Global Research

‘Simply put, getting vaccinated is going to be our patriotic duty,’ and America should consider making it difficult for the unvaccinated to participate in society, three doctors wrote.

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A coronavirus vaccine should be mandatory, and tax penalties, higher insurance premiums, and denial of many government and private services ought to be considered for those refusing the shot, two doctors and an attorney argued in USA Today on Thursday.

“[W]hile the measures that will be necessary to defeat the coronavirus will seem draconian, even anti-American to some, we believe that there is no alternative. Simply put, getting vaccinated is going to be our patriotic duty,” wrote Dr. Michael Lederman, Dr. Stuart Youngner, and Maxwell J. Mehlman.

There is no “alternative to vaccine-induced herd immunity in a pandemic,” they argued. “Broad induction of immunity in the population by immunization will be necessary to end this pandemic.”

The USA Today article, published August 6, is titled “Defeat COVID-19 by requiring vaccination for all. It’s not un-American, it’s patriotic.” Its original subhead (see screenshot below) read,

“Make vaccines free, don’t allow religious or personal objections, and punish those who won’t be vaccinated. They are threatening the lives of others.” It has since been changed to “Make vaccines free, don’t allow religious or personal objections, and create disincentives for those who refuse vaccines shown to be safe and effective.”

Screenshot of how the USA Today article’s subhead originally appeared, via Internet archive

“When a vaccine is ready,” the doctors wrote, it must be free and exemptions must only be made for people with “medical contraindications to immunization.”

But “medical conditions that prohibit all COVID-19 vaccines will be rare,” they claimed. No religious or personal objections to receiving the shot or shots should be honored, they wrote, and harsh penalties should be adopted by important sectors of society to pressure the populace to comply.

The physicians proposed,

“Private businesses could refuse to employ or serve unvaccinated individuals. Schools could refuse to allow unimmunized children to attend classes. Public and commercial transit companies — airlines, trains and buses — could exclude refusers. Public and private auditoriums could require evidence of immunization for entry.”

They then outlined how a “registry of immunization will be needed with names entered after immunization is completed.” People who receive the vaccine should be issued “certification cards” with expiration dates (“the durability of protection by different vaccines may vary and may require periodic booster immunizations”).

The concept of “immunization cards” or digital vaccine records was floated shortly before the coronavirus outbreak and since the virus has spread.

A December 2019 article in Scientific American described the vision of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers for embedding vaccine records “directly into the skin” of children.

“Along with the vaccine, a child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with a special cell-phone filter, combined with an app that shines near-infrared light onto the skin. The dye would be expected to last up to five years, according to tests on pig and rat skin and human skin in a dish.”

The development of this idea, which the article proudly noted avoids using “iris scans” that might violate privacy, was “funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” It “came about because of a direct request from Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates himself, who has been supporting efforts to wipe out diseases such as polio and measles across the world.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of Trump’s top pandemic advisers, said in April that he thought it was “possible” that one day Americans may have to carry certificates showing they are immune to the coronavirus.

“I think it might actually have some merit under certain circumstances,” he said.

Also in April, Gates speculated,

“Eventually, we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”

Lederman, Mehlman, and Youngner concluded by comparing Americans’ fight against the coronavirus to World War I and World War II. Around 37 million casualties can be attributed to World War I, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. World War II was even deadlier, with 70 million to 85 million deaths– including those due to famine, the Holocaust, disease, and other war-related factors – being attributable to it.

As of press time, worldwide, there have been 20,383,417 million reported coronavirus cases but only 741,707 reported deaths. 13,281,928 people have contracted the virus and recovered. These numbers may not be accurate due to the unreliability of COVID-19 tests and reporting systems in the United States – which has seen people who were never even tested for the virus receive positive results, the governor of Ohio receiving both positive and negative test results on the same day, and at least one person who died in a motorcycle crash coded as a COVID-19 death – and the likelihood of communist China, where the virus originated, downplaying its infection and death rates.

During World War I and World War II,

“Everyone contributed, no one was allowed to opt out merely because it conflicted with a sense of autonomy, and draft dodgers who refused to serve were subject to penalties,” the doctors wrote. “True, conscientious objectors could refuse to use weapons for religious reasons, but they were obligated to help out in other ways, serving in noncombatant roles. There are no such alternatives for vaccination.”

In a recent online debate on mandatory vaccinations, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed out that a significant percentage of participants in a recent trial for a leading coronavirus vaccine have been hospitalized.

Kennedy, a liberal environmental attorney and member of the Kennedy political dynasty, also noted that several of the coronavirus vaccine developers, a number of which have received funding from Bill Gates, have been forced to pay billions of dollars in criminal penalties related to their medical products.

“It requires a cognitive dissonance for people who understand the criminal corporate cultures of these four companies to believe that they’re doing this in every other product that they have, but they’re not doing it with vaccines,” Kennedy said.

In an April 9 article, Kennedy wrote:

“Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.”

Kennedy has been raising awareness about those injured by vaccines since before the coronavirus outbreak and has now emerged as one of the strongest voices against a forced COVID-19 vaccine.

Many immunizations are made from cell lines of aborted babies, and a number of the coronavirus vaccines being developed are also using immorally obtained fetal cell lines.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced today that his country has approved the world’s first coronavirus vaccine and that one of his daughters received both doses of it. “Questions over its [the vaccine’s] safety remain,” noted one CNN headline, with another asking, “ … would you take a vaccine from Vladimir Putin?”

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It seems that whoever wins the presidency, United States foreign policy will keep chugging away at intervening across the world, including via “regime change” efforts. Over the last couple decades, targets for US-government-supported overthrow have included Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Belarus also appears to be in the US government’s crosshairs. If its government holds back through January the effort seeking to topple it, Belarus looks sure to remain a US target for regime change during either a second term of President Donald Trump or a first term of President Joe Biden.

On Monday, as revolutionaries in Belarus capital Minsk attempted to oust the Belarus government, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden issued interchangeable statements regarding Belarus and US policy toward it. Both Pompeo’s statement and Biden’s statement condemned the government of Belarus, called fraudulent the country’s recent national election in which President Aleksander Lukashenko won reelection by a wide margin, and made demands upon the Belarus government.

The statements of Pompeo and Biden may not seem so threatening if you imagine them coming from the government of a country of average population, economic strength, military power, and tendency to intervene in other countries. The comments could then just be understood as politicians spouting off or being relatively harmless buttinskis.

It is different when the pronouncements are made by a top foreign affairs official of the US and the potential next president of the US. The US presides over a large population country with major economic resources. The US has military bases and ships, as well as covert operatives, across the world. The US has a long and ongoing history of pursuing, and often achieving, the overthrow of governments through actions including invasions, assassinations, sanctions, election meddling, and the financing and coordinating of coups and revolutions.

In 2015, during the Barack Obama administration in the US and after another wide-margin reelection win by Lukashenko in Belarus, Ron Paul Institute Executive Director Daniel McAdams discussed the US government’s disdain for Lukashenko and the Belarus government. McAdams wrote in part:

Lukashenko has been a favorite punching bag of the US and western neocons for a number of years because he has not shown the required level of deference to his would-be western overlords compared to, say, the Baltics. He routinely wins re-election even as the US government has funneled millions of dollars into the political opposition in hopes of somehow fomenting a regime change.

Don’t believe the sanctimonious comments, whether from the Trump administration or the Biden campaign, about the US seeking to promote democracy and human rights in Belarus. This is about power. The US has let slide and continues to let slide democratic and human rights shortcomings of countries across the world where benefit can be obtained. Dictatorship? No problem. The expression of concern about democracy and human rights is propaganda selectively applied to stir up support for, or at least quell opposition to, US intervention abroad.

Pompeo and Biden’s statements regarding Belarus help make clear that overthrowing governments appears set to remain a feature of US foreign policy no matter if Trump wins a second term or Biden defeats him in the upcoming November presidential election.

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The following research article aims at exploring the issue of history of settler colonialism in Palestine. It will tackle three different settler colonial projects that were established in Arab Palestine: the German Templers, the Jewish and the Zionist.

In the beginning, the research article will provide a background that will deal with British imperial interests in Palestine and how they were related to both trade and communication routes and the concept of a buffer state.

British Imperial Interests in Palestine

There were two trade and communication routes that connected Britain with its markets and colonies in the East, a long one around the Cape of Good Hope and a short one that passed through the Ottoman Empire.Both routes were vulnerable and needed protection.

The search for protection of the trade and communication routes by British strategists and politicians coincided with the search for a viable solution to the Jewish Question, namely finding a solution for the Jewish refugees who began to immigrate from East Europe to West Europe. The British imperialists came up with the idea of establishing a buffer state in Palestine as a solution to both problems.

Vulnerable Trade and Communication Routes

Palestine was targeted to become a British colony for one reason: its strategic location. Its location on the cross roads of Europe, Africa and Asia, gave it an important strategic location. Moreover, Palestine was located on the trade and communication route that connected Britain with its colonies and spheres of interest in the East[1]  which in turn possessed a huge market that was vital for British capitalism. The importance of this market increased after Britain lost thirteen colonies in North America.[2]

Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, a trade and communication route, connected Britain with the East. It passed through Egypt, beginning in Alexandria, then went by land to Cairo, then by land to the Suez City, then through the Red Sea to the East. It should be pointed out that this route was first operated by Britain by “…using horse-drawn vehicles and, later, trains …”[3] as means to pass the land part of it. The trains connected Alexandria with Cairo, then Cairo with Suez City.It could be called a sea-land-sea route. This route was used by the British to transport troops, merchandise, travelers and post.

Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and Palestine in 1799, led to the closure of this route and highlighted its vulnerability. Mohammed Ali’s invasion of Syria in 1831, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire, and his attempt to create an Arab Empire encompassing all the Arabic-speaking Ottoman subjects, had alarmed the British and other imperialists.[4] His invasion of Syria resulted in the closure of this route for nine years (1831-1840). These two military incursions constituted a real threat to imperialist interests. They specifically threatened the vulnerable trade and communication route.

In 1840 Mohammed Ali’s political military designs in the Syria were frustrated when the European imperialist powers of Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Austria-Hungary united in a military coalition and defeated the Egyptian army.[5]

It was precisely under these circumstances of wars and fierce European rivalry over markets and spheres of influence, that some British imperialist politicians began to look for ways and means of protecting this vulnerable trade and communication route. The British solution for such a problem was the creation of an artificial colonial settler state in Palestine, which at that time was supposed to form as a buffer state separating Mohammed Ali’s Egypt from the rest of the Ottoman Empire.

Moreover, when the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, British imperialist interests in Palestine achieved more weight. The Suez Canal occupied a pivotal position on the trade route that connected Britain with its colonies especially India. Therefore, the establishment of a settler state became imperative for the protection of the Suez Canal. It should be pointed out that the Suez Canal shortened the distance between Britain and the East.

…when opened it was realized that it shortened by some considerable distance the journey to India. The distance around the Cape to Bombay was 10,450 miles but just 6,000 miles through the canal. The opening of the canal increased the need for Britain to remain the dominant power in the Middle East as it was now India’s lifeline.  The Middle East became henceforth a major focal point of British interest.[6]

The first European statesman to propose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine was Napoleon Bonaparte who called for it in 1799[7], namely 97 years prior to Herzl’s call. Later on, a group of British politicians, strategists, archaeologists, and scholars, advocated the same idea in the period 1838-1902.

Due to capitalist developments inside feudalist Europe, Jewish refugees began to emigrate from East European countries to West Europe. This coincided with the rise of anti-Semitism. This European Jewish problem demanded a solution.

In 1838[8], Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury[9] drew up a detailed project for the settlement of Jews in Palestine under British protection. This venture predated both the rise of Political Zionism and Theodor Herzl’s call by 58 years. Shaftesbury presented his project to the British government as well as to other Western governments.[10] Lord Shaftesbury justified his colonial project as follows.

Syria and Palestine will before long become very important. … The country wants capital and population. The Jews can give it both. And has not England a special interest in promoting such restoration? It would be a blow to England if either of her rivals should hold of Syria. Her Empire reaching from Canada in the West to Calcutta and Australia in the South East would be cut in two…[11]

Shaftesbury added that the British Empire

… must preserve Syria to herself. Does not policy there … exhort England to foster the nationality of the Jews and aid them … to return as leavening power to their old country? … To England then, naturally, belongs the role of favoring the settlement of Jews in Palestine.[12]

Shaftesbury’s idea of Jewish settlement was adopted by foreign secretary Henry Palmerstone[13] who in 1840 sent a letter to the then British Ambassador to Istanbul, in which he asked him to deliberate with the Ottoman authorities the idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine. Palmerstone stated in his letter that the “Jewish people if returning [to Palestine] under the sanction and protection and at the invitation of the Sultan, would be a check upon any future evil designs of Mohammed Ali or his successor.”[14]

There were other colonialists who recognized the strategic importance of Palestine and who regarded the Jewish refugees of Europe as candidate colonizers who were available to colonize and hold Palestine under British aegis. These colonialists included: Colonel Charles Henry Churchill (1841) who took part in war against Mohammed Ali in Syria[15], E.L. Milford[16], a friend of Palmerstone (1845), the Italian philosopher and politician Benedetto Musolino (1851), Colonel George Gawler, former governor of South Australia (1852), founder of the International Red CrossJean Henri Dunant(1863), who founded the Palestine Colonization Society in Londonin 1875, Charles Warren and Claude Reignier Conder from the Palestine Exploration Fund (1865), and the British industrialist and economist Edward Gazalet.[17]

All these imperialists proposed the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine prior to the emergence of the Zionist movement in 1897 and prior to the publication of Theodore Herzl’spamphlet The Jewish Statein 1896. Therefore, the very idea of establishing a Jewish State in Arab Palestine was originally not a Zionist idea but an imperialist idea. It was a colonialist venture that was deemed as a necessary step in safeguarding vulnerable imperialist trade and communication routes that connected Britain with its colonies and markets in the East. Herzl and other Zionists simply adopted this imperialist idea and decided to establish administrative and financial means to implement it. Zionism in other words, exploited an existing imperialist idea and capitalized on a proper opportunity and readiness of British imperialism to implement this grand colonialist scheme.

European Settler Colonialism in Palestine (1882-1899)

Historically speaking, Arab Palestine has witnessed the establishment of three types of European settler colonial projects: German, Jewish and Zionist.

• The Templers Settler Colonial Project

Prior to the beginning of Jewish settler colonialism, a German religious group called the Templers exhibited interest in colonizing Palestine. Few of them came to Palestine in 1868, purchased land and within seven years, founded a German colony in Haifa. The settlers soon reached more than 300 people. They owned 3000 dunums of land (800 acres), 85 buildings, and two flour mills. Later on, the Templers established six more settlements: Jaffa (1869), Sarona (1878), Jerisalem (1878), Wilhema (1902), Galilean Bethlehem (1906) and Waldheim (1907).[18]

The Templers were professional artisans and farmers. They “…had no nationalist aspirations but were content with the autonomous status they had achieved within their colonies…”. They were motivated by religious beliefs and religious oriented ideology. They regarded that colonizing Palestine “…was part of the fulfillment of their faith. The Holy Land had to be prepared for the Second Coming of Christ, which was to occur in the year 2000.”[19]

After they occupied Palestine, the British colonial authorities treated the Templers as German citizens and in July and August 1918 they decided to deport

…850 Templers to an internment camp at Helwan near Cairo in Egypt. In April 1920, 350 of these internees were deported to Germany. All the property of the Templers was regarded as belonging to an enemy nationality (except of that of a few US citizens among them). Thus, it was taken into public custodianship.[20]

With the rise of Nazism in Germany, the majority of the Templers began to identify with the Nazi ideology. As a result, the British colonial authorities began to treat them as enemy aliens. In 1941, the British colonial authorities deported 661 Templers to Australia and confiscated their property.[21] With the deportation of the Templer settlers, there came an end to their settler colonial project in Palestine.

• The Jewish Colonization of Palestine (1882-1899)

In addition to the Templers colonial project, Palestine had witnessed two types of colonization projects, a Jewish non-Zionist settler colonial project and a Zionist settler colonial project.  There are fundamental differences between these two types especially regarding their attitude towards the utilization of indigenous labor potential, their final political objectives and their colonial metropolis (mother country).

As a direct result of the conflict with settlers over land, all indigenous societies have undergone profound class restructuring. Colonial projects are initially carried out by the coercive radical change of land proprietors.[22] The possible options in the relationship of both settlers and indigenous people could include any of the following combinations.

The colonial enterprise involves in the first place the capture of land and other physical resources. One possibility after this has occurred in the development of an estate system in which new owners either develop the land in the form of large estates which they either work themselves in such non-labor intensive activities as sheep-rearing, or let out in smaller lots of tenant farmers. More commonly, however, the possession of the land by itself is not enough. Those who have been expelled from the land have to be compelled by one means or another to work for the new proprietor.[23]

Jewish non-Zionist colonization of Palestine began by the English Jewish banker Sir Moses Montefiore who in 1855 bought a citrus orchard adjacent to Jaffa.[24] Montefiore “made various plans which would, he hoped, lead to a resettlement of Jews in the country.”[25] He did not secure satisfactory conditions from the Ottoman authorities, therefore he decided to assist the Palestinian Jews, who were already residing in Palestine, by improving their living conditions through agricultural work.[26] In short, he failed to attract any Jewish settlers to Palestine.

Moses Montefiore was “not interested in creating a Jewish state, he did regard the normalization of Jewish life through self-supporting labor, as essential.”[27] However, the accumulated impact of his project has contributed to the development of Jewish colonization efforts.

A more successful colonization project was initiated by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a capitalist French Jew, who established a settler colonial project in Palestine in order to secure two goals: (1) a haven for East European Jewish refugees[28] fleeing anti-Semitic massacres that took place in East Europe and the Russian Empire, and immigrated to West Europe; (2) establishing a ‘sphere of influence` for French imperialism[29] in the Ottoman Empire.

Between 1882 and 1899, Edmund de Rothschild established 19 Jewish colonial settlements and a Jewish agricultural school[30] on lands he purchased in Palestine in 1853. “The Baron bought land from the feudal Effendis[31], sometimes by bribing the Ottoman administration, and then drove the fellahin[32] off the land…”[33]  The landless Palestinian peasants and ex-tenants of the land, were later hired by the Baron as seasonal and cheap agricultural workers.

The Baron’s colonial activity in Palestine “… clashed with the Palestine Arabs over one fundamental issue – land ownership …”[34] He bought a total of 275,000[35] dunams[36] of arable land, and this fact led to the dispossession and pauperisation of many Palestinian Arab tenant farmers.

In 1900, the Baron terminated his colonial venture by transferring his colonial settlements to the Jewish Colonisation Association (ICA) which was led and financed by Baron Maurice Hirsch[37], a German Jewish capitalist.

Jewish colonization of Palestine was carried out as a service to French imperialism. Its implementation was done in accordance with the classical examples of Western settler colonialism, of large estates, cheap indigenous labor, and colon settlement. Such a colonial project, if continued, could have developed Palestine into a typically settler colonialist entity similar to French Algeria, South Africa and Rhodesia. However, the advance of Political Zionism gave Palestine a different brand of settler colonialism.

• Zionist Settler Colonialism

Settler colonialism had been used by the highly developed Western powers as a means of expanding European capitalism through the barrel of the gun. Political Zionism had been used as an agent for the implementation of this expansion in the Middle East. Therefore, Zionist settler colonialism could be regarded as the most important wave of direct European capitalist expansion that ever took place in the Middle East.

Unlike the non-Zionist Jewish colonization of Palestine, Political Zionism has entirely been focused on statehood. Since its very inception in 1897, Political Zionism had devoted its efforts for the establishment of a Jewish state, initially in Cyprus, Sinai, Uganda, Portuguese Angola, Libya, Palestine[38] and Argentine.[39] However, later historical developments made Palestine become the sole option for the establishment of a Zionist settler colonial state.

• Similarities and Differences

Both Jewish settlement and Zionist settlement in Palestine were settler colonial projects. They began by purchasing Palestinian land then establishing colonies to which they attracted European Jews. Both projects exhibited similarities; nevertheless, they also bore fundamental differences in their conduct and practice.

One of the factors that distinguish Zionist from Jewish colonization is that the Zionist idea of establishing a Jewish state was never envisaged by neither Rothschild nor his predecessors Montefiore and Hirsch.  As Richard Stevens, an American author, remarked:

… While the philosophy of Montefiore and the Rothschilds might have been predisposed in favor of Jewish settlement in Palestine, they and other Western Jews were also willing to see Jewish settlement in various other countries as concrete solutions to particular problems of anti-Semitism. Jewish statehood was not envisaged. …[40]

Neither Montefiore, nor Baron Rothschild were Zionists, and the latter “… was soon criticized by the Zionists for his paternalistic administration of Jewish colonies and for permitting the development of a Jewish planter class dependent upon the labor of Arab farm laborers. …”[41]

In addition to Jewish workers, Jewish settler colonies employed Palestinian Arab workers in their agricultural settlements. They developed economic relations with the surrounding Palestinian Arab villages and exchanged goods with the Palestinian Arab peasants. Some of the Jewish settlers adopted the “Kafia”, an Arab head dress and this could be clearly observed in old photographs of these settlers.

Britain ruled[42] over Palestine as a colonial power in the period 1918 – 1948. It was under British protection and authority that Zionist settler colonialist project was set in motion. As French author Maxime Rodinson remarked:

… Although very few Zionists had come from Great Britain, this country, in regard to Palestine, played the role of mother country for a colony that was being settled, because, like it or not, it had protected the formation and growth of the Yishuv[43] as it had, for example, once protected British colonization in North America, and as France had protected French colonization in Algeria…[44]

Faced by the problem of “undercutting” by the Palestinian cheap labor, the Zionist settler workers

… found a way out of the deadlock by contracting an alliance with organized Zionism, which was at bottom a marriage of convenience, Jewish labor got the benefit of political sympathy and, more importantly, of economic subsidy to workers and their collective institutions. In return, their leaders undertook to manage the labor movement by Zionist criteria – which included keeping Arabs out of both jobs and workers’ organizations in the Jewish sector.[45]

The campaign for strict racial exclusiveness within the settlers’ economy was envisaged and led by left wing Zionists, by the all-Jewish Mapai[46] party and by the Histadrut[47] an all-Jewish trade union. To implement their policy they used violence: “… [T]he Mapai leadership stepped up its commitment to the sanctity of all-Jewish labor and supported violent efforts to force Arabs out of their jobs – efforts impregnated with racist and nationalist rhetoric which parts of the labor elite believed possessed considerable ‘educational` value …”[48] As this first result, a total of 6,500 Palestinian agricultural workers who worked inside the Baron’s settlements were replaced by Zionist settler workers.[49]

Another aspect of this racial exclusiveness was implemented by the Histadrut, the Jewish labor union in Palestine. Since its foundation in 1920, the Histadrut did not play a trade unionist role dedicated to the defense of workers’ rights and interests. It opted for a colonial role based on inter-class solidarity and collaboration between the Zionist colonial bourgeoisie and the settler workers, and on racial exclusiveness in jobs and trade union membership.[50]

Both, the Histadrut and the left-wing Zionist parties preferred class collaboration with the Zionist colonial bourgeoisie and not class solidarity among all workers in Palestine, Jews and Arabs. In fact, “…trade unionism remained only a secondary concern for the Histadrut centre, and its leadership was inclined to restrain the workers’ pursuit of their immediate interests in the context of the employment relation. …” [51]

As a reflection of their ideology of racial exclusiveness, the left-wing Zionist leadership coined a number of racist slogans such as “Kiboosh H’avoda”[52] (conquest of work) and “Avoda ‘Ebrit”(Hebrew work) as rallying slogans for settler workers. Another racist slogan added to the former, was “Tutseret Ha’aretz”[53] which called on colonial settlers to boycott Palestinian produce and buy Jewish produce only.  Another racist slogan to be added is that of “Kibush Hakark’a”[54] (conquest of land) or “Kark’a ‘Ebrit”(Jewish land) which called for the exclusive ownership and tenancy of Zionist purchased land. All these racist slogans were adopted by the Histadrut and the Zionist settler colonialist parties.

In a frank admission of the racist character, stemming from the racial exclusiveness of Zionist practice, David Hacohen,[55] a left-wing Zionist, reported the following reminiscences:

I remember being one of the first of our comrades to go to London after the First World War.  … There I became a socialist. … When I joined the socialist students – English, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Indian, African – we found that we were all under English domination or rule. And even here, in these intimate surroundings, I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guards at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there. … To pour Kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash the Arab eggs they had bought; to praise to the skies the KerenKayemet[Jewish Land Fund] that sent Hankin to Beirut to buy land from absentee effendi[land lords] and to throw the fellahin[peasants] off the land – to buy dozens of dunamsfrom an Arab is permitted, but to sell, God forbids, one Jewish dunamto an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild, the incarnation of capitalism, as a socialist and to name him the “benefactor” – to do all that was not easy. And despite the fact that we did it – maybe we had no choice – I was not happy about it.[56]

The Zionist colonial policy of economic exclusion was not without historical precedent. It had been employed by settler colonial bourgeoisies elsewhere to establish their own economic base and their own market. However, Zionist economic exclusiveness had led to the creation of a dual economy in Palestine: an advanced European capitalist enclave based on both capitalist industry and agriculture, and a colonized, developing capitalist economy that was based on capitalist agriculture and an emerging industrial base. Moreover, the Zionist colonial economy had developed during the period 1900-1948 in complete isolation from the basically Palestinian agrarian-based economy. Zionist economic activity in the field of production and marketing was carried out separately.[57]

Concluding Remarks

In conclusion both Jewish and Zionist settlement in Palestine were settler colonialist projects. They differed on three major aspects: (1) The Zionist settler colonial project aimed at the creation of a Jewish state, while the Jewish settler colonial project aimed at the creation of a sphere of influence for French imperialism; (2) The Jewish settler colonialist project employed indigenous Palestinian Arab workers on their land, while the Zionist settler colonial project opposed the employment of Palestinian Arab workers in their agricultural estates; (3) Both settler colonial projects were supported by two different metropolises. The metropolis for the Jewish settler colonial project was French imperialism, while the metropolis for the Zionist settler colonial project was British imperialism.

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Dr. Zuhair Sabbagh teaches sociology at Birzeit University in the colonized West Bank. He is a resident of Nazareth, Israel. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Manchester and is author of a number of books and research articles.

Notes

[1]These colonies were India, Cylon, Burma, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and parts of China. In addition to these countries, British markets were also located in the Ottoman Empire, including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, the Gulf area, and South Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, and other regions (ZS).

[2]The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (1974) Vol. 4 (15th Edition), (London: William Benton) p. 892

[3]History.com editors, Suez Canal,, 21-8-2018

[4]Lutsky, Vladimir (1975) The Modern History of the Arab Countries –in Arabic (Moscow: Progress Publishers) pp 102-145, pp. 131 – 132

[5]Ibid., pp 102-145

[6]The British Empire, “The Opening of the Suez Canal”, http://www.britishempire.me.uk. Retrieved on: 11-6-2020

[7]Sherif, Regina (1983)Non-Jewish Zionism (London: Zed Press), pp. 61, 51

[8]Ibid., p.  158

[9]Lord Shaftesbury was an anti -Semite.  He consistently opposed granting civil emancipation for English Jews and opposed their entry to Parliament. Lord Shaftesbury thought of Jews as being “stiff-necked, dark-hearted people, and sunk in moral degredation, obduracy and ignorance of the Gospel, and were not worthy of salvation.” Look in W.T. Gidney (1908) The History of the London Society for the Restoration of Christianity among the Jews(London: Centennial issue), as quoted by Regina, Sherif, op. cit., p. 128

[10]Makachy, Yona, “Christian Zionism”,Zionism, (Jerusalem, Keter Publishing House Ltd., 1973), p. 233

[11]Sokolow, Nahum,History of Zionism, 2 vols., Passim, index., p. 207.  As quoted by Jabbour, George (1970) Settler Colonialism in Southern Africa and the Middle East(Beirut: PLO Research Center), p. 23

[12]Ibid.

[13]The British statesman Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston (1784 – 1865), served in Whig governments as foreign secretary (1830-34, 1835-41, 1846-51) and home secretary (1852-55) and was twice prime minister (1855-58, 1859-65). Southgate, Donald,“Palmerston, Henry”, The Academic American Encyclopedia (1996 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia Version), copyright (C) 1996, Grolier, Inc. Danbury, CT, USA.

[14]As quoted by Jabbour, George, op. cit., p. 22

[15]Ibid., p. 132

[16]Sharif, Regina,  “Christians for Zion”, op. cit., p. 131

[17]Makachy, Yona, op. cit., p. 235

[18]Yazbak, Mahmoud, “Templars as Proto-Zionists?”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Summer, 1999), pp. 40-54,  https://www.jstor.org, Accessed: 21-01-2020.

[19]Ibid.

[20]Wikimili, “Wilhelma, Palestine”, https://wikimili.com, 3-11-2019

[21]David, “Nazis – in Israel, the Templars”, https://strangeside.com. Retrieved on: 12-6-2020

[22]Rex, John (1970)Race Relations In Sociological  Theory(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), p. 38

[23]Ibid.

[24]Lutsky, Vladimir, op. cit., p. 158

[25]Parkes, James (1970) Whose Land?,(Middlesex: Penguin Books) p. 229

[26]Ibid.

[27]Blumberg, Arnold (2007)Zion Before Zionism 1838–1880. (Jerusalem: Devora Publishing). As quoted by: Goodman, Bonnie K. , “British Colonel Charles Henry Churchill’s letter to Sir Moses Montefiore”, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com, 15-6-2018

[28]Bober, Arie (1972) “ The Palestine Problem ”, The Other Israel, (New York: Anchor Books), p. 37

[29]Ibid.

[30]Weinstock, Nathan (1979)Zionism:  False Messiah(trans. and edited by Alan Adler), (London: Ink Links), p. 67

[31]Effendi is a Turkish word that means land lord. It also denotes a respectable official of the Ottoman administration. (ZS)

[32]Fellahin is the Arabic word for peasants.(ZS)

[33]Bober, Arie , op. cit., p. 38

[34]Bober, op. cit., p. 38

[35]Israel Margalith’s (1957)Le baron Edmond de Rotschild et la colonisation juive en Palestine 1882-1889(Paris: Name of publisher unknown), p p. 141-142. As quoted by Weinstock, op. cit., p. 66

[36]One dunum equals 0.23 acres or 1000 squared meters.(ZS)

[37]Ibid.

[38]Stevens, Richard P. (1972)Zionism And Palestine Before The Mandate: A Phase of Western Imperialism(Beirut: The Institute for  Palestine Studies) pp. 14 – 19

[39]Herzl, Theodore, (1896) The Jewish State, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved on: 14-6-2020

[40]Stevens, Richard P., op. cit., p.7

[41]Ibid., pp. 10-11

[42]British rule over Palestine is usually characterised in numerous sources as the “British Mandate” (1922-1948). I do think that this is a misnomer because it does not correspond to reality. Instead of preparing the people of Palestine for self-government and independence as the Mandate should have been, the British rule treated Palestine as a typical British colony and the “Mandate” was nothing but a cloak for the transformation of Palestine into a Zionist settler colonialist entity. In addition, the British “Mandate” over Palestine was very much similar to South Africa’s “Mandate” over Namibia. Both Namibia and Palestine were brutally transformed into settler colonialist projects by the administrators of a theoretical Mandate that acted as a camouflage for classical colonialist policies (ZS).

[43]Yishuv,  is the Hebrew word for the Zionist settler society in Palestine. It was used only in the period 1900 – 1948 (ZS).

[44]Rodinson, Maxime (1973) Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?. New York: Monad Press, p.  64

[45]Shalev, Michael (1992) Labour and the Political Economy in Israel(Oxford: Oxford University Press) p. 35

[46]Mapai is the Hebrew abbreviation of “Workers of the Land of Israel Party” (ZS).

[47]Histadrut is the “General Confederation of  Jewish  Workers in Palestine” which was established by the Zionists in 1920. (ZS)

[48]Shalev, op. cit., p. 42

[49]Simpson, John Hope (1930) Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development  (London: Cmd. 3686) p. 55. As quoted by Abdo-Zubi, Nahla (1987) Family, Women and Social Change in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press) p. 18

[50]Shalev, op. cit., pp. 40-41

[51]Ibid., p. 40

[52]Bober, Arie, op. cit., p. 11

[53]Ibid.

[54]Ibid.

[55]David Hacohen, is one of the leaders of the Mapai Zionist party which dominated Israeli politics. Hacohen was a member of the Israeli parliament for many years and chairman of its most important committee, the Defence and Foreign Affairs Committee. (ZS)

[56]Speech delivered by David Hacohen to the secretariat of the Mapai party in November 1969, Ha’aretzdaily (Hebrew), Nov. 15, 1969. As quoted by Bober, Arie, op. cit., p. 12

[57]Kamen, Charles S. (1991) Little Common Ground, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press) p. 69

Featured image is from IMEMC

Last week, I asked, “Will Trump’s Maximum Pressure on UNSC against Lifting Iran Arms Embargo Backfire Big Time?”

As Iran’s IRNA news service reports today, the answer was a resounding “Yes!”

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council took up a resolution presented by US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, aimed at an indefinite extension of the UN arms embargo on Iran. Only one of the 15 members, the Dominican Republic, supported the US resolution. Eleven abstained. And two–Russia and China, voted against it. The resolution would have needed 8 to pass and would have needed to avoid a veto by one of the five permanent members.

But it failed by 13 to 2. China and Russia did not even have to brandish a veto. It is hard to remember another vote on which the US was humiliated quite this badly, though if George W. Bush had actually pursued a UNSC authorization for his Iraq War in spring of 2003, he might have similarly gone down to epochal diplomatic defeat.

Let us underline this. The most powerful countries in the world and the current representatives of the main global blocs just sided with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against Donald J. Trump.

The United States is no longer the leader of the free world.

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal signed between that country and the five permanent members of the UNSC stipulated that the arms embargo would lapse on October 18, 2020. The Trump administration, along with allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, wanted to avert the end of the ban on selling weapons to Iran.

The UN Security Council has five permanent members– Russia, China, France, the UK and the US. It has another ten rotating members. Right now they are Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Germany, Indonesia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Tunisia, and Viet Nam. I was a little surprised that South Africa and Viet Nam did not outright vote against, though I suppose they thought abstention made their point well enough and was less likely to anger the mercurial Trump. The US only finally lifted a longstanding arms embargo on Viet Nam a few years ago.

One of the functions of the secretary of state of the United States is to politick with other countries in such a way as to ensure the US gets its way. When that isn’t possible, at the very least a public humiliation should be avoided. SecState Mike Pompeo accomplished neither one. He was so inept and so huge a failure at this diplomatic demarche that the US language went down to crushing defeat.

It was obvious to me that this would happen a week ago.

