve the Gulf crisis before its departure to guarantee to tighten the screws on Iran.

The Trump administration is pressing Saudi Arabia to open its airspace for Qatari flights that pay millions of dollars to use Iran’s airspace. MBS had forged a close relationship with Trump and Kushner, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed (MBZ) also has strong ties with the US President and his son in law.

On September 14, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “To keep our focus on this work and to close the door to increased Iranian meddling, it’s past time to find a solution to the Gulf rift.”

Trump’s administration focused on uniting the GCC countries with Israel to form a unified front against Iran but neglected to address the deep divisions that caused the crisis, such as Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they share in common with Turkey, who has been another big problem for Trump.

US policy in the Middle East is changing

The US is oil self-sufficient, and they don’t need to defend Saudi Arabia, the other oil-rich monarchies, of the Straits of Hormuz. The US wants to drawdown some bases and troops in the region, but can’t leave Israel surrounded by hostile neighbors. By promoting normalization between the Arab nations and Israel, the US may be able to leave the area one day.

Arab countries have normalized with Israel

Saudi Arabia remains keen on improving security ties with Israel to contain Iran, but without openly normalizing relations. However, Egypt and Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel decades ago, and during the summer the UAE and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accord, which normalizes relations with Israel.

Palestinian rights 

Former Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, criticized the Palestinian leadership for condemning Gulf states which decided to normalize ties with Israel. His remarks in October called Palestinian leaders “failures” and signaled that Riyadh’s support for them was eroding.

Publically, the Arab Peace Initiative, which Saudi Arabia unveiled back in 2002 still represents the Arab world’s basis for normalization with Israel. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, told the Manama conference on December 5 that Riyadh was “completely open to full normalization with Israel.” The only condition first was for “the Palestinians to get their state, and we do need to settle that situation.”

At the regional security conference in Manama recently, the former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the seasoned former ambassador to the UK and the US, attacked Oman on foreign interference and called Israel the “last of the Western colonizing powers in the Middle East” and doubting its commitment to peace with the Palestinians, as well as its claim to be a democracy, which provoked the foreign ministers of Oman and Israel who were in attendance.

“They’re demolishing homes as they wish and they assassinate whomever they want, and yet the Israeli Knesset passed a law that defines the citizenship of Israel as exclusively Jewish, denying the non-Jewish inhabitants of Israel of equal rights under the law,” said Prince Turki while asking, “What kind of democracy is that?”

Iran and the Arab Gulf 

As a result of the blockade, Qatar moved closer to Iran and Turkey, establishing international supply channels and becoming independent of its neighbors.  One year after the blockade began, Iran’s exports to Qatar increased five-fold and are expected to increase 15 times by 2022. Qatar’s leaders have also repeatedly spoken out in support of Iran.

Abdulaziz Aluweshej, Assistant Secretary-General of the GCC, said that Iran’s role in the region is a major issue of concern between the US and the Gulf Arab countries, and both intend to contain Iran.

Some experts have asked why the GCC doesn’t negotiate directly with Iran, to establish some common ground, rather than only serving the US and Israeli interests.

Turkey and Qatar

Turkey and Qatar are both led by the political ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been associated with many terrorist groups in Syria and Libya.

Egypt accused Qatar of undermining Libya’s current peace talks, following an agreement on November 13 between Doha and the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Qatar agreed to provide support and training to the GNA’s military force, which is run by terrorists following Radical Islam, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey is also on the ground in Libya, having sent armed terrorists from Idlib, Syria to Libya.

To counter the government of Tripoli, the UAE has funded General Haftar, who is fighting to establish a secular government in Libya.

The Obama-NATO war on Libya for regime change in 2011 succeed only in destroying the country, killing thousands, and has left the country after 10 years of chaos under the control of the Radical Islam ideology, which President Macron recently declared France was at war with.

Saudi Arabia’s statements

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said recently that his country was seeking ways to end the blockade on Qatar. “We continue to be willing to engage with our Qatari brothers, and we hope that they are as committed to that engagement,” said bin Farhan in October.

On December 4 Prince Faisal said, “We hope that this progress can lead to a final agreement which looks in reach, and I can say that I am somewhat optimistic that we are close to finalizing an agreement between all the nations in the dispute to come to a resolution that we think will be satisfactory to all.”

Kuwait is the broker

Kuwaiti foreign minister Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Sabah, who is heavily involved in mediating negotiations, declared that “fruitful discussion has taken place” and that both sides wanted “to reach a final agreement.” Qatari foreign minister Muhammad bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani thanked the Kuwaitis for their mediation and said that there is “a movement that we hope will put an end to this crisis.” Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal said that Saudi Arabia appreciated Kuwait’s efforts to resolve the crisis.

GCC summit

The 41st annual summit for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is scheduled to take place in Riyadh later in December and may provide a venue for resolving the Gulf crisis with Qatar, especially as the GCC now operates under a Kuwaiti Secretary-General.

Saudi, the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar will be negotiating the points of contention and the demands that have been in place since the crisis erupted in 2017, through working groups that will be tasked with drafting a final agreement.