Just on Thursday, Russia’s Tass reported That Russia’s permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, had tweeted out that the extension of an arms embargo against Iran is a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which provides for a resumption of the supply of arms and military equipment to Iran in the wake of the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had already made it clear in June that this was the Russian position.

Russia and China clearly see Iran as a market for their arms industries, and won’t let Washington get in the way.

IRNA quoted the new Belgian ambassador to the UN, Philippe Kridelka, as saying that his country abstained on the US initiative because Brussels strongly believes that Iran’s nuclear program must remain within the framework of the JCPOA.

Belgium, Germany, Britain and France all abstained on these grounds. They are afraid that if the arms embargo is kept in place, in contravention of the 2015 nuclear accord, Iran will simply withdraw from it, as Trump already has, and will then be free to pursue any nuclear ambitions it has, unconstrained by inspections or the other severe restraints of the JCPOA.

Pompeo is now threatening to try to invoke a provision of the Iran nuclear deal that allows signatories to it to erase the gains Iran made in that treaty on the grounds that Iran has not strictly observed the provisions of the treaty.

Iran was in fact in complete compliance until May, 2018, when Trump breached the treaty and placed the most severe sanctions on Iran ever placed on any country by another in peace time. Since then Tehran has departed from compliance in minor ways, so as to put pressure on Europe to defy Trump’s third-party economic sanctions, which have had the effect of devastating Iran’s trade. Europe has not in fact defied Trump. Since Iran gave up 80% of its nuclear program to get sanctions relief, and has instead seen sanctions turbocharged, Tehran understandably feels betrayed.

The rest of the UNSC thinks Pompeo’s idea is crazy, that he can trigger the snap back provision even though the US pulled out of the treaty, telling CNN, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

Some observers are so puzzled by the Trump administration’s Himalayan ineptitude that they expressed suspicions that it was trying to fail at the UNSC for some nefarious purpose. Me, I think ineptitude is the better explanation.

If a US snap back resolution is sent to the UNSC, it will receive a humiliating response, just as happened on Friday. And that will be more ineptitude, not signs of grand strategy.

Some fear that Trump will then try to sanction countries that sell arms to Iran, using its status as the world’s sole superpower to overrule the UNSC and so irreparably damaging its effectiveness, beginning a process of destroying the United Nations Organization.

China has already made it clear that it will adopt Iran as its next big economic project, regardless of what Washington wants, and China’s gross domestic product by purchasing power parity now rivals that of the US (since it is handing the coronavirus recession much better than Trump, its relative economic strength over the US could grow the rest of this year).

So I think it is more likely that Trump will dull the US sanctions blade than that he will be able to use it to decapitate the United Nations.

*

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Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Several recent developments in Russian-Belarusian relations — in particular, Belarus’ return of 32 suspected Wagner mercenaries to Russia, Belarusian opposition leader Tsepkalo’s departure from Russia, and the two phone calls between Presidents Putin and Lukashenko — hint that bilateral ties might soon return to their formerly fraternal level, though the fact of the matter is that Minsk simply doesn’t have any realistic option other than to re-engage Moscow (albeit on the latter’s terms) after the dramatic failure of the former’s “balancing” act and is thus destined to be Russia’s “little brother” instead of its “equal brother”.

The city of Minneapolis is where it all began. It is where the last drop fell on the surface of a proverbial overflowing lake, causing the dam to burst, consequently starting to destroy the foundations of the empire.

A death of just one single man can, under certain dreadful circumstances, put into motion the entire avalanche of events. It can smash the whole regime into pieces. It can fully rewrite history, and even change the identity of a nation. It can… although it not always does.

George Floyd’s death became a spark. The city of Minneapolis is where the murder occurred, and where the ethnic minorities rose in rage.

But it is also where white extreme right-wing criminals, and some even say, entire regime, perpetrated the uprising, kidnapped what could have become a true revolution and began choking legitimate rebellion by a stained duvet of nihilism and confusion.

Here, we will not speculate. We will not point fingers at “deep state” or some multi-billionaire families, and to what extent they have been involved. Let others do this if they know details. But this time, I simply came to listen. And to pass to the world what I discovered first hand and what I was told.

This time I simply went to Franklin Avenue and Lake Street, both in Minneapolis.

I spoke to Native American people there. To those who joined forces with the African-American community during those dangerous days after May 25, 2020. To people who dared to defend their neighborhoods against brutality against white gangs, which came to loot, infiltrate, and derail the most powerful uprising in the United States in modern history.

***

Bob Rice is a Native American owner of Pow Wow Grounds, a local entrepreneur, and a ‘community protection organizer.’ His legendary café is located on Franklin Avenue. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been reduced, for the time being, to a takeaway business, but even as such, it is enormously popular among the Native Americans, as well as others.

At the back of the cafe is huge storage, full of food. Everyone hungry, in need of help, can simply come here and take whatever he or she needs.

We grab some freshly brewed coffee from the shop and take it out to the public benches outside.

Bob Rice then begins his story:

“There has been police brutality for a very long time, against people of color. Not only talking about Minneapolis but in all these other places, since the 1991 Rodney King incident. Things were boiling and building up – leading to a big blow up.”

“And all this discrimination did not start here; it came centuries ago from Europe.”

“After the George Floyd murder, I wanted to show solidarity. Native Americans were experiencing an even higher degree of persecution than Black people. We had to stand together. I went down to the site of the murder of George Floyd, in order to support protests.”

For a while, we talked about the mass media in the United States, an official and even some ‘independent one,’ and how it quickly and violently turned against the left, as well as against those who have been daring to expose endemic racism in the United States.

But soon, we returned to the events that took place here, in May and June.

“I noticed the presence of strange elements right from the start. I was watching guys breaking windows. At about 6 am, the morning after, I traveled down to South Minneapolis. There were piles of rocks in front of the rioters. Flash hand grenades. I kept on moving around the areas and kept on seeing rocks. I noticed the Minneapolis Umbrella Man, dressed all in black, with mask and black umbrella and black hammer smashing things – at the end being stopped by black guys. People were walking out of the store with car parts, and I thought, “why stealing those things”? These guys didn’t seem to be as part of the protest. I started moving and going away from the area, thinking that these guys would burn down stores and places soon. I even called up my insurance company the following morning to see if my policy covers civil unrest. That night they burned a lot of stores – auto stores, liquor stores, all types of businesses. I thought that if we do not do something ourselves to protect our neighborhoods, they will burn down all of our areas, too.”

“From what I saw, I couldn’t tell you who these guys were, but they were not from here.

So, we put up our protection zone calling out people on Facebook. We became the Headquarters of protection of Native American businesses and nonprofit organizations, as well as banks, shops, investment properties, etc. all belonging to the Native American community around here.

I noticed there were Caucasian people, driving cars very slowly with no license plates, yelling racial slurs out of the windows. We formed a human shield, chain, along Franklin Avenue, to protect ourselves and our people.

At a high point, about 300 people were protecting the area all night long for about eight days in a row. It had to be done, because here we had people from all over, including Wisconsin, descending on us – we had white supremacist group Proud Boys here. They arrived wearing masks. We had young white kids – 16 and 17 years old – coming from Wisconsin, looting liquor stores. We caught them. Obviously, they came out here because they thought it was an exciting thing to do. They didn’t even know where they were – this area is very dangerous with drug dealing and gang violence at night. Lucky, they got caught by us.”

And the coverage? I wanted to know whether these events, in the heart of Native American neighborhoods, were described in depth by media reports.

Bob Rice replied readily:

There was no media reporting on these matters – mass media blamed everything on the Black Lives Matter movement.

When liquor stores and tobacco shops were on fire, no police or fire trucks were around. Then the National Guard took over – using tear gas.

Mr. Rice sighed, still in disbelief:

Just incredible how our so-called President has done all the mess going and even made it worse!

***

Robert Pilot, Native Roots Radio host, drove me for days all around the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, explaining what really took place on both Franklin Avenue and Lake Street.

But before, we visited provisory, impromptu monument, where the murder of George Floyd took place. There were flowers, graffiti, works of art; there was grief, and there was solidarity. Native American people clearly supported the plight of the African-Americans.

The area was safe; it was well organized. People of all races came here to pay tribute to the murdered man, and centuries of atrocious history of the United States.

As we drove, Robert Pilot explained:

“Native American neighborhoods armed themselves after the Floyd murder. But not only that: economic hardships ensued after the murder; food banks have come up. The Pow Wow Grounds used to be a food distribution deport but ended up becoming a food bank for anyone to donate and get what they need.

Protesters were everywhere; the young generation got fed up. So different from other murders. The last straw was the murder of George Floyd. Four years earlier, in 2016, Philando Castile, an African American man, got murdered by police. He had worked in a school cafeteria. His murder was broadcast live on Facebook. It was a buildup. 10,000 people protested on 38th Street and Chicago in Minneapolis – the site of the murder of George Floyd. Combination of racial and overall frustration.”

We drove by burned stores, services, gas stations. Everything was resembling a war zone, and in a way, it was.

If you are there, things are extremely raw, emotional. It is not like analyzing things from a distance from the comfort of one’s home.

Robert continued explaining, as we drove by block after block of the Middle East-style combat destruction:

“There is a small percentage of African American people as compared to White Americans. We need allies, too. We have to support each other. Signs everywhere in my neighborhood, ‘Black Lives Matter.’”

“Some young white people have woken up. They see the truth. The opinion of the masses is moving to the left; they are feeling fed up with what is happening around them and what it is that the country is doing to the world because of oil.

What is interesting is that there is a protest every single day, which is something new and mind-blowing. The media is misreporting, minimizing the enormity and magnitude of protests, CNN, MSNBC, etc.”

Robert Pilot is not only a radio host, but he is also a teacher:

“White teachers are still teaching history; they are teaching it to black and Native American kids! Political standing of my students – a few are engaged, but definitely not all. Perhaps 10 percent of people are engaged and doing the work for 90 percent.

The white guilt now and then… But many of us feel: You should stand behind us and with us but not in front of us. Revolution is happening in that sense. Everything is changing since protests are happening.”

Not everyone likes the changes; definitely not everyone. The establishment is fighting back, trying to survive, in its existing, horrid form.

Robert Pilot concludes:

“Generally, Black and Native Americans are together, supportive of each other.

It is symbolic that the Native American movement started on Franklin Avenue, where protests began in 1968. We would never burn down our own stores like grocery stores and hospitals. Why should we?

But we had to mobilize and stop members of the KKK and Proud Boys type of guys.”

***

We drive some 100 miles north, in order to meet Ms. Emma Needham – a young Native American activist. Emma was kind enough to bring traditional medicine from her area. We met halfway at the Sand Prairie Wildlife Management Area.

Before our encounter, along the highway, we are surrounded by true ‘Americana’: endless open spaces, half-empty highways, more than 100 car-long cargo train pulled by two monstrous engines, while pushed by yet another one. We pass by St. Cloud Correctional Facility – an ancient-looking prison that bears the resemblance of some massive medieval English mansion surrounded by an elaborate system of barbed wires and watchtowers.

In one of the towns along the road, there is a big makeshift market selling posters, T-shirts, and other memorabilia, all related to the current President. It is called Trump Shop. Big banners are shouting at passing cars: “Trump, Make America Great Again,” “Trump 2020 – No More Bullshit,” and “God, Guns & Guts Made America. Let’s Keep All Three”.

Emma is a storyteller, a writer. She is an intelligent, outspoken, sincere, and passionate person:

“Where we were, we did not see a lot of white men with masks attacking, but what we did see were two young white kids, around 16, from Wisconsin, looting a liquor store which was run by Native Americans.”

“I stayed over Friday and Saturday nights around the Indian American Cultural Center in Minneapolis. On Friday night, within half a mile to a mile in all directors, we could see and hear the riots and looting. There were gunshots, helicopters hovering all around us. But nobody came to rescue us.”

“On Saturday night, we could see white people on Jeeps, waving flags, cruising around the neighborhood. “The white kids from Wisconsin were there, it appeared to me, opportunistic grabbing whatever was available.”

“Majority of those who came to protest and loot were outsiders, not from the neighborhoods. It does not make sense for people in Minneapolis to burn down and loot stores they rely on.”

I wanted to know whether the Native Americans and African-Americans were helping each other in that difficult hour?

Emma did not hesitate:

“There was big solidarity between Black people and Native American people; there was empathy.”

“It has been lifelong degradation for many of us growing up poor and severely marginalized in reservations, but we had never seen anything like this, so close to what resembled a war.

Those of us who were down in North Minneapolis those nights – Friday and Saturday – could not find words to describe what was happening. But we had a strong sense that what has been happening to us, Native Americans was happening to Black Americans, too – 400 years of surviving in a system of oppression. Enough is enough! Shared horrors – same for both groups!”

I asked whether everything changed, and this is a new beginning for the nation? As many, Emma did not sound overly optimistic:

“A black American female artist once said, ‘I love my white friends, but I don’t trust you because I know when the time comes, you need to choose your skin color. You count on the freedom and safety which you have. Whether you make that conscious decision or not, it will be there for you.’”

***

On my behalf, Robert Pilot asked Brett Buckner, his fellow radio host, and an African American activist, whether he could confirm that the majority of rioters were whites and not from the community. He replied:

“I would say so. Based on police reports and accounts from the community members, most of the damage was done by outsiders. Unfortunately, their actions will cause our community pain for years and even decades to come.”

***

Before I finished writing this report, “Umbrella man” got ‘identified.’

On July 29, 2020, Daily Mail wrote:

“Masked “Umbrella Man” who was seen smashing windows of Minneapolis AutoZone that was later burned to the ground during George Floyd protests is identified as ‘Hells Angels gang member with ties to white supremacist group’… The Star Tribune reported the 32-year-old man has links to Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a white supremacist gang based in Minnesota and Kentucky.”

He was one of many, but the most notorious one. Looking at his photos when in action, he was bearing a striking resemblance to ‘ninja’ looking rioters – right-wing hooligans – who were unleashed in order to bring chaos to Hong Kong, people who have been supported and financed by Western governments. I know, because I work in Hong Kong, since the beginning of the riots. Coincidence? And if not: who really ‘inspired’ whom?

***

Before I left Minneapolis, Robert Pilot and his wife Wendy interviewed me on their Native Roots Radio. What was supposed to be just 30 minutes appearance ended up being a one-hour event.

They showed me their city and their state, sharing sincere feelings and hopes, unveiling suffering of both African American and Native American communities.

This time, I traveled to the United States in order to listen. But I was also asked to talk, and so I did.

During the interview, I took them to several parts of the world, where black people still suffer enormously, due to Western imperialism and corporate greed. The world where Native people of Latin America, Canada, as well as other parts of the Planet, are brutally humiliated, robbed of everything, even murdered by millions.

We were complimenting each other. Our knowledge was.

I am glad I came to Minnesota. I am thankful that I could witness history in the making.

I am also delighted that I observed solidarity between the African American and Native American people. For centuries, both went through hell, through agony. Now, they were awakening.

Minnesota is where the latest and very important chapter of American history began. But I also went to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York City, Massachusetts. I witnessed protests, anger, despair. But there was also hope. Hope, despite tear gas and riot police, lockdowns, despite mismanaged COVID-19 and increasing poverty rates. Something was ending, something unsavory and brutal. Whether this could be considered a new beginning was still too early to tell.

In Minnesota, I chose to see events through the eyes of Native Americans, people who were here ‘forever,’ to whom this land used to belong. People who were exterminated by the “new America,” by European migrants, in a genocide that claimed roughly 90% of the native lives. These were people who were robbed of their culture and their riches. I am glad; I am proud that I chose this angle.

True peace, true reconciliation can only come after history as well as reality are fully understood, never through denial.

Now, both African Americans and Native Americans are speaking, and the world is listening. It has to listen. At least this is already progress. These two groups are forming a powerful alliance of victims. But also, an alliance of those who are determined to make sure that history never repeats itself.

*

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

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s the creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that has penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

All images in this article are from the author/NEO

Adequate housing, healthcare, food, public services, education, mass transit, health & safety standards, and environmental protections are the prerequisites for a humane democracy.

***

Economic indicators – data points, trends, and micro-categories – are the widgets of the big information industry. By contrast, indicators for our society’s democratic health are not similarly compiled, aggregated, and reported. Its up and down trends are presented piecemeal and lack quantitative precision.

We can get the process started and lay the basis for qualitative and quantitative refinement. Years ago, when we started “re-defining progress” and questioning the very superficial GDP and its empirical limitations, professional economists took notice. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, economists cling to the yardsticks that benefit and suit the plutocrats and CEOs of large corporations.

Here are my offerings in the expectation that readers will add their own measures:

1. A society is decaying when liars receive mass media attention while truth-tellers are largely ignored. Those who are chronically wrong with outrageous and baseless predictions are featured on news broadcasts, op-ed pages, and as convention and conference speakers. On the other hand, those who forewarn and are proven to be accurate are not regaled, but instead, they are excluded from the media spotlight and significant gatherings. Consider the treatment of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz post-Iraq invasion, compared to people like Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn who factually warned Washington not to attack illegally a country that didn’t threaten us.
2. A society is decaying when rampant corruption is tolerated, and its perpetrators are rewarded with money, votes, and praise. When President Eisenhower’s chief of staff, former New Hampshire Governor Sherman Adams, accepted a vicuña coat from a textile manufacturer, he was forced to resign. The daily corruption of Trump and the Trumpsters towers beyond measure over Adams’ indiscretion. Yet calls for Trump and his cronies to resign are rare and anemic. Tragically, the law and the norms of decency have done little to curb the corrupt, criminogenic, and criminal excesses of Trump & company. Even government prosecutors and inspectors generals have been fired, chilled, and sidelined by Trump and his toady,  Attorney General Barr.
3. A society is decaying when a growing number of people believe in fantasies instead of realities. Social media makes this an ever more serious estrangement from what is actually happening in the country and in the world. Believing in myths and falsehoods leads to political servitude, economic disruption, and social dysfunction. The corrupt concentration of power ensues.
4. An expanding economy focusing increasingly on ‘wants and whims’ while ignoring the meeting of basic ‘needs and necessities’ shatters societal cohesiveness and deepens miseries of many people. Adequate housing, healthcare, food, public services, education, mass transit, health & safety standards, and environmental protections are the prerequisites for a humane democracy. The economy is in shambles for tens of millions of Americans, including hungry children. Minimal economic security is beyond the reach of tens of millions of people in our country.
5. With few exceptions, the richer the wealthy become, the more selfish they behave, from severely diminished contributions to charities to the failure to exert leadership to reverse the breakdown of society. Take all the failures of the election machinery from obstructing voters to simply counting the votes honestly with paper records. The U.S. Senate won’t vote to give the states the $4 billion needed for administering the coming elections despite the Covid-19-driven need for expanded voting by mail. The Silicon Valley, undertaxed, mega-billionaires could make a $4 billion patriotic donation to safeguard the voting process in November and not even feel it.
6. Rampant commercialism knowing no boundaries or restraints even to protect young children is running roughshod over civic values. Every major religion has warned about giving too much power to the merchant class going back over 2000 years. In our country, justice arrived after commercial greed was subordinated to humane priorities such as abolishing child labor and requiring crashworthy cars, cleaner air, water, and safer workplaces. Mercantile values produce predictable results, from excluding civic groups from congressional hearings and the mass media to letting corporations control what the people own such as the vast public lands and public airwaves.
7. Then there is the American Empire astride the globe, enabled by an AWOL Congress and propelled by the avaricious military-industrial complex. In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower presciently forewarned that “[W]e must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” All Empires devour themselves until they collapse on the countries of their origins. Over 55% of the federal government’s operating spending goes to the Pentagon and its associated budgets. The military-industrial complex increasingly leads to quagmires and creates adversaries abroad, as it starves the social safety net budgets in our country. Our country’s military spending with all its waste is surging and unaudited. The U.S. spent more than $732 billion on direct defense spending in 2019; this is more than the next ten countries with the largest military expenditures.
8. A society that requires its people to incur crushing debt to survive, while relying on casinos and other forms of gambling to produce jobs, is going backward into the future.
9. Public officials who repeatedly obstruct voters from having their votes received and counted accurately and in a timely fashion continue with impunity to try to steal elections. Then Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (now governor of Georgia) “stole” the election in 2018 from gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Abrams said Kemp was an “architect of voter suppression.” And that because Kemp was the Georgia Secretary of State during the race, he was “the referee, the contestant and the scorekeeper” for the 2018 gubernatorial election. He escaped accountability. Democracy decays.
10. Access to justice is diminishing. Tort law – the law of wrongful injuries – has been weakened in many states with arbitrary caps on damages for the most serious injuries. It also is harder than ever for citizens to get through to real people in government agencies.

Time to conclude and look forward to your indicators of societal decay. Send them to [email protected] or CSRL, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036. The more Americans know where their country is heading, the more they may just want a better future and participating in or supporting the movements dedicated to turning our democracy around.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest books include: To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course, How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress, Breaking Through Power: It’s easier than we think, and Animal Envy: A Fable

When the first COVID-19 cases hit Brazil in March, the government agency in charge of protecting the country’s Indigenous peoples, the National Indigenous Foundation, ordered all civilians to leave the Indigenous reservations. Only essential workers, such as health care personnel and those involved in food distribution, could remain. 

But a new law signed by President Jair Bolsonaro on July 7 has made an exception for one group: Christian missionaries. A simple form from a doctor vouching for a faith worker’s health is enough to allow the person to stay as an essential worker.

According to Eliesio Marubo, a lawyer for the Indigenous Peoples Association of the River Javari Valley, known as UNIVAJA, some missionaries had never heeded the order to leave.

“A few villages reported that there were evangelical missionaries in their areas who refused to go away,” Marubo told Religion News Service.

In April, UNIVAJA sued to force the expulsion of several evangelical missionaries, at least two of whom are U.S. citizens, from the Javari Valley, an important legal victory against a group that is closely aligned with Balsonaro.

Now, Indigenous groups and those who defend their rights worry that the new law will prompt missionaries to enter their reservations, which have long been protected by the Brazilian government in an effort to preserve their culture.

“We’re questioning the legislation in order to restore the self-determination prerogative of the Indigenous peoples,” explained Marubo, a member of the Indigenous Marubo people himself.

One of the missionaries expelled in April was Andrew Tonkin, a member of the Frontier International Mission, an independent Free Will Baptist mission ministry based in the United States that trains missionaries who are then sent by their home churches. One of its goals, according to its website, is to “establish mission work among the unreached Indigenous people groups across the world.”

According to a story published by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo in March, Tonkin tried last year to get to the River Itacoaí, one of the Javari’s tributaries.

“He already managed to approach an area of isolated peoples without authorization,” said Marubo. “People who know him say that he believes that the men’s rules don’t apply because (his presence) is God’s will.”

A village of uncontacted Indigenous people in the western Brazilian state of Acre, in 2009. Photo by Gleilson Miranda/Government of Acre/Creative Commons

In an email to RNS, Tonkin said the federal government granted him permission to go “into the reserve” to “help and better the life of the people. The people in the reserve also have every right as a community to invite who they wish to visit their village.”

Saying that he does not “preach or teach a religion of any form,” he describes his mission as an effort to empower “the people by the redemptive power of Christ,” helping “them to discover God’s plan for their life through Jesus Christ.”

Tonkin, who said he has been in the Amazon for 13 years, calls critics of his mission “self-appointed representatives” of the Indigenous peoples who live in the city. “They have learned how the system works, what keywords can bring more funding to line their pockets,” he said.

“They often say they are protecting the Indians’ rights. What about the right to invite who they want to their community? What about the right as a Brazilian to worship God freely?”

Tonkin said his efforts in the Javari Valley are “a spiritual battle against evil and against darkness” and are not about “people and policy.”

Beto Marubo, one of UNIVAJA’s coordinators, dismissed Tonkin’s claim that he is welcomed by residents of the valley. “The only Indigenous persons who don’t oppose their presence are the ones who were catechized by them,” he told RNS.

He explained that previous encounters with the non-Indigenous society often ended in violence, especially during the Amazon rubber boom, which ended in the 1940s and saw many Indigenous people killed in their forests. “Now they’re in the last place they found to be left alone, and these fundamentalists show up to disturb them.”

He said that the missionaries’ teaching, by introducing other ways of thinking about community and even the locals’ cosmology, attacks the society as a whole.

Sydney Possuelo, who created the government’s National Indigenous Foundation’s department of isolated peoples in the 1980s, explained that missionaries often offer gifts, particularly much-needed iron tools. “Attracted by them, the isolated Indigenous peoples agree to listen to preachers. So, you attract them through their fragility, through the technical unbalance between our societies. That’s not exactly a Christian principle,” he told RNS.

Image on the right: Sydney Possuelo, left, meets with a group of Indigenous people in Brazil. Photo courtesy of Sydney Possuelo

“Religious proselytism can have a great impact on their way of living,” Possuelo added. “The Indigenous peoples don’t have a formal religion, with regular services and a supreme god. In general, they celebrate the transformative heroes who taught them to fish, to produce maize and cassava, to sing and dance.”

In the 1990s, as president of the foundation, known as FUNAI, Possuelo stopped missionaries from proselytizing among the then newly contacted Zo’é people. “I suggested they should pursue activities related to health care, education and other needs of the Indigenous peoples, except religious proselytism. But that was what they wanted,” he recalled.

Other Christian groups that have been working with Indigenous groups for decades also say the evangelical missionaries are more interested in conversion than helping the isolated Amazonians.

“The Indigenous peoples’ spirituality should be respected according to the constitution,” said Jandira Keppi, project adviser for the Lutheran Diakonia Foundation, which is dedicated to working with socially vulnerable groups and poor communities. “But the fundamentalists believe they must evangelize them for their salvation. This always meant death for the Indigenous peoples and their history proves it.”

That’s no less true during the current pandemic, according to Keppi, who noted that “their immunity is very low.”

Cleber Buzzato, assistant secretary of the Catholic Church’s Indigenous Missionary Council, agreed that “every possible contact established with isolated peoples should be their initiative and not the outsiders’.”

Beto Marubo believes the Bolsonaro administration supports the missionaries’ activities in the Amazon. “He’s backed by the evangelicals. There’s a plan behind all this: The missionaries get into those territories, dismantle the policy of no contact and then the landowners appear to grab their lands,” he said.

In February, Bolsonaro appointed the evangelical pastor and anthropologist Ricardo Lopes Dias to coordinate FUNAI’s department of isolated Indigenous peoples. Dias worked with the Brazilian New Tribes Mission for several years. “It’s all being orchestrated by the current administration,” Beto Marubo said.

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Featured image: Uncontacted Indigenous people look up at an aircraft in the western Brazilian state of Acre in 2009. Photo by Gleilson Miranda/Government of Acre/Creative Commons

On August 16, the Belarusian Armed Forces announced large-scale military drills near the country’s nuclear plant and in the Grodno region bordering Poland and Lithuania. The drills will take place on August 17-20 and involve rocket and artillery units, air-defense forces and airborne troops. Meanwhile, mechanized and battle tank brigades also hold live-fire exercises. The military added that forces will train to strengthen the country’s western border as part of the drills.

The military exercises served as a visual and powerful confirmation to earlier remarks by the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko about his readiness to defend Belarus from the ‘foreign interference’. Nonetheless, if earlier Lukashenko was widely speculating about unfriendly ‘Russian actions’ in an attempt to gain support of the media-active pro-Western opposition, after the presidential election his position shifted towards the ‘friendship’ with Russia and the repelling of ‘Western interference’. Indeed the main opposition propaganda and coordination center is managed from Poland, but this shift is rather a result of the complicated situation in which Lukashenko found itself rather than the admission of these apparent facts.

Meanwhile, the government also staged a large rally in center of Minsk in support of the acting president. President Lukashenko participated in the pro-government rally claiming that Belarus will cease to exist as a country if the destabilization efforts achieve success. He also warned about NATO troops deployed at Belarus’ border.

“I am kneeling for you, for the first time in my life. You have deserved it!” he said.

“Despite all the difficulties, all its flaws, we’ve built a beautiful country together. Who did you decide to surrender her to? If somebody wants to surrender the country, even when I am dead, I will not allow it.”

Despite the large pro-government rally in Minsk, Lukashenko and his supporters have been losing the media battle to anti-government structures supported from the West. Furthermore, on August 16, state-run channels ONT and STV reported about anti-government protests in an apaprent shift of their coverage. Earlier, pro-opposition sources claimed that at least a part of workers of state-media is going to join the so-called ‘nation-wide’ strike. A large number of workers from state-run plants participate in protests on a regular basis.

Among the main targets of the pro-opposition propganda campaign:

• the Lukashenko government is about to collapse and his political regime will soon fall;
• the dehumanization of Lukashenko (as a cockroach) and servicemembers of law enforcements (as fascists);
• the promotion of the expected support of the so-called ‘international community’ (the US and the EU);
• the promotion of violence again law enforcements (at least at the first stages of the protest; later, when rioters lost clashes to Police, opposition media started claiming that all demonstrations are ‘peaceful’)
• the creation of the image of Belarus as a country with a strong economic basis and genuine ‘democratic values’ that are undermined by Lukashenko. According to them, if Minsk gets rid off Lukashenko and breaks ties with Russia, Belarus will immediately enter the era of wealth and prosperity (like Ukrane apparently);
• the fueling of ‘fears’ of the coming Russian intervention and the seizure of entire Belarus by ‘bloody Russians’. The facts that Belarus is in fact economically, socially and militarily deeply integrated with Russia, a large part of population works in Russia and 100% of the population speaks Russian, are somehow ignored. By the way, Russian troops are officially deployed in Belarus already as a part of the existing military cooperation agreements.

Meanwhile, authorities said that security forces detained 2 persons that exploded an improvised explosive device near the supermarket “Belarus”. No casualties were reported.

As to anti-government demonstrations and actions, they continued increasing on August 16. According to reports, tens of thousands attending a protest in Minsk. The main event took place near a memorial to the fight against Nazi Germany, which is located near a war museum and that has a lot of space around it.

Protests continue with a large-scale support on the international scene with ‘groups of activists’ holding anti-Lukashenko rallies across Europe and mainstream media outlets widely speculating about the fall of the Lukashenko political regime and the upcoming Russian intervention to Belarus. All of these goes fully in the framework of the propaganda campaign described above.

The US and the EU continue pressuring Lukashenko on the international scene. On August 14, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said that the EU had refused to accept Lukashenko’s victory and promised sanctions against Belarusian officials. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said that the election was rigged and threatened Lukashenko with sanctions.

The situation in Belarus, while in the terms of security is still mostly controlled by the Lukashenko circle, is pretty complicated. The propaganda war is about to be lost by Lukashenko, if not already, and supporters of the opposition are much more well-coordinated and have an upper hand in the field of media resources. The strike of large Belarusian plants undermined Lukashenko’s support base among work class. Supporters the president are poorly coordinated and not motivated for a real confrontation with the opposition due to the wide-scale usage of violence by police against peaceful rallies earlier. The aggressive Western-funded succeeded in gaining a wider support of the population (mainly due to mistakes by authorities and the non-proportional use of force) and is now trying to use the protest sentiments to overthrow the Lukashenko government or at least undermine the stability in the country to fuel the social and political instability and further.

At the same time, the harsh determination of Lukashenko to keep power and protect his political regime at any cost seem to be enough to prevent any regime-change attempts through power-based methods. Therefore, if Lukashenko’s “silent majority”, law enforcements and local elites remain loyal to him, he will be able to remain the president. Nonetheless, his chances to organize a controlled transfer of power to the chosen successor have apparently collapsed.

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Yesterday’s hearing in London made clear, if any further proof was needed, that the prosecution of Julian Assange is a shameful and degrading show trial, intended to railroad an innocent man to prison or death for revealing the crimes of US imperialism.

In a botched proceeding, Assange was initially not brought to the video room to join the proceedings, the US prosecutors failed to show up after getting the hearing time wrong, and, with only five observers allowed in the courtroom, every journalist and legal observer who tried to listen to the hearing remotely was not admitted.

Assange, the world’s most famous political prisoner, has been denied access to his attorneys since March, and he has not seen his family or young children since then.

In the most egregious move of all, just two days before the hearing, the US Justice Department, under the right-wing authoritarian ideologue William Barr, issued a completely new indictment against Assange, which the accused had not been able even to read before the hearing.

“The US government seems to want to change the indictment every time the court meets, but without the defense or Julian himself seeing the relevant documents,” said WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Less than 24 hours before the start of the final procedural hearing and less than four weeks before the resumption of the extradition trial, Barr signed a new 33-page request to have Assange sent to the US from the UK.

The superseding indictment, upon which the new extradition request is based, was released on June 24, yet US prosecutors refused to confirm over the course of two hearings, on June 30 and July 28, precisely when it would be introduced into the UK legal proceedings.

The new extradition request was brought after Assange’s legal team had submitted all of their evidence. The defense argued that to proceed on the basis of a new indictment would amount to an abuse of due process. Judge Baraitser refused the defense request, instead allowing them to apply for a postponement of the hearing.

Assange’s legal team is now confronted with the choice of whether to accept the further sabotage of their client’s case or prolong the endangerment of his life with more months in prison.

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic rages through the UK prison system, Assange remains incarcerated in Belmarsh. Medical experts who have examined him report that his health is deteriorating and he could die in prison.

The new indictment expands the scope of what is branded as criminal activity. The charge of “unauthorized disclosure of defense information” formerly accused Assange simply of “publishing [the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs and the State Department Cables] on the internet.” This has now been expanded to include “distributing” the documents, for example, to other media organizations.

Assange associates Sarah Harrison, Jacob Applebaum and one-time WikiLeaks employee Daniel Domscheit-Berg are now also targeted as “co-conspirators.” Efforts to help a persecuted whistleblower (Edward Snowden) gain asylum and even to speak in defense of his actions are criminalized, as are the most general statements in support of government transparency.

These details make it clear that while Julian Assange has been isolated in prison and unable to meet with his lawyers, the US government has been building its extradition case and expanding the scope of its vendetta against all those who have helped WikiLeaks bring the truth to the people of the world.

Julian Assange, who faces 175 years in federal prison for exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan that claimed tens of thousands of lives, is being persecuted as part of an international drive by the ruling elite to criminalize whistleblowers, journalists and political dissent.

The state conspiracy against Julian Assange is the spearhead of a sustained offensive against democratic rights targeting the working class. Assange’s crime in the eyes of his persecutors is his exposure of imperialist war crimes and diplomatic intrigues that galvanized mass oppositional sentiment around the world.

The new indictment was drawn up by Barr, who six days earlier appeared on Fox News to denounce a broad swathe of Trump’s political opponents as “revolutionaries” and “Bolsheviks” intent on “tearing down the system.” Barr gives voice to the real scope of Trump’s plans to impose a presidential dictatorship.

These developments are a searing indictment of all those political forces who either maintained silence or supported Assange’s persecution. This includes the Democratic Party in the United States, which has spearheaded the attack on WikiLeaks as part of its neo-McCarthyite anti-Russia campaign. The Democratic candidates in the 2020 elections, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have both been enthusiastic participants in this reactionary and antidemocratic vendetta.

As for the liberal media, led by the Guardian and the New York Times, it has thrown Assange to the wolves. It is significant that not a single major news organization in the US even bothered to report the hearing yesterday. Neither did any of the pseudoleft publications, such as the Nation or Jacobinmagazine, report the assault on fundamental rights taking place in the London courtroom.

Predictably, the self-styled socialists Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have all said nothing about yesterday’s pseudolegal travesty.

Political responsibility for the ability of the Trump administration in the US and the Johnson government in the UK to proceed with their joint effort to silence Assange rests with the entire pseudoleft fraternity, who lined up against Assange, recycling the smears and lies of the State Department, Pentagon and CIA over frame-up Swedish allegations, “failure to redact” and other lies.

Those in the official campaign around WikiLeaks who seek to channel the defense of Assange behind appeals to the British Labor “lefts,” trade union bureaucrats and Assange’s chief persecutor, the Democratic Party in the United States, are perpetrating a political fraud that prevents a genuine movement for Assange’s freedom.

The World Socialist Web Site renews the call for the international working class to come to the defense of Julian Assange. The working class must make clear the fundamental link between Assange’s persecution, the defense of democratic rights and the struggle against the capitalist system, which is plunging the world into war and barbarism.

The fight to free Assange is inseparable from the mobilization of a mass political movement in the struggle for socialism against imperialist war, social inequality and the lurch to dictatorial forms of rule.

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A perfect storm affects Lebanon and vast majority of its near-seven million people, including:

Out-of-control rampant corruption.

Unemployment of a third or more of working-age Lebanese.

Poverty exceeding 50% of the population.

Over 80% inflation since last October, debasing the Lebanese pound.

Based on its debt-to-GDP ratio, Lebanon is the world’s third highest indebted country, according to the IMF, a nation unable to repay its creditors.

The draconian US Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act that aims to starve the country’s population into submission greatly harms Lebanon’s economy and people.

So does US war on Syria in its 9th year with no resolution in prospect.

The risk of total economic collapse haunts Lebanon.

The misfortune of bordering Israel compounds its woes further.

According to Consultancy Middle East, the country’s central bank lost its monetary ability to manage the economy.

Before the massive August 4  blast that destroyed Beirut’s port and heavily damaged surrounding areas, killing hundreds, wounding thousands, and displacing 300,000 people, Lebanon was experiencing economic and financial meltdown.

Once called “the Paris of the Middle East,” a fusion of East and West, a hub of modernity, art, fashion, and culture, much of Beirut was heavily damaged by the cataclysmic blast — with little ability to rebuild without large-scale financial help from abroad.

According to Beirut-based InfoProResearch, a local economic consulting firm, in the 17-month period from January 2019 through May 2020, around one-fifth of Lebanese companies suspended operations or shut down entirely.

The number is likely much higher in the aftermath of the August 4 blast.

The Beirut metro area is home to around 2.2 million of Lebanon’s 6.8 million population.

According to the Wall Street Journal last week, the Trump regime intends imposing maximum pressure on Lebanon by “sanction(ing) (targeted)  politicians and businessmen” in an effort to weaken Hezbollah’s influence.

When the nation and its people are on their knees in desperate need of help, US hardliners — likely in cahoots with NATO and Israel — intend rubbing salt in the wounds of the state, its enterprises and people to increase mass deprivation and suffering.

The Journal said Trump regime actions on Lebanon will target its “leaders aligned with Hezbollah.”

Its democratically elected officials are part of the Lebanese government.

Its leadership threatens no one except in response if preemptively attacked — self-defense a UN Charter right applying to all nations.

The Journal added that the Trump regime “see(s) an opportunity to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and its allies as part of a broader effort to contain the Shiite force backed by Tehran.”

Iran backs all nations that observe the rule of law in support of world peace and stability, polar opposite how the US, NATO and Israel operate.

The Journal got things backwards, claiming “Hezbollah…is the region’s most potent threat to Israel (sic).”

Along with the US, Israel is the “most potent threat to” regional peace and stability.

In saying Trump uses sanctions “as a central tool in his ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran” and other countries, the Journal failed to explain that only Security Council members may legally impose them — not individual countries against others.

An unnamed Trump regime official told the Journal that it intends to “take advantage of the (desperate) situation (in Lebanon) to shake things up” in the country.

It wants Hezbollah’s influence weakened at a time of severe economic and financial hardships for the nation, its institutions and people.

Hezbollah is a popular resistance force to be reckoned with against US/NATO/Israeli imperial aims in the region — including against ISIS, al-Qaeda and likeminded terrorists they use as proxy fighters.

The US, Israel, and their imperial allies want sovereign independent regional governments replaced by pro-Western puppet rule.

Their strategy includes maximum pressure to cause maximum pain and suffering for people in targeted countries.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah correctly called US  regional sanctions “economic war” on Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

Ongoing endlessly, the Trump regime intends squeezing Lebanon harder.

Maybe its hardliners have more regional war in mind, perhaps an October surprise ahead of US November 3 elections.

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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.

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There are no official policing authorities as such when it comes to international relations.  Realists imagine a jungle of states, the preyed upon and the predators, a grim state of affairs moderated by alliances, agreements and understandings. But there is one body whose resolutions are recognised as having binding force: the Security Council, that most powerful of creatures in that jumble known as the United Nations.

To convince the permanent five on the Security Council to reach agreement is no easy feat.  There are the occasional humiliations in the failure to get resolutions passed, but whether it be the US, Russia, China, France or the UK, wise heads tend to prevail.  Best put forth resolutions with at least some chance of garnering support.  Rejection will be hard to take.

On August 14, a degree of humiliation was heaped upon the US delegation.  Washington seemed to have read the situation through fogged goggles, assuming that it would get the nine votes needed to extend arms restrictions on Iran due to expire in October under Resolution 2231.  Of the 15 members, only two – the United States and Dominican Republic – felt the need to vote for it.  Russia and China strongly opposed it; the rest were abstentions.  Previous warnings that any such quixotic effort was bound to fail had been ignored.

The body most shown up in all of this was the US State Department and, it followed, its indignant chief Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

“The UN Security Council failed today to hold Iran accountable,” he raged on Twitter.  “It enabled the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism to buy and sell deadly weapons and ignored the demands of countries in the Middle East.  America will continue to work to correct this mistake.” 

He also called the position taken by Britain and France “unfortunate”, as it had only been the US view to “keep the same rules that have been in place since 2007.”

US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, took it personally, giving the impression that she saw it coming in the diplomatic tangle. 

“The United States is sickened but not surprised by the outcome of today’s UNSC vote.  The Council’s failure to extend the Iran’s arm embargo is a devastating blow to the Council’s credibility.”

She also promised that the US would “not abandon the region to Iranian terror and intimidation, and when we look for partners in that effort, we will look beyond the UN Security Council.”

The humiliation gave Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi much room to gloat. 

“In the 75 years of United Nations history, America has never been so isolated,” he confidently asserted.  “Despite all the trips, pressure, and the hawking, the United States could only mobilize a small country [to vote] with them.”

There was much that sat oddly in this enterprise.  It showed a US effort strongly driven by the anti-Iranian Middle East coven of Arab Gulf states, along with Israel.  That said, the position amongst those states is not uniform either.  In the words of Mutlaq bin Majid Al-Qahtani, special envoy of the Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs for Combating Terrorism and Mediation in Settlement of Disputes,

“Iran is a neighbouring country with which we have good neighbourly relations, and it has a position that we value in the State of Qatar, the government and the people, especially during the unjust blockade on Qatar.”

Absurdly, Pompeo has promised to see how the US might rely on a provision in the nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action it unilaterally left in 2018, which permits a “snapback”.  Triggering it would entail a return to the full complement of UN sanctions against Iran.  This novel take was also given an airing by Craft.  “Under Resolution 2231, the United States has every right to initiate snapback of provisions of previous Security Council resolutions.” 

In April, Reuters noted the view of a European diplomat that it was “very difficult to present yourself as a compliance watcher of a resolution you decided to pull out of.  Either you’re in or either you’re out.”  Samuel M. Hickey from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation also warned in May that invoking the snapback provision, especially by a non-party, “would not only underscore US isolation on the global stage, it might also undermine the effectiveness of the UNSC by creating a dispute over the validity of a UNSC resolution.”  Russia and China expressed similar readings: it was a bit rich to trigger provisions in an agreement so publicly repudiated.

Iran, in turn, huffed at the very idea of a snapback through its UN ambassador Majid Takht-Ravanchi.

“Imposition of any sanctions or restrictions on Iran by the Security Council will be met severely by Iran and our options are not limited.”

This entire act of gross miscalculation did its fair share of harm, though not in the sense understood by Pompeo and his officials.  It spoke to a clumsy unilateralism masquerading as credible support; to great power obstinacy misguided in attaining a goal.  It was not the UN Security Council that had failed, but the US that had failed it, an effort that many at the UN are reading as directed at torching the remnants of the Iran nuclear deal.  The assessment of the US effort by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was sharp and relevant. 

“You got the Dominican Republic on board (how much did that cost the US taxpayer?)  Not a single other nation voted with you!  The shining city on the hill has been reduced to a glow, like the embers of a dying fire.”

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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]

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In order for us to be on the same wavelength, I have to define that word. Conspiracy Theorist: An advocate of Conspiracy theory.

It’s like saying, racist: defender of a theory of racism. We don’t get very far with that. A synonym is conspiracy theorist.

What is a conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorist? One thing’s for sure, these words are pejorative, bad. Nobody likes this label: “conspiracy theorist”, “conspiracy theory”.

Since September 11, 2001, this ancient word [1] has been used to disqualify anyone who makes statements which go against the official narrative.

Let’s analyze this sentence because every word is important.

By official, many mean governmental.

That’s not quite right.

If you say that Donald Trump, who is the “official” president and elected head of the U.S. government, is full of BS, who has used the support of the Russians to get elected [2] or that he wants to cancel the next U.S. elections [3], i.e. which constitute conspiracy theories against Trump,  Western journalists in chorus will applaud. They won’t call you a conspiracy theorist even if, according to the definition, that’s what you have being doing.

In the case of COVID-19 in 2020, if you say that all the doctors (and there are not two, ten or a hundred, but thousands around the world) who say that hydroxychloroquine is a cure to COVID-19 and that these crazy doctors have escaped from a lunatic asylum [4], once again the journalists will congratulate you. In any case, even without proof of what you say, no one will call you a conspiracy theorist.

Yet, it is a conspiracy theory and it is directed against qualified doctors.

By doing so, you are accusing doctors [5], some of whom work at the University or in recognized hospitals for decades, such as Professor Harvey Risch [6] of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Professor Didier Raoult, Director of the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection in Marseille, and Dr Christian Perronne [7], a professor of French university hospital practitioners, specialized in the field of tropical pathologies and emerging infectious diseases and former president of the specialized commission “Communicable Diseases” of the High Council of Public Health, in addition to many less known but equally reliable and serious doctors, family doctors, field doctors, general practitioners or specialists [8 to 13].

You are a real “conspiracy theorist” if you think that all these highly qualified doctors are lying or want to manipulate you, Yet, no one will treat you like that.

The truth is that you will be labeled a “conspiracy theorist” if and only if you say things against the official narrative or official consensus, which is sustained and acknowledged by:

1. international institutions (World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Forum, United Nations, European Commission, European Medicines Agency…).
2. By national relays who report to these international institutions in all important fields, health, medical, educational, media, economic… [14].

All this forms a coherent, transnational, supranational system (a consensus), driven by common goals and using a precise and studied language.

It must be understood that this system is independent of politicians and survives electoral changes. It perpetuates itself, whatever happens, not through a president, a particular person, but through these institutions that go through all the scandals [15 to 18] and all the attacks without taking a scratch.

Who runs this system?

I won’t answer here first because this is another task which deserves a full report and second, because many researchers have already successfully identified this topic [19 to 22].

Therefore, being a president, head of government, a medical graduate and representing a valid and serious authority is not enough to protect you from being challenged on the grounds that the challenger is a conspirator.

No.

To benefit from this protection, you must belong to the system, speak its language and pursue its goals.

Thus, Anthony Fauci, with his criticizable and contradictory remarks [23], will never be called a conspirator.

Professor Harvey Risch will.

Thus, newspapers that claim that Remdesivir (produced by Big Pharma) is effective in treating COVID-19, contrary to hydroxychloroquine, will never be called conspiracy theorists.

Those who say otherwise, with studies and doctors to back them up, yes.

The problem is that Trump said he was in favour of hydroxychloroquine as well, and he is discredited each time he says it.

It is said that Remdesivir proved its effectiveness against Covid-19, in a Belgian newspaper of August 11, 2020 [24].

Words are important.

The word “proven“, in this case, is false.

But who will notice it, if you are neither a doctor nor aware of the studies in question?

In the meantime, a lie is taken for granted, it becomes a truth.

A single treatment with Remdesivir will bring Gilead Science Inc. $2,500 per patient [25].

In contrast, Hydroxychloroquine, nothing or almost nothing. It is a very inexpensive drug.

The terms “conspiracy” or “conspiracy theory” have nothing to do with truth or credibility, they have to do with conformity to dominant ideas, dictated by the system that relentlessly pursues its goals.

Another important word is “theory“. Conspiracy theories.

This implies ramblings without foundation, without evidence.

Yet many claims labeled “conspiracy theories” are not theoretical.

It is rare to have formal proof at the time of the claim. It may be the result of research, reflections or presumptions.

In forensic medicine or criminal science, you will not always have irrefutable evidence but a set of solid presumptions (motive, indirect and coherent facts) that is sufficient to convict an accused person, according to the law.

Consider the “conspiracy theory” that the pharmaceutical industry is pushing to discredit hydroxychloroquine in favour of its expensive products, antivirals such as Remdesivir or vaccines.

It would be nice to have irrefutable proof of this, but I can’t see an industry leader writing such an admission and then leaving it lying around to fall into the hands of an honest journalist. That would be really suicidal, don’t you think? And in any case, we would discredit that executive, or that journalist, until their words become worthless.

However, as we would do in any police investigation, is there a strong circumstantial body of evidence?

1) Does this industry have a motive?

Yes.

This industry has a famous motive for doing this: money.

It’s not thousands or hundreds of thousands of euros that would push a lot of people to commit murder, but billions of euros [26-27].

2) Does this industry have the means to do this?

Yes.

We know it thanks to the testimony of people from inside, like John Virapen, former CEO of Eli Lilly & Company in Sweden [28], or former editors of major medical journals like Marcia Angell [29] (New England Journal of Medicine) or Richard Horton [30] (Lancet).

3) Has the industry ever done it?

Yes.

There are proven cases that illustrate the corruption of doctors by the pharmaceutical industry, such as the case of anaesthetist Scott Reuben who falsified data concerning the efficacy of the antidepressant Effexor (venlafaxine), produced by Wyeth (merged with Pfizer) in neuropathic and postoperative pain [31].

This is just one example [32]. More recently, you have the Lancet-Gate: “Scientific Corona Lies” and Big Pharma Corruption 

Even when the evidence is there, have you ever seen a journalist who accused someone of being a “conspiracy theorist” make his mea culpa, apologize for his misunderstanding and restore the reputation of the “theorist” in question? And above all, restore the truth?

For just one example, I will take the story of the Kuwaiti babies torn from their incubator and thrown to the ground by Iraqi soldiers to justify the American intervention in Iraq in 1990. President George H. Bush senior used it on several occasions in several inflammatory speeches.

It was a lie [33]. We know that.

Yet anyone who would have known or understood this, and said so at the time, would have been called a “conspiracy theorist” in collusion with Saddam Hussein.

For the record, and to show you that these techniques did not stop in 1991 or after the proof of this lie, the dishonest PR firm behind this Kuwaiti babies myth is the same firm that in 2020 helped the World Health Organization (WHO) to make the World Health Organization (WHO) believe in the COVID-19 pandemic and to enforce its diktats: the firm Hill & Knowlton [34].

So, what does this mean, conspiracy, and who is really a conspirator?

We can see that it means nothing.

It’s a pejorative, bad label, which will not be given to you if you lie, or if you criticize a person or a government that justly disturbs the system.

It will be given to you if what you say, even if it is true, plausible, proven, goes against the authorized discourse of the system.

Check it out for yourself.

Criticize the doctors who defend the use of hydroxychloroquine in VIDOC-19, and you won’t be charged with conspiracy.

You will be listened to, approved.

Criticize Anthony Fauci or the national security councils regarding Covid-19, then yes, you will be accused of conspiracy, indeed of all evils.

Very often it has nothing to do with theories.

The facts that are put forward are sometimes proven, very often supported by many solid and plausible arguments.

Words are very important. Do not underestimate their importance. They direct our thoughts.

I know this as a doctor, but I also know it as a passionate advocate of therapeutic communication.

Like the very first doctors of the Antiquity, I know that words can heal.

They can also make people docile or sick.

The words “conspiracy theorist”, “conspiracy theorist”, “conspiracy theorist” only serve to cut short any debate.

Only to have the person the dominant system wants to discredit rejected, so that person is no longer listened to.

That is what is dangerous, not “conspiracy theories”.

What is really dangerous is to not even want to debate and to exclude ideas, people and opinions on the pretext that they are disturbing.

That is what sows the seeds of a totalitarian society; not conspiracy theories.

It is by refusing any debate, any discussion and by brandishing this kind of disqualifying expression that threatens humanity.

Dr Pascal Sacré

Featured Image: pixabay.com

Translation from French by Maya for Global Research

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Notes :

[1] Théorie du complot, Wikipédia

[2] Ingérence : comment la Russie a biaisé la campagne de 2016 au profit de Trump

[3] Comment Trump pourrait saboter l’élection pour la remporter

[4] Hydroxychloroquine: Goliath contre David, acte I : les détracteurs

[5] Covid-19 – Hydroxychloroquine, David contre Goliath, acte II : les supporteurs

[6] L’hydroxychloroquine agit chez les patients à haut risque, et dire le contraire est dangereux, Harvey Risch M.D., Ph.D., professeur d’épidémiologie à la Yale School of Public Health.

[7] Christian Perronne : “À Garches, nous avons de bons résultats avec l’hydroxychloroquine”,  April 15, 2020, Fervent defender of the treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, for Pr Christian Perronne the question of its effectiveness no longer arises. Head of the Infectious Diseases Department at the Raymond-Poincaré Hospital in Garches, he has seen it every day since the beginning of the epidemic: Professor Raoult’s treatment cures and considerably reduces the need for intensive care.

[8] Riposte à la covid-19 : la saine colère du Dr BELLATON, Source : page Facebook de Silviane Le Menn, 20 avril 2020.

[9] Coronavirus : le bilan très positif d’un praticien lorrain qui prescrit l’hydroxychloroquine, the Lorrain Republican, Philippe Marque, April 6, 2020. The results are more than positive: “I have used this protocol on a dozen hospitalized patients, who therefore have a Covid-19 that is already relatively worrying, and I have had neither death nor any evolution towards a serious stage requiring resuscitation.”

[10] Un médecin mosellan constate l’efficacité d’un protocole à base d’azithromycine,  the Lorrain Republican, Thierry Fedrigo, April 11, 2020. Two Moselle doctors and one of their Belgian colleagues seem to have developed a drug combination effective against coronavirus. Relying on azithromycin without resorting to the hydroxychloroquine advocated by the infectiologist Didier Raoult, they have noted a clear drop in hospitalizations of their treated patients.

[11] Un médecin néerlandais soigne les patients atteints de coronavirus, mais le gouvernement néerlandais n’est pas content, Amari Roos, 10 avril 2020

[12] Des médecins algériens attestent de l’«efficacité quasi totale» de l’hydroxychloroquine contre le Covid-19,April 27, 2020. The heads of infectious disease departments of a hospital in Blida and another in Algiers say that the hydroxychloroquine protocol followed in the treatment of patients with coronavirus gives a “near-total” positive result.

[13] Après l’Algérie, le Maroc encense l’efficacité de l’hydroxychloroquine contre le Covid-19, May 1, 2020. The therapeutic protocol based on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin used against Covid-19 “has given positive results” in Morocco, the Health Minister said, adding that “side effects are minimal”.

[14] Ordres nationaux tels que l’Ordre des Médecins, l’Ordre des Pharmaciens, Hautes Autorités de Santé, Sciensano en Belgique…

[15] Agence européenne du médicament : des experts sous influence ?, 12 décembre 2017.

[16] Covid-19: les conseillers du pouvoir face aux conflits d’intérêts, paru le 31mars 2020, écrit par Rozenn Le Saint et Annton Rouget.

[17] Coronavirus : des liens troubles entre labos et conseils scientifiques, Valeurs actuelles, 3 avril 2020.

[18] L’Assemblée parlementaire du Conseil de l’Europe va enquêter sur l’OMS et le scandale « pandémique », Mondialisation.ca,  F. William Engdahl, 6 janvier 2010

[19] Anthony C Sutton: British economist, historian and writer. Sutton was a Stanford scholar at the Hoover Foundation from 1968 to 1973. He taught economics at UCLA. He studied in London, Göttingen and UCLA and received a PhD in science from the University of Southampton, England. In 1972, at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, he was awarded a Ph.D : Wall Street et l’ascension de Hitler , Wall Street et la révolution bolchévique

[20] Carroll Quigley: American historian and professor of history at Georgetown University from 1941 to 1976. Quigley was born in Boston, where he later studied and earned two degrees and a doctorate in history from nearby and highly regarded Harvard University. At Georgetown University: Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

[21] Pierre Hillard :  essayiste français, docteur en science politique : La marche irrésistible du nouvel ordre mondial , Chroniques du mondialisme

[22]  Michael Parenti, American historian, political scientist and cultural critic. He has taught in American and foreign universities. A must read: L’Horreur impériale

[23] Lancet-Gate: « Mensonges scientifiques sur le coronavirus » et corruption des grandes sociétés pharmaceutiques., Mondialisation.ca, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, 15 July 2020. Dr Anthony Fauci, Donald Trump’s adviser, described as “America’s top infectious disease expert”, played a key role in smearing the HCQ cure that had been approved years earlier by the CDC, as well as in legitimizing Gilead’s Remdesivir.

[24] Le remdesivir, médicament qui a prouvé son efficacité face au Covid-19, 11 août 2020.

[25] Le traitement au remdesivir coûtera 2.340 dollars, selon Gilead, 29 juin 2020

[26] COVID-19 : au plus près de la vérité. Vaccins., Mondialisation.ca, Dr Pascal Sacré, 2 août 2020

[27] COVID-19: au plus près de la vérité – Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), Mondialisation.ca, Dr Pascal Sacré, 29 juillet 2020

[28] Médicaments effets secondaires : la mort, les laboratoires nous trompent. John Virapen, le cherche midi éditions, 2014

[29] The truth about drug companies, how they cheat us, how to thwart them, Marcia Angell, MD, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, French translation, les éditions le mieux-être, 2005.

[30] COVID-19 : le côté obscur de la science révélé, Mondialisation.ca, Dr Pascal Sacré, 26 mai 2020

[31] Top Pain Scientist Fabricated Data in Studies, Hospital Says, 11 Mars 2009

[32] Du Nujol au Tamiflu : la guerre menée par l’industrie pharmaceutique contre nos santés, Mondialisation.ca, Dr Pascal Sacré, 16 juin 2010

[33] l’affaire des Couveuses de la Mort et le début de la Guerre du Golfe

[34] COVID 19 – Contrat de l’OMS avec la société de relations publiques Hill & Knowlton

It usually makes sense to follow the money when seeking understanding of almost any major change. The strategy of following the money in our current convergence of crises in late summer of 2020 leads us directly to the lockdowns. The lockdowns were first imposed on people in the Wuhan area of China. Then other populations throughout the world were told to “shelter in place,” all in the name of combating the COVID-19 virus.

Understanding of the enormous impact of the lockdowns is still developing. The lockdowns are proving to pack a far more devastating punch than any other aspect of the strange sequence of events that is making 2020 a year like no other. Even when the issues are narrowed to those of human health, the lockdowns have had, and will continue to have, far more wide-ranging and devastating impacts than the celebrity virus.

The lockdowns have, for starters, been directly responsible for explosive rates of suicide, domestic violence, overdoses, and depression. In the long run, these maladies from the lockdowns will probably kill and harm many more people than COVID-19.

But this comparison does not tell the full story. The nature and length of the lockdowns are causing millions of people to lose their jobs, businesses and financial viability. It seems that the economic descent is still gathering force. The assault of the lockdowns on our economic wellbeing still has much farther to go.

The lockdowns have proven to be a powerful instrument of social control. This attribute is becoming very attractive especially to some politicians. They have discovered they can derive considerable political traction from hyping and exploiting the largely manufactured pandemic panic.

The lockdowns are still a work-in-progress. There are past lockdowns, revolving lockdowns, partial lockdowns, mandatory lockdowns, voluntary lockdowns, severe lockdowns and probably an array of many lockdown types yet to be invented.

The lockdowns extend to disruptions in supply chains, disruptions in money flows, drops in consumption, breakdowns in transport and travelling, increased bankruptcies, losses of finance leading to losses of housing, as well as the inability to pay taxes and debts.

The lockdowns extend beyond personal habitations to prohibitions on large assemblies of people in stadiums, concert halls, churches, and a myriad of places devoted to public recreation and entertainment. On the basis of this way of looking at what is happening, it becomes clear the economic and health effects of the lockdowns are far more pronounced than the damage wrought directly by the new coronavirus.

This approach to following the money leads to the question of whether the spread of COVID-19 was set in motion as a pretext. Was COVID-19 unleashed as an expedient for bringing about the lockdowns with the goal of crashing the existing economy? What rationale could there possibly be for purposely crashing the existing economy?

One possible reason might have been to put in place new structures to create the framework for a new set of economic relationships. And these changes would come accompanying sets of altered social and political relationships.

Among the economic changes being sought are the robotization of almost everything, cashless financial interactions, and elaborate AI (Artificial Intelligence) impositions. These AI impositions extend to digital alterations of human consciousness and behavior. The emphasis being placed on vaccines is very much interwoven with plans to extend AI into an altered matrix of human nanobiotechnology.

There are other possibilities to consider. One is that in the autumn of 2019 the economy was already starting to falter. Fortuitously for some, the new virus came along at a moment when it could be exploited as a scapegoat. By placing responsibility for the economic debacle on pathogens rather than people, Wall Street bankers and federal authorities are let off the hook. They can escape any accounting for an economic calamity that they had a hand in helping to instigate.

A presentation in August of 2019 by the Wall Street leviathan, BlackRock Financial Management, provides a telling indicator of foreknowledge. It was well understood by many insiders in 2019 that a sharp economic downturn was imminent.

At a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole Wyoming, BlackRock representatives delivered a strategy for dealing with the future downturn. Several months later during the spring of 2020 this strategy was adopted by both the US Treasury and the US Federal Reserve. BlackRock’s plan from August of 2019 set the basis of the federal response to the much-anticipated economic meltdown.

Much of this essay is devoted to considering the background of the controversial agencies now responding to the economic devastation created by the lockdowns. One of these agencies is empowered to bring into existence large quantities of debt-laden money.

The very public role in 2020 of the Federal Reserve of the United States resuscitates many old grievances. When the Federal Reserve was first created in 1913 it was heavily criticized as a giveaway of federal authority.

The critics lamented the giveaway to private bankers whose firms acquired ownership of all twelve of the regional banks that together constitute the Federal Reserve. Of these twelve regional banks, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is by far the largest and most dominant especially right now.

The Federal Reserve of the United States combined forces with dozens of other privately-owned central banks thoughout the world to form the Bank of International Settlements. Many of the key archetypes for this type of banking were developed in Europe and the City of London where the Rothschild banking family had a large and resilient role, one that persists until this day.

Along with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, BlackRock was deeply involved in helping to administer the bailout in 2008. This bailout resuscitated many failing Wall Street firms together with their counterparties in a number of speculative ventures involving various forms of derivatives.

The bailouts resulted in payments of $29 trillion, much of it going to restore failing financial institutions whose excesses actually caused the giant economic crash. Where the financial sector profited greatly from the bailouts, taxpayers were abused yet again. The burden of an expanded national debt fell ultimately on taxpayers who must pay the interest on the loans for the federal bailout of the “too big to fail” financial institutions.

Unsettling precedents are set by the Wall Street club’s manipulation of the economic crash of 2007-2010 to enrich its own members so extravagantly. This prior experience bodes poorly for the intervention by the same players in this current round of responses to the economic crisis of 2020.

In preparing this essay I have enjoyed the many articles by Pam Martens and Russ Martens in Wall Street on Parade. These hundreds of well-researched articles form a significant primary source on the recent history of the Federal Reserve, including over the last few months.

In this essay I draw a contrast between the privately-owned regional banks of the Federal Reserve and the government-owned Bank of Canada that once issued low-interest loans to build infrastructure projects.

With this arrangement in place, Canada went through a major period of national growth between 1938 and 1974. Canada emerged from this period with a national debt of only $20 billion. Then in 1974 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau dropped this arrangement to enable Canada to join the Bank of International Settlements. One result is that national debt rose to $700 billion by 2020.

We need to face the current financial crisis by developing new institutions that avoid the pitfalls of old remedies for old problems that no longer prevail. We need to make special efforts to change our approach to the problem of excessive debts and the overconcentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Locking Down the Viability of Commerce

Of all the facets of the ongoing fiasco generally associated with the coronavirus crisis, none has been so widely catastrophic as the so-called “lockdowns.” The supposed cure of the lockdowns is itself proving to be much more lethal and debilitating than COVID-19’s flu-like impact on human health.

Many questions arise from the immense economic consequences attributed to the initial effort to “flatten the curve” of the hospital treatments for COVID-19. Did the financial crisis occur as a result of the spread of the new coronavirus crisis? Or was the COVID-19 crisis set in motion to help give cover to a long-building economic meltdown that was already well underway in the autumn of 2019?

The lockdowns were first instituted in Wuhan China with the objective of slowing down the spread of the virus so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed. Were the Chinese lockdowns engineered in part to create a model to be followed in Europe, North America, Indochina and other sites of infection like India and Australia? The Chinese lockdowns in Hubei province and then in other parts of China apparently set an example influencing the decision of governments in many jurisdictions. Was this Chinese example for the rest of the world created by design to influence the nature of international responses?

The lockdowns represented a new form of response to a public health crisis. Quarantines have long been used as a means of safeguarding the public from the spread of contagious maladies. Quarantines, however, involve isolating the sick to protect the well. On the other hand the lockdowns are directed at limiting the movement and circulation of almost everyone whether or not they show symptoms of any infections.

Hence lockdowns, or, more euphemistically “sheltering in place,” led to the cancellation of many activities and to the shutdown of institutions. The results extended, for instance, to the closure of schools, sports events, theatrical presentations and business operations. In this way the lockdowns also led to the crippling of many forms of economic interaction. National economies as well as international trade and commerce were severely impacted.

The concept of lockdowns was not universally embraced and applied. For instance, the governments of Sweden and South Korea did not accept the emerging orthodoxy about enforcing compliance with all kinds of restrictions on human interactions. Alternatively, the government of Israel was an early and strident enforcer of very severe lockdown policies.

At first it seemed the lockdown succeeded magnificently in saving Israeli lives. According to Israel Shamir, in other European states the Israeli model was often brought up as an example. In due course, however, the full extent of the assault on the viability of the Israeli economy began to come into focus. Then popular resistance was aroused to reject government attempts to enforce a second wave of lockdowns against a second wave of supposed infections. As Shamir sees it, the result is that “Today Israel is a failed state with a ruined economy and unhappy citizens.” (See this)

In many countries the lockdowns began with a few crucial decisions made at the highest level of government. Large and proliferating consequences would flow from the initial determination of what activities, businesses, organizations, institutions and workers were to be designated as “essential.”

The consequences would be severe for those individuals and businesses excluded from the designation identifying what is essential. This deep intervention into the realm of free choice in market relations set a major precedent for much more intervention of a similar nature to come.

The arbitrary division of activities into essential and nonessential categories created a template to be frequently replicated and revised in the name of serving public heath. Suddenly central planning took a great leap forward. The momentum from a generation of neoliberalism was checked even as the antagonistic polarities between rich and poor continued to grow.

To be defined as “nonessential” would soon be equated with job losses and business failures across many fields of enterprise as the first wave of lockdowns outside China unfolded. Indeed, it becomes clearer every day that revolving lockdowns, restrictions and social distancing are being managed in order to help give false justification to a speciously idealized vaccine fix as the only conclusive solution to a manufactured problem.

What must it have meant for breadwinners who fed themselves and their families through wages or self-employment to be declared by government to be “non-essential”? Surely for real providers their jobs, their businesses and their earnings were essential for themselves and their dependents. All jobs and all businesses that people depend on for livelihoods, sustenance and survival are essential in their own way.

Read Part II forthcoming

Prof. Anthony James Hall is Editor In Chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is Professor emeritus of Globalization Studies and Liberal Education at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta.  The focus of Dr. Hall’s teaching, research, and community service came to highlight the conditions of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in imperial globalization since 1492.

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Time and again, the CIA, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), and USAID have been involved in US schemes to replace independent governments with pro-Western puppet ones.

Tactics include violent and non-violent labor strikes, mass street protests, major media propaganda, and whatever else it takes to achieve Washington’s aims — at times succeeding, other times failing.

In late 2013, early 2014, the Obama regime successfully replaced Ukraine’s democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych with pro-Western putschist rule — a fascist dictatorship in Europe’s heartland, targeting Russia.

For months in Hong Kong last year and sporadically in 2020,  Trump regime orchestrated violence, vandalism and chaos failed to achieve its aims that were all about weakening China by attacking its soft underbelly.

Tactics employed by the US in Ukraine, Hong Kong, and elsewhere were first used against Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

What appeared to be a spontaneous political uprising was developed by RAND Corporation strategists in the 1990s — the concept of swarming.

It replicates “communication patterns and movement of” bees and other insects used against nations to destabilize and topple their governments.

The CIA and other anti-democratic US organizations are involved.

Their mission is all about achieving what the Pentagon calls “full spectrum dominance,” seeking control over planet earth, its resources, populations, and outer space.

Swarming and related actions are war by other means, including by use of information and communications technologies, along with social media.

Cyberwar today is what blitzkrieg was to 20th century warfare.

Swarming is a way to strike from all directions in an overwhelming fashion similar to an all-out military attack.

Is this what’s been going on in Belarus for months, especially since the August 9 presidential election.

Longtime incumbent Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory by more an 80% majority over key opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Now in Lithuania, she cried foul, claiming she won. He lost.

Disruptive actions against Lukashenko have been ongoing since last spring, dubbed a “slipper revolution” by Belarusian Belsat TV in May.

Like Ukraine, Belarus borders Russia, why Washington aims to transform it into a client state.