Biden and Saudi Arabia

Joe Biden’s victory in the US Presidential elections has put pressure on Saudi Arabia to alter its foreign policy.

Biden has criticized MBS throughout his presidential campaign, promising to “reassess” Washington’s ties with Saudi Arabia over the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in September 2018, and the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Biden didn’t call for an end to the blockade against Qatar, but his pressure on MBS could force the Crown Prince to alter Riyadh’s foreign policy, and stopping the blockade would be an important first step, as Saudi Arabia might want to paint itself as a diplomatic bridge-builder to the upcoming Biden administration.

Trump’s departure will remove the support and protection MBS enjoyed during his 4-year term.

Biden has warned Saudi Arabia that he will reverse some of Trump’s policies, which include new negotiations with Iran. This makes Gulf unity of urgent concern.

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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.

After the third certification of the results of the presidential elections in the state of Georgia, efforts are underway to ensure equal access to the franchise leading up to the pivotal race to determine the composition of the United States Senate.

The administration of President Donald Trump along with its failed campaign organization has sought over the last month to overturn their defeats in several key states won by incoming President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Georgia, a southern state with a sordid history of African enslavement and national oppression, voted by a margin of 12,000 against the Trump-Pence ticket. These developments came as a shock and disappointment to the right-wing which was relying on the Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to reject and reverse the popular will of the electorate in favor of the administration.

Republican incumbent Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue represent the hopes of their party since a victory by Democratic challengers John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock would shift the majority within the Senate, removing the current leadership of Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Trump visited Georgia to campaign on behalf of the Republican candidates claiming once again the presidential elections were marred by fraud and that he is the rightful winner. The president has attacked both the Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia after they would not go along with his charges and mandate to interfere with the documented results.

Lawsuit Filed Against Disenfranchisement

In Georgia a lawsuit was filed during early December claiming that 200, 000 people have been purged from the voter’s rolls. The legal action is seeking to avoid the circumstances which resulted in the ascendancy of Governor Kemp in 2018 when he was serving as Secretary of State.

Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, was poised to become the first African American to hold the position of governor in the state. Although a protracted struggle was waged in the courts to redress the electoral irregularities, Kemp prevailed as the winner. (See this)

Image on the right: Barbara Arnwine

Barbara Arnwine, of the Transformative Justice Coalition (TJC) and one of three litigants in the case, told Ms. Magazine that:

“Black Voters Matter et al. v. Raffensperger was filed in the United States District Court on Dec. 2. Black Voters Matter Fund, TJC and the Rainbow Push Coalition are the plaintiffs in the case suing Secretary of State of Georgia Brad Raffensperger in his official capacity for violations of the National Voters Registration Act.” (See this)

The decision to remove so many people from the voter registration list, the plaintiffs contend, is a direct violation of a law which was passed nearly three decades ago. The rationale utilized by the Secretary of State Raffensperger is that those denied eligibility had not updated their addresses along with non-participation in the two most recent elections. The plaintiffs refute this position saying that the Secretary of State did not exercise the proper methodology in determining whether the voters were still qualified to cast their ballots on January 5 in the runoff senatorial election.

Arnwine emphasized in relationship to the eligibility of these members of the electorate saying:

“The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 is clear on this. There’s no way of misreading the statute: It says that if you’re going to remove somebody because you believe they put in a change of address, you’ve got to use a certified USPS licensee. Georgia didn’t. The tragedy of it is that since they were told about it, they’ve done nothing to restore these people’s right to vote. They knew this going into November, that they had wrongfully removed 70,000 people, and that they had violated the law in doing so, and they did nothing to restore those people. We couldn’t sue them then because the NVRA requires that we give the state 90 days’ notice. So, we had to run the full 90 days and unfortunately those 90 days ran beyond November the third, but fortunately they just ran in time for us to file for this January 5 runoff election.” (See this)

Universal Suffrage, Self-Determination and the Need for an Independent Political Program

African Americans have historically been subjected to national oppression, institutional racism and economic exploitation, particularly in the former antebellum slavocracy in the South. After the conclusion of the Civil War, the question for the ruling interests in the U.S. was what would be the future status of the 4.5 million people of African descent.

Reconstruction efforts aimed at dismantling the plantation system and providing an avenue for “citizenship” to the formerly enslaved population became a serious point of contention on a national level. There were advances made during the late 1860s and 1870s with the support of the Radicals within the U.S. Congress to provide voting rights, land, education and due process to the African American people.