On Saturday, Lukashenko said he’s being target by a “color revolution” attempt to remove him from power he’s had as president since 1994.

Reportedly he said “(w)e have read the guidelines on how to conduct color revolutions,” adding that’s what happening in Belarus suggests that Russia is next if not effectively countered.

Late Saturday, he and Putin spoke by phone, a Kremlin readout saying:

Lukashenko initiated the call. He “informed Vladimir Putin about the developments following the presidential election in Belarus.”

“Both sides expressed confidence that all existing problems will be settled soon.”

“The main thing is to prevent destructive forces from using these problems to cause damage to mutually beneficial relations of the two countries within the Union State.”

In 1995, both countries agreed on this arrangement that lets their citizens work and/or live in either nation at their discretion — while retaining their passports and national identity.

A bilateral 1999 treaty calls for economic integration and mutual cooperation to defend both nations from foreign threats — with the intent of integrating Belarus with Russia.

So far, it hasn’t happened because Lukashenko’s power would be subordinated to Moscow.

Is now the time to accept where he hasn’t gone before because of concern about a fate similar to Ukraine’s Yanukovych?

Public anger is fueled by Belarusians wanting change, his dubious one-sided reelection margin, and police state tactics against street protesters, including thousands of arrests and reported mistreatment in detention.

Opposition elements demand he step down. Mass protests continued over the weekend, including many thousands in Minsk, the nation’s capital.

Lukashenko said he ordered the deployment of an air assault brigade to border areas in response to US-led NATO military exercises in bordering Poland and Lithuania.

Belarus “cannot calmly observe this” and do nothing, he reportedly said, adding that Putin offered to help protect the country’s security.

Now is the time for integration into Russia, perhaps in similar fashion to how Crimeans corrected an historic error by becoming the Republic of Crimea in the Russian Federation.

The alternative for Lukashenko may be a successful US-style color revolution that replaces him with pro-Western rule.

The alternative for Russia would be having another hostile US controlled state on its border.

Belarusians under Lukashenko are between a rock and a hard place — his hardline rule v. a likely worse fate under a US installed regime similar to Ukraine’s.

Full integration as a Russian Federation republic makes most sense, perhaps where things are heading.

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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.

Preferential treatment for Israel has long been a prerequisite for success in the corridors of power in Washington, where ambitious politicians long ago learned to fear the wrath of ‘the Israel lobby’, and at the same time yearn for the deluge of ‘Benjamins’ and other fringe benefits that ‘the lobby’ in all its forms and manifestations can muster. Nonetheless, relations between the leadership of the two countries have reached new heights – and plunged new depths – during the Trump administration.

The United States under the Trump administration has undergone a shift in its foreign policy, with the new president regularly insulting and expressing contempt for the US’ strategic allies and threatening to dismantle the bilateral and multilateral arrangements that they have developed over the course of many years to organize and institutionalize their relations. The one exception from the outset was the US ‘special relationship’ with Israel.

The Foreign Policy Institute summarized the differences between the approaches of the Obama and Trump presidencies to foreign policy in the following manner:

“Trump is a kind of illiberal alter ego of Obama. Whereas Obama looked to use force alongside allies (“leading from behind” in the 2011 Libya War), Trump has long been disdainful toward America’s coalition partners. In 1987, Trump paid for an advertisement in the New York Times that railed against allies, “taking advantage of the United States.” As president, Trump has been deeply critical of trade agreements and has withdrawn from more treaties and organizations than all the other post-Cold War U.S. administrations combined.

Whereas Obama spoke eloquently about the importance of the American creed, or the founding ideals of human rights and democracy, Trump may be the first president to openly admire foreign despots.

Whereas Obama traveled to Cairo in 2009 in pursuit of a ‘new beginning’ between the United States and Muslims around the world, Trump wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the United States…”

However, the differences between the Obama and Trump administrations in terms of their dealings with Israel and in the Middle East more generally go beyond their personal idiosyncrasies, ideological preferences, strategic objectives and management styles. They have also been operating in a quantitatively distinct geopolitical environment, with events in many countries throughout the region undergoing major and in some cases abrupt and tectonic shifts, such as the popular uprising in Egypt that ousted Hosni Mubarak, followed by the military coup that ousted and ultimately murdered his successor Mohamed Morsi, and the deepening cooperation – that appears more and more to be some kind of strategic alliance based on profound common interests and objectives – between Israel and the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates.

Nonetheless, despite the differences there has also been considerable continuity in certain aspects of US foreign policy. The same report by the Foreign Policy Institute quoted above explained this apparent contradiction as being primarily due to objective conditions in global politics:

“Surprisingly, however, there’s significant continuity between the Obama and Trump foreign policy doctrines because of something that is much more difficult for Trump to ignore—geopolitics. Obama and Trump are like two siblings who deeply dislike each other, and seem opposites in every possible way, and yet nevertheless share many of the same genes…”

However, this is also a very convenient explanation for the extremely powerful groups that have a stranglehold over US foreign policy. As noted above, there have been some fundamental transformations taking place in the Middle East over the last two decades, and yet despite some turbulence certain aspects of US foreign policy remain constant.

The most constant of all policies is that any suggestion that the US military footprint and associated astronomical military budget might be reduced, in any place or at any time and for any reason, has been promptly buried by an avalanche of criticism from most members of Congress and almost all segments of the corporate media.

Hence, a major showdown appeared imminent at the onset of the Trump administration. Trump campaigned on the promise of closing overseas military bases and ending the permanent wars the US is involved in, in particular in Afghanistan but also the military occupation of Iraq as well as open or, more often, covert involvement in disputes and conflicts throughout the region and beyond. Needless to say, ultimately this great  showdown never happened.

When Trump announced that he would withdraw all US military from Syria, where they are deployed in complete contravention of all relevant international and US law, the groups controlling US foreign policy (as it affects their core interests) had within a short period of time corrected this anomaly. Very shortly after the revelation that Trump had decided to withdraw all US troops from Syria, a decision that appears to have been made unilaterally by the president, National Security Advisor John Bolton clarified that such a withdrawal might actually take months or years.

Needless to say, there are still an unknown number of US military and contractors in Syria and there is no departure date: Trump managed to save face personally, as he could later claim that they are paying their way by looting Syria’s oil.

Soon after the announcement that US troops would be withdrawn from Syria, Trump also directed the Pentagon to halve the number of US troops in Afghanistan, another decision that appeared to have been made unilaterally by the president. The corporate media and prominent Establishment politicians and pundits immediately responded:

“On this issue…there is more continuity between Trump and Obama than would make either administration comfortable,” Richard N. Haas, president of The Council on Foreign Relations, told The New York Times in an article headlined “A Strategy of Retreat in Syria, with Echoes of Obama.”

The next day, The Hill repeated the sentiment in an article whose headline holds nothing back: “Trump’s Middle East Policy Looks a lot Like Obama’s – That’s not a Good Thing.”

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), whose support for Trump is matched only by his disdain for Obama’s Middle East policy, called Trump’s plan ‘an Obama-like mistake.’” LINK

Consequently, while there has been an effort to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan in the lead-up to the US elections scheduled to be held later this year, there they remain, no vital strategic goals and objectives defined and no departure date set, to be reduced to ‘only’ 5,000 soldiers apparently (plus the usual unspecified number of ‘contractors’) to guard over US Establishment interests and objectives. They certainly aren’t there to safeguard the interests of the American people, much less those of the people of Afghanistan.

One analyst explained the paradoxical comments condemning the supposed similarity between the foreign policies of Obama and Trump in the Middle East as follows:

“While both presidents have advocated decreasing America’s footprint in the region, their policies are comparable only on the most superficial level. Obama and Trump have taken contrasting approaches to the Afghanistan war, America’s longest. Both favoured troop withdrawal – but with different intentions.

In June 2011, Obama announced a multi-year timetable for a withdrawal, after an initial surge. His goal was to let the Afghan government know that the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan was not open-ended. The Afghans had to get their house in order, then take over the fight before the U.S. left for good.

It was, in effect, an announcement of the ‘Afghanistanization’ of the war, similar in intent to Richard Nixon’s policy of ‘Vietnamization.’ In 1969, Nixon proposed replacing U.S. combat troops with South Vietnamese troops in order to extricate the United States from a seemingly endless war. This was Obama’s goal in Afghanistan as well. By the end of his second term, however, circumstances there persuaded him to slow the withdrawal.

When Trump announced his policy toward Afghanistan during the first year of his presidency, he mocked Obama’s plan. According to Trump, “Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on.”

And instead of ‘Afghanistanization’, Trump originally supported increasing the use of force to compel the Taliban, whom the U.S. and its allies are fighting in Afghanistan, to come to the bargaining table.

The Taliban had other ideas.

Rather than being backed into a corner, the Taliban recently made battlefield gains and is defying U.S. efforts to negotiate a settlement. It was in this context that Trump decided that ‘conditions on the ground’ were ripe for a partial U.S. withdrawal…

Obama’s Afghanistan policy was part of a broader approach his administration took toward the Middle East… Unlike Obama, Trump does not have a Middle East strategy, grand or otherwise. He has impulses…” LINK

In the broader regional context, Obama believed that the United States had expended far too much blood and treasure in the Middle East under his predecessor, George W. Bush. For Obama, the region’s many intractable conflicts and problems made it more trouble than it was worth. Reinforced by the rapidly growing geopolitical and economic might of China across the Pacific, one of his primary goals was to get the United States out of the Middle East and into Asia.

Therefore Obama sought to reduce tensions in the Middle East, and shift the burden of ‘policing’ the region to Israel, the Saudis and others, as the United States had done during the Cold War. In line with the aim of withdrawing US forces from the Middle East and initiating the ‘pivot to Asia’, the Obama administration forged an international Iran nuclear deal and tried to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

However, the chaos created by the Arab uprisings and colour revolutions of 2010-11, and the resistance of US allies in the region to what they believed was US disengagement and neglect, prevented Obama from achieving many of these goals.

Unlike Obama, Trump does not appear to have a cohesive Middle East strategy, and most of his decisions are not based on a deep analysis of events in the region and the needs and interests of the countries and people there. In the Trump administration, there are only two sets of interests that count, and they count above everything else: the interests of the US (as perceived and interpreted by the Trump administration), and Israel.

If there is one country on Earth that equals Trump’s contempt for international law and the US Establishment’s addiction to permanent war it is Israel, which has enjoyed the protection of the US veto as its own since the day it was created (the main exception being during the Suez Crisis). Another common factor in the specific case of Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is their billionaire benefactor Sheldon Adelson, who has particularly close ties with both and has provided vast sums to smooth their way to power and keep them there. LINK1, LINK2

Yet the ties between the two go further:

“Trump’s affinity for Netanyahu is also probably enhanced by the PM’s relationship with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, which goes way back. Kushner’s father appeared alongside Sheldon Adelson and Ron Lauder on a list of potential donors Netanyahu compiled in 2007. On a trip Netanyahu took to the US before he became PM, he stayed as a guest at the Kushner home, sleeping in Jared’s bed while Jared, a teenager at the time, bunked in the basement. Netanyahu visited Jared’s father Charles at his office and played soccer at one of the Jewish day schools bearing the Kushner family name with Joshua Kushner, Jared’s younger brother.” LINK

Thus bilateral US-Israel relations and cooperation on the international scene to achieve common objectives were set to reach unprecedented levels. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of economic and military benefits Israel has received over the last four years was merely part of the built-in financial, military, technological and diplomatic largesse that the US bestows on Israel year after year, jealously protected by a bipartisan chorus that very few members of the US Congress can resist. The twenty-six standing ovations Netanyahu received for his mediocre address before the US Congress in 2015 should be sufficient testimony on this point.

The power of the Israel lobby in US politics and corporate media was also put on display on another rare occasion that a US president infringed upon one of the lobby’s sacred cows when George Bush (Snr) threatened to withhold US aid to Israel should Israeli President Chaim Herzog not cease the construction of new settlements in the West Bank. After determined lobbying of the US Congress by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in particular, accompanied by a withering corporate media backlash, Bush stated that he was: “one lonely little guy, up against some powerful political forces made up of a thousand lobbyists on the Hill.” His remarks identifying AIPAC as one of the main protagonists behind the lobbying campaign sparked another barrage of criticism for which Bush later apologized, agreeing to send Israel its grants in foreign aid irrespective of the policies and conduct of the Israeli government and whether they are compatible with the interests of the people of the US.

In 2007, George Bush (Jnr) signed an agreement with Israel promising to provide $30 billion in US military aid to Israel for a 10 year period. Barack Obama also duly signed a deal guaranteeing 38 billion dollars in aid to Israel. While the Obama administration generally maintained the US’ favourable posture towards Israel, it declined to back some of the Israeli leadership’s more insistent and reckless demands, foremost among which was that the US isolate, demonize and ultimately attack Iran. Indeed, Obama went one step further and ended the staged confrontation over Iran’s nuclear energy program by signing the JCPOA along with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, successfully quashing a dangerous flashpoint – for a while, at least.

One of Obama’s final major decisions as president, to not veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territory and the construction of Israeli settlements on territory occupied in the aftermath of the 1967 war, earned him the wrath of ‘the lobby’ and a public flaying in the corporate media, typical of the political excommunication of those that waver even the slightest in placing the interests of Israel above all others, including those of the US. A prominent hit piece in the Washington Examiner, “Obama’s disgraceful and harmful legacy on Israel”, gives just a small taste of the barrage of wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed:

“For all eight years of the Obama administration, Democrats have made believe that Barack Obama is a firm and enthusiastic supporter and defender of the Jewish state. Arguments to the contrary were not only dismissed but angrily denounced as the products of nothing more than vicious partisanship. Obama’s defenders repeatedly used the trope that “Israel should not be a partisan issue”…

All of those arguments have been ground into dust by Obama’s action Friday allowing a nasty and harmful anti-Israel resolution to pass the United Nations Security Council. Just weeks before leaving office, he could not resist the opportunity to take one more swipe at Israel—and to do real harm. So he will leave with his record on Israel in ruins, and he will leave Democrats even worse off…

Today’s anti-Israel action will further damage the Democratic party, by driving some Jews if not toward the Republicans then at least away from the Democrats and toward neutrality. Donald Trump’s clear statement on Thursday that he favored a veto, Netanyahu’s fervent pleas for one, and the Egyptian action in postponing the vote show where Obama stood: not with Israel, not even with Egypt, but with the Palestinians. Pleas for a veto from Democrats in Congress were ignored by the White House.

Does the resolution matter? It does. The text declares that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law”… The text demands “that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”… The resolution also “calls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.” This is a call to boycott products of the Golan, the West Bank, and parts of Jerusalem, and support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

Yet Barack Obama thought this was all fine and refused to veto. Settlements have been an obsession for Obama since the second day of his term in office, January 22, 2009. That day he appointed George Mitchell to be his special peace envoy, and adopted the view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the key to peace in the entire region and that freezing construction in settlements was the key to Israeli-Palestinian peace…” LINK

Another corporate media outlet complained:

“When speaking with Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy bewailed Israel’s PM saying, “I can’t stand Netanyahu; he is a coward and a liar.” Rather than defend Netanyahu, Obama replied, “You can’t stand him? I have to deal with him more than you.” LINK

A report by The Guardian provides another perspective on the Obama administration’s relations with Israel and policies on the Israel-Palestine question:

“That Obama detests Netanyahu is common knowledge. What is less well known is that Obama’s personal antipathy towards the prime minister co-exists with a genuine commitment to the welfare and security of the Jewish state.

Obama’s actual record over his eight years in office makes him one of the most pro-Israeli American presidents since Harry S Truman. Obama has given Israel considerably more money and arms than any of his predecessors. He has fully lived up to America’s formal commitment to preserve Israel’s ‘qualitative military edge’ by supplying his ally with ever more sophisticated weapons systems. His parting gift to Israel was a staggering military aid package of $38bn for the next 10 years. This represents an increase from the current $3.1 to $3.8bn per annum. It is also the largest military aid package from one country to another in the annals of human history.” LINK

One of the major shifts that has occurred in the bedrock of geopolitics in the Middle East is the relations between the Gulf States, particularly the Saudis and the UAE, and Israel. While the respective parties are still reticent to openly acknowledge the extent to which their interests and objectives are aligned and the nature of their collaboration, the fact that such alignment can now be openly discussed is in itself a paradigm shift. This has already become a part of the ‘new normal’ under the Trump administration.

“Muhammad bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, believed the Gulf states and Israel shared a common enemy: Iran. In May 2017, Trump and his team met with Arab leaders in Riyadh, and Kushner and MBS agreed on the outlines of a Middle East strategic alliance. Israel would remain a ‘silent partner’, at least for now. The US committed to taking a harder line on Iran, and the Gulf Arabs promised to help get the Palestinians to go along with the new program.

In May 2009, Netanyahu had tried to get Obama and his team to assist in easing Israel’s isolation in the region. He asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to convince Gulf leaders to meet with him publicly to demonstrate a normalization of relations to the peoples of the Middle East. Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz refused to meet an Israeli leader, and American officials were skeptical for years of Israel’s claims that it was possible for it to expand ties with the Gulf States.” LINK

The differences between the Obama and Trump administrations on their policies towards Israel and the Middle East more generally, despite the above-mentioned continuities, is also clearly demonstrated with respect to the latter point mentioned in the report by the Washington Examiner quoted above, the cornerstone issue of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory and a broader Israel-Palestine peace agreement. The article in the Guardian argued in this respect:

“Netanyahu has always believed what the Likud’s electoral platform continues to state explicitly: there can be no independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. He is a reactionary politician whose overriding aim is to preserve the status quo with Israel as a regional superpower, ruling over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians in what he and his colleagues insist on calling Judea and Samaria.

Netanyahu presides over the most rightwing, jingoistic, pro-settler, and overtly racist coalition government in Israel’s history. He and his government are addicted to occupation – the root of all evil. In the teeth of almost universal condemnation, they continue to expand the Jewish settlements on the West Bank, thereby deliberately destroying the basis for a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state.

Area C, where most of these settlements are located, comprises 60% of the West Bank. Several ministers, led by the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, advocate outright annexation of this area. A cabinet majority is pushing for a new law that would ‘legalize’ the illegal Jewish outposts on the West Bank – illegal even by Israeli standards because they were built on private Palestinian land. This law, if passed by the Knesset, as seems very likely, will translate the ongoing practice of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine into official state policy…

The Israeli hawks cannot wait for Donald Trump to enter the White House because he is a strong supporter not only of Israel itself but of the illegal settler movement. They believe he would give them a free pass to annex the rural parts of the West Bank and they hope that he will act on his promise to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem ̶ a move that would drive a stake through the two-state solution…” LINK

Indeed, the US Embassy is now located in Jerusalem.

An article posted by the Besa Foundation provides a very different interpretation of the topic of illegal Israeli settlements and the ‘peace process’ in its summation of the Trump administration’s proposal to resolve the Israel-Palestine question, the ‘Deal of the Century’ drafted pursuant to the directives of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“To achieve harmony and actually solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Trump, with Kushner, unveiled a $50 billion Palestinian investment and infrastructure proposal dubbed the ‘Deal of the Century’ The plan is designed to create at least a million new jobs for Palestinians. It proposes projects worth $27.5 billion in the West Bank and Gaza and $9.1 billion, $7.4 billion, and $6.3 billion for Palestinians in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, respectively. The projects envisioned are in the healthcare, education, power, water, high-tech, tourism, and agriculture sectors. (Needless to say, the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan before even seeing it.)

One of the most significant differences between the Obama and Trump administrations is their approach to, and understanding of, the Palestinian question. Obama felt the best approach was to beat up on Israel and give the Palestinians everything. Trump, by contrast, wants the Palestinians to understand that their stock is declining. The goal is to get the Palestinian leadership to accept more realistic proposals.” LINK

The ‘more realistic proposals’ require them to surrender all aspirations to a Palestinian State and most of their territory, to live in a few scattered enclaves surrounded and guarded by Israeli security forces.

As noted previously, in stark contrast to relations with Israel, Trumps decisions and policies with respect to other countries in the region, including other allies for which the US has traditionally offered unwavering support, have been opportunistic, patronising and condescending if not downright insulting, and always based on the fundamental principle of ‘America (and Israel) first’. The relations between the Saudis and the Trump administration are illustrative in this respect, as they have concluded massive weapons deals and the US has continued to support the Saudi’s and UAE’s genocidal war against Yemen even as Trump has twittered that the Saudi regime is inherently unviable and would immediately collapse without the military and other hardware that the US provides as well as the technical expertise required to operate it.

The relations between the Trump administration and other countries with ‘autocratic’ regimes in the region have been similar, in effect a necessary business arrangement to be concluded amidst effusive expressions of friendship despite the mutual dislike, if not contempt, that exists between the respective parties. For example, Trump’s casting aside of all diplomatic niceties (not to mention pretences and charades) at a function attended by US and Egyptian officials:

“During a reception at the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, France, at the recent G7 summit, President Donald Trump was looking for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and called out, ‘Where’s my favorite dictator?’ according to the Wall Street Journal, citing several people who were in the room at the time.

According to the witnesses, Trump appeared to be joking, but, the Journal said, “his question was met by a stunned silence.” LINK

Thus although Trump’s conduct of foreign policy has been spontaneous, erratic and opportunistic, his support for Israel has been consistent and absolute. This may be due in part to his benefactor Sheldon Adelson’s influence, but on many related matters their positions were probably not that far apart to begin with even if the finer details and specific decisions remained to be defined:

“Adelson gave $82m toward Trump’s and other Republican campaigns during the 2016 election cycle – more than three times the next largest individual donor, according to Open Secrets.

That commitment bought him an attentive hearing from the new administration as he pushed for the appointment of Bolton as national security adviser knowing that he would be an important ally in getting the White House to kill the Iran nuclear deal. The New York Times reported that Adelson is a member of a ‘shadow National Security Council’ advising Bolton.

The day after Trump announced that the US was pulling out of the Iran agreement, Adelson was reported to have held a private meeting at the White House with the president, Bolton and Vice-President Mike Pence.” LINK

While it has always been unpredictable and subject to abrupt tectonic shifts in the external environment, the future course of relations between the US, Israel and the Middle East once again is located on the threshold of a major juncture with the presidential elections scheduled to be held in a few months and turmoil peaking throughout the Middle East region, most recently with the catastrophic accident or attack that has devastated Lebanon.

Whether Trump or Biden win the elections, or whether they are held at all, is unlikely to significantly affect the Establishment dogma of the primacy bestowed upon Israel in the conduct of US foreign policy.

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Yesterday, one of the most unexpected geopolitical manoeuvres took place that no one was expecting. U.S. President Donald Trump went to Twitter to announce that Washington’s “two GREAT friends, Israel and the United Arab Emirates” made a “Historic Peace Agreement.” In years past, there would have been widespread condemnation across the Muslim world against the UAE, but in actual fact, the near complete silence in condemning Abu Dhabi’s decision speaks volumes. Israel is no longer the main priority for Arab Gulf states, and rather their geopolitical focus is towards countering what they claim are Iran’s ambitions to spread its Islamic Revolution in the Arab Peninsula and Turkey’s unwavering backing and support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

There is already strong speculation that following the UAE’s peace deal with Israel, one between the world’s only Jewish state and Oman and Bahrain will soon follow. If, or more likely, when Oman and Bahrain sign a peace deal with Israel, it is likely that Saudi Arabia will eventually follow, leaving Qatar and Yemen as the only Arab Peninsula countries to not recognize Israel. This will quickly change the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East as Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have common enemies – Iran and Turkey, but have never been able to openly coordinate and cooperate with each other to achieve their regional goals and ambitions.

It appears that France is the main harbinger of such an alliance and is becoming the centerpiece of states who are opposing the ambitions of Turkey and Iran. However, for now, this is mostly focused towards Turkey, especially as French President Emanuel Macron only days ago announced that his country will increase its military presence in the East Mediterranean as part of a continuation of the Franco-Turkish confrontation.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis responded to Macron’s announcement, thanking the French president by saying that France is a sincere friend of Greece and a protector of international law. According to the Greek Prime Minister, in order to continue the peaceful dialogue between Athens and Ankara, it is necessary for Turkey to stop its unilateral exploration of gas and oil reserves on Greece’s continental shelf that it began a few days ago. Last week Greece and Egypt signed an agreement on maritime demarcation that was welcomed by Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while Turkey declared the agreement null and void and declared that Greece and Egypt do not have a mutual border. The Greek-Egyptian deal was made under the auspices of the United Nations Charter Law of the Sea and effectively ended the illegal memorandum of understanding signed between Turkey and the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood government based in Tripoli. The Turkey-Tripoli deal aimed to annex Greek maritime waters between them.

What culminated was a Turkish announcement that its Oruç Reis research vessel will be escorted by seven warships to conduct seismic research in Greece’s continental shelf. This hostility was met with France’s immediate mobilization of some naval vessels and war jets to Greece and Cyprus, with Greece and France immediately conducting naval exercises. Among this escalation of hostilities, and despite Mitsotakis’ warning that an accident will occur in the Aegean Sea, the Greek Limnos frigate, commissioned in 1982, collided with the Turkish frigate Kemal Reis, commissioned in 2000. The 38-year-old Limnos frigate outmanoeuvred the Kemal Reis, considered one of the best warships in the Turkish navy, and sustained only limited damage, while the Turkish warship is now out of action for at least a few months according to some sources.

Although Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan alluded that the Limnos was damaged and threatened to attack anyone who harassed the Oruç Reis, he was quickly distracted by the shock of the UAE making a peace agreement with Israel. The UAE, just like the majority of the Arab Peninsula states, were never really vested in the Palestine issue, and rather they have a much bigger rivalry with Turkey and Iran. The UAE and France have been cooperating to counter Turkey’s ambitions. For France, Turkey threatens its influence and control over their former colonies in Africa, while for the UAE, Turkey backs and supports the Muslim Brotherhood that calls for the overthrow of monarchies in Muslim countries. Therefore, Abu Dhabi’s peace with Israel is to consolidate the anti-Turkey bloc into a more cohesive unit without miscommunications and problems caused by non-existing relations between some states, notably the UAE and Israel.

This brings France to the centre of such a bloc. France and Greece have impeccable relations with both the UAE and Israel, and with both states recognizing each other, they can now begin to coordinate efforts to counter Turkish ambitions more effectively and openly. Turkey recognizes this new coordinated threat headed by a nuclear France. Although Iran’s denouncement of the UAE’s peace deal with Israel is unsurprising, the Turkish Foreign Ministry shockingly and contradictorily reacted by stating:

“Neither history nor the collective conscience of the region will ever forget and forgive the hypocritical behaviour of the UAE, which is trying to depict the deal as a sacrifice for Palestine, when in reality it is a betrayal to the Palestinian cause for its own narrow interests.”

This is a curious response by Turkey considering it was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel and to this day has a multibillion-dollar trade relation with the Jewish state. However, Erdoğan recognizes that the peace deal between the UAE and Israel is a major threat to Turkey’s ambitions to dominate the region, especially at a time when Ankara is becoming increasingly isolated while states opposing Turkish ambitions are consolidating and coordinating. While France, Cyprus, the EU, Israel, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have congratulated the Greek-Egyptian deal and/or denounced Turkish aggression on the Greek continental shelf, Turkey is completely alone and isolated in its aggression. It is for this reason that Turkey is using the peace deal between the UAE and Israel as an excuse for Ankara to potentially suspend diplomatic relations with the UAE, but strangely enough not with Israel, in the hope that other countries will follow its move. This unlikely to happen with any serious effect.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The Middle East is on the brink of the new tectonic shift in the regional balance of power. The previous years were marked by the growth of the Iranian and Hezbollah influence and the decrease of the US grip on the region. The January 2020 started with the new Iranian-US confrontation that had all chances to turn into an open war. August 202 appeared to mark the first peace agreement between an Arab state and Israel in more than 25 years.

Israel and the United Arab Emirates have reached a historical peace agreement. US President Donald Trump announced the breakthrough agreement on August 13, calling Israel and the UAE “great friends” of his country. In a joint statement, Israel, the UAE and the U.S. said the agreement will advance peace in the Middle East. The statement praised the “bold diplomacy” and “vision” of the three country’s leaders.

Delegations from Israel and the UAE are expected to meet within a few weeks to sign bilateral agreements regarding investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit.

In the framework of the peace agreement, Israel will suspend declaring sovereignty over areas outlined in Netanyahu’s “Vision for Peace” in the Western Bank. Also, Tel Aviv will reportedly focus its efforts on “expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world.” The agreement will also provide Muslims with greater access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It still remains in question how Israel will comply with its part of the deal as the annexation of Palestinian territories is the cornerstone of its regional policy.

In the near future, the United States will likely work to motivate other Gulf states to follow the UAE’s footsteps. In particular, another US regional ally, Saudi Arabia, is already widely known for keeping close ties with Israel in the field of security and military cooperation. Both states are allies of Washington and are engaged in a regional standoff against the Iranian-led coalition of Shiite forces.

The support of the UAE-Israeli agreement is also a logical step for the Trump administration’s regional policy, which is based on the two main cornerstones: the unconditional support of Israel and the confrontation with Iran. Through such moves, Washington may hope to create a broader Israeli-Arab coalition through which it will try to consolidate the shirking influence and contain the ongoing Iranian expansion in the region. At the same time, the overtures with Israel, which has undertaken wide and successful efforts to destabilize neighboring Arab states, could cause a public backlash among the Arab population and contribute to its further dissatisfaction with the course of its leadership. All these developments, together with the consisted Iranian policy aimed at the defense of Palestinians, will increase the popularity of Iran as not only defender of Shiites across the Middle East, but all Muslims in general. Tehran has been seeking to achieve this goal for years and achieved a particular progress in the field. The US-Israeli aggressive policy in the region also played an important role in fact promoting the popularity of the so-called Axis of Resistance. Now, the Iranian soft power in Arab states will become even more noticeable and create additional threats to Gulf states involved in a direct confrontation with it.

The Saudi Kingdom, as the main candidate for the next peace deal, will find itself in an especially shaky position. It is already involved in the long, bloody, and unsuccessful intervention in Yemen, with Yemen’s Houthis regularly conducting cross-border raids into Saudi Arabia and even striking its capital, Riyadh. Also, the Saudi leadership has a long-standing problem with the oppressed Shia minority, protests of which are regularly and violently suppressed by Saudi forces. Other factors are the apparent economic and social problems, not least due to Riyadh’s own adventures on the oil market and the coronavirus crisis. Therefore, at some moment the Saudi regime may easily find itself on the brink of collapse under the weight of its own social, political and economic mistakes, and controversial policies on the international arena. And it’s highly unlikely that the friends in Tel Aviv or Washington will decide to undertake any extraordinary steps to rescue the current political regime in the Saudi kingdom.

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Nephew of President John F. Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, and tireless crusader against the tyranny of the mainstream medical establishment, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. joins today’s Liberty Report to discuss his startling discoveries about who really killed his father and uncle…and why.

Plus, Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has been among the most vocal and most successful opponents of the mainstream medical establishment, driven by big Pharma to inoculate and medicate everything that moves. He tells the Liberty Report how he very reluctantly decided to dedicate his career to fighting the mandatory vaccines that have resulted in so many documented injuries to the recipients. Don’t miss this very special edition of the Liberty Report:

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Minnesota’s superintendents of public schools have been placed in a difficult position, one that the folks at the CDC and the Minnesota Department of Health (DOH) have put them in with their Distance Learning Plan 2.0.

I would like to point out some flaws in the DOH’s Distance Learning Plan 2.0, which I fear will be obediently and blindly followed by school districts across the state, without anyone in position of power and influence actually checking the DOH’s math.

The figures that were published in the August 5, 2020 Duluth News-Tribune presented the following information about the increasingly restrictive learning levels for schools according to the incidence of COVID-19 “cases” that have been reported to the DOH from the local communities.

What follows is the Distance Learning Plan 2.0 formula that totally ignores the reality that the RT-PCR nasal swab test, which is considered the “gold standard” for making the diagnosis of COVID-19, is fatally flawed, resulting in high percentages of false positive tests (see article below for more information) that make the test essentially worthless – and misleading.

The first of the serious problems dealt with in this article is the flawed DOH 5-part formula for how Minnesota’s children are to be educated this fall and into the future.

1] if the incidence of “cases” (actually positive tests, which are frequently false positives) is 0 – 9 per 10,000 in the community then all elementary and secondary schools can open for in-person learning. This tiny fraction (less than 10/10,000 means that there are essentially zero active “cases” (or at least what the Public Health bureaucracy considers “cases”) in the community;

2] if the community incidence was between 10 – 19 “cases” per 10,000 population,  in-person learning would be still be allowed for elementary students but “hybrid” learning would be offered for secondary students;

3] if there were 20 – 29 “cases“ per 10,000 population, then both elementary and secondary schools would have to be ”hybrid”;

4] if there were 30 – 49 “cases” per 10,000 population: elementary schools “could be hybrid” while secondary schools “would be hybrid”;

5] if there were 50 or more “cases” per 10,000 population, all students would be offered only distance learning, essentially meaning a return to essentially lock-down status for students – and parents.

However, each of those ranges of “cases” actually represents very small incremental fractions of the community that are erroneously assumed to be sick and contagious despite many of the cases being totally asymptomatic and essentially non-contagious.

A Positive PCR test IS NOT the Same as a “Case” of COVID-19!

Moreover, these “assumptions” about how far to open our public schools are based on seriously flawed PCR tests – with the incidence of each of the five groups falling below the numbers of annual common cold coronavirus infections, annual influenza infection or the more common “influenza-like illnesses” (ILI) cases that are epidemic each flu season – none of which, it must be pointed out, have resulted in draconian lock-downs – or even mandatory mask-wearing.

What is being uncritically reported to the DOH includes totally asymptomatic “cases” of people that had false positive nasal swab tests but never were ill and never become ill after the false positive test results were revealed.

Unfortunately, these PCR tests have never been approved by the FDA for diagnostic testing, but that hasn’t stopped them from being very profitably marketed by a multitude of biomedical companies, including both major Big Pharma corporations and start-up outfits. Instead, they have been granted blanket Emergency Authorized Use by the FDA!

Every PCR test kit on the market – to my knowledge – has been found to have high percentages of false positive results, often in the 40% to 70% range. That makes them unreliable at best and worthless at worst, especially when the test results are used for propaganda purposes by greedy, vaccinology-illiterate billionaires like Bill Gates and his billionaire buddies at the World Economic Forum, co-opted academic epidemiologists/statisticians, CDC bureaucrats, WHO bureaucrats and greedy Big Pharma/Big Media/Big Medicine CEOs that have influenced governments all around the world.

Other innocent entities that are necessarily vaccinology-illiterate (because vaccinology and virology are such complex areas of study) and are therefore dependent on the advice of bought-and-paid for “scientists-for-profit”, include struggling small business owners, school superintendents, mayors, governors, presidents, politicians and even most physicians and nurses that are influencing serious decisions about the futures of our nation’s children, the economy and the planet.

The DOH’s statistical error that needs to be pointed out to all public school superintendents and school boards in Minnesota is this: the seemingly large “relative” differences between 10 or 20 or 30 of 50 “cases” per 10,000 population “actually” means 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 PCR positive tests per 1,000 population, which, in “actual” percentage terms, translates to the very small percentage figure differences of 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3% or 0.5%.

What should disturb everybody is the fact that the Minnesota Department of Health (probably at the behest of the CDC) has erroneously/deceptively (intentionally?) led us all to believe that a positive PCR test is the same as a “case” of COVID-19, whereas nothing could be further from the truth.

For further references see:

Covid-19: Questionable Policies, Manipulated Rules of Data Collection and Reporting. Is It Safe for Students to Return to School?

By H. Ealy, M. McEvoy, and et al., August 09, 2020

Manufactured Pandemic: Testing People for Any Strain of a Coronavirus, Not Specifically for COVID-19

By Julian Rose, June 29, 2020

COVID-19: Closer to the Truth: Tests and Immunity

By Dr. Pascal Sacré, August 07, 2020

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Dr Kohls is a retired rural family physician from Duluth, Minnesota who has written a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, Duluth’s alternative newsweekly magazine since his retirement in 2008. His column, titled Duty to Warn, is re-published around the world. 

He practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth for the last decade of his family practice career prior to his retirement in 2008, primarily helping psychiatric patients who had become addicted to their cocktails of psychiatric drugs to safely go through the complex withdrawal process. His Duty to Warn columns often deals with various unappreciated health issues, including those caused by Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas and Big Food’s malnourishing food industry. Those four entities can combine to even more adversely affect the physical, mental, spiritual and economic health of the recipients of the medical treatments and the eaters of the tasty and ubiquitous “FrankenFoods” – particularly when they are consumed in combinations, doses and potencies that have never been tested for safety or long-term effectiveness.

Dr Kohls’ Duty to Warn columns are archived at: 

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/; and 

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

The decision made this week by the United Arab Emirates and Israel to establish full diplomatic relations as part of a commitment to normalize the interaction between the two countries was characteristically announced by President Donald Trump because he is, undoubtedly, the main beneficiary. With less than three months to go until the U.S. national election, the timing of the announcement was not fortuitous as the president clearly needed some good news. There are reports that the agreement will be signed in a formal ceremonial meeting in the White House later this month.

The deal, reportedly set up by White House Special Assistant to the President and son-in-law Jared Kushner, will in fact have little impact on the UAE, whose Crown Prince and head of state of Abu Dhabi Mohamed bin Zayed was instrumental in coming to an agreement on behalf of all of the Emirates. He issued a statement on the understanding reached, stating that

“During a call with President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, an agreement was reached to stop further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories. The UAE and Israel also agreed to cooperation and setting a roadmap towards establishing a bilateral relationship.”

As usual, the big losers will be the Palestinians, who will now live in a non-country that they inhabit only under Israeli sufferance, an arrangement that is now de facto endorsed by some of its Arab neighbors and by the Europeans, leaving them with no friends or advocates. They immediately declared that the agreement is not binding on them. Indeed, little will actually change on the ground in Israel-Palestine. Israel has indeed agreed to further “temporarily postpone” its oft stated commitment to annex most of the Palestinian West Bank, a proposition that was already in trouble both domestically and due to almost universal international censure. Even some Democratic Party congressmen had developed a spine over the issue and were willing to cut military assistance to the Jewish state if the annexation program were to move forward. Now that the word annexation has been dropped, the fundamental apartheid policies pursued by Israel will continue to advance and the illegal settlements will presumably continue to expand.

The agreement will also benefit beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu politically to a certain extent, giving him some favorable press from liberal Israelis and Europeans, though he will also face a backlash from the powerful West Bank settlers. But at the same time, it must be recognized that he obtained something for nothing, for which he will be praised inside Israel. Annexation was on hold anyway and now the Israelis will be credited with taking a “step for peace,” a step that is in fact being endorsed by an Arab country. It will be exploited by Israeli propagandists to lighten the pervasive criticism of Israel as a “pariah” state and will allow the continued delegitimization of the Palestine pursuit of justice.

So, Trump will be the big winner, clearly by design, because it in a stroke transforms him from a loser foreign policy neophyte and international laughing stock into a man who can now claim a major success in making progress on one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. The news immediately drew rave reviews from America’s friends in Europe and Asia, most of whom have long been caught metaphorically between the Israeli rock and the Palestinian hard place and have been looking for a way out. It was a change from the usual brickbats that the president had become accustomed to receiving, and the U.S. media was also enthusiastic, though less for Trump and more for making Israel “safer” while also casting it in a positive light.

The New York Times is seeing a “broader realignment for the region” which “…could reorder the long stalemate…potentially leading other Arab nations to follow suit.” Such an outcome would mostly benefit Israel, though the Times article does not explicitly say so and Trump framed his announcement more broadly, asserting that “This deal is a significant step towards building a more peaceful, secure and prosperous Middle East. Now that the ice has been broken, I expect more Arab and Muslim countries will follow the United Arab Emirates’ lead.” He then quipped that the agreement should actually be called the “Donald J. Trump Accord” while his national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien later declared that the president “should win the Nobel Peace Prize.”

The overwhelmingly Sunni UAE was clearly motivated in part by its fear of Shi’a dominated Iran and was also undoubtedly subjected to considerable urging by the United States officials around Kushner to help Trump get re-elected. The Gulf countries for reasons of their own are very interested in maintaining Trump in power, so the approach was welcome. One can expect that Kushner and company will now exert maximum pressure to get the Oman and Bahrain to also line up and recognize Israel, and they might also hope to bring in Saudi Arabia. Israel and the anti-Iran coalition countries have had confidential relationships for years, based on mutual hatred of the Persians. Moving forward, any broadening of diplomatic and trade ties could be framed as a grand alliance consisting of the Sunni Arab states and Israel against the greatly feared Iranians. And Washington would undoubtedly supply everyone with the necessary weapons to do the job.

Where will it go from here? America’s upcoming elections will have little impact on the Middle East region as the Joe Biden “I am a Zionist” plus Kamala Harris ticket is, if anything, more closely tied to Israeli interests than is Trump. Israel meanwhile, aided by the U.S., has successfully disrupted Arab unity over Palestine by crafting relationships with states that have never been greatly committed to the Palestinian cause. Jordan and Egypt, heavily bribed by the United States to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, are now joined by the UAE. If, as expected, more of the Gulf Arab states join in, the Palestinians will be in no position to make any demands on the Israeli government. That constitutes a significant victory for Netanyahu and his government and the Palestinians will now have work to do to make their cause relevant to anyone but themselves. And, of course, an emboldened Netanyahu backed by the United States and his new Arab friends might set his sights on a bigger target, taking care of the “Iran problem.”

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests.

Featured image is from AHT

On Friday, the Trump regime was dealt a humiliating Security Council defeat.

Bullying, bribes, and threats failed this time, perhaps indicative of more US setbacks ahead.

Its attempt to extend an arms embargo on Iran indefinitely was supported by only one other SC member state, the Dominican Republic.

The unacceptable scheme in violation of SC Res. 2231 (that’s binding international law) was opposed by 13 other nations.

The vote was two nations in favor of the unlawful scheme, two opposed (Russia and China), 11 others abstaining — a virtual “no” by other means.

Even nearly always willing to go along with the most outrageous US demands Britain, France and Germany rejected the anti-Iran scheme by refusing to support it.

In response to the Trump regime’s humiliating defeat, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi said the following:

“In the 75 years of United Nations history, America has never been so isolated.”

What Pompeo called “reasonable” was all about seeking Security Council support for the Trump regime’s imperial war on Iran by other means.

He defied reality claiming “failure to act decisively (against Iran jeopardizes) international peace and security,” adding:

The Trump regime will go it alone “to ensure that (Iran) does not have the freedom to purchase and sell weapons that threaten the heart of Europe, the Middle East and beyond (sic).”

Iran is the region’s leading proponent of peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries, threatening none.

The US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners pose an unparalleled threat to world peace and humanity’s survival.

In response to Friday’s SC vote, Trump said “(w)e’ll be doing a snapback. You’ll be watching it next week.”

The so-called JCPOA snapback provision lets any of its signatories reimpose veto-proof sanctions on Iran that were null and void when the agreement took effect in January 2016.

By unlawfully abandoning the JCPOA in May 2018, the Trump regime lost the right under SC Res. 2231 to invoke snapback.

Only Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany may legally invoke the provision.

They unanimously oppose this action because it would undo years of diplomatic efforts that went into establishing the JCPOA they want preserved.

Trump has no legal authority to invoke snapback. The rule of law never deters the US from doing whatever it pleases.

Will other nations observe illegally imposed snapback sanctions on Iran if Trump follows through on his threat?

Russia and China strongly oppose extending the arms embargo on Iran.

Beijing and Tehran reportedly agreed on a 25-year/$400 billion “strategic accord” to advance the economic and related interests of both countries.

China will be involved in building Iran’s core infrastructure as part of its “One Belt, One Road” initiative.

It’s a longterm project for greater regional integration, numerous countries involved in investments of over $1 trillion.

China, Russia, Iran, and other nations seek increased industrialization through mutual cooperation.

The US under both right wings of its war party pursue militarism and other hostile actions over cooperative relations with other nations, a prescription for confrontation over peace and stability.

Predictably, Netanyahu called  Friday’s vote “scandalous (sic),” ignoring nuclear armed and dangerous Israel — a nation waging war by other means on Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, along with undeclared hot war on Syria.

Longtime Iranophobe, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham tweeted the following in response to Friday’s vote:

“This was a major mistake by the UN (sic). It also makes a major conflict with Iran much more likely as they build up their military arsenal (sic).”

Pompeo tweeted that the Trump regime “will continue to work to correct this mistake (sic).”

Russia’s Sergey Lavrov explained that the arms embargo was agreed on by P5+1 countries to ensure Iran’s compliance with JCPOA provisions which it’s done.

“(T)here was never any intention to prolong it after October (18) 2020,” he stressed.

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif tweeted:

The Trump regime “is so desperate to show support for its struggle to illegally extend arms restrictions on Iran that it clings to the personal position of (the Gulf states)—obtained thru coercion—as regional consensus.”

“All knew that most in the region—even in GCC—do NOT subscribe to this.”

In response to Vladimir Putin’s call for heads of P5+1 countries to convene an online meeting “as soon as possible…to outline steps that can prevent (regional) confrontation,” Pompeo’s spokeswoman said the following:

The Trump regime “believes strongly that the Security Council is the best place to have discussions related to extending the UN arms embargo” — rejecting Putin’s call unless Trump accepts it, which he hasn’t done so far.

On Saturday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry called Friday’s Security Council vote against extending the soon to expire arms embargo on Iran an almost unanimous refusal to go along with the Trump regime on this issue.

In response to DJT’s threat to unilaterally impose snapback sanctions on Iran, President Hassan Rouhani vowed a tit-for-tat response.

“Our options are unlimited,” he stressed.

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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 Al-Masdar News

First published on April 8, 2020

Background

On January 30th 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in relation to China’s novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) categorized  as a viral pneumonia.  The virus outbreak was centred in  Wuhan, a city in Eastern China with a population in excess of 11 million.

In the week prior to January 30th decision, the WHO Emergency Committee “expressed divergent views”. There were visible divisions within the Committee. On January 30th, a far-reaching decision was taken without the support of expert opinion at a time when the coronavirus outbreak was limited to Mainland China.

There were 150 confirmed cases outside China, when the decision was taken. 6 in the United States, 3 in Canada, 2 in the UK, etc.

150 confirmed cases over a population of 6.4 billion (World population of 7.8 billion minus China’s 1-4 billion).

What was the risk of being infected? Virtually zero.

The WHO did not act to reassure and inform World public opinion. Quite the opposite: A “Fear Pandemic” rather than a genuine Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)  was launched.

Outright panic and uncertainty were sustained through a carefully designed media disinformation campaign.

Almost immediately this led to economic dislocations, a crisis in trade and transportation with China affecting major airlines and shipping companies.  A hate campaign against ethnic Chinese in Western countries was launched, followed by the collapse in late February of stock markets, not to mention the crisis in the tourist industry resulting in countless bankruptcies.

The complexity of this crisis and its impacts have to be addressed and carefully analysed.

What we are dealing with is “economic warfare” supported by media disinformation, coupled with the deliberate intent by  the Trump administration to undermine China’s economy. The ongoing economic dislocations are not limited to China.

There are important public health concerns which must be addressed. But what motivated the Director-General of the WHO to act in this way?  Who was behind this historic January 30th decision of the WHO’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. 

Our subsequent  analysis (in the timeline below) reveals that powerful corporate interests linked to Big Pharma, Wall Street and agencies of the US government were instrumental in the WHO’s far-reaching decision.

What is at stake is the alliance of “Big Pharma” and “Big Money”, with the endorsement of the Trump Administration. The decision to launch a fake pandemic under the helm of the WHO on January 30, was taken a week earlier at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF). The media operation was there to spread outright panic.

(Scroll down to Read our Timeline on how these events unfolded)

But this was not the first time that the WHO decided to act in this way.

Remember the unusual circumstances surrounding the April 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic.

An atmosphere of fear and intimidation prevailed. The data was manipulated.

Based on incomplete and scanty data, the WHO Director General nonetheless predicted with authority that: “as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population.” (World Health Organization as reported by the Western media, July 2009).

It was a multibillion bonanza for Big Pharma supported by the WHO’s Director-General Margaret Chan. 

In June 2009, Margaret Chan made the following statement:

“On the basis of … expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met. I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from Phase 5 to Phase 6.  The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic. … Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), Press Briefing  11 June 2009)

What “expert assessments”?

In a subsequent statement she confirmed that:

“Vaccine makers could produce 4.9 billion pandemic flu shots per year in the best-case scenario”,Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), quoted by Reuters, 21 July 2009)

A  financial windfall for Big Pharma Vaccine Producers including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Merck & Co., Sanofi,  Pfizer. et al.

CORONAVIRUS TIMELINE 

September 2019: The official US-WHO position is that the coronavirus originated in Wuhan, Hubei Province and was first discovered in Late December. This statement is questioned by Chinese and Japanese virologists who claim that the virus originated in the US.

A renowned Taiwanese virologist pointed to evidence that the virus could have originated at an earlier stage, stating : “We must look to September of 2019”.

October 18-27 2019: Wuhan 2019: CISM Sport Military World Games

Chinese media intimates (without corroborating evidence) that the coronavirus could have been brought to China “from a foreign source” during the CISM Military World Games.

10,000 soldiers from 109 countries will participate

200 American military personnel participated in this 10 day Event.

October 18, Event 201. New York. Coronavirus nCoV-2019 Simulation and Emergency Preparedness Task Force, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health Security. 

Big Pharma-Big Money Simulation Exercise sponsored by WEF and Gates Foundation 

Simulation Exercise of a coronavirus epidemic which results in 65 million dead. Supported by the World Economic Forum (WEF) representing the interests of Financial institutions, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation representing Big Pharma:

In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a pandemic tabletop exercise called Event 201 with partners, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. …  For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction.

Instead, the exercise served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic. We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people.

Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.“We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 [which was also used as the name of the simulation] outbreak will kill 65 million people.

.Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.”

Several of the occurrences of the nCoV-2019 exercise coincided with what really happened. In the Event 201 Simulation of a Coronavirus Pandemic, a 15% collapse of financial markets had been “simulated”.

It was not “predicted” according to the organizers and sponsors of the event.

Private sector initiative. Participation of corporate execs, foundations, financial institutions, Banks, Big Pharma, CIA, CDC, China’s CDC. No health officials (with exception of CDC and China CDC) present on behalf of national governments or the WHO. The simulation exercise was held on the same day as the opening of the CISM World Militaty Sports Games in Wuhan.

December 31, 2019: First cases of pneumonia detected and reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province. China.

January 1, 2020: Chinese health authorities close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market after Western media reports that wild animals sold there may have been the source of the virus. This initial assessment was subsequently refuted by Chinese scientists.

January 7, 2020: Chinese authorities “identify a new type of virus” which was isolated  on 7 January. The coronavirus was named 2019-nCoV by the WHO exactly the same name as that adopted in the WEF-Gates-John Hopkins October 18, 2019 simulation exercise. 

January 11, 2020 – The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announces the first death caused by the coronavirus.

January 22, 2020: WHO. Members of the WHO Emergency Committee “expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not”.

January 21-24, 2020: Consultations at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland under auspices of  the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) for development of a vaccine program. CEPI is a WEF-Gates partnership. With support from CIPI, Seattle based Moderna will manufacture an mRNA vaccine against 2019-nCoV, “The Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, collaborated with Moderna to design the vaccine.”

Note: The development of a 2019 nCoV vaccine was announced at Davos, 2 weeks after the January 7, 2020 announcement, and barely a  week prior to the official launching of the WHO’s Worldwide Public Health emergency on January 30.  The WEF-Gates-CEPI Vaccine Announcement precedes the WHO Public Health Emergency (PHEIC).

January  30, 2020: Geneva: WHO Director General determines that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). This decision was taken on the basis of 150 confirmed cases outside China, First case of person to person transmission in US is reported, 6 cases in the US, 3 cases in Canada, 2 in the UK.

The WHO Director General had the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Big Pharma and the World Economic Forum (WEF). There are indications that the decision for the WHO to declare a Global Emergency was taken on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (January 21-24) overlapping with the Geneva January 22 meeting of the Emergency Committee.

Both WHO’s Director Tedros as well as Bill Gates were present at Davos 2020. Bill Gates announced the Gates Foundation’s $10 billion commitment to vaccines over the next 10 years.

January 30, 2020 The Simulation Exercise Went Live. The same corporate interests and foundations which were involved in the October 18 John Hopkins Simulation Exercise became REAL ACTORS involved in providing their support to the implementation of the WHO Public Health emergency (PHEIC).

January 31, 2020 – One day later following the launch of WHO Global Emergency, The Trump administration announced that it will deny entry to foreign nationals “who have traveled in China in the last 14 days”. This immediately triggers a crisis in air transportation, China-US trade as well as the tourism industry, leading to substantial bankruptcies, not to mention unemployment.

Immediately triggers a campaign against ethnic Chinese throughout the Western World.

Early February: the acronym of the coronavirus was changed from nCoV- 2019 (its name under the October Event 201 John Hopkins Simulation Exercise before it was identified in early January 2020) to COVID-19.

February 28, 2020: A massive WHO vaccination campaign was announced by WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus  

Who was behind this campaign: GlaxoSmithKline in partnership with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). It is a Gates-WEF partnership, both of which were sponsors of the October 18, “Simulation Exercise”. The campaign to develop vaccines was initiated prior to decision of the WHO to launch a Global Public Health emergency. It was first announced at the WEF meeting at Davos (21-24 January).

Late February 2020. Collapse of the stock markets, surge in the value of the stocks of Big Pharma.

Early March devastating consequences for the tourist industry Worldwide.

February 24:  Moderna Inc supported by CIPI  announced  that it experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, was ready for human testing.

Late February 2020. Second wave of transmission of the virus (Worldwide) to a large number of countries.

Late February – Early March: China: More than 50% of the infected patients recover and are discharged from the hospitals. March 3, a total of 49,856 patients have recovered from COVID-19 and were discharged from hospitals in China.  What this means that the total number of  “confirmed infected cases” in China is 30,448. (Namely 80,304 minus 49856 = 30,448  (80 304 is the total number on confirmed cases in China (WHO data, March 3, 2020). These developments concerning “recovery” are not reported by the Western media.

March 5, WHO Director General confirms that outside China there are 2055 cases reported in 33 countries. Around 80% of those cases continue to come from just three countries (South Korea, Iran, Italy).

These figures suggested that we are not facing a global health emergency, that the probability of infection was low. And Based on China’s experience  the treatment for the virus infection was effective.

March 7: USA: The number of “confirmed cases” (infected and recovered) in the United States in early March is of the order of 430, rising to about 6oo (March 8). Rapid rise in the course of March.

Compare that to the figures pertaining to the Influenza B Virus: The CDC estimates for 2019-2020 “at least 15 million virus flu illnesses… 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths. (The Hill)

Early March:  IMF and World Bank To the Rescue 

The WHO Director General advises member countries that “the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have both made funds available to stabilize health systems and mitigate the economic consequences of the epidemic”. That is the proposed neoliberal  “solution” to COVID-19. The World Bank has committed $12billion in so-called “aid” which will contribute to building up the external debt of developing countries.

March 7:  China: The Pandemic is Almost Over

Reported new cases in China fall to double digit. 99 cases recorded on March 7.  All of the new cases outside Hubei province are categorized as  “imported infections”(from foreign countries). The reliability of the data remains to be established:

99 newly confirmed cases including 74 in Hubei Province, … The new cases included 24 imported infections — 17 in Gansu Province, three in Beijing, three in Shanghai and one in Guangdong Province. 

March 10-11, 2020: Italy declares a lockdown, followed by several other countries of the EU.  Deployment of 30,000 US troops in the EU as part of the “Defend Europe 2020” war games directed against Russia.

March 11, 2020: the Director General of the WHO officially declares the COV-19 Pandemic. Bear in mind the global health emergency was declared on January 3oth without stating officially the existence of a pandemic outside Mainland China.

March 11:  Trump orders the suspension for 30 days of all transatlantic flights from countries of the European Union, with the exception of Britain. Coincides with the collapse of airline stocks and a new wave of financial instability. Devastating impacts on the tourist industry in Western Europe.

March 16: Moderna  mRNA-1273 is tested in several stages with 45 volunteers in Seattle, Washington State. The vaccine program started in early February:

“We don’t know whether this vaccine will induce an immune response, or whether it will be safe. That’s why we’re doing a trial,” Jackson stressed. “It’s not at the stage where it would be possible or prudent to give it to the general population.” (AP, March 16, 2020)

March 21, 2020: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo while addressing the American people from the White House stated that COVID-19 is a live military exercise.

“This is not about retribution, … This matter is going forward — we are in a live exercise here to get this right.”

With a disgusted look on his face, President Trump replied: “You should have let us know.”

April 8, 2020: Mounting fear campaign led by Western media. Very rapid increase in so-called “confirmed cases”. “1,282,931 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 72,776 deaths, reported to WHO” (April 8). Mounting doubts on the reported “confirmed cases” of COVID-19. Failures of the CDC’s categorization and statistical estimates.

March- April: Planet Lockdown. Devastating economic and social consequences. The economic and social impacts far exceed those attributed to the coronavirus. Cited below are selected examples of  a global process: 

• Massive job losses and layoffs in the US, with more than 10 million workers filing claims for unemployment benefits.
• In India,  a 21 days lockdown has triggered a wave of famine and despair affecting millions of homeless migrant workers all over the country. No lockdown for the homeless: “too poor to afford a meal”.  
• The impoverishment in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa is beyond description. For large sectors of the urban population, household income has literally been wiped out.
• In Italy, the destabilization of the tourist industry has resulted in bankruptcies and rising unemployment. 
• In many countries, citizens are the object of police violence. Five people involved in protests against the lockdown were killed by police in Kenya and South Africa.

Concluding Remarks

We  are dealing with a complex global crisis with far-reaching economic, social and geopolitical implications.

We have provided factual information as well as analysis in a summarized “common sense” format.

Is is important that COVID-19 be the object of  widespread debate and that the “official interpretations” be forcefully challenged.

We ask our readers to forward this article as well other Global Research articles pertaining to the COVID-19 coronavirus.

When the Lie becomes the Truth, there is No Moving Backwards.

The citizens of Australia’s second most populous city are suffering under the harshest lockdown conditions of all Western democracies. Their voices need to be heard.

In the last several weeks, Melbourne has introduced shockingly draconian anti-Covid measures, imposed on the metropolis of some 5 million souls. What tragedy was responsible for spurring officials to leap into action? To blame was a fractional uptick in the number of coronavirus deaths – seven to be exact, and all involving citizens above the age of 70 years old.

The media jumped on the “new single-day record in Victoria,” which brought the state death toll to 56. I repeat, 56, and the overwhelming majority of those cases involved elderly people in nursing facilities, some of which are under investigation for their handling of patients. While it goes without saying that elderly lives matter, do seven elderly deaths really warrant the shutdown of one of Australia’s busiest cities?

Fascism is alive and well we see @VicGovAu.

Dystopian hell in Melbourne Australia pic.twitter.com/U3bKb1Pihh

— Minitrue (@BanTheBBC) August 7, 2020

Despite the extremely low death rate, Melbourne residents – or shall we call them what they really are, prisoners – must adhere to the following rules:

• No traveling more than 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from their homes;
• No traveling to other states inside of the country;
• Those under house arrest are permitted to leave home for just one hour each day for exercise;
• Only one person is permitted to go shopping per family each day; shopping is to be done within 5 kilometers from home;
• Unlike traditional prisons, visitations are not permitted to house arrestees;
• All school activities are to be conducted online;
• All businesses, services and construction cancelled;
• Organized sport, forget it;
• In the case of funerals, try and delay your demise if at all possible, otherwise, expect just 10 guests;
• Ditto for weddings;
• Curfew in effect between 8 pm and 5 am.

These restrictions will be in place for (at least) six weeks.

Meanwhile, as to be expected, the authorities have been enthusiastic about meting out their street justice on people who allegedly violate the regime’s rules. And not just on the street. The police have been authorized to enter private residences without a warrant.

Shane Patton, Police Chief Commissioner of Victoria, told reporters that “there are consequences” for not going along with the lockdown.

“In the last week, we’ve seen a trend, an emergence, if you like, of groups of people, small groups, but nonetheless concerning groups, who classify themselves as ‘sovereign citizens,’ whatever that might mean, people who don’t think the law applies to them,” Patton, wearing all black attire for the occasion, explained. “We’ve seen them at checkpoints…not providing a name and address. And at least on three or four occasions in the last week, we’ve had to smash the windows of people in cars and pull them out of there…”

This is getting outta hand. Guy was arrested at the Shrine of Rememberance today. This guy was not only arrested but forcibly made to wear a mask. Hitting someone with a fake $200 fine is one thing, but forcibly masking is another. This is straight up brute intimidation people. pic.twitter.com/gexKUfTMiJ

— 👊✖️RISEUPMELBOURNE✖️👊 (@riseupmelbourne) July 31, 2020

Needless to say, there have been other examples of people losing their patience with the lockdown conditions. Local media reported that an unidentified 38-year-old Melbourne woman was arrested after “repeatedly bashing a 26-year-old female police officer’s head against a concrete sidewalk.” The police officer was reportedly attacked for asking the woman why she wasn’t wearing a mask.

In the same week, a mother was fined $1,652 for breaking with regulations after she was tackled to the ground and handcuffed by three cops. Her daughter filmed the incident, while begging the police, “get off my mum, she’s in pain.”

An American acquaintance, who requested to remain anonymous, sent me the following message from Melbourne where he lives with his family:

“All three of my working kids are in enforced idleness – mandatory masks and, as you might expect in a place with its fair share of inadequate people, mask nazis are the new danger for sane citizens. I was in Argentina in the 70s during the Dirty War and this is the closest I have felt to that kind of experience since those days. Dark days indeed – and did I mention the press? They are specializing in singling out people who voice opposition and shaming them in really vile terms.”

Anika Stojkovski, a corporate compliance and governance consultant based in Melbourne, also offered her personal impressions on the situation.

“I sensed there was something very wrong with all this and predicted what is happening now,” Stojkovski told me via email. “I could tell they were lying.”

“I really think there is more to it and it is all about total control and heading towards the agenda for us all to be vaccinated… [Victorian Premier Dan] Andrews says he wants every man, woman and child vaccinated. There is no vaccine!! So will we be kept in isolation till when?”

Speaking on the medical situation in the city, Stojkovski was struck by the fact that “all consulting rooms in hospitals are closed, and all appointments are conducted by specialists by phone.”

“This still doesn’t add up … they are not admitting to hospital for Covid unless severely ill with life threatening symptoms, while most people cannot be tested for the virus without traveling beyond the 5-kilometer point.”

When I inquired if there was anything happening out of the ordinary in Australia aside from the pandemic, Stojkovski mentioned that the Australian federal government [Canberra] was “not happy with the contracts our Victorian State Premier was making with China. Our prime minster [Scott Morrison] said they were not in the national interest.”

In terms of geopolitical significance, this is huge. Victoria is the only Australian state to formally sign on to the People Republic of China’s major foreign-policy initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative. This contradicts the position of the federal government to not join the BRI as it raised serious geostrategic concerns. According to a report by the Australian Institute of International Affairs, the BRI Framework Agreement “places Victoria in an awkward position as Australia has formally signed onto the ‘Blue Dot Network’ with the US to assist in developing infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region to counter the BRI.”

At the very least, the timing of an agreement between Victoria and communist China, happening just months before the economic shutdown of Melbourne over a minuscule increase in Covid deaths, which will halt, possibly indefinitely, China’s spread into a major Western economy, is astonishing. Although it would be hard to prove cause and effect, future historians would certainly find the connection – involving as it does the momentous geopolitical battle between Beijing and Washington – worth examining in greater detail. To that end, the media is already busy portraying anyone who questions the logic of the lockdowns with its favorite conversation stopping term, “conspiracy theorist.”

Whatever the case may be, the alleged ‘super spread’ of Covid in Melbourne is already causing political fractures between Canberra and Victoria, in much the same way it is in the United States between the Democrats and the Republicans. Meanwhile, the residents of Melbourne continue to suffer under a lockdown that appears more tenuous with each passing day.

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Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist.

Featured image is from AP

“Solitary is used against prisoners who continue to resist against the oppressive environment within the system, and it is used to extremes that are hard for anyone to believe possible in a modern-day society. It is used to wear us down, to degrade us, humiliate us, and to try and break our spirit. They want to make a man less than a man, and when they find that they can´t make a dent in his resolve they just keep him in solitary.” – Prisoner (anonymous) in Millhaven solitary confinement [1]

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According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer in Canada, the total spending on Canada’s Prison System (2011-12 statistics) was around $20 billions dollars, $5 billion dollars of which came from federal sources. According to the numbers for 2015-2016, 40,147 adult offenders were incarcerated at the federal and provincial levels. [2][3]

By contrast, according to 2018 statistics, $3 billion a year was spent on the federal Department of Health, Aboriginal Affairs costs $10 billion a year, Veterans affairs is $3.5 billion, and the federal Department of the Environment stands at $1 billion. [4]

So, prisons are essentially one of the largest expenditures paid for by the public purse.

And yet, efforts to gain access from the incarcerated is incredibly difficult. Family members have a rough time just trying to communicate with people in custody. Frequently, people die in jail under suspicious circumstances, and the death rate among the detained is alarmingly high.

According to a report commissioned by Reuters, between 2012 and 2017, 270 died while in custody. Of that number, 174 were merely awaiting trial. [5]

The numbers suggest that for the vast sums of money going into the enterprise, there is a shocking low level of transparency with regard to the numbers suffering at the hands of the state.

August 10 was the date when a prisoner in a Millhaven Institution, Eddie Nalon, died as a result of neglect. His death in segregation inspired a mass uprising among inmates everywhere, consisting of a day of fast and no labour. Prisoner Justice Day is still commemorated in communities across the country, although numbers are not quite as robust as they had been in the press. [6]

This past August 10 marked the 46th anniversary of Prisoner Justice Day. We chose to commemorate the occasion by making the topic of prison justice the theme for this week’s broadcast of the Global Research News Hour.

In our first half hour, we aired an interview with Robert Gaucher on the history of the prison reform movement. We next spoke with two prison justice organizers from opposite end of the country on the current challenges facing the movement.

Robert Gaucher was a distinguished professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. He led the fight for ending the death penalty in 1976. In1988, he started the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons. Bob also spend a period of time in prison.

Johanne Wendy Bariteau is a Montreal based organizer with for Prisoners’ Justice Day. She has spent time in prison as well.

Meenakshi Mannoie is an organizer for the Prisoners’ Justice Day event in Vancouver.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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. http://www.vcn.bc.ca/august10/politics/1014_history.html
2. https://johnhoward.ca/blog/financial-facts-canadian-prisons/
3. Julie Reitano, 2017, ‘Adult correctional statistics in Canada, 2015/2016’, Statistics Canada; https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2017001/article/14700-eng.htm
4.  http://www.vcn.bc.ca/august10/politics/1014_history.html
5. Anna Mehler Paperny, August 3, 2017, ‘Canada’s jailhouse secret: Legally innocent prisoners are dying’, Reuters; 
6. http://www.vcn.bc.ca/august10/politics/1014_history.html

Military aircraft were heard, and in some cases seen, flying in the sky in the moments before the apocalyptic Beirut explosion, war-hardened residents of the Lebanese capital told Asia Times this week.

Araz Bedros, a resident of the Metn district overlooking Beirut, told Asia Times that she and her husband were drawn to their 11th-floor balcony last Tuesday, August 4, by the sound of a loud boom.

Bedros, 37, was raised during the Lebanese Civil War, which stretched from 1975 to 1990, and she lived through the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.

“We ran to the balcony and we saw two aircraft, black planes flying. I screamed to my husband it must be Israel. And then the big explosion happened.”

Although the couple’s residence is located in the hills just above the city, she says she went into wartime mode, ordering her daughter to get dressed so they could evacuate to an open space.

“At first I thought they would continue to the Dahieh,” she said, referring to the Shiite-majority southern suburbs of Beirut, which bore the brunt of Israeli air attacks during the month-long 2006 war. But then, she says, she watched them fly out to sea, out on the Mediterranean.

“US forces in Lebanon were not flying any aircraft in the sky above Beirut at the time of the blast; however, we routinely utilize unmanned aerial platforms as a  force protection tool for our teams on the ground,” Captain Bill Urban, a spokesman for US Central Command, told Asia Times.

CENTCOM does not publicize the “mission specifics of our particular platforms,” Urban said, adding he was able to share that US forces were asked for and responded to a request by the Lebanese Armed Forces for video support following the explosion.

“On August 4, seventy minutes following the initial report of explosion and at the request of our LAF partners, we provided three and a half hours of full motion video support over the explosion to provide damage assessments as well as assist in personnel search and recovery efforts,” Urban said.

Senior Western sources told Asia Times that Western reconnaissance craft were in the skies above the Lebanese coast at the time of the blasts. These craft did not carry out any attack, they said.

“The cause of the first fire/explosion is still an unanswered question,” a US official told Asia Times on condition of anonymity. While there have been reports that the initial fire may have been due to negligence, the source noted he has not yet seen “actual evidence to support or confirm that,” and that “other alternatives” are possible.

Israel, which last year accused Hezbollah of militarizing Beirut Port and whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in 2018 that the Shiite group was “using the innocent people of Beirut as human shields,” has denied involvement in the human catastrophe. Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi last week told Israeli N12 television the explosion was most likely an accident.