Nonetheless, the post-Civil War plantation economy still required the super-exploitation of Africans and even poor whites, in order to prevent the emergence of a genuinely democratic system in the U.S. After the elections of 1876 and the historic compromise over the outcome of the contest between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, the federal government withdrew its support for Reconstruction. Over the proceeding decades of the 19^th century, African Americans were systematically disenfranchised and placed in a social status quite similar, if not worst, than what existed during legalized slavery. (See this)

The criminal justice apparatus was a tool to charge African Americans with various crimes so they could be further marginalized and incarcerated in order to work without wages as in a slave system, and even lynched. Between the 1880s and the 1960s, it is estimated that approximately 3,700 African Americans were murdered extra-judicially. Despite these atrocities, the federal government refused to pass anti-lynching legislation to hold the white racist mobs accountable for their crimes against humanity. (See this)

Today, in the third decade of the 21^st century, 2.5 million people remain jailed and imprisoned in the U.S. Over half of the people detained are African Americans, people of Latin American descent and working people in general. There are no rich people on death row. The death penalty is still in effect as evidenced by the scheduled federal executions of four African American men and one impoverished white woman as the Trump administration is slated to leave office on January 20. These events are taking place amid the pardoning of Trump loyalists, and possibly himself, for crimes committed while in office. (See this and this)

African Americans and people of color communities must have the right to vote and equal protection under the law. The nationally oppressed should have the right to determine their own destiny from a political and economic perspective. There can be no democracy in the U.S. absent of the full participation of the most oppressed and exploited sections of the population.

The senatorial elections in Georgia represents a test for the U.S. political system. Irrespective of the outcome of January 5 elections, ultimately African Americans cannot achieve genuine equality and self-determination without a fundamental change in the structures of the racist capitalist system. The mobilizations by various organizations nationally must extend their scope to demand the destruction of institutional racism and the realization of the social liberation of all working class and exploited peoples in the U.S.

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

All images in this article are from the author

The unknown is simply the future.

This future is to be determined by a declining global economy becoming saturated with massive U.S. money printing to prop up the banksters and corporate CEOs.

It will be determined by the disregard domestically and internationally for the supposed ‘rule of law’ but more importantly international law and true justice for all people.

The changes to our environment are at the moment relatively slow, but are becoming irreversible under current trends.

Finally, the massive military investments on a global scale for both nuclear and conventional weaponry threatens everyone with a very delicate balance of power.

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Days of the future passed: Point of no return

Kindle edition

Author: Jim Miles

Publication date: December 6, 2020

Print length: 423 pages

ASIN: B08PVZSHCC

 Click here to order.

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Seven years after being launched by President Xi Jinping, first in Astana and then in Jakarta, the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increasingly drive the American plutocratic oligarchy completely nuts.

The relentless paranoia about the Chinese “threat” has much to do with the exit ramp offered by Beijing to a Global South permanently indebted to IMF/World Bank exploitation.

In the old order, politico-military elites were routinely bribed in exchange for unfettered corporate access to their nations’ resources, coupled with go-go privatization schemes and outright austerity (“structural adjustment”).

This went on for decades until BRI became the new game in town in terms of infrastructure building – offering an alternative to the imperial footprint.

The Chinese model allows all manner of parallel taxes, sales, rents, leases – and profits. This means extra sources of income for host governments – with an important corollary: freedom from the hardcore neoliberal diktats of IMF/World Bank. This is what is at the heart of the notorious Chinese “win-win”.

Moreover, BRI’s overall strategic focus on infrastructure development not only across Eurasia but also Africa encompasses a major geopolitical game-changer. BRI is positioning vast swathes of the Global South to become completely independent from the Western-imposed debt trap. For scores of nations, this is a matter of national interest. In this sense BRI should be regarded as the ultimate post-colonialist mechanism.

BRI in fact bristles with Sun Tzu simplicity applied to geoeconomics. Never interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake – in this case enslaving the Global South via perpetual debt. Then use his own weapons – in this case financial “help” – to destabilize his preeminence.

Hit the road with the Mongols

None of the above, of course, is bound to serenade the paranoid volcano, which will keep spitting out a 24/7 deluge of red alerts  deriding BRI as “poorly defined, badly mismanaged and visibly failing”. “Visibly”, of course, only for the exceptionalists.

Predictably, the paranoid volcano feeds on a toxic mix of arrogance and crass ignorance of Chinese history and culture.

Xue Li, director of the Department of International Strategy at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has shown how “after the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed in 2013, China’s diplomacy has changed from maintaining a low profile to becoming more proactive in global affairs. But the policy of ‘partnership rather than alliance’ has not changed, and it is unlikely to change in the future. The indisputable fact is that the system of alliance diplomacy preferred by Western countries is the choice of a few countries in the world, and most countries choose non-aligned diplomacy. Besides, the vast majority of them are developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

Atlanticists are desperate because the “system of alliance diplomacy” is on the wane. The overwhelming majority of the Global South is now being reconfigured as a newly energized Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – as if Beijing had found a way to revive the Spirit of Bandung in 1955.

Chinese scholars are fond of quoting a 13^th century imperial handbook, according to which policy changes should be “beneficial for the people”. If they only benefit corrupt officials, the result is luan (“chaos”). Thus the 21^st century Chinese emphasis on pragmatic policy instead of ideology.

Rivaling informed parallels with the Tang and Ming dynasties, it’s actually the Yuan dynasty that offers a fascinating introduction to the inner workings of BRI.

So let’s go for a short trip back to the 13^th century, when Genghis Khan’s immense empire was replaced by four khanates.

We had the Khanate of the Great Khan – which turned into the Yuan dynasty – ruling over China, Mongolia, Tibet, Korea and Manchuria.

We had the Ilkhanate, founded by Hulagu (the conqueror of Baghdad) ruling Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, parts of Anatolia and the Caucasus.

We had the Golden Horde ruling the northwestern Eurasian steppe, from eastern Hungary to Siberia, and most of all the Russian principalities.

And we had the Chaghadaid Khanate (named after Genghis Khan’s second son) ruling Central Asia, from eastern Xinjiang to Uzbekistan, until Tamerlane’s rise to power in 1370.

This era saw an enormous acceleration of trade along the Mongol Silk Roads.

All these Mongol-controlled governments privileged local and international commerce. That translated into a boom in markets, taxes, profits – and prestige. The khanates competed to get the best trading minds. They laid out the necessary infrastructure for transcontinental travel (13^th century BRI, anyone?) And they opened the way for multiple East-West, trans-civilizational exchanges.

When the Mongols conquered the Song in southern China they even expanded overland Silk Roads trade into Maritime Silk Roads. The Yuan dynasty was now controlling China’s powerful southern ports. So when there was any kind of turbulence overland, trade switched to the seas.

The key axes were through the Indian Ocean, between south China and India, and between India and the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea.

Cargo was traveling overland to Iran, Iraq, Anatolia and Europe; by sea, through Egypt and the Mediterranean, to Europe; and from Aden to east Africa.

A slave trade maritime route between the Golden Horde’s ports on the Black Sea and Egypt – run by Muslim, Italian and Byzantine traders – was also in effect. The Black Sea ports transited luxury merchandise arriving overland from the East. And caravans traveled inland from the Indian coast during dangerous monsoon seasons.

This frantic commercial activity was the proto-BRI, which reached its apex in the 1320s and 1330s all the way to the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 in parallel to the Black Death in Europe and the Middle East. The key point: all the overland and maritime roads were interlinked. 21^st century BRI planners benefit from a long historical memory.

“Nothing will fundamentally change”

Now compare this wealth of trade and cultural interchange with the pedestrian, provincial, anti-BRI and overall anti-China paranoia in the US. What we get is the State Dept. under exiting Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo issuing a paltry diatribe on the “China challenge”. Or the US Navy recommissioning the First Fleet, probably to be based in Perth, to “have an Indo-Pac footprint” and thus maintain “maritime dominance in an era of great power competition”.

More ominously, here is a summary of the humongous, 4,517-page, $740.5 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2021, just approved by the House by 335 to 78 (Trump threatened to veto it).

This is about funding for the Pentagon next year – to be supervised in theory by the new Raytheon General, Lloyd Austin, the last “commanding General” of the US in Iraq who run CENTCOM from 2013 to 2016 and then retired for some juicy revolving door gigs such as the board of Raytheon and crucially, the board of ultra-toxic air, water, soil polluter Nucor.

Austin is a revolving door character who supported the war on Iraq, the destruction of Libya, and supervised the training of Syrian “moderate rebels” – a.k.a. recycled al-Qaeda – who killed countless Syrian civilians.

The NDAA, predictably, is heavy on “tools to deter China”.

That will include:

1. A so-called “Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI), code for containment of China in the Indo-Pacific by boosting the Quad.

2. Massive counter-intel operations.

3. An offensive against “debt diplomacy”. That’s nonsense: BRI deals are voluntary, on a win-win basis, and open to renegotiation. Global South nations privilege them because loans are low-interest and long-term.

4. Restructuring global supply chains which lead to the US. Good luck with that. Sanctions on China will remain in place.

5. Across the board pressure forcing nations not to use Huawei 5G.

6. Reinforcing Hong Kong and Taiwan as Trojan Horses to destabilize China.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has already set the tone: “Beijing intends to dominate the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically”. Be afraid, very much afraid of the evil Chinese Communist Party, “the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II”.

There you go: Xi is the new Hitler.

So nothing will fundamentally change after January 2021 – as officially promised by Biden-Harris: it’s gonna be Hybrid War on China all over again, deployed all over the spectrum, as Beijing has perfectly understood.

So what? China’s industrial production will continue to grow while in the US it will continue to decline. There will be more breakthroughs by Chinese scientists such as the photonic quantum computing – which performed 2.6 billion years of computation in 4 minutes. And the 13^th century Yuan dynasty spirit will keep inspiring BRI.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Venezuela held legislative elections on December 6 and, as has become the norm, the U.S. and sectors of the opposition that boycotted the election are claiming fraud without presenting evidence. The coalition of parties supporting President Maduro won 68% of the vote and a supermajority in the National Assembly. All the evidence suggests the elections were free and fair. However, turnout was only 31%, a participation rate that was hampered by a partial opposition boycott of the election. 

This call to abstain was made by Juan Guaidó and his allies, but a different faction of the opposition participated fully. In the past three years, this faction of the opposition has taken a moderate stance that involves engaging in dialogue and participating in elections. The moderates accepted the election’s results, called for reflection and strongly criticized the call for a boycott.

The Trump administration spent the last several months attempting to sabotage Venezuela’s elections by characterizing them as a “sham” and sanctioning some of these moderates. Yet now that the vote took place, there is no evidence of irregularities. Claiming that elections are fraudulent before they’re even held – and insisting that fraud occurred in the face of overwhelming evidence against such a claim – is a specialty of the Trump administration.