“If it was an Israeli attack, then this will not be revealed because it implicates both sides in a war they don’t want,” a senior Lebanese source close to Hezbollah told Asia Times on condition of anonymity.

The explosions killed more than 170 people and wounded over 6,000.

Sonic boom

In the city below, Marwan Naaman was leaving his work at Fashion Trust Arabia, whose Lebanon office is located directly across from the port. He sent a text message at 6:03 pm, just before driving off. He says he was about to turn off the Sea Road to get on the highway towards East Beirut when the first explosion hit.

“I turned and heard vrrrrr. I remember the war years we’d hear a vrrrr … not like a passenger plane flying, but much faster. I heard that, then heard BOOM.”

Naaman, 48, sped to get away from the Sea Road and onto the highway, and then the second explosion hit.

“This is when the buildings started exploding and the glass started flying. My first reaction was that the city was being bombed, I thought I was going to die now. It was really terrifying.”

Naaman, who experienced much of of the Lebanese Civil War, and spent a decade of his life in San Fransisco from 1990, says he had flashbacks to the sounds of Fleet Week, the annual air show between the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

“All I could think of was the sound of the Blue Angels,” he said referring to the US Navy formation.

Naaman’s testimony was echoed by residents of Borj Hammoud, a working-class district adjacent to the port that is home to mainly ethnic Armenians, Syrian refugees, and migrant workers.

In security camera footage captured in the heart of Borj Hammoud, two men are seen leaving their shops to look up at the sky. One man grins, jokingly pointing his finger up, twirling it around, and then diving it down as if to mimic an expected strike.

In a moment, the grin evaporates from his face and he joins his friend across the street to watch something in the sky. Seconds later, a blast hits, sending the men back and shattering the glass of the entire street of shops.

“I definitely heard the sound of a plane. First came the sonic boom, then you heard the explosion,” said shop-owner Nazareth Vandakardjian, 75, interviewed by Asia Times on Saturday.

“It was abnormal. An abnormal explosion. Every single person thought the blast was hitting building,” he said, sitting outside his shop, midway through a game of backgammon with his Syrian colleague.

Image on the right: Nazareth Vandakardjian, 75, says he heard the sound of a sonic boom before the August 4, 2020 Beirut explosion from the Borj Hammoud district located across from the port, where the explosion originated. Photo: Asia Times

Riad Mohammad Ali, who hails from the countryside of Aleppo, and who took shelter in Lebanon after the outbreak of the war in Syria, says he heard the same.

“I fled the war to here. A warplane sound? I heard it for sure – before the explosion.

“I heard it, and everybody heard it,” Ali stated flatly.

Vandakardjian interjects:

“Didn’t we live through the 2006 war? We know the sonic boom, it’s the same sound.”

The Syrian man told Asia Times he had spent the past four days evacuating wounded and helping people clean up their wrecked houses in the upscale Gemmayzé district, where his main workplace is located. The backgammon game was his first break.

Image below: Riad Mohammad Ali, a Syrian from the countryside of Aleppo, says he heard the sound of a warplane before the Beirut explosion of August 4, 2020. Photo: Asia Times

‘We’ve been hit’

Perhaps the most horrifying video, which has emerged from inside the port itself and which purportedly was filmed by a worker on a mobile phone, records the moments after the final, cataclysmic explosion.

“We’re in the port of Beirut, and we’re hit,” says the petrified man, filming as black smoke billows amid the forest of cranes and containers around him. A transport vehicle buzzes past.

“One minute ago, there was an airplane that did two strikes … that, or one plane made a strike, and then another came and made another strike,” he continues, aiming the camera to show smoke rising into the sky over French CMA-CGM containers, some of them lit with amber flames.

“We’ve really been hit,” he says. “I don’t know what’s happening.” He quivers before the video cuts.

Elie Asmar was in a bar in the adjacent district of Mar Mikhael, when the blasts occurred.

“The cloud of the explosion, the silence, the dust, is definitely the same,” he told Asia Times of the video from the port.

“I can clearly identify the silence. It was the most horrible deafening silence I have ever felt,” he said.

Asmar said he also thought it was an air strike in the moment, but told Asia Times he does not believe any strike from the air occurred.

In what is one of the clearest videos of the explosion, filmed from one of the luxury high-rises above the port, a couple document the initial fire billows.

They are at first totally unaware of the danger headed their way, alternately poking fun at themselves for playing TV journalists, and expressing mounting worry for those in the port.

One minute into the video, what sounds like an incoming jet is heard.

“What’s that sound? Emad get inside. Honey get inside. Emad! Get inside!” the woman shrieks to her companion, apparently on the balcony.

Twenty seconds into the audible crescendo, at 1:20, a blast is heard.

“Emad! Please, please get inside … something bigger exploded, dear God, hopefully no one was hurt,” she says. As seconds pass, the billowing charcoal clouds become more intense.

“Emad come inside! Close the glass please,” she implores him.

But he continues filming, even as small explosions begin erupting and orange flares are seen bursting from the area. At 1:54, the final explosion blasts out of the port and through apartment. The phone tumbles and the couple go silent.

Western reconnaissance confirmed

Lebanese authorities say that final, fatal blast was the explosion of a 2,750 metric-ton stock of ammonium nitrate, a notoriously weaponizable fertilizer, which had been inexplicably kept inside a warehouse in the port for the past six years, despite regular warnings and the obvious dangers and illegalities it presented.

US President Donald Trump and Lebanese President Michel Aoun have each raised the possibility that the Beirut blasts were triggered by an “attack,” or “external interference by a missile or a bomb.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an address following the blasts, notably did not raise the possibility of any role by enemy Israel in the cataclysmic explosion, despite weeks of rising tensions along the border and in neighboring Syria, and after a series of mysterious explosions targeting sensitive sites in allied Iran.

Iran has said the explosions should not be “politicized,” while French President Emmanuel Macron, who has assumed an outsized role in managing the fallout and on Thursday demanded an international probe, as of Sunday judged there was “enough objective evidence” to judge the double blasts as “accidental.”

Lebanon’s Judge Fadi Akiki is currently overseeing an investigation by Military Intelligence and the Information Division of the Internal Security Forces. Akiki, Lebanese journalists are noting, is married to the niece of the powerful Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

President Aoun has rejected calls by Lebanese civil society for an international probe.

Israel, whose UN ambassador one year ago said Beirut Port had become “Hezbollah’s port” and accused the Shiite group of using civilian areas as human shields, has denied any role in the explosions.

On Monday, Israel’s military publicly said it was reducing its troop presence along the border with Lebanon and Syria, indicating confidence that Hezbollah will not or cannot reply at this time.

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Featured image: Two men standing on Arax Street in Borj Hammoud district, adjacent to the Beirut Port, are seen in security camera footage released after the August 4, 2020 double explosion, pointing to the sky. Photo: screenshot

Only through repetitive propaganda across the Western media and their local partners in Thailand can current protests appear “student led,” “leaderless,” and “organic.”

An article published by the Bangkok Post titled, “PM: Who is financing student rallies?,” would repeat Thailand’s elected prime minister’s questions, but Bangkok Post’s reporters themselves have categorically failed to either ask or answer the same question.

Despite claiming the protests are youth-led and leaderless, middle-aged lawyer Anon Nampa of Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) is clearly among the core leaders. He leads every significant protest in the country, both in Bangkok and upcountry.

His organization, TLHR, ceaselessly promotes the protests, providing them round-the-clock PR, legal aid, and other forms of material support.

TLHR is in turn funded by the US government via  the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). TLHR’s funding was listed openly on NED’s official website in 2014.

Before TLHR and its members began leading rallies – founding members admitted TLHR is entirely funded by foreign governments.

Even the Bangkok Post previously reported this – despite apparently “forgetting” this fact more recently.

The Bangkok Post in a 2016 article titled, “The lawyer preparing to defend herself,” would admit:

…[TLHR] receives all its funding from international donors including the EU, Germany and US-based human rights organisations and embassies of the UK and Canada.

In addition to an award presented by the French Embassy, the US State Department awarded TLHR member  Sirikan “June” Charoensiri the 2018 “International Women of Courage Award” presented by US First Lady Melania Trump.

The US embassy in Bangkok openly praised TLHR in its own post celebrating the award, exclaiming:

The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok is proud of Sirikan “June” Charoensiri’s work as a lawyer and human rights defender, and for being recognized by the Secretary of State as an International Women of Courage award recipient.

Ms. Sirikan is a co-founder of Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), a lawyers’ collective set up to provide pro bono legal services for human rights cases and to document human rights violations.

Thus – an organization carefully cultivated by the US government for years – propped up financially and politically and even awarded for carrying out Washington’s agenda in Thailand – is now leading protests aimed at overthrowing the elected government of Thailand.

This is not unlike US-backed regime change aimed at nations like Syria, Libya, and Ukraine where false claims of the US promoting “democracy” or “defending human rights” later turned out to be simply naked military aggression couched behind such pretexts and all aimed at wrecking nations, pilfering resources, and denying Washington’s adversaries – China and Russia – stable allies and economic partners.

In addition to TLHR the US government is also funding iLaw via the NED. It is listed on iLaw’s website as well as NED’s official website under, “Internet Law Reform Dialogue.”

US-funded iLaw is currently heading a petition to literally rewrite Thailand’s constitution, as reported by The Nation’s article, “iLaw launches petition for charter rewrite.”

It would be unimaginable for the US to tolerate a foreign-funded front – say from Russia – petitioning inside the US for the US constitution to be rewritten. It would be interesting to hear the US embassy in Bangkok explain why it believes Thailand should nonetheless tolerate similar interference in its own internal political affairs by the US and agitators it is extensively funding.

There are also a number of fake news websites funded by the US government and providing decidedly lopsided coverage of the ongoing protests including Prachatai.

Prachatai receives millions of Thai Baht a year from the US government to advance narratives that divide and destabilize Thailand and promote US interests within Thai borders.

The media front’s “executive director” Chiranuch Premchaiporn is also a “fellow” of the National Endowment for Democracy –  an organization chaired by representatives not of promoting democracy and human rights – but inveterate warmongers and war criminals like Elliot Abrams, propagandists like Anne Applebaum, and representatives of America’s arms, oil, and banking sectors.

Prachatai’s activities include promoting and defending opposition groups and parties the US seeks to place into power. It has recently served as a central platform promoting ongoing unrest, protesters’ demands, and attempting to build legitimacy around all three while omitting any mention of documented foreign funding or ulterior motives involved.

Prachatai has in the past and still currently hides its US government funding. A partial disclosure made in 2011 is buried on its English website and has not been updated since. No financial disclosure at all has been made on its Thai language website.

Often the Western media and local newspapers like the Bangkok Post and The Nation will mention all of these US-funded fronts in a single article and never once mention who funds them or their connections to opposition parties attempting to deny any role in current protests.

Prachatai – for example – supplied at least one member of its staff – Nalutporn Krairisksh – as a “founding member” of billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit’s Future Forward Party. Prachatai even “interviewed” her but never disclosed her relationship with Prachatai or the fact that she still worked out of their offices even after joining Future Forward.

The conflicts of interest are numerous and alarming – but also being entirely unmentioned or even covered up. It is impropriety that should help further illustrate the true nature of Thailand’s so-called “opposition” and undermine dishonest claims that US interference in Thailand is not a serious problem.

That the US government is funding protest leaders attempting to oust the current government, while funding efforts to rewrite Thailand’s constitution, all while funding media fronts to control the narrative while doing so – constitutes a clear cut case of foreign political meddling – the sort of toxic and intolerable meddling the US accused Russia of in fiction – but is verifiably carrying out against nations like Thailand.

The US has insisted it should not suffer or tolerate foreign meddling in its own domestic affairs. Why does it believe other nations should tolerate foreign meddling? And why does the US believe it has the right to be the one who does so?

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This article was originally published on Land Destroyer Report.

Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from LDR unless otherwise stated

U.S. President Donald Trump has issued an executive order that could ban TikTok from the U.S. if it is not purchased by an American company. On August 6, Trump’s executive order banned U.S. financial transactions with Chinese company ByteDance, owner of the TikTok app. The ban will take effect 45 days after the executive order was made.

According to Trump, if the app is not sold to an American company, it will be banned from the U.S. because it represents a so-called national security threat. Growing immensely popular all throughout the world during the coronavirus quarantine, the TikTok app has been downloaded more than a billion times around the globe, totalling 175 million downloads in the U.S. alone.

TikTok as a social media platform is distinct from other competitors because its short video content is fun, easy to consume and dynamic, popular especially with teenagers and young adults. Operated by the most valuable start-up in the world, ByteDance, TikTok adopts a market strategy based on not having an obvious Chinese connection. However, despite trying to detach itself from its Chinese roots, TikTok still faces mistrust around the world, and not from its consumers, but rather from the consumers governments.

After Trump consolidated Sinophobia in the U.S., which then spread throughout the Anglosphere, targeting TikTok as a Chinese spy mechanism was intensified. To counter this aggression, the company took steps such as hiring Kevin Mayer, a former Disney executive, to become CEO of TikTok, and it is rumored to be considering relocating the app outside of mainland China. But the strategy did not prevent the company from becoming the target of the Trump administration. The U.S. president gave TikTok a few weeks to sell its U.S. operations to an American company. Apparently, the buyer will be Microsoft.

The threat to ban the app if there is a no sales agreement with Microsoft by September was viewed with great suspicion in Chinese public opinion. The press in China has classified the measure as an attempt to steal Chinese technology.

Trump’s decision is in line with Washington’s recent stance on Beijing. The subsequent announcement that Trump expects the U.S. to receive a percentage of the possible sale of TikTok to an American company is a major escalation in the economic war between the U.S. and China. There is no precedent in recent U.S. history for such a requirement and rather it is a clear act of extortion.

The Trump administration justifies the move against TikTok, claiming there is a risk that data from U.S. users will be transferred to the Chinese government. A broad debate on privacy and data protection is necessary, but it needs to be guided by evidence and not just suspicion. The U.S. is yet to provide any tangible evidence that TikTok data ends up in the hands of the Chinese government. It is also problematic that Chinese companies are subjected to such scrutiny while Western companies are spared the same level of rigor, both on the part of governments and the general public.

Trump is in the middle of an election campaign and wants to attract a portion of the electorate with anti-China sentiment. The president is also reacting to a movement supposedly orchestrated by users of the app, which sabotaged Trump’s first campaign rally in June by registering most of the seats at the rally but did not attend it. The Trump administration is concerned with TikTok’s influence in the public debate and the humiliation it made on Trump’s rally, and Trump is now seeking revenge.

A Chinese retaliation is possible and will damage the business environment for both countries. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbing warned that Washington’s move could open a “pandora’s box.” This unprecedented action by Trump could open the door for similar measures to be taken against U.S. companies in other countries.

However, it is important to remember that China’s ability to retaliate is not the same as the U.S. as the North American country has a bigger economy, technological superiority and more influence over others countries – for now at least. In addition, many of the American companies similar to ByteDance, such as Facebook and Google, already have a very limited or even non-existent presence in China, which would also make it difficult for Beijing to respond proportionately.

Initiatives against other companies like Huawei, suggest that Washington is engaged in a broader battle against Chinese technology companies. Technology companies will increasingly be used in containment strategies in the China-U.S. dispute. ByteDance said it would sue the Trump administration for accusing the company without evidence and failing to guarantee the right of defense. Effectively, this issue over TikTok is far from over for Trump, especially since it still remains a threat to his election campaign.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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The Vice Presidency has always gotten a degree of bad press in the US political system. Its ineffectuality is sometimes lost on the occupant, though not on John N. Garner, who considered it “not worth a bucket of warm spit.”  (R. G. Tugwell in The Brains Trust suggests that the measure “quart” was used.)  Two terms as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second fiddle was something he considered “the worst thing that ever happened to me”, occupying an office that was “a no man’s land somewhere between the legislative and executive branch.”  He regretted giving up the heftier role as Speaker of the House. 

Joe Biden, having himself occupied that spittoon of an office for eight years during the Obama administration, has now found the person he hopes will do the same for him.  That candidate, Kamala Harris, had been an early Democratic contender for main billing, but the electoral law of entropy struck her down early.  In March, when she announced her withdrawal from the race, she was careful to keep her hat in the ring of favour, endorsing Biden as the presumptive nominee with her own lacing of fiction. 

“There is no one better than Joe to steer our nation through these turbulent times, and restore truth, honour and decency to the Oval Office.” 

The announcement propelled pundit land to chorus with bone weary predictions and assessments, some of which might prove, come November, to be merely astrological.  The fortissimo score that is being played through is that of Harris’s moderation and safe bearing.  The America of Donald Trump is dangerous and immoderate; Harris offers a tepid corrective, one that will see a Bourbon restoration rather than inspired reform.  She “can appeal to voters in key swing states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania,” suggests Thomas Gift, director of the Centre on US Politics at UCL.  She also measures up in the identity stakes, “the first African-American and Asian-American selected as VP candidate for a major party”.

The commentary on her selection is heavy with the centrist tag, one that seeks to push the stone throwing radicals out while supposedly embracing voters who steered to Trump in 2016.  For the Los Angeles Times, Biden’s choice of Harris “set a marker for how he believes Democrats can win – both in this election and in the future – with a multiracial coalition that can excite voters, but a centre-left brand that steers clear of the most far-reaching progressive demands.” 

Ed Kilgore, writing in New York magazine, noted these points in 2019.  She is “disciplined”; she is the candidate of “moderation – or some would say, lack of courage”.  Where she is seen as radical is through no doing of her own.  As Elizabeth Weil put it, “Harris’s demographic identity has always been radical” while her record in office was marked by avoiding “saying or doing much that could be held against her.” 

These are not exactly promising attributes in populist times.  The Democrats risk doing, as Ted Rall warns, of making the same mistake they did with Hillary Clinton.  Picking Harris is a suggestion to the left base of the Democratic Party to “drop dead”.  Biden’s “centrist establishment handlers view Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 as historically anomalous rather than evidence of a flawed strategy.”  Identity politics becomes the substitute for policy. 

This suggests that little in the way of change will be forthcoming on a Biden-Harris ticket.  Harris is branded as an institutional figure (thirteen years in public office, spent as District Attorney in San Francisco and Attorney General of California), one who, according to family friend Lateefah Simon, chose to “work within some of the most systematically racist institutions in the country” while her sister, Maya, became the enterprising advocate.   

The institutional moorings of the presumptive VP-nominee is seen as a strength, till you realise that Trump’s victory in 2016, and his appeal to the country’s marked rages, were of an anti-institutional flavour.  What he has done during his tenure has been to trash them, to break the Republic, assisted by his opponents who have done little in the way of addressing the country’s ills. (Coronavirus has, and is doing, the rest.)  A ticket with Harris on it is a promise to Make America the Same Again, a return to political recycling.

Establishment Democrats are certainly happy about “no risk” Harris.  President Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice enthusiastically pointed out that any Republican attacks on Biden’s choice was always going to focus on whether they were “left and socialist.  It’s not true.  That is not who Kamala Harris is.  And it’s not who Joe Biden is.” 

Much analysis on the Harris pick soon turns into waffle and tripe.  Former Republican staffer and communications boffin Drew Holden picks up on the “moderate and centrist” theme in the Democrat advertising strategy, but insists that she is “among the most liberal in Congress”.  This conclusion is not reached through teasing out any substantive political philosophy.  Holden is a strategist in political communication, and is happy to bore us with “Ideology-Leadership” charts featuring Harris (spot the “purple triangle”) as scoring as an extreme liberal on “our liberal-conservative ideology score”. More interesting is the view held by the editors of the conservative National Review that Harris “is a moderate autocrat”, a “moderate anti-Catholic bigot” and a “moderate monopolist on health care”.  Moderation is the new extremism.

Stool water and slush continue to mark the issue about what constitutes wings of US politics.  Barack Obama suggested in 2004 that there was no “liberal” or “conservative” America, merely the “United States of America.”  Gore Vidal’s idea of two right wings holding the US political cosmos together remains the most pertinent.  There are other iterations of the theme, which focus on the business element so crucial to the timbre of the election system.  A business civilisation will only tolerate the parties of business.  No divvying-up-the-wealth populist is ever going to be allowed to get by the banking mentality that governs the DNC-RNC duopoly.  He can certainly, as Trump has tried to do, pretend to drain the fetid swamp, with the natural inclination to fill it with his own brand of crony.  The rest is reality television chaos. 

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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]

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“HUGE breakthrough today,” crowed Donald Trump on twitter as he announced the new peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The deal makes the UAE the first Gulf Arab state and the third Arab nation, after Egypt and Jordan, to have diplomatic ties with Israel. But the new Israel-UAE partnership should fool no one. Though it will supposedly stave off Israeli annexation of the West Bank and encourage tourism and trade between both countries, in reality, it is nothing more than a scheme to give an Arab stamp of approval to Israel’s status quo of land theft, home demolitions, arbitrary extrajudicial killings, apartheid laws, and other abuses of Palestinian rights. 

The deal should be seen in the context of over three years of Trump administration policies that have tightened Israel’s grip on the Palestinians: moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and creating a so-called peace plan with no Palestinian participation or input. While no U.S. administration has successfully brokered a resolution to Israel’s now 53-year-long occupation, the Trump years have been especially detrimental to the Palestinian cause. Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi wrote on Twitter that with this deal, “Israel got rewarded for not declaring openly what it’s been doing to Palestine illegally & persistently since the beginning of the occupation.” Indeed, with Donald Trump at the helm and son-in-law Jared Kushner as the primary strategist, even concessions for Palestinians have been done away with. To add insult to injury, while the deal had been couched in terms of a commitment by Israel to suspend annexation of Palestinian territories, in his Israeli press conference announcing the deal, Netanyahu said annexation was “still on the table” and that it was something he is “committed to.”

Among the most brutal aspects of this period for Palestinians have been the loss of support for their cause in neighboring Arab states. The Arab political party in Israel, Balad, said that by signing this pact, “the UAE has officially joined Israel against Palestine, and placed itself in the camp of the enemies of the Palestinian people.”

The UAE has previously held a position consistent with public opinion in Gulf and Middle East countries that the acceptance of formal diplomatic relations with Israel should only take place in exchange for a just peace and in accordance with international law. Back in June, Emirati ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba penned an an op-ed in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the Israeli equivalent to U.S.A Today, appealing directly in Hebrew for Israel not to annex the West Bank. However, by working out an agreement with Trump and Netanyahu to normalize relations, the country has now made itself Israel’s partner in cementing de facto annexation and ongoing apartheid.

The UAE’s change from supporting Palestinian dignity and freedom to supporting Israel’s never-ending occupation is a calculated move by UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, a shrewd Middle East dictator who uses his country’s military and financial resources to thwart moves towards democracy and respect for human rights under the guise of fighting Islamic terrorism. His support for Israel cements his relationship with the Trump administration. Trump has already gone out of his way to push billions of dollars in arms sales to the UAE, despite opposition from Congress because of high number of civilian casualties associated with the use of those weapons in Yemen.

Secretary Pompeo has also defended the UAE from credible reports that U.S. weapons sold to the UAE have been transferred in Yemen to groups linked to Al Qaeda, hardline Salafi militias and Yemeni separatists. The UAE was also stung by revelations of secret prisons it had been operating in Yemen where prisoners were subjected to horrific forms of torture, including “the grill,” where victims were “tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire.” In Libya, the UAE has been criticized for violating a 2011 UN Security Council arms embargo by supplying combat equipment to the LAAF, the armed group commanded by General Khalifa Haftar with a well-established record of human right abuses. So this deal with Israel gives the UAE a much-needed veneer of respectability.

But it is impossible to understand the impetus for this deal without putting it in the context of the ongoing hostilities between all three countries and Iran. Following the old adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” in recent years Israel has been negotiating with various Gulf states, including the UAE, to push back against Iran’s growing influence in the region. As the communique announcing the Israeli-UAE deal asserted, the U.S., Israel and the UAE “share a similar outlook regarding threats in the region.” This dovetails with Trump’s anti-Iran obsession, which includes withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and his “maximum pressure” campaign designed to force Iran back to the negotiating table to make a “better deal.” In announcing the UAE-Israeli pact, Trump declared with ridiculous bravado that if he wins the elections, he’ll have a new deal with Iran within 30 days. Anyone who believes this must be almost as delusional as Trump.

The fact that this agreement between two Middle East countries was first announced thousands of miles away in Washington DC shows how it is more about shoring up Trump’s slumping electoral campaign and improving Netanyahu’s battered image in Israel than bringing peace to the Middle East. It also shows that Netanyahu and bin Zayed have a stake in seeing Trump win a second term in the White House. Instead of pointing out the hollowness of the pact, Joe Biden’s response was unfortunately to congratulate Israel and the UAE and try to take credit for the deal. “I personally spent time with leaders of both Israel and the U.A.E. during our administration, building the case for cooperation and broader engagement,” he said. “I am gratified by today’s announcement.”

The normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel, facilitated by the U.S., serves to prop up three repressive leaders — Trump, Netanyahu, and bin Zayed — and will cause further harm to Palestinians. It is both a shame and a sham.

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This article was originally published on CODEPINK.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Ariel Gold is the national co-director and Senior Middle East Policy Analyst with CODEPINK for Peace.

On June 11, 2020, 21 lakes, streams and wetlands in northern Ontario were re-characterized as a mine tailings impoundment for the proposed Magino gold mine. This magical transformation took place through Schedule 2 of the Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulation (MDMER) under the federal Fisheries Act.

Although the Act says it is illegal to “put deleterious substances into waters frequented by fish,” the MDMER creates a number of exemptions for the mining industry. As of July 2020, across Canada there are 64 “water bodies” that are exempt.

Prodigy Gold, the mine owner, now has the key permit to proceed with one of the largest gold mines in northern Ontario.

Prodigy Gold Incorporated, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Argonaut Gold Incorporated, is planning the construction, operation, decommissioning and abandonment of an open pit gold mine and metal mill located 14 kilometres south-east of Dubreuilville, Ontario. Mining would occur over 10 years. The on-site metal mill would have an ore input capacity of 35000 tonnes per day and would operate for approximately 12 to 15 years. During its last years, it will process a low-grade ore stockpile.

The final area disturbed by the mine will be 1,135 hectares. This figure does not include elevated arsenic, copper, manganese and cadmium in Herman, Otto, Spring, and Goudreau lakes, and in McVeigh Creek.

Nor does it include the risk of a catastrophic tailings dam failure of the waste rock dams holding water saturated mine wastes. The Tailings Management Facility will eventually hold 150 million tonnes of thickened tailings (45-65% water), in an area where “the water surplus must be carefully managed.”Another 400-430 million tonnes of waste rock will be generated. Fortunately, less than 5% of this is expected to be acid-generating.

The area where the mine will be is no stranger to mining. Magino is on the site of a former underground mine and is considered a “brownfield site.” Around Wawa, the legacy of arsenic contamination from historic mines and mills continues to be a problem, and in the area near the Magino project there are ten abandoned mines. In addition, the Wawa Plume — “a 24 km trail of environmental destruction,” the legacy of the Algoma Ore iron sintering plant — remains clearly visible from space.

Abutting the east side of the project, Alamos Gold has the producing Island Gold Mine, and to the south, the Eagle River and Mishi Pit gold mines are in production. Not far away, at Hemlo, there is the Williams Mine. But these mines have much lower production rates: Island Gold mills only 900 tonnes per day; Eagle River mills 1500.

The approval process for the Magino Mine illustrates everything that is problematic with mineral strategy in Ontario:

• The mine has obtained the approval of all the First Nations affected and they have signed Impact Benefit Agreements (with the exception of Garden River First Nation). These agreements are confidential. Submissions from First Nations during the environmental assessment process show that the Magino Mine area has been an important one for Indigenous people, providing food, cultural activities and spiritual renewal for centuries. That they have been forced to eliminate these long-term benefits for a gold mine that will last less than fifteen years, is an indication of the desperation created by on-going colonial policies of dispossession and impoverishment. Once the mine is operating, it is unclear how they can enforce the terms of their agreements.
• Prodigy Gold began its environmental assessment (EA) process in September 2013 and got a federal EA decision in January 2019. As a result, the EA was conducted prior to the Impact Assessment Act of 2019 (in force since 28 August 2019), and was under CEAA 2012. The new Act would have required more extensive and earlier public and Indigenous consultation, would have required gender-based analysis of impacts, and more thorough consideration of cumulative effects. It would also have required a “sustainability assessment” and more discussion of the “need and purpose” of the project, but it is not clear if this would have made a difference.
• The federal EA approval had a number of conditions that had to be met before mine construction could take place. Many of these conditions have not yet been met, and the company says a decision to proceed has not yet been taken.
• The federal Fisheries Act requires a fishery compensation plan as part of the Schedule 2 amendment discussed above, as well as a letter of credit for the cost of undertaking this plan. However, at the time Schedule 2 was approved, the plan was still being developed and it was not clear what would be done if the company failed to follow through or if the plan itself failed.
• Ontario did not then and still does not require mines to undergo an EA. Ontario does not require environmental assessment of private projects, unless they are specifically designated by regulation (for example hazardous waste sites). Ontario maintains that the staking of mining claims and leases is “not discretionary” and that it cannot refuse them. As a result, the only MNDM activities that require EA are “discretionary land grants,” reversals of land withdrawals, and the government remediation of mine hazards. Prodigy Gold “volunteered” to have a provincial EA concurrent with the federal one, to ease the permits it might require later for water-taking, road construction, power-lines, etc.

COVID-19, Gold, and the Coming Staking Rush?

Ironically, the coronavirus pandemic has given new life to the gold mining sector, as international investors have scrambled for “safe haven” assets amidst the economic chaos unleashed by the virus. On July 26, the gold spot price hit a record high above US$1920, surpassing its previous 2011 peak in the midst of the Eurozone crisis.

For many analysts, including the US bank Citigroup, gold has nowhere to go but up, as hedge fund managers and other “sophisticated investors” bet on the metal in fears that central bank measures to contain the economic crisis will debase major currencies. For investors, the fear is that governments will either have to raise taxes or print money — leading to inflation — to pay down their coronavirus debts, possibilities that make holding real assets like gold more attractive than currency-denominated assets.

Wall Street, Bloomberg reports, is now “throwing billions” at gold miners: Gold mining companies raised $2.4 billion in secondary equity offerings during the second quarter — seven times more than they raised last year. While big players like Barrick and Newmont have been the main beneficiaries, “juniors” (mining exploration companies) are also starting to get in on the action.

These trends are already having ripple effects in Ontario, where, once marginal projects now appear profitable. Toronto-based IAMGOLD, for instance, announced its plans to move ahead with its “massive” $1.3 billion Cote Gold mine near Gogama in partnership with Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. after having previously shelved the mine in January 2019, citing “poor market conditions.”

Argonaut Gold is also benefiting from the COVID-19 gold rush: On July 23, the company announced that it had raised more than $126 million through a public offering of 49 million shares to advance mine construction.

While it’s hard to predict how long the current boom will last, Wall Street’s newfound love affair with gold does not bode well for Ontario’s environment, nor for the province’s or industry’s relationship with communities and Indigenous peoples. Mining investors are notoriously irrational. Though it takes years to get from finding an orebody to turning into a profitable mine, mine financing is driven almost entirely by short-term price considerations.

If the recent past is any guide, Ontario’s junior gold sector can count on a big influx of cash to fund new exploration projects in the short term. Despite “modernizing” its mining legislation a decade ago, Ontario continues to offer mining companies a free hand to scour the province for profitable minerals. As the province’s Guide for Crown Land Use Planningputs it: “The Mining Act establishes a free entry/open access environment where as much land as possible is open for exploration and mine development.” Renewed conflicts like the ones we saw at Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and near Sharbot Lake a decade ago are all but inevitable, as Ontario continues to allow mining companies to stake claims on culturally and ecologically sensitive lands as well as traditional Indigenous territories without first gaining their consent.

The Magino mine approval in the context of the latest gold staking frenzy underscores the the vital need to reform Ontario’s mineral strategy to put people and the environment ahead of the industry and Wall Street’s short-term profit.

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It has been one of the worst periods in our global history. But for Scottish Nationalists, the pandemic was the crisis needed to escalate the independence cause. In the latest poll on Scottish independence, now 53% support it, with 47% against. It is the highest ever number of people to support leaving the Union. Now Unionists must wake up and smell the coffee.

Of course it isn’t an overwhelming figure of support. But to appreciate the significance of this milestone in the journey that the independence cause has taken, it’s important to remember how we got here. Take for example, the percentage of people in favour of independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum.  Polls showed at the time it was a mere 32-38%. Then you have to think about the extraordinary rise of the Scottish National Party over the last couple of decades. Earlier in the 20th century the SNP was a radical fringe party, no-one ever thought it could get elected to government. By 2007 it had gained power in Scottish parliament, forming a minority government. Since then it has only gone from strength to strength, in recent years dominating the Scottish political scene.

Foreigners often ask me, why are more Scots not in favour of independence, surely every people has the desire for self-determination? My answer: of course there is a desire. But for centuries the notion of what it is to be Scottish was literally beaten out of people. People were banned from wearing the kilt – the national dress, and forced to speak English instead of Gaelic or Scots. When my grandmother went to school in the 1920s children were beaten for speaking in their native tongue. Then you have the power of the media. Decades of a London-based broadcasting service – the BBC – had huge influence over the Scots’ way of thinking about themselves. The propaganda has been so effective as to persuade many people that Scotland is not capable of governing itself, that it cannot manage without England, that its language and culture is somehow inferior to that of English.

And yet there has always remained a grassroots level of support for independence, the descendents of those who fought the wars of independence of the 13th and 14th centuries and the later Jacobite rebellions; those who have never forgotten how sovereignty was stolen. Or ‘sold’ as some might say. For although there was opposition to the 1707 Union Act right up until its signing, those who did vote the country out of existence, reaped the financial benefits of doing so, receiving titles and land. As Sir Walter Scott said, the men who sold Scotland to the English, were ‘bought and sold’. He described them as ‘false and corrupted’,  writing that ‘the interests of Scotland were considerably neglected in the Treaty of Union; and in consequence the nation, instead of regarding it as an identification of the interests of both kingdoms, considered it as a total surrender of its independence’.

The Union has never been able to address Scotland’s interests effectively; the nations have never been equal partners. Even with a devolved parliament Scotland is not in charge of its own broadcasting, benefits and social policy, defence, foreign policy, immigration policy, or trade and industry. Furthermore, it needs ‘permission’ to hold a referendum on independence; authorization which Boris Johnson is not granting. But such an unequal relationship is proving problematic now for the Union’s future. Just as Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax two decades ago paved the way for the creation of a Scottish parliament, so the UK’s pursuit of Brexit has laid the foundations of another rebellion. Once again the Scottish people are being taken down a path they rejected; we didn’t vote to leave the EU and yet have been left with no choice but to comply with Westminster’s wishes.