The U.S. government repeatedly said that there were “no conditions” for free and fair elections, but the condition it sought to impose was the resignation of President Maduro. Unsurprisingly, the European Union, the Lima Group (an ad hoc set of Latin American countries pushing for regime change in Venezuela) and the corporate media followed the State Department’s lead, attempting to delegitimize what is likely one of the most fraud-proof electoral processes in the world. In contrast, observers on the ground, including the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts, underscored the election’s compliance with international standards.

A secure electoral system 

Back in 2012, Jimmy Carter called Venezuela’s process “the best in the world.” It’s not hard to see why. Venezuela has electronic voting machines that print paper receipts. The machines are only unlocked when a voter’s identity is verified by digital fingerprint scan and a spot-check of their national identity card. After voting on the machine (a simple process that can take as little as ten seconds), it prints out a paper receipt so electors can verify that their vote was correctly recorded. The elector then places this receipt in a secure ballot box, and then signs and places a thumbprint on the voter roll.

A graphic from Venezuela’s National Electoral Council showing the voting process. 

After polls close, the digital vote count is compared to a random sampling of at least 54% of the ballot boxes (a figure that is higher than necessary to have a statistically significant result). It’s a system with multiple redundancies that is backed by 16 different audits that must be signed off on by representatives of political parties.

In these elections, 14,000 candidates from 107 parties (97 of which oppose the Maduro government) ran for 277 seats. The choices ran the ideological spectrum from communists and socialists to evangelicals, Christian conservatives and neoliberals. Opposition candidates got air time on state television stations and took part in several debates.

The elections were monitored by 300 international observers from 34 countries, as well as over 1,000 national observers from political parties and social organizations. Teri Mattson, who observed two previous elections in Venezuela, led a CODEPINK observation delegation and described this year’s elections as free and fair, and without fraud or tampering. “Voting is easy, fast and secure: an incentive for all voters while also preventing long lines due to cumbersome ballots and voter procedures such as those seen in the U.S.,” Mattson said.

Voter turnout

Of course, the low turnout is bound to raise eyebrows, yet it’s important to place it into context. One factor that depressed participation is a gasoline shortage induced by U.S. sanctions, which made it difficult for some voters to travel to polls. Migration is another factor that artificially reduced turnout. Only citizens who currently reside in the country can vote in legislative elections, but most who left in recent years still appear on voter rolls as living in Venezuela.

A further factor is the pandemic. Venezuela is doing significantly better than most countries in handling the coronavirus (3,694 cases per million population and 33 deaths per million population, versus 46,348 cases per million and 877 deaths per million in the U.S.). However, there’s still enough fear of the virus that it serves as a disincentive to voting.

International comparisons should also be taken into account when analyzing the turnout. For example, parliamentary elections were also held Sunday in Romania, which had similarly low voter turnout (33%). Other countries have also had poor participation this year, including legislative elections in Egypt (28% turnout), Mali (35%), Jamaica (38%) and Jordan (30%), as well as municipal elections in Costa Rica (38%). Additionally, U.S. midterm elections typically feature 40% voter turnout (it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, as virtually all eligible voters are registered in Venezuela, which is not the case in the U.S.). None of these elections are less legitimate for their low participation, and neither is Venezuela’s.

The failed strategy of boycotts

Clearly, a significant factor in reduced turnout was the extremist opposition’s call for a boycott. This tactic of boycotting elections has been used by the opposition in the past, including in the 2005 legislative elections, the 2017 national constituent assembly elections, the 2017 municipal elections (partial boycott) and the 2018 presidential elections (partial boycott).

However, at no point has boycotting elections helped them in any way. So why do the extremists keep engaging in a failed tactic? After all, the opposition routinely claims (again, offering no evidence) that 80% of the population disapproves of the Maduro administration; it doesn’t make sense to cede ground when there’s the possibility of winning.

One explanation is that they were afraid of losing. In the last elections that featured full participation, the 2017 gubernatorial elections, the opposition ended up losing in 19 of 23 states. It’s not clear that they would have won this time around, particularly as a significant percentage of their base has migrated in recent years. A loss would have destroyed once and for all the fiction of Juan Guaidó’s so-called interim president (his “claim” to the presidency is based on his being a legislator in the current National Assembly). Better to not run than run and lose.

Another explanation is that a boycott was part of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign, which involves ongoing attempts to delegitimize Venezuela’s democratic credentials. This strategy was threatened when the moderate opposition engaged in dialogue and announced they were running in the elections. The Trump administration quickly denounced them as “complicit” with and “puppets” of the Maduro government, before sanctioning several of those leaders.

The U.S. got the European Union on board with this plan as well. In January, the EU sanctioned three moderate opposition figures for “acting against the National Assembly’s democratic functioning” after they were elected to leadership positions in the legislature, replacing Juan Guaidó and two of his allies.

More recently, the EU refused the calls from two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles to monitor the elections. Capriles said his participation was contingent upon EU monitoring, which didn’t occur because the EU claimed it did not have enough time to prepare a delegation. This was back in September, three months before the vote. After the elections, the EU had the gall to criticize the Venezuelan government for failing “to mobilize the Venezuelan people to participate.”

In practical terms, higher turnout may have opened the doors for negotiations between the U.S. and moderate opposition, but that possibility now seems less likely. Other than that, the low turnout is not going to have much impact on the ground in Venezuela.

The Maduro government will have a supermajority in the National Assembly for the next five years, which should help it develop measures to counter the economic sanctions. It’s in a stronger position now than it was prior to the elections. After four years of sanctions, sabotaged industries, attempted coups, an assassination by drone attempt, a mercenary incursion and paramilitary attacks, among others, Venezuela managed to survive the Trump administration’s maximum pressure. The elections were carried out in complete tranquility. That is quite an achievement and puts to rest the magical thinking of the Trump administration and extreme opposition, which have spent years saying that regime change is just around the corner.

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Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy expert and campaigner with CODEPINK.

Featured image is from Alliance for Global Justice

Before the January 4 ruling of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the extradition case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher will continue to endure the ordeal of cold prison facilities while being menaced by a COVID-19 outbreak.  From November 18, Assange, along with inmates in House Block 1 at Belmarsh prison in south-east London, were placed in lockdown conditions.  The measure was imposed after three COVID-19 cases were discovered. 

The response was even more draconian than usual.  Exercise was halted; showers prohibited.  Meals were to be provided directly to the prisoner’s cell.  Prison officials described the approach as a safety precaution.  “We’ve introduced further safety measures following a number of positive cases,” stated a Prison Service spokesperson.

Assange’s time at Belmarsh is emblematic of a broadly grotesque approach which has been legitimised by the national security establishment.  The pandemic has presented another opportunity to knock him off, if only by less obvious means.  The refusal of Judge Baraitser to grant him bail, enabling him to prepare his case in conditions of guarded, if relative safety, typifies this approach.  “Every day that passes is a serious risk to Julian,” explains his partner, Stella Moris.  “Belmarsh is an extremely dangerous environment where murders and suicides are commonplace.”

Belmarsh already presented itself as a risk to one’s mental bearings prior to the heralding of the novel coronavirus.  But galloping COVID-19 infections through Britain’s penal system have added another, potentially lethal consideration.  On November 24, Moris revealed that some 54 people in Assange’s house block had been infected with COVID-19.  These included inmates and prison staff.  “If my son dies from COVID-19,” concluded a distressed Christine Assange, “it will be murder.”

The increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Belmarsh has angered the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer.  On December 7, ten years from the day of Assange’s first arrest, he spoke of concerns that 65 out of approximately 160 inmates had tested positive.  “The British authorities initially detained Mr. Assange on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Sweden in connection with allegations of sexual misconduct that have since been formally dropped due to lack of evidence.” He was currently being “detained for exclusively preventive purposes, to ensure his presence during the ongoing US extradition trial, a proceeding which may well last several years.”

The picture for the rapporteur is unmistakable, ominous and unspeakable.  The prolonged suffering of the Australian national, who already nurses pre-existing health conditions, amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.  Imprisoning Assange was needlessly brutal.  “Mr. Assange is not a criminal convict and poses no threat to anyone, so his prolonged solitary confinement in a high security prison is neither necessary nor proportionate and clearly lacks any legal basis.”  Melzer suggested immediate decongestion measures for “all inmates whose imprisonment is not absolutely necessary” especially those, “such as Mr Assange, who suffers from a pre-existing respiratory health condition.”

Free speech advocates are also stoking the fire of interest ahead of Baraitser’s judgment.  In Salon, Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, penned a heartfelt piece wondering what had happened to the fourth estate.  “Where is the honest reporting that we all so desperately need, and upon which the very survival of democracy depends?”  Never one to beat about the bush, Waters suggested that it was “languishing in Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh.”  To extradite Assange would “set the dangerous precedent that journalists can be prosecuted merely for working with inside sources, or for publishing information the government deems harmful.”  The better alternative: to dismiss the charges against Assange “and cancel the extradition proceedings in the kangaroo court in London.”

In the meantime, a vigorous campaign is being advanced from the barricades of Twitter to encourage President Donald Trump to pardon Assange.  Moris stole the lead with her appeal on Thanksgiving.  Pictures of sons Max and Gabriel were posted to tingle the commander-in-chief’s tear ducts.  “I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas.” 

Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has added her name to the Free Assange campaign, directing her pointed wishes to the White House.  “Since you’re giving pardons to people,” she declared, “please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality in the deep state.”

Pamela Anderson’s approach was somewhat different and, it should be said, raunchily attuned to her audience.  She made no qualms donning a bikini in trying to get the president’s attention.  “Bring Julian Assange Home Australia,” went her carried sign, tweeted with a message to Trump to pardon him.  Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Intercept, proved more conventional, niggling Trump about matters of posterity.  “By far the most important blow Trump could strike against the abuse of power by CIA, FBI & the Deep State – as well as to impose transparency on them to prevent future abuses – is a pardon of @Snowden & Julian Assange, punished by those corrupt factions for exposing their abuses.”  Alan Rusbridger, formerly editor of The Guardian, agrees. 