The final nail in the Union’s coffin, however, has come of late. Every cloud has a silver lining, and this pandemic has without a doubt boosted Scotland’s desire for independence. Opinion polls prior to Covid-19 showed a majority were still in favour of remaining in the UK, a Panelbase poll on 3rd December 2019 showed 50% to 44% voted against independence. And yet the numerous surveys carried out since the beginning of the pandemic consistently show the opposite.

Undoubtedly, credit for this change goes to Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and her handling of the crisis. A poll on 26th May this year demonstrated just how much better people thought Sturgeon had dealt with the pandemic compared to her Westminster counterpart.  A remarkable 82% praised Sturgeon, with only 30% saying they thought Johnson had handled it well. The First Minister’s daily press briefings, consistent messaging and assurances, together with effective track and trace programmes which have significantly reduced the number of cases of coronavirus, have all demonstrated effective leadership. This has led to Sturgeon gaining advantage in one main area: trust. Johnson simply can’t compete with that, as England struggles to contain the pandemic with the biggest economic recession in history on the horizon.

It’s difficult to see how Johnson can turn things around. Panic is reportedly setting in in Westminster, as officials realize they are on the precipice of losing Scotland once and for all.  It remains to be seen how Scotland can engineer a second referendum if Westminster won’t grant one. But as the old saying goes, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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On August 11, Russia registered the first vaccine for use against COVID-19, named Sputnik V. More on this development below.

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Toxins in vaccines make them hazardous to human health.

Time and again, they cause diseases they’re promoted as protection against.

Nothing in medical science indicates that vaccines are safe.

They all contain harmful to health mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol (antifreeze), MSG, and squalene adjuvants that weaken and can destroy the human immune system, making it vulnerable to many annoying to life-threatening illnesses.

Annually, the US Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) reports thousands of serious adverse vaccine reactions, including many deaths and disabling disabilities.

Virtually none of this is reported by establishment media.

Far too often, vaccines are ineffective or not effective enough. They’re an unreliable way to prevent illness and disease.

Proper health, personal hygiene, and sanitation practices are far more effective than mass-vaxxing.

An earlier WHO report said disease and mortality rates in developing countries were closely related to hygiene and dietary practices, unrelated to immunization programs.

In the West and elsewhere, no evidence links vaccines with declines in infectious diseases.

Although vaccines stimulate antibody production, no evidence suggests that alone assures immunity.

Squalene adjuvants and other toxins in vaccines harm the human immune system, making it susceptible to numerous illnesses and diseases that range from very annoying to life threatening.

The notion of herd immunity from mass-vaxxing is Big Pharma promoted rubbish.

Numerous industry promoted “facts” about vaccines were later proved false.

Childhood disease dangers are greatly exaggerated to scare parents into getting their children vaccinated with unsafe drugs.

Following the introduction of the Salk polio vaccine, large outbreaks of the disease were reported in the US.

Years later, Jonas Salk admitted that mass inoculations caused most polio cases.

Even when no adverse reactions occur days or even weeks after being inoculated, evidence shows longer-term problems developed.

They include the disease vaxxing is supposed to protect against, chronic headaches, rashes, skin lesions, seizures, autism, anemia, multiple sclerosis, ALS, cancer, diabetes, and many other health issues.

US federal, state, and local immunization policy is driven by politics and profit potential, not science or concern for human health and welfare.

According to earlier industry estimates before coronavirus outbreaks occurred this year, the market potential for vaccines was estimated at around $60 billion annually.

If when available, a full COVID-19 vax treatment of all Americans would have a market potential dollar volume of around $150 billion of near-all profit, according to one estimate.

The global market potential is much greater — why the race is on to cash in big.

Noted vaccine expert Dr. Viera Schiebner minced no words, saying the following:

“There is no evidence whatsoever of the ability of vaccines to prevent any diseases.”

“To the contrary, there is a great wealth of evidence that they cause serious side effects.”

Many other scientific experts agree.

Russia’s Sputnik V is the first vaccine available for use against COVID-19 — registered by the Russian Ministry of Health on August 11.

Developed by Russia’s  Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, it followed over 20 years of vaccine research, according to Sechenov University’s Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology director Vadim Tarasov.

Technology used to develop Sputnik V is based upon adenovirus, the common cold.

Tarasov explained that the vaccine may not entirely stop COVID-19 from spreading. He claimed it’ll make symptoms milder, adding:

“We can really talk about a breakthrough as our country has shown itself to be one of the leaders in the global pharmaceutical industry due to the fact that it has retained and developed new competencies in drug development.”

Russia’s sputnikvaccine.com website explained the following:

“In 1957, the successful launch of the first man-made satellite by the Soviet Union activated space research in the entire world,” adding:

“Thanks to this comparison, the vaccine received the name of Sputnik V” to note another “Sputnik moment.”

Information on the website aims to dispel Western media disinformation already begun.

Will Russia’s Sputnik V prove safe and effective in immunizing against COVID-19?

The fullness of time will tell what’s very much unknown now.

A Final Comment

As expected, establishment media mocked Sputnik V.

The NYT accused Russia of  “cutting corners on testing to score political and propaganda points,” citing no evidence backing its claim.

The Washington Post accused Moscow of “jumping dangerously ahead of” larger-scale testing to make a COVID-19 vaccine available ahead of ones being developed in the West.

The Wall Street Journal said Russia registered the “world’s first Covid-19 vaccine despite safety concerns.”

Other establishment media made similar comments — demeaning Russia’s development while promoting undeveloped/yet to be available Big Pharma vaccines.

With billions of dollars of market potential up for grabs, it’s no surprise that establishment media are supporting development of Western vaccines for COVID-19 over alternatives from Russia, China, and other countries.

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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 March of this year the United States has been plunged into the worst outbreak of an infectious viral disease since the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920.

The impact of the COVID-19 outbreaks beginning in February and March has resulted in the closure of many production and service facilities throughout the country. Consequently, these events have rendered millions of workers unemployed.

Hospitals and educational institutions are overburdened with the novel virus since it presents profound challenges on how to address the disease through healthcare and the necessity of the resumption of courses whether held in-person or online. Absent of a vaccine and effective treatment, public apprehension related to the resumption of large gatherings whether in the workplace, schools, sports, entertainment and lodging will hamper the ability of millions of working people to earn a living.

Without jobs households will be unable to pay their rents, mortgages and property taxes placing them in foreclosure and evictions statuses. These inevitable consequences of high levels of joblessness are already being witnessed around the U.S.

The Cares Act passed in March by both the House of Representatives and the Senate and later signed by President Donald Trump which was implemented purportedly to assist businesses, institutions and working families, in reality provided the bulk of this public funding to ruling class interests such as multi-national corporations, banks and allied groupings. The one-time payment of $1,200 per person and even lesser amounts for those designated as dependents, was also bolstered by an enhanced payment of $600 per week for the unemployed.

However, the Senate rejected the proposed Heroes Act which would have granted additional assistance over an extended period of time. In addition, a renewal of the Cares Act has not materialized after the collapse of negotiations between the Democratic-dominated House and the Republican majority Senate. Trump’s executive orders related to COVID-19 assistance declared on August 7, raises more questions than answers since the already beleaguered state governments are required to provide a percentage of the resources needed restore only $400 in jobless benefits, a slashing of enhanced benefits by one-third.

As the moratoriums imposed on evictions by various states and the federal government in response to the economic crisis spawned by the pandemic, are being lifted in numerous states, people are being ejected from their homes at a rapidly rising rate. The state governmental structures and the federal housing authorities have not developed programs which can avoid a socially catastrophic situation.

Princeton University has established an Eviction Lab which attempts to track the number of displacements nationwide. Although this research center provides valuable data on the quantitative growth of the evictions, they admit to being limited due to the lack of reporting by numerous municipalities, county and state governments.

Through tracking data from 17 different cities, the Eviction Lab says that since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic some 34,699 notices to vacate have been filed by landlords. The public health situation has exacerbated the existing housing crisis which stems from the structural inequalities inherent within the modern-day capitalist system.

The Eviction Lab says of the present conjuncture:

“Current policy responses to the pandemic may be insufficient to prevent a surge in evictions. CARES Act stimulus payments and unemployment insurance–when accessible–will provide families with some support, but in many cases not enough to make ends meet. Some states have passed temporary eviction moratoria, which the Eviction Lab is tracking in the COVID-19 Housing Policy Scorecard, and localities across the country have introduced additional measures. Once these measures expire, however, millions of renters will owe significant amounts of back rent. For many, a displacement and eviction crisis will follow the public health crisis.”

From California to South Carolina and Michigan Landlords Are Throwing People Out

In the state of California, the most populous in the country, the pandemic has continued to grow particularly in the southern regions. Reports from the state indicate that landlords are locking tenants out of their homes for the failure to pay rent arrears. Even though restrictions on the ability to evict have been enacted, aggressive actions by property owners are forcing many people to move without adequate funds to find new homes. (See this)

Ananya Roy, the Director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) told the Guardian newspaper in late July that:

“When talking about the scale of eviction and mass displacement, it’s pretty unimaginable. This will be worse than the Great Depression.”

The state of South Carolina was highlighted during the Democratic primary elections as representing a turning point in the prospects of presumptive nominee former Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware. The African American voters of South Carolina were hailed as providing Biden the necessary victory needed to continue in the race against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Nevertheless, there is far less focus on South Carolina in recent weeks which is now a focal point for the national eviction crisis. Even prior to the pandemic, the state had the highest eviction rate of any of its counterparts by a two-to-one margin according to data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton.

These rates of evictions are clearly related to the level of poverty in the state, 16.6%, which is moderately higher than the national average, at 14.6. Among African Americans and people of Latin American descent the rates are far higher at 26.7 and 28.6 percentages of the overall population respectively.

A report published by NBC News on August 10 says of the crisis in this Southern state:

“In South Carolina alone, 52 percent of renter households can’t pay their rent and are at risk of eviction, according to an analysis of census data by the consulting firm Stout Risius Ross. About 185,000 evictions could be filed in the state over the next four months.”

Michigan was one of the hardest hit states related to the housing crisis which arose during the Great Recession beginning in 2007. Tens of thousands of foreclosures and evictions occurred while successive administrations failed to impose a moratorium.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, once considered a possible Vice Presidential candidate pick for Biden, imposed strict measures related to the mitigation of the pandemic. There was a statewide moratorium on evictions along with the mandated closings of schools, universities, restaurants and all non-essential businesses.

Many of these policies served to reduce the rate of infections and deaths in the state up until June. Under pressure by right-wing elements in the State House and Senate along with their constituencies, Whitmer relented by reducing restrictions and allowing the opening of sectors of the economy. By August, the rates of infections were rapidly increasing with thousands of new cases confirmed every week.

Whitmer lifted the moratorium on evictions suggesting that a renter assistance program was adequate to prevent mass evictions and foreclosures. Yet the failure by the state to properly manage the unemployment insurance program sheds must doubt in the public mind about its capacity to provide aid for distressed renters and homeowners.

The Moratorium NOW! Coalition and other anti-eviction organizations are planning actions to demand the re-enactment of the statewide moratorium. The Chief Judge of 36^th District Court imposed a moratorium covering the Detroit area, the largest municipality in Michigan which is set to expire on August 17 with the re-opening of the in-house legal proceedings downtown.

Statewide and Federal Moratoriums Imperative to Avoid Catastrophic Collapse

In the short term the only remedy to the worsening housing crisis is the imposition of a halt to all evictions as well as programs aimed at rent and mortgage forgiveness. Otherwise the large-scale displacement across the U.S. will make any effective plans to control of the spread of COVID-19 impossible.

The establishment of homeless encampments already exists in California and other regions of the U.S. These makeshift settlements are growing while making mitigation efforts such as the wearing of masks, virus testing, contract tracing and social distancing even more difficult.

Under capitalism, the housing crisis has been a by-product of the growth of cities and the impoverishment of working people. These problems developed in England and the European continent in the time of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels during the 19^th century.

In 1872 Engels wrote that:

“Modern natural science has proved that the so-called ‘poor districts’ in which the workers are crowded together are the breeding places of all those epidemics which from time to time afflict our towns. Cholera, typhus, typhoid fever, small-pox and other ravaging diseases spread their germs in the pestilential air and the poisoned water of these working-class quarters. In these districts, the germs hardly ever die out completely, and as soon as circumstances permit it they develop into epidemics and then spread beyond their breeding places also into the more airy and healthy parts of the town inhabited by the capitalists. Capitalist rule cannot allow itself the pleasure of creating epidemic diseases among the working class with impunity; the consequences fall back on it and the angel of death rages in its ranks as ruthlessly as in the ranks of the workers.” (See this)

Even though it is necessary for the ruling class to address the combined crises of housing and public health, the desire for the maximum acquisition of profit from the working class interferes with these imperatives. Only the direct intervention of the masses of working people can the winning of moratoriums and rent forgiveness be secured.

*

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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 unless otherwise stated

By George C. Fareed, MD Brawley, California Michael M. Jacobs, MD, MPH Pensacola, Florida Donald C. Pompan, MD Salinas, California

August 12, 2020

Anthony Fauci, MD
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Washington, D.C.

Dear Dr. Fauci:

You were placed into the most high-profile role regarding America’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Americans have relied on your medical expertise concerning the wearing of masks, resuming employment, returning to school, and of course medical treatment.

You are largely unchallenged in terms of your medical opinions. You are the de facto “COVID-19 Czar”. This is unusual in the medical profession in which doctors’ opinions are challenged by other physicians in the form of exchanges between doctors at hospitals, medical conferences, as well as debate in medical journals. You render your opinions unchallenged, without formal public opposition from physicians who passionately disagree with you. It is incontestable that the public is best served when opinions and policy are based on the prevailing evidence and science, and able to withstand the scrutiny of medical professionals.

As experience accrued in treating COVID-19 infections, physicians worldwide discovered that high-risk patients can be treated successfully as an outpatient, within the first 5 to 7 days of the onset of symptoms, with a “cocktail” consisting of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin (or doxycycline). Multiple scholarly contributions to the literature detail the efficacy of the hydroxychloroquine-based combination treatment.

Dr. Harvey Risch, the renowned Yale epidemiologist, published an article in May 2020 in the American Journal of Epidemiology titled “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk COVID-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to Pandemic Crisis”. He further published an article in Newsweek in July 2020 for the general public expressing the same conclusions and opinions. Dr. Risch is an expert at evaluating research data and study designs, publishing over 300 articles. Dr Risch’s assessment is that there is unequivocal evidence for the early and safe use of the “HCQ cocktail.” If there are Q-T interval concerns, doxycycline can be substituted for azithromycin as it has activity against RNA viruses without any cardiac effects.

Yet, you continue to reject the use of hydroxychloroquine, except in a hospital setting in the form of clinical trials, repeatedly emphasizing the lack of evidence supporting its use. Hydroxychloroquine, despite 65 years of use for malaria, and over 40 years for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, with a well-established safety profile, has been deemed by you and the FDA as unsafe for use in the treatment of symptomatic COVID-19 infections. Your opinions have influenced the thinking of physicians and their patients, medical boards, state and federal agencies, pharmacists, hospitals, and just about everyone involved in medical decision making.

Indeed, your opinions impacted the health of Americans, and many aspects of our day-to-day lives including employment and school. Those of us who prescribe hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin/doxycycline believe fervently that early outpatient use would save tens of thousands of lives and enable our country to dramatically alter the response to COVID-19. We advocate for an approach that will reduce fear and allow Americans to get their lives back.

We hope that our questions compel you to reconsider your current approach to COVID-19 infection.

Questions regarding early outpatient treatment

1. There are generally two stages of COVID-19 symptomatic infection; initial flu like symptoms with progression to cytokine storm and respiratory failure, correct?
2. When people are admitted to a hospital, they generally are in worse condition, correct?
3. There are no specific medications currently recommended for early outpatient treatment of symptomatic COVID-19 infection, correct?
4. Remdesivir and Dexamethasone are used for hospitalized patients, correct?
5. There is currently no recommended pharmacologic early outpatient treatment for individuals in the flu stage of the illness, correct?
6. It is true that COVID-19 is much more lethal than the flu for high-risk individuals such as older patients and those with significant comorbidities, correct?
7. Individuals with signs of early COVID-19 infection typically have a runny nose, fever, cough, shortness of breath, loss of smell, etc., and physicians send them home to rest, eat chicken soup etc., but offer no specific, targeted medications, correct?
8. These high-risk individuals are at high risk of death, on the order of 15% or higher, correct?
9. So just so we are clear—the current standard of care now is to send clinically stable symptomatic patients home, “with a wait and see” approach?
10. Are you aware that physicians are successfully using Hydroxychloroquine combined with Zinc and Azithromycin as a “cocktail” for early outpatient treatment of symptomatic, high-risk, individuals?
11. Have you heard of the “Zelenko Protocol,” for treating high-risk patients with COVID 19 as an outpatient?
12. Have you read Dr. Risch’s article in the American Journal of Epidemiology of the early outpatient treatment of COVID-19?
13. Are you aware that physicians using the medication combination or “cocktail” recommend use within the first 5 to 7 days of the onset of symptoms, before the illness impacts the lungs, or cytokine storm evolves?
14. Again, to be clear, your recommendation is no pharmacologic treatment as an outpatient for the flu—like symptoms in patients that are stable, regardless of their risk factors, correct?
15. Would you advocate for early pharmacologic outpatient treatment of symptomatic COVID-19 patients if you were confident that it was beneficial?
16. Are you aware that there are hundreds of physicians in the United States and thousands across the globe who have had dramatic success treating high-risk individuals as outpatients with this “cocktail?”
17. Are you aware that there are at least 10 studies demonstrating the efficacy of early outpatient treatment with the Hydroxychloroquine cocktail for high-risk patients — so this is beyond anecdotal, correct?
18. If one of your loved ones had diabetes or asthma, or any potentially complicating comorbidity, and tested positive for COVID-19, would you recommend “wait and see how they do” and go to the hospital if symptoms progress?
19. Even with multiple studies documenting remarkable outpatient efficacy and safety of the Hydroxychloroquine “cocktail,” you believe the risks of the medication combination outweigh the benefits?
20. Is it true that with regard to Hydroxychloroquine and treatment of COVID-19 infection, you have said repeatedly that “The Overwhelming Evidence of Properly Conducted Randomized Clinical Trials Indicate No Therapeutic Efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)?”
21. But NONE of the randomized controlled trials to which you refer were done in the first 5 to 7 days after the onset of symptoms- correct?
22. All of the randomized controlled trials to which you refer were done on hospitalized patients, correct?
23. Hospitalized patients are typically sicker that outpatients, correct?
24. None of the randomized controlled trials to which you refer used the full cocktail consisting of Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Azithromycin, correct?
25. While the University of Minnesota study is referred to as disproving the cocktail, the meds were not given within the first 5 to 7 days of illness, the test group was not high risk (death rates were 3%), and no zinc was given, correct?
26. Again, for clarity, the trials upon which you base your opinion regarding the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine, assessed neither the full cocktail (to include Zinc + Azithromycin or doxycycline) nor administered treatment within the first 5 to 7 days of symptoms, nor focused on the high-risk group, correct?
27. Therefore, you have no basis to conclude that the Hydroxychloroquine cocktail when used early in the outpatient setting, within the first 5 to 7 days of symptoms, in high risk patients, is not effective, correct?
28. It is thus false and misleading to say that the effective and safe use of Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Azithromycin has been “debunked,” correct? How could it be “debunked” if there is not a single study that contradicts its use?
29. Should it not be an absolute priority for the NIH and CDC to look at ways to treat Americans with symptomatic COVID-19 infections early to prevent disease progression?
30. The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 virus is an RNA virus. It is well-established that Zinc interferes with RNA viral replication, correct?
31. Moreover, is it not true that hydroxychloroquine facilitates the entry of zinc into the cell, is a “ionophore,” correct?
32. Isn’t also it true that Azithromycin has established anti-viral properties?
33. Are you aware of the paper from Baylor by Dr. McCullough et. al. describing established mechanisms by which the components of the “HCQ cocktail” exert anti-viral effects?
34. So- the use of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin (or doxycycline) and zinc, the “HCQ cocktail,” is based on science, correct?

Questions regarding safety

1. The FDA writes the following: “in light of on-going serious cardiac adverse events and their serious side effects, the known and potential benefits of CQ and HCQ no longer outweigh the known and potential risks for authorized use.”So not only is the FDA saying that Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, they are also saying that it is a very dangerous drug. Yet, is it not true the drug has been used as an anti-malarial drug for over 65 years?
2. Isn’t true that the drug has been used for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis for many years at similar doses?
3. Do you know of even a single study prior to COVID -19 that has provided definitive evidence against the use of the drug based on safety concerns?
4. Are you aware that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine has many approved uses for hydroxychloroquine including steroid-dependent asthma (1988 study), Advanced pulmonary sarcoidosis (1988 study), sensitizing breast cancer cells for chemotherapy (2012 study), the attenuation of renal ischemia (2018 study), lupus nephritis (2006 study), epithelial ovarian cancer (2020 study, just to name a few)? Where are the cardiotoxicity concerns ever mentioned?
5. Risch estimates the risk of cardiac death from hydroxychloroquine to be 9/100,000 using the data provided by the FDA. That does not seem to be a high risk, considering the risk of death in an older patient with co-morbidities can be 15% or more. Do you consider 9/100,000 to be a high risk when weighed against the risk of death in older patient with co-morbidities?
6. To put this in perspective, the drug is used for 65 years, without warnings (aside for the need for periodic retinal checks), but the FDA somehow feels the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that the drug is dangerous. Does that make any logical sense to you Dr. Fauci based on “science”?
7. Moreover, consider that the protocols for usage in early treatment are for 5 to 7 days at relatively low doses of hydroxychloroquine similar to what is being given in other diseases (RA, SLE) over many years- does it make any sense to you logically that a 5 to 7 day dose of hydroxychloroquine when not given in high doses could be considered dangerous?
8. You are also aware that articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet, one out of Harvard University, regarding the dangers of hydroxychloroquine had to be retracted based on the fact that the data was fabricated. Are you aware of that?
9. If there was such good data on the risks of hydroxychloroquine, one would not have to use fake data, correct?
10. After all, 65 years is a long-time to determine whether or not a drug is safe, do you agree?
11. In the clinical trials that you have referenced (e.g., the Minnesota and the Brazil studies), there was not a single death attributed directly to hydroxychloroquine, correct?
12. According to Dr. Risch, there is no evidence based on the data to conclude that hydroxychloroquine is a dangerous drug. Are you aware of any published report that rebuts Dr. Risch’s findings?
13. Are you aware that the FDA ruling along with your statements have led to Governors in a number of states to restrict the use of hydroxychloroquine?
14. Are you aware that pharmacies are not filling prescriptions for this medication based on your and the FDA’s restrictions?
15. Are you aware that doctors are being punished by state medical boards for prescribing the medication based on your comments as well as the FDA’s?
16. Are you aware that people who want the medication sometimes need to call physicians in other states pleading for it?
17. And yet you opined in March that while people were dying at the rate of 10,000 patient a week, hydroxychloroquine could only be used in an inpatient setting as part of a clinical trial- correct?
18. So, people who want to be treated in that critical 5-to-7-day period and avoid being hospitalized are basically out of luck in your view, correct?
19. So, again, for clarity, without a shred of evidence that the Hydroxychloroquine/HCQ cocktail is dangerous in the doses currently recommend for early outpatient treatment, you and the FDA have made it very difficult if not impossible in some cases to get this treatment, correct?

Questions regarding methodology

1. In regards to the use of hydroxychloroquine, you have repeatedly made the same statement: “The Overwhelming Evidence from Properly Conducted Randomized Clinical Trials Indicate no Therapeutic Efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine.” Is that correct?
2. In Dr. Risch’s article regarding the early use of hydroxychloroquine, he disputes your opinion. He scientifically evaluated the data from the studies to support his opinions. Have you published any articles to support your opinions?
3. You repeatedly state that randomized clinical trials are needed to make conclusions regarding treatments, correct?
4. The FDA has approved many medications (especially in the area of cancer treatment) without randomized clinical trials, correct?
5. Are you aware that Dr. Thomas Frieden, the previous head of the CDC wrote an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2017 called “Evidence for Health Decision Making – Beyond Randomized Clinical Trials (RCT)”? Have you read that article?
6. In it Dr. Frieden states that “many data sources can provide valid evidence for clinical and public health action, including “analysis of aggregate clinical or epidemiological data”-do you disagree with that?
7. Frieden discusses “practiced-based evidence” as being essential in many discoveries, such SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)-do you disagree with that?
8. Frieden writes the following: “Current evidence-grading systems are biased toward randomized clinical trials, which may lead to inadequate consideration of non-RCT data.” Dr. Fauci, have you considered all the non-RCT data in coming to your opinions?
9. Risch, who is a leading world authority in the analysis of aggregate clinical data, has done a rigorous analysis that he published regarding the early treatment of COVID 19 with hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin. He cites 5 or 6 studies, and in an updated article there are 5 or 6 more-a total of 10 to 12 clinical studies with formally collected data specifically regarding the early treatment of COVID. Have you analyzed the aggregate data regarding early treatment of high-risk patients with hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin?
10. Is there any document that you can produce for the American people of your analysis of the aggregate data that would rebut Dr. Risch’s analysis?
11. Yet, despite what Dr. Risch believes is overwhelming evidence in support of the early use of hydroxychloroquine, you dismiss the treatment insisting on randomized controlled trials even in the midst of a pandemic?
12. Would you want a loved one with high-risk comorbidities placed in the control group of a randomized clinical trial when a number of studies demonstrate safety and dramatic efficacy of the early use of the Hydroxychloroquine “cocktail?”
13. Are you aware that the FDA approved a number of cancer chemotherapy drugs without randomized control trials based solely on epidemiological evidence. The trials came later as confirmation. Are you aware of that?
14. You are well aware that there were no randomized clinical trials in the case of penicillin that saved thousands of lives in World War II? Was not this in the best interest of our soldiers?
15. You would agree that many lives were saved with the use of cancer drugs and penicillin that were used before any randomized clinical trials–correct?
16. You have referred to evidence for hydroxychloroquine as “anecdotal”- which is defined as “evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony”- correct?
17. But there are many studies supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine in which evidence was collected formally and not on personal testimony, has there not been?
18. So it would be false to conclude that the evidence supporting the early use of hydroxychloroquine is anecdotal, correct?

Comparison between the US and other countries regarding case fatality rate

(It would be very helpful to have the graphs comparing our case fatality rates to other countries)

1. Are you aware that countries like Senegal and Nigeria that use Hydroxychloroquine have much lower case-fatality rates than the United States?
2. Have you pondered the relationship between the use of Hydroxychloroquine by a given country and their case mortality rate and why there is a strong correlation between the use of HCQ and the reduction of the case mortality rate.?
3. Have you considered consulting with a country such as India that has had great success treating COVID-19 prophylactically?
4. Why shouldn’t our first responders and front-line workers who are at high risk at least have an option of HCQ/zinc prophylaxis?
5. We should all agree that countries with far inferior healthcare delivery systems should not have lower case fatality rates. Reducing our case fatality rate from near 5% to 2.5%, in line with many countries who use HCQ early would have cut our total number of deaths in half, correct?
6. Why not consult with countries who have lower case-fatality rates, even without expensive medicines such as remdesivir and far less advanced intensive care capabilities?

Giving Americans the option to use HCQ for COVID-19

1. Harvey Risch, the pre-eminent Epidemiologist from Yale, wrote a Newsweek Article titled: “The key to defeating COVID-19 already exists. We need to start using it.” Did you read the article?
2. Are you aware that the cost of the Hydroxychloroquine “cocktail” including the Z-pack and zinc is about $50?
3. You are aware the cost of Remdesivir is about $3,200?
4. So that’s about 60 doses of HCQ “cocktail,” correct?
5. In fact, President Trump had the foresight to amass 60 million doses of hydroxychloroquine, and yet you continue to stand in the way of doctors who want to use that medication for their infected patients, correct?
6. Those are a lot of doses of medication that potentially could be used to treat our poor, especially our minority populations and people of color that have a difficult time accessing healthcare. They die more frequently of COVID-19, do they not?
7. But because of your obstinance blocking the use of HCQ, this stockpile has remained largely unused, correct?
8. Would you acknowledge that your strategy of telling Americans to restrict their behavior, wear masks, and distance, and put their lives on hold indefinitely until there is a vaccine is not working?
9. So, 160,000 deaths later, an economy in shambles, kids out of school, suicides and drug overdoses at a record high, people neglecting and dying from other medical conditions, and America reacting to every outbreak with another lockdown- is it not time to re-think your strategy that is fully dependent on an effective vaccine?
10. Why not consider a strategy that protects the most vulnerable and allows Americans back to living their lives and not wait for a vaccine panacea that may never come?
11. Why not consider the approach that thousands of doctors around the world are using, supported by a number of studies in the literature, with early outpatient treatment of high-risk patients for typically one week with HCQ + Zinc + Azithromycin?
12. You don’t see a problem with the fact that the government, due to your position, in some cases interferes with the choice of using HCQ. Should not that be a choice between the doctor and the patient?
13. While some doctors may not want to use the drug, should not doctors who believe that it is indicated be able to offer it to their patients?
14. Are you aware that doctors who are publicly advocating for such a strategy with the early use of the HCQ cocktail are being silenced with removal of content on the internet and even censorship in the medical community?
15. You are aware of the 20 or so physicians who came to the Supreme Court steps advocating for the early use of the Hydroxychloroquine cocktail.In fact, you said these were “a bunch of people spouting out something that isn’t true.”Dr. Fauci, these are not just “people”- these are doctors who actually treat patients, unlike you, correct?
16. Do you know that the video they made went viral with 17 million views in just a few hours, and was then removed from the internet?
17. Are you aware that their website, American Frontline Doctors, was taken down the next day?
18. Did you see the way that Nigerian immigrant physician, Dr. Stella Immanuel, was mocked in the media for her religious views and called a “witch doctor”?
19. Are you aware that Dr. Simone Gold, the leader of the group, was fired from her job as an Emergency Room physician the following day?
20. Are you aware that physicians advocating for this treatment that has by now probably saved millions of lives around the globe are harassed by local health departments, state agencies and medical boards, and even at their own hospitals? Are you aware of that?
21. Don’t you think doctors should have the right to speak out on behalf of their patients without the threat of retribution?
22. Are you aware that videos and other educational information are removed off the internet and labeled, in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, as “misinformation.”?
23. Is it not misinformation to characterize Hydroxychloroquine, in the doses used for early outpatient treatment of COVID-19 infections, as a dangerous drug?
24. Is it not misleading for you to repeatedly state to the American public that randomized clinical trials are the sole source of information to confirm the efficacy of a treatment?
25. Was it not misinformation when on CNN you cited the Lancet study based on false data from Surgisphere as evidence of the lack of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine?
26. Is it not misinformation as is repeated in the MSM as a result of your comments that a randomized clinical trial is required by the FDA for a drug approval?
27. Don’t you realize how much damage this falsehood perpetuates?
28. How is it not misinformation for you and the FDA to keep telling the American public that hydroxychloroquine is dangerous when you know that there is nothing more than anecdotal evidence of that?
29. Fauci, if you or a loved one were infected with COVID-19, and had flu-like symptoms, and you knew as you do now that there is a safe and effective cocktail that you could take to prevent worsening and the possibility of hospitalization, can you honestly tell us that you would refuse the medication?
30. Why not give our healthcare workers and first responders, who even with the necessary PPE are contracting the virus at a 3 to 4 times greater rate than the general public, the right to choose along with their doctor if they want use the medicine prophylactically?
31. Why is the government inserting itself in a way that is unprecedented in regard to a historically safe medication and not allowing patients the right to choose along with their doctor?
32. Why not give the American people the right to decide along with their physician whether or not they want outpatient treatment in the first 5 to 7 days of the disease with a cocktail that is safe and costs around $50?

Final questions

1. Fauci, please explain how a randomized clinical trial, to which you repeatedly make reference, for testing the HCQ cocktail (hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc) administered within 5-7 days of the onset of symptoms is even possible now given the declining case numbers in so many states?
2. For example, if the NIH were now to direct a study to begin September 15, where would such a study be done?
3. Please explain how a randomized study on the early treatment (within the first 5 to 7 days of symptoms) of high-risk, symptomatic COVID-19 infections could be done during the influenza season and be valid?
4. Please explain how multiple observational studies arrive at the same outcomes using the same formulation of hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin + Zinc given in the same time frame for the same study population (high risk patients) is not evidence that the cocktail works?
5. In fact, how is it not significant evidence, during a pandemic, for hundreds of non-academic private practice physicians to achieve the same outcomes with the early use of the HCQ cocktail?
6. What is your recommendation for the medical management of a 75-year-old diabetic with fever, cough, and loss of smell, but not yet hypoxic, who Emergency Room providers do not feel warrants admission? We know that hundreds of U.S. physicians (and thousands more around the world) would manage this case with the HCQ cocktail with predictable success.
7. If you were in charge in 1940, would you have advised the mass production of penicillin based primarily on lab evidence and one case series on 5 patients in England or would you have stated that a randomized clinical trial was needed?
8. Why would any physician put their medical license, professional reputation, and job on the line to recommend the HCQ cocktail (that does not make them any money) unless they knew the treatment could significantly help their patient?
9. Why would a physician take the medication themselves and prescribe it to family members (for treatment or prophylaxis) unless they felt strongly that the medication was beneficial?
10. How is it informed and ethical medical practice to allow a COVID-19 patient to deteriorate in the early stages of the infection when there is inexpensive, safe, and dramatically effective treatment with the HCQ cocktail, which the science indicates interferes with coronavirus replication?
11. How is your approach to “wait and see” in the early stages of COVID-19 infection, especially in high-risk patients, following the science?

While previous questions are related to hydroxychloroquine-based treatment, we have two questions addressing masks.

1. As you recall, you stated on March 8^th, just a few weeks before the devastation in the Northeast, that masks weren’t needed. You later said that you made this statement to prevent a hoarding of masks that would disrupt availability to healthcare workers. Why did you not make a recommendation for people to wear any face covering to protect themselves, as we are doing now?
2. Rather, you issued no such warning and people were riding in subways and visiting their relatives in nursing homes without any face covering. Currently, your position is that face coverings are essential. Please explain whether or not you made a mistake in early March, and how would you go about it differently now.

Conclusion

Since the start of the pandemic, physicians have used hydroxychloroquine to treat symptomatic COVID-19 infections, as well as for prophylaxis. Initial results were mixed as indications and doses were explored to maximize outcomes and minimize risks. What emerged was that hydroxychloroquine appeared to work best when coupled with azithromycin. In fact, it was the President of the United States who recommended to you publicly at the beginning of the pandemic, in early March, that you should consider early treatment with hydroxychloroquine and a “Z-Pack.” Additional studies showed that patients did not seem to benefit when COVID-19 infections were treated with hydroxychloroquine late in the course of the illness, typically in a hospital setting, but treatment was consistently effective, even in high-risk patients, when hydroxychloroquine was given in a “cocktail” with azithromycin and, critically, zinc in the first 5 to 7 days after the onset of symptoms. The outcomes are, in fact, dramatic.