While often coupled with Assange in the pardoning stakes, Edward Snowden has been clear about his wish to see the publisher freed.  “Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency during your time in office, please: free Julian Assange.  You alone can save his life.”  As well meant as this is, Trump’s treasury of pardons is bound to be stocked by other options, not least for himself. 

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

The collective wealth of America’s 651 billionaires has jumped by over $1 trillion since roughly the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to a total of $4 trillion at market close on Monday, December 7, 2020. Their wealth growth since March is more than the $908 billion in pandemic relief proposed by a bipartisan group of members of Congress, which is likely to be the package that moves forward for a vote in the next week, but has been stalled over Republican concerns that it is too costly.  

The total net worth of the nation’s 651 billionaires rose from $2.95 trillion on March 18—the rough start of the pandemic shutdowns—to $4.01 trillion on Dec. 7, a leap of 36%, based on Forbes billionaires, according to a new report  by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). By around March 18 most federal and state economic restrictions in response to the virus were in place. Combined, just the top 10 billionaires are now worth more than $1 trillion.

Forbes’ annual billionaires report was published March 18, and ATF and IPS collected the real-time data on Dec. 7 from the Forbes website. The methodology of this analysis has been favorably reviewed by PolitiFact. The ATF-IPS analysis also looks at wealth growth since February 2019—the date of Forbes’ immediately previous annual billionaires report published well before the start of the pandemic and resulting market gyrations.

The $1 trillion wealth gain by 651 U.S. billionaires since mid-March is:

• More than it would cost to send a stimulus check of $3,000 to every one of the roughly 330 million people in America. A family of four would receive over $12,000. Republicans have blocked new stimulus checks from being included in the pandemic relief package.
• Double the two-year estimated budget gap of all state and local governments, which is forecast to be at least $500 billion. By June, state and local governments had already laid off 1.5 million workers and public services—especially education—faced steep budget cuts.
• Only slightly less than total federal spending on Medicare ($644 billion in 2019) and Medicaid ($389 billion in FY2019), which together serve 120 million Americans (69 million in Medicaid, 63 million in Medicare, less 12 million enrolled in both).
• Nearly four times the $267 billion total in stimulus payments made to 159 million people earlier this year.

At $4 trillion the total wealth of all U.S. billionaires today is nearly double the $2.1 trillion in total wealth held by the bottom half of the population, or 165 million Americans.

“Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “As tens of millions of Americans suffer from the health and economic ravages of this pandemic, a few hundred billionaires add to their  massive fortunes. Their pandemic profits are so immense that America’s billionaires could pay for a major COVID relief bill and still not lose a dime of their pre-virus riches. Their wealth growth is so great that they alone could provide a $3,000 stimulus payment to every man, woman and child in the country, and still be richer than they were 9 months ago. Joe Biden won a tax-fairness mandate in November. We look forward to working with him and Congress to deliver on that mandate by taxing the massive wealth of these billionaires.”

“The updraft of wealth to the billionaire class is disturbing at a time when millions face eviction, destitution, and loss,” said Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of Billionaire Bonanza 2020, a report looking at pandemic profiteering and billionaire wealth. “Billionaires are extracting wealth at a time when essential workers are pushed into the viral line of fire.”

All data in table is from Forbes and available here.

March 18, 2020 data: Forbes, “Forbes Publishes 34th Annual List Of Global Billionaires,” March 18, 2020

Dec. 7, 2020 data: Forbes, “The World’s Real-Time Billionaires, Today’s Winners and Losers,” accessed Dec. 8, 2020

Feb. 8, 2019 data: Forbes 2019 World Billionaires Report, March 5, 2019

Ordinary Americans have not fared as well as billionaires during the pandemic:

• Nearly 14.9 million have fallen ill with the virus and 284,000 have died from it. [Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center]
• Collective work income of rank-and-file private-sector employees—all hours worked times the hourly wages of the entire bottom 82% of the workforce—declined by 2.3% from mid-March to mid-October, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
• Nearly 67 million lost work between Mar. 21 and Oct. 7, 2020. [U.S. Department of Labor]
• 20 million were collecting unemployment on Nov. 14, 2020. [U.S. Department of Labor]
• 98,000 businesses have permanently closed. [Yelp/CNBC]
• 12 million workers have lost employer-sponsored health insurance during the pandemic as of August 26, 2020. [Economic Policy Institute]
• Nearly 26 million adults reported their household not having enough food in the past week between Nov. 11-23. From Oct. 28 to Nov. 7, between 7 and 11 million children lived in a household where kids did not eat enough because the household could not afford it. [Center on Budget & Policy Priorities (CBPP)]
• 12.4 million adults—1 in 6 renters—reported in November being behind in their rent. [CBPP]

Without a federal fiscal relief package, workers will face even greater loss of jobs and services than they have already suffered. The Economic Policy Institute predicts that without more federal aid 5.3 million public-sector jobs—including those of teachers, public safety employees and health care workers—will be lost by the end of 2021.

Because of long-standing racial and gender disparities, low-wage workers, people of color and women have suffered disproportionately in the combined medical and economic crises of 2020. Blacks and Latinos are far more likely to become infected with Covid-19 and to die from the disease. Billionaires are overwhelmingly white men.

The stock market surge and lock-down economy have been a boon to tech monopolies and helped create four U.S. “centi-billionaires.” Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are now each worth more than $100 billion. Prior to this year, Bezos had been the only U.S. centi-billionaire, reaching that peak in 2018. Bezos and other billionaires have seen particularly astonishing increases in wealth between March 18 and Dec. 7:

• Jeff Bezos’s wealth grew from $113 billion on March 18 to $184 billion, an increase of 63%. Adding in his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott’s wealth of $60 billion on that day, the two had a combined wealth of almost a quarter of a trillion dollars thanks to their Amazon stock. If Bezos’s $71.4 billion growth in wealth was distributed to all his 810,000 U.S. employees, each would get a windfall bonus of over $88,000 and Bezos would not be any “poorer” than he was 9 months ago.
• Elon Musk’s wealth grew by nearly $119 billion, from $24.6 billion on March 18 to $143 billion, a nearly five-fold increase, boosted by his Tesla stock. SpaceX founder Musk has enjoyed one of the biggest boosts in net worth of any billionaire. That $119 billion growth in wealth is more than five times NASA’s $22.6 billion budget in FY2020, the federal agency Musk has credited with saving his company with a big federal contract when the firm’s rockets were failing and it faced bankruptcy.
• Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth grew from $54.7 billion on March 18 to $105 billion, an increase of 92%, fueled by his Facebook stock.
• Dan Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans, saw his wealth rocket by 543%, from $6.5 billion to $41.8 billion, the second biggest percentage increase of all the billionaires.

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Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs

By Jacob G. Hornberger, December 09 2020

Given the outrage over what the court historians and the U.S. mainstream press have long maintained was an unprovoked attack by Japan on the United States, why have these same court historians and mainstream media outlets given a pass to the U.S. government for initiating an unprovoked attack on Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961?

The “Great Reset” or the “Great Pretext” … for Dystopia.

By Diana Johnstone, December 09 2020

In the current atmosphere of confusion and distrust, the glee with which economists Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret greet the pandemic as harbinger of their proposed socioeconomic upheaval suggests that if Covid-19 hadn’t come along by accident, they would have created it (had they been able).

How to Get Saved from COVID-19 Under Nuclear Bombs

By Manlio Dinucci, December 09 2020

FEMA – the United States Government Emergency Management Federal Agency  –  updated instructions to the population on how to behave in the event of a nuclear attack. The new instructions, provided by the Ready Campaign, keep in mind the Covid-19 pandemic, consequent lockdowns and rules to follow in order to protect ones-self from the virus. 

Whistleblower: FDA Failed to Address ‘Biohazard Nightmare’ at Merck Vaccine Plant

By Children’s Health Defense, December 09 2020

A former FDA employee-turned-whistleblower says the agency downgraded his report on safety violations at a Merck vaccine plant. The allegation raises questions about how the FDA will monitor safety of COVID vaccine manufacturers.

The U.S. ‘War on Terror’ Has Displaced 37 Million People

By David Vine, December 09 2020

The report conservatively estimates that eight of the most violent “counterterror” wars the U.S. government has engaged in since 9/11 — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — have produced 8 million refugees and 29 million internally displaced people.

Trump’s Pernicious Military Legacy: From the Forever Wars to the Cataclysmic Wars

By Michael T. Klare, December 09 2020

However newsworthy it may be, this focus on Trump’s belated troop withdrawals obscures a far more significant aspect of his military legacy: the conversion of the U.S. military from a global counterterror force into one designed to fight an all-out, cataclysmic, potentially nuclear war with China and/or Russia.

Beef, Banks and the Brazilian Amazon

By Global Witness, December 09 2020

A chain of actors from cattle ranchers through to multinational beef traders, international financiers, supermarkets and fast-food chains, and the governments that regulate them, are either destroying rainforests or are complicit in the destruction of the Amazon, with flawed audits undertaken by US and European auditors.

China Shoots the Moon

By Philip J Cunningham, December 09 2020

While currently playing catch-up behind the space accomplishments of the US and Russia, it is rapidly gaining ground as a result of an ambitious Chinese space program coinciding with domestic squabbling in the US, budgetary shortfalls in Russia, and lack of focused political will on the part of both space pioneers.

Central Africa and South Asia: World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Knew About Rights Abuses by Park Rangers, but Didn’t Respond Effectively

By Ashoka Mukpo, December 09 2020

The reports sent shock waves through the conservation industry, depicting out-of-control eco-guards enforcing the boundaries of protected wildlife reserves through the torture, rape and murder of people living in nearby communities.

Celebrated Artist Mira Lehr Confronts 2020 with New Planetary Visions

By William Spring, December 09 2020

The depth of Lehr’s perspective and the scope of her trajectory are singular, having worked as an artist through the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, the 80s and the 90s . . . and now the 21st century, with its direction into the unknown that feels so impossible to navigate.