As clearly presented in the McCullough article from Baylor, and described by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, the efficacy of the HCQ cocktail is based on the pharmacology of the hydroxychloroquine ionophore acting as the “gun” and zinc as the “bullet,” while azithromycin potentiates the anti-viral effect. Undeniably, the hydroxychloroquine combination treatment is supported by science. Yet, you continue to ignore the “science” behind the disease. Viral replication occurs rapidly in the first 5 to 7 days of symptoms and can be treated at that point with the HCQ cocktail. Rather, your actions have denied patients treatment in that early stage. Without such treatment, some patients, especially those at high risk with co-morbidities, deteriorate and require hospitalization for evolving cytokine storm resulting in pneumonia, respiratory failure, and intubation with 50% mortality. Dismissal of the science results in bad medicine, and the outcome is over 160,000 dead Americans. Countries that have followed the science and treated the disease in the early stages have far better results, a fact that has been concealed from the American Public.

Despite mounting evidence and impassioned pleas from hundreds of frontline physicians, your position was and continues to be that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have not shown there to be benefit. However, not a single randomized control trial has tested what is being recommended: use of the full cocktail (especially zinc), in high-risk patients, initiated within the first 5 to 7 days of the onset of symptoms. Using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin late in the disease process, with or without zinc, does not produce the same, unequivocally positive results.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, in a 2017 New England Journal of Medicine article regarding randomized clinical trials, emphasized there are situations in which it is entirely appropriate to use other forms of evidence to scientifically validate a treatment. Such is the case during a pandemic that moves like a brushfire jumping to different parts of the country. Insisting on randomized clinical trials in the midst of a pandemic is simply foolish. Dr. Harvey Risch, a world-renowned Yale epidemiologist, analyzed all the data regarding the use of the hydroxychloroquine/HCQ cocktail and concluded that the evidence of its efficacy when used early in COVID-19 infection is unequivocal.

Curiously, despite a 65+ years safety record, the FDA suddenly deemed hydroxychloroquine a dangerous drug, especially with regard to cardiotoxicity. Dr. Risch analyzed data provided by the FDA and concluded that the risk of a significant cardiac event from hydroxychloroquine is extremely low, especially when compared to the mortality rate of COVID-19 patients with high-risk co-morbidities. How do you reconcile that for forty years rheumatoid arthritis and lupus patients have been treated over long periods, often for years, with hydroxychloroquine and now there are suddenly concerns about a 5 to 7-day course of hydroxychloroquine at similar or slightly increased doses? The FDA statement regarding hydroxychloroquine and cardiac risk is patently false and alarmingly misleading to physicians, pharmacists, patients, and other health professionals. The benefits of the early use of hydroxychloroquine to prevent hospitalization in high-risk patients with COVID-19 infection far outweigh the risks. Physicians are not able to obtain the medication for their patients, and in some cases are restricted by their state from prescribing hydroxychloroquine. The government’s obstruction of the early treatment of symptomatic high-risk COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine, a medication used extensively and safely for so long, is unprecedented.

It is essential that you tell the truth to the American public regarding the safety and efficacy of the hydroxychloroquine/HCQ cocktail. The government must protect and facilitate the sacred and revered physician-patient relationship by permitting physicians to treat their patients. Governmental obfuscation and obstruction are as lethal as cytokine storm.

Americans must not continue to die unnecessarily. Adults must resume employment and our youth return to school. Locking down America while awaiting an imperfect vaccine has done far more damage to Americans than the coronavirus. We are confident that thousands of lives would be saved with early treatment of high-risk individuals with a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin. Americans must not live in fear. As Dr. Harvey Risch’s Newsweek article declares, “The key to defeating COVID-19 already exists. We need to start using it.”

Very Respectfully,

George C. Fareed, MD, Brawley, California

Michael M. Jacobs, MD, MPH, Pensacola, Florida

Donald C. Pompan, MD, Salinas, California

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Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Chief Executive Officer Kiril Dmitriev announced that Cuba could begin producing the COVID-19 vaccine, the Sputnik V, in November.

“Cuba has a large capacity to produce medicines and vaccines with highly qualified staff. We could coordinate with its government to start the vaccine production in November,” Dmitriev stated.

He also pointed out that the third stage of vaccine trials will begin in Russia on Wednesday. Later the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines will continue testing it.

On Tuesday, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko announced the registration of the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine, the Sputnik V, which is named after the first artificial satellite launched into orbit by the USSR in 1957.

Before being tested in 76 volunteers, the Russian COVID-19 vaccine passed all the necessary safety and efficacy tests in several animal species.

On Tuesday morning, outlet Sputnik reported that that the Russian vaccine, which was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute, can protect a person from the coronavirus for up to two years after injection.

“Such a prolonged period of protection is possible due to the vaccine being based on viral vectors – a harmless human adenovirus delivers a portion of the COVID-19 virus to a human body forcing it to form an immune response to it,” the Russian outlet explained.

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Featured image: BioCubaFarma facilities in Cuba, August, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @CubaStandard

As Canadians look back over the 75 years since the mass murders in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we should reflect on how this country has long punched above its weight when fighting to serve and protect imperialism. This is perhaps especially true when it comes to our Peaceable Kingdom’s so-called “defence” and “security” companies which sell more to America’s warfare/surveillance state than any other other nation on earth.

But many Canadians, being sheltered from knowledge of their country’s deep complicity in the US imperium, are content to cozy themselves with self-righteous delusions about mythical “Canadian values.” The prevailing national narratives, propagated by state institutions, corporations (including the mass media) and similarly captive NGOs, still propagate the fiction that Canada is a beacon of light shining human rights, justice and democracy on the world.

In truth, Canada stands unreservedly for the capitalist model of private exploitation which has shackled the peoples of this planet for centuries in varying forms of slavery, and is now driving us recklessly towards environmental destruction, all in the name of increased profitability for corporations.

Canada’s commitment to aiding and abetting America’s role as the “Global Cop,” patrolling the world and busting heads to impose order and the “rule of law,” is well illustrated by the unrestricted flow of billions of dollars worth of Canadian military technologies to the US every year. Over the decades, much of this high-tech Canadian matériel has been assembled into major US killing machines that have been used to wage dozens of wars, invasions and regime-changes, which Canada prefers to phrase as “peacekeeping” or “international policing operations.” But, whatever they’re called, these multifarious US-led military activities have resulted in the deaths of between 20 to 30 million people since WWII.(1) Oftentimes, these military efforts have been carried out to keep business-friendly dictators in power, to undermine progressive political movements, and/or to overthrow governments deemed to be enemies of the American hegemony to which Canadian governments remain ever so loyal.

The Reaper, a Grimm Parable of Canadian Surveillance/Targeting Technology

To shine some light on the ever-blurry jurisdiction between the realms of global warfare and local police enforcement, let’s use an illustrative example through which to view Canada’s longstanding commitment to strengthening America’s highly-militarized way of policing protests. This case study involves one of the world’s most advanced surveillance, weapons-targeting systems which can also be weaponised to carry “Hellfire” missiles. It is, appropriately enough called the “Reaper,” but it is also known as a Predator B or MQ-9. If inspired by the Brothers Grimm, we could also compare this device to a “Magic Mirror.” It is a looking-glass “eye in the sky” through which the West’s powerful global elites can track and attack those who might dare to challenge their self-glorifying authority as “the fairest of them all.”

This seemingly magical, spy technology has been used of late by US “law-enforcement” agencies eager to look down upon the scurrying masses of antiracist protesters in American cities. But, as we’ll see, the centrepiece of this incredible technology — a cutting-edge, Canadian-made “high-magnification, missile-grade multisensor” technology — was used to great effect one decade ago by Canada’s military. They used this same spy technology aboard warplanes to aid Canada’s civilian police authorities in their monitoring of mass protests against the G8-G20 summit. Ironically, these protesters were tried to shine a critical spotlight on the world’s most powerful heads of state who were then gathering in Toronto to structure their control over the global financial system.

The Reaper is an unmanned aerial drone equipped with this Canadian sensor technology that was used to fly circles around Minneapolis during Black-Lives-Matter protests in late May.(2) Press reports have said that the US Customs and Border Protection(3) was also using some of its other Reaper drones around that time to fly missions over San Antonio, Texas and Detroit, Michigan.(4)

Reapers are among numerous aerial platforms that allow the military minions of ruling authorities (akin to Orwell’s “Big Brother” or the Brother Grimm’s “Evil Queen”) to keep tabs on those who dare to threaten the elite’s supremacy.  But besides keeping a watchful eye on adversaries of the establishment, the Reaper can also be used to target and kill them.

Reapers are in fact better known for their weapons-targeting contributions to warfighting than to policing uppity activists who protest in the streets.  These drones have, for instance, been used in various wars including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Mali and Yemen. Perhaps most infamously, the US military used one of its weaponized Reapers to fire the “Hellfire” missile that assassinated Iranian General Qassim Suleimani (and Iraqi counterparts) in Baghdad in January of this year.(5).

Although the Reaper bestows near-magical advantages to murderous global elites, this eerie technology is very real. Its practical, day-to-day functioning relies on crucial, indispensable high-tech systems that are manufactured by two of Canada’s many government-subsidized war industries, CAE(6) and WESCAM.(7)

Dr. Strangelove, General Atomics, Canadair and the RCAF’s nuclear payloads

Before examining in more detail the key roles played by CAE and WESCAM technology in the functioning of Reapers, it is worth looking at an instructive history of events that links this weapons system’s prime contractor to the Canadian government. Reapers are built by General Atomics, which was co-founded some 65 years ago by the much-vilified nuclear physicist Dr. Edward Teller. While aptly nicknamed “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” Teller is still heralded by some for his 1950s work at General Atomics. (Although Teller “hated the association,” he is widely-accepted as the real life model for “Dr. Strangelove,” the eponymous mad scientist played by Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic, Cold-War satire.)(8)

Back in 1955, during the height of the Cold War, just a decade after the criminal obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (in which Canada played such a significant role, 9), General Atomics was created as a division of General Dynamics.  It had been formed in 1952, thanks in no small part to the great financial success of what had been Canada’s top warplane manufacturer, Canadair. This Canadian Crown Corporation was created by Mackenzie King’s Liberal government in 1944.  But after sinking tremendous amounts of public money into Canadair, the Canadian government sold it for a bargain-basement sale price in 1947 to a troubled US submarine builder called Electric Boat.(10)

As General Dynamics’ own version of this history explains:

“By the early 1950s, Canadair’s success began overshadowing that of Electric Boat; some business advisers even suggested that Canadair purchase Electric Boat and operate it as a subsidiary. Instead, on February 21, 1952, a new parent company called General Dynamics Corporation was established to manage the operations of Canadair and Electric Boat.”(11)

Thanks to Canadair, General Dynamics went on to become a very highly-profitable manufacturer of thousands of warplanes, including CF-104 “Starfighters.”(12) The Canadian Air Force operated these nuclear-bomb equipped jets in West Germany as part Canada’s faithful commitment to NATO. Dedicated to carrying out NATO’s nuclear warfighting doctrine, Canada had its warplanes optimized to work as a “nuclear strike force.” Nothing could perhaps better illustrate Canada’s grim willingness to reap the souls of the dead than this.

Nuclear weapons, being the most deadly devices ever conceived, can be seen to symbolize the Spectre of Death. Similarly, those who produce or profit from these technologies personify those mythic characters, the psychopomps, who escort the dead away from the land of the living.  As Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb,” remorsefully said after witnessing the first nuclear detonation on July 16, 1945: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”(13)

Between 1964 and 1971, Canadair “Starfighter” warplanes dutifully carried several kinds of US-made tactical/strategic thermonuclear warheads with variable yields. Between 1965 and 1984, Canada’s CF-101 jets carried American Air-2A “Genie” rockets with 1.5 kiloton nuclear warheads. And, immediately after Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson took power, in what amounted to a US-backed coup in 1963, he brought in US W40 fusion-boosted fission nuclear warheads to arm Canada’s CIM-10 “Bomarc” missiles.(14)

As Canadian military historian Dr. John Clearwater has noted:

“From 1963 to 1984, US nuclear warheads armed Canadian weapons systems in both Canada and West Germany. It is likely that during the early part of this period, the Canadian military was putting more effort, money and manpower into the nuclear commitment than any other single activity.”(15)

Having kept its fingers in the production of both warplanes and warships, General Dynamics has since grown to become the world’s fifth largest military industry, with revenues of $36 billion in 2018.(16) It is a behemoth of war, firmly ensconced in the top one percent of global merchants-of-death clubhouse. One of its subsidiaries, General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, based in London, Ontario, produces the weapons-laden armoured vehicles that Canada has infamously sold to Saudi Arabia. Less infamously, Canada has also sold these same tank-like vehicles to other countries as well including the far-right, US-allied government of Colombia. Even more significantly, Canada has also sold these vehicles to the US military which deployed them on countless missions that “accumulating over 6 million miles” in the Iraq War between 2003 and 2005 alone.(17)

Reaper Canada: Doing our part to serve and protect the US and its ravenous empire

The operation of General Atomics’ pilotless Reaper/Predator drones depends in large part on the complicity of two major Canadian war industries:

(1) CAE (Montreal, QC)

With $995 million in military revenues, is Canada’s top war-profiteering corporation.(18) Among its many contributions to the US war machine, CAE manufactures the Predator Mission Trainer. This “training and mission rehearsal” system uses a “fully-immersive, virtual environment replicating actual operational conditions” to prepare Reaper pilots and crew.18 This CAE flight simulator “delivers an unprecedented level of fidelity and capability in the use of simulation-based training for remotely piloted aircraft pilots and sensor operators,” said Todd Probert, President of CAE’s Defense & Security Group. CAE also notes that its Predator Mission Trainer delivers “initial qualification and aircraft sensor systems training in addition to mission-specific training.” CAE’s mission-training, simulation technology is so realistic that it the allows aircrews to “potentially conduct all training in the simulator without necessarily requiring further training on the actual aircraft.”(19)

(2) WESCAM (Burlington, ON)

This Canadian subsidiary of America’s L3Harris Technologies(20) provides the Reaper drone with the MX-20 Electro-optical/Infrared (EO/IR) imaging system. The MX-20 is WESCAM’s largest, high-magnification, missile-grade multisensor. It sports laser-illuminated, see-in-the-dark surveillance cameras that can identify and engage subjects that are more than 20 kilometres away. As WESCAM notes, the MX-20 is an “advanced targeting solution” that allows Reaper operators to “locate and track targets at long stand-off.” WESCAM puffery goes on to brag that its EO/IR system provides “high-sensitivity multi-spectral sensors for day, low-light and nighttime missions” that “support Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance and Precision Guided Munitions missions.” These deadly qualities allow Reapers, and other aircraft, to “operate with excellent detection and recognition capabilities from extremely high altitudes.”(21)

Wescam’s high-tech sensor systems provide an almost all-seeing eye in the sky not only for General Atomics’ Reapers but for other military aircraft as well, including Canada’s CP-140 “Aurora” spy planes.(22)

The role of CAE and WESCAM in Spying on Canadian Protests

The 2020 use of Reapers to spy on US protesters was not the first time that CAE and WESCAM technology contributed to the aerial surveillance of mass protests in North America. Battle tested over Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, Canada’s Aurora spy planes used Wescam’s MX-20 imaging sensors to watch over the huge 2010 protests in Vancouver and Toronto. These Auroras, named for the Roman goddess of dawn (who was mother of Lucifer, the mythic “bringer of light,” 23) are Canada’s strategic patrol aircraft. As such, they conduct Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance missions.

The Canadian pilots and crew aboard Canada’s Auroras learned their crafts — like their Reaper colleagues — thanks to the CAE’s advanced training and mission rehearsal simulators. Canada’s surveillance aircraft are but one of many dozens of varieties military aircraft that employ CAE technologies.(24)

Although Aurora crews had run missions to track Russian submarines, to pursue Iraqi leaders fleeing death aboard ships in the Persian Gulf, and to target those fighting the foreign occupation of Afghanistan, protesters in Canada became a new target in the Aurora’s sights in 2010. These spy planes were then used to conduct surveillance during two of the biggest domestic “security” operations in Canadian history.

Operation Podium in Vancouver:

The first of these — Operation Podium — took place during the Olympic/Paralympic games in early 2010. Canada’s Air Force described Operation Podium as “the most complex domestic operation ever undertaken in Canada,” and said it was “the largest [Canadian Forces] CF and Air Force deployment in recent memory.”(25) This was also “the first time in Canada” that “video streaming from CP-140” was “operationalised,” i.e., used in a “real world” operation outside a military exercise. And, the Air Force also described it as a “world first,” in terms of using “integrated data links from the Air Force, Navy and [Canadian NORAD Region] CANR, as well as the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard, into one coherent air and maritime picture.”(26)

Cutting through such technical descriptions, the vice president of Canada’s L-3 Wescam summed up the role of their MX-20 sensors against protesters by saying: “They were used at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver this year providing persistent surveillance in an overview capability to keep an eye out for anyone who might want to cause trouble.”(27)

Operation Cadence in Toronto:

A few months later, the CP-140 was at it again, this time over the turbulent down-town streets of Toronto, during protests against the G8-G20 summit. On June 26(28) and June27,(29) an Aurora aircraft was seen continuously circling over Toronto’s downtown core as thousands of citizens assembled to express opposition to government policies, including Canada’s deep involvement in the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. An Aurora was also spotted flying nearby over Burlington and Hamilton, Ontario, on June 23,(30) just as excessive “security” restrictions descended upon citizens of the entire region.

The CP-140 that was on the lookout over Toronto was part of what Canada’s military called Operation Cadence. Col. Eyre, then-Commander of a Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, described it as “the largest security operation in the history of Canada.”(31) It was also a first, said Maj. Kael Rennie and Capt. Matt Crosbie, in that “a Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) saw its first ever major domestic operation in Canada.” This was unusual, they continued, because “Normal TACP duties included the employment of fixed wing and attack helicopters in the employment of air-to-ground munitions. While that works well in Afghanistan, it was obviously not the desired effect for the G8/G20.”(32)

Canada’s then newly battle-tested technology was referred to as the “Overland Equipment Mission Suite” and the “Tactical Common Data Link.” Using L3Wescam cameras affixed to the CP-140s, these new systems provide “full motion video imagery” for the immediate use of army and/or police units on the ground, whether they are battling the Talibhan or ban-the-bomb protesters. As Major CMR Larsen put it in 2010:

“In plain speak: the Aurora can now use its powerful camera system efficiently, and while airborne can actually transmit video to a supported unit…. What we can see from the air, a tactical commander can see on the ground. It is not hard to imagine how this capability greatly adds to the ‘big picture’ required by operational commanders.”(33)

In an even ‘bigger picture’ view of this ‘technological advancement,’ what this means is that the militarisation of policing in Canada has reached phenomenally new heights. The CP-140 aircraft facilitated the government’s highly-militarised, $1 billion response to G8/G20 protests, was operated out of a Canadian Forces Base (CFB) in Trenton, Ontario. Two RCMP officers very happily took turns working 12-hour shifts doing “air services” aboard the CP-140. As RCMP Cpl. Bob Thomas describes it: “We did flight observation for the security on the ground…. Just before both Summits started I moved to CFB Trenton and did all my flying from there as the Summits were going on.”(34) Thomas was chosen for the job because of his experience with “aerial flight observation and infrared camera training.” He was “one of just two RCMP officers assigned to fly with the … surveillance aircraft, a CP-140 Aurora. It was that opportunity that Thomas found most memorable. ‘It was an awesome experience.’”(35)

Canadian crews operating CP-140 Auroras at the Comox Air Force Base on Vancouver Island, BC, (where some of Canada’s Bomarc missiles were armed with US nuclear warheads beginning in 1965(36) aptly call themselves the “Demon Squadron.” In their “vision” statement, they recognize the changing nature of the CP-140’s role, saying: “The Demons will be leaders in a dynamic environment. In our quest for excellence, we will embrace and pursue technological change.”(37) And, in their “mission” statement, Canada’s “Demon” warriors express their willingness to embrace their future wherever it leads, including “to project air power at home and abroad”:

“The 407 Demon Squadron mission is to provide regional, national and expeditionary commanders with a rapidly deployable, self-sufficient, combat [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] ISR and [Anti-Submarine Warfare] ASW attack capability to enable them to project air power at home and abroad.”

The “Demon’s Creed” concludes:

“The Demons are proud warriors….We are the eyes, ears and fists of commanders over the land and sea….We are proud to be recognized as Demons.”(38)

Are Canadian Reapers on the Horizon? More Wars abroad, More Surveillance at Home

The Canadian military may soon be acquiring its very own version of General Atomics’ Reaper drones. In October 2019 Canada’s war department finally narrowed down its search for corporations that could fulfill the military’s demands for a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System. There are now only two competing teams bidding for this lucrative contract to build aerial drones for Canada’s military. These two teams are led by [1] General Atomics, which qualified for the contest with its Reaper drone, and [2] L3 Technologies MAS Inc. which has proposed that Canada purchase Heron TP drones from Israeli Aircraft Industries.(39) This Israeli drone was battle tested in Gaza during the 22-day Israeli offensive there that massacred 1,417 Palestinians in 2008-2009.(40) In June 2009, just a few months after this massacre, the Canadian Forces announced that it had begun leasing Israeli Heron drones from a Canadian military company called Macdonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA).(41) Canada was soon using these Israel-made drones in Afghanistan.(42)

To build its case for Canada’s acquisition of Reapers, General Atomics, which leads Team SkyGuardian Canada, noted that “We have a long-standing global relationship with CAE and L3 WESCAM.”(43) This “long-standing relationship” does not just relate to their participation in making the Reaper a successful US instrument of war and surveillance. These companies began working together during joint efforts on the Reaper’s precursor, the RQ-1 Predator. Used in Bosnia (1995), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001-2003), Yemen (2002) and Iraq (2003), this low-altitude drone was used primarily for photographic, electronic surveillance and target-acquisition missions. The RQ-1 drone was also weaponized by the CIA so that it could fire missiles to assassinate suspects in the War on Terror, as it did in Yemen in 2002.(44)

In pushing its case for the Reaper, General Atomics has also told the Canadian military that it “look[ed] forward to growing our relationship with MDA as a part of this new team in Canada.”(45) MDA has also proven its strong commitment to serving US wars through its production of such surveillance and weapons-targeting systems as Canada’s RADARSAT satellites.(46)

Unrestricted Flow of Weapons vs. Restricted Flow of Information

America has a long history of using Reapers to spy on people, to wage wars, to overthrow foreign governments, to carry out mass murder and, generally, to wreak havoc and destruction around the world. This, of course, has never stopped the Canadian government from allowing the export of CAE and WESCAM technologies to the US so that it can maximize its use of these deadly Reapers.

Neither, for that matter, has Canada’s government ever seen fit to prevent any other Canadian war industry from feeding the voracious appetite of the US military industrial complex. While about half of Canada’s military production is exported, as much as two thirds of those exports go to the US. This huge flow of Canadian military hardware has been deeply entrenched in the world’s closest economic trade relationship since the Canada-US Defence Production Sharing Agreement was signed in 1956.(47)

For many decades, the Canadian government has required domestic military industries to obtain permits for their exports around the world, except, that is, for arms sales to the US. This exemption has served to ensure the free and unrestricted flow of Canadian military exports to the US. Since, over the deaces, the Canadian government has handed out billions in grants and “investments” to support the business prospects of Canada’s hugely profitable military industries, the US has been able to benefit from unfettered access to its northerly neighbour’s generously subsidized military industrial base.

In stark contrast, the flow of publicly accessible information about Canada’s traffic in arms to the US has been severely restricted by our government. Although limited, generalized information about Canadian military exports to other countries is made public in government reports, virtually all data on Canada’s military sales to the US have long been completely excluded from this reporting process. This of course has made it extremely difficult to monitor Canada’s contributions to the US war machine. This lack of transparency is unacceptable not only because America is by far the largest recipient of Canadian military products and services, but because it can still accurately be seen as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” (as Martin Luther King Jr. put it in 1967).(48)

Regardless of which particular brand of drones is acquired by the Canadian military, activists will soon have to contend with the fact that their government has acquired yet another tool for its deadly arsenal of war. This will not only allow Canada’s military to increase its practical support for US-led foreign invasions and interventions, it will also give even more resources to police forces which have been spying on progressives since this country’s inception.(49)

2020 Vision: Watching the Watchers and Watching Ourselves

By watching the watchers we progressives become more aware of the continuing crimes committed by those powerful institutions which have put us in their surveillance sights. In the process we also build our awareness of how these institutions have been victorious in the battle to fabricate and frame the public’s limited understanding of history.

But besides watching the watchers it is important to be ever more vigilant in watching ourselves and those civil organizations which claim to represent our best interests. For centuries, good honest Canadians have been convinced to support criminally-harmful state policies and to collaborate in turning those policies into reality. The complicity of Canada’s churches in the genocide of First Nations peoples is a case in point. It illustrates how decent, well-meaning Canadians became so enamoured by entrancing mainstream narratives of racism, xenophobia and white superiority, that they went beyond just turning a blind eye to repressive policies, and actively administered the crimes that were committed throughout the entire Residential School process. These crimes were, afterall, conducted in the name of helping those poor so-called “savages” who were wrongly seen to be in great need of a benevolent grace that could best be bestowed by the great uplifting processes of civilization, Christianization and Canadianization.(50)

So, while it is important to watch the watchers who oversee the ongoing international crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, it is — perhaps counterintuitively — even more important to watch ourselves. Although we have little if any real power to influence those who hold sway over global military, political and financial institutions, we do have a fighting chance at influencing our own behaviour. With this in mind it may be useful to engage in thought experiments to imagine ourselves standing at a vantage point 100 years in the future from whence we can look back in hindsight at the present day.

Just as Reaper drones hover above the social fray looking down upon us all from a great distance, we can try to escort our imaginations to a point in time when we as individuals will all be long dead. From that hopefully more advanced point of view we can perhaps more objectively see the current flaws in our society and then ask ourselves what crimes Canadians were unwittingly committing back in the dark days of 2020. By viewing ourselves through this Reaper like “Magic Mirror” hovering on the other side of our own deaths, we may be able to see some way to prevent Canadians from becoming even further complicit in vast crimes that many cannot yet even see.

Defunding the Military and Defusing NATO

Besides calling on Canada to defund the police, many activists are also ramping up demands to defund the military. What better bank of resources is there than Canada’s vast military coffers to find the monetary resources needed to invest in institutions that promote health, education, day care, mass transportation and environmental protection? Instead of continually electing politicians that unquestionably increase financing to feed our military’s unquenchable desire for more and more weapons, Canadians need a government that will instead fund socially-useful and environmentally-sustainable solutions to the world’s collective problems. By doing so, the Canadian could not only create far more jobs at home, it could — for a change — actually have a positive influence on the world. Demilitarizing Canada and the planet would be extremely beneficial in many ways, not least of which because the armed forces burn more fossil fuels, and hence contribute more to catastrophic climate change, than any other force on earth.

No to NATO

Instead of continually aiding and abetting US-led wars, and further promoting the most destructive, exploitative practices of unfettered capitalism, Canada desperately needs to make an abrupt about face. We need, for example, to have a government that will stop dressing itself up behind phoney facades of sensitivity to the evils of racism, and begin to actually take practical steps to eradicate the systemic, institutionalised racism that riddles the Canadian state. This work must begin by recognizing the continuing harm that has been done by the centuries of genocide, slavery and imperial land plunder upon which the whole Canadian nation-building project has long been based.

The struggle to end Canada’s longstanding complicity in war could start by severing our military ties to the US, and by removing ourselves from NATO. This aggressive military alliance is a major threat to world peace and Canada should have no part in it. NATO still maintains its founding doctrine which is based on its willingness to prepare for and wage nuclear war. Canada also needs to sign and ratify the UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons. And, while we’re dreaming in technocolour, Canada should stop mining uranium, stop plans for spreading mini nuclear reactors across the north, and stop creating more nuclear waste because we simply cannot dispose of the vast stores of this deadly material that we have already amassed.

But achieving such utopian visions of an independent, peaceful and just Canada will always remain in the realm of fairy-tales unless Canadians, as a small first step, are able to free themselves from the many powerful myths and deceptive narratives that distort this country’s self awareness. Because these grand national myths constrict Canadians’ understanding of history and obscure our current complicity in international crimes, they form major ideological obstacles which block the work of progressive people struggling for social change. Only by becoming more aware and mindful of our Peaceable Kingdom’s powerful mythologies, can Canadians hope to ever extricate this country from its ongoing collaboration with the American imperium of war and repression.

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Richard Sanders is the editor/producer of Press for Conversion!, magazine of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade.

Notes

1. U.S. Regime Has Killed 20-30 Million People Since World War II
https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-regime-has-killed-20-30-million-people-since-world-war-ii/5633111

2. Joseph Trevithick, Customs and Border Protection Reaper Drone Appears Over Minneapolis Protests, May 29, 2020.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33756/customs-and-border-protection-predator-b-drone-appears-over-minneapolis-protests

3. Calling itself “one of the world’s largest law enforcement organizations,” the CPB says it “is charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S. while facilitating lawful international travel and trade.”

About CBP
https://www.cbp.gov/about

While the CBP is only allowed to operate within 100 miles of the US border, Minneapolis and San Antonio are beyond that 100-mile zone.

The Constitution in the 100-Mile Border Zone, American Civil Liberties Union
https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

4. Joseph Cox, “The Government Is Regularly Flying Predator Drones Over American Cities,” Vice Motherboard, June 3, 2020
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wnzm/government-flying-predator-drones-american-cities

5. Joe Lauria, “Fear of a Major Mideast War,” Consortiumnews, January 2, 2020
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/02/fear-of-a-major-mideast-war/

6. Prime Minister announces new project to create jobs and improve training in Canada’s aerospace and healthcare sectors, August 8, 2018.
https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2018/08/08/prime-minister-announces-new-project-create-jobs-and-improve-training

7. Feds invest $75M in Burlington’s Wescam, The Hamilton Spectator, March 24, 2015.
https://www.thespec.com/business/2015/03/24/feds-invest-75m-in-burlington-s-wescam.html

8. Peter Goodchild, “Meet the real Dr Strangelove,” The Guardian, Apr 1, 2004.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/apr/01/science.research1

9. Setsuko Thurlow, An open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada from a survivor of the Hiroshima A-Bombing, August 7, 2020
https://countercurrents.org/2020/08/an-open-letter-to-the-prime-minister-of-canada-from-a-survivor-of-the-hiroshima-a-bombing/

10. General Dynamics Corporation History
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/general-dynamics-corporation-history/

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. James Temperton, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’. The story of Oppenheimer’s infamous quote,” Wired, Aug 9. 2017.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/manhattan-project-robert-oppenheimer

14. 1962-1963, Canada: ‘Knocking Over’ “Dief the Chief”

A Plot “Made in the U.S.”
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/plot_made_in_us.htm

Key Quotations on the events of January 1963
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/key_quotations_on_the_events.htm

CIA Fingerprints
The Americans behind the Plot to Oust John Diefenbaker
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/cia_fingerprints.htm

John Diefenbaker’s “Made in Canada” Policies
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/john_diefenbaker.htm

15. “Books on Nuclear Weapons in Canada,” Press for Conversion! Issue # 39 Dec. 1999. p.32.
http://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/39.pdf

Nuclear Weapons: Preparing for Global Annihilation, Press for Conversion! Issue # 48 July 2002. p.40.
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue48/articles/40.pdf

John Clearwater. Canadian Nuclear Weapons: The Untold Story of Canada’s Cold War Arsenal, 1998, pp.91–116.

John Clearwater, US Nuclear Weapons in Canada, 1999.

Canada’s Nuclear Strike Force: 1st Air Division 1964-1972 , 10 August 2015
https://web.archive.org/web/20170728201632/http://www.tailsthroughtime.com/2015/08/canadas-nuclear-strike-force-1st-air.html

16. Top 100 for 2019
https://people.defensenews.com/top-100/

17. “69M to Reset 265 Stryker ICVs Back from Iraq,” Defense Industry Daily, Nov. 8, 2005.
https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/69m-to-reset-265-stryker-icvs-back-from-iraq-01450/

18. CAE Predator Mission Trainer (PMT)0
https://www.cae.com/media/media-center/documents/DM104-PredatorMissionTrainer_ENG_September2019.pdf

19. CAE-built Predator Mission Trainer now in-service at General Atomics Flight Test and Training Center in North Dakota, CAE, Apr 7, 2020.
https://www.asdnews.com/news/defense/2020/04/07/caebuilt-predator-mission-trainer-now-inservice-at-general-atomics-flight-test-training-center-north-dakota

20. L3Harris was formed in 2019 through a merger of L3 Technologies and Harris Corp., America’s 7th and 12th largest war industries.
Top 100 for 2019, op. cit.

The Canada Pension Plan holds $49 million in L3Harris stocks.

Foreign public equity holdings as at March 31, 2020
https://cdn4.cppinvestments.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Foreign-Publicly-Traded-Equity-Holdings-ibfs-06-2020-en-v2.htm

21. EO/IR Targeting System Integrated into MQ-9 Predator UAS, Mar 5, 2020.
https://www.unmannedsystemstechnology.com/2020/03/eo-ir-targeting-system-integrated-into-mq-9-predator-uas/

Technical specifications and performance of WESCAM’s MX-20 used by the Predator can be found here:

WESCAM MX™-20
https://www.wescam.com/products-services/airborne-surveillance-and-reconnaissance/mx-20/

22. AH-1 “Cobra” Attack Helicopter

Richard Sanders, Table: “Canadian War Industries Exporting Parts and/or Services to the USA for the AH-1 ‘Cobra,'” COAT Campaign to Oppose CANSEC, 2009.
http://coat.ncf.ca/ARMX/cansec/AH-1.htm

C-130 “Hercules” Tactical transport

Richard Sanders, “C-130 ‘Hercules,'” Press for Conversion! (Issue # 52) October 2003, p.15
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/52/15.pdf

P-3 “Orion” Maritime Patrol Aircraft
Richard Sanders, Table: “Canadian War Industries Exporting Parts and/or Services to the USA for the P-3 ‘Orion,'” COAT Campaign to Oppose CANSEC, 2009.
http://coat.ncf.ca/ARMX/cansec/P-3.htm

Richard Sanders, P-3C“’Orion,'” Press for Conversion! Issue # 52 October 2003, p.24.0
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/52/24.pdf

British MR2 “Nimrod” Maritime Patrol Aircraft
Richard Sanders, “Lt.Col. Jason Major and Col. Bill Seymourserved with LRP Squads in Iraq, 2003,” Press for Conversion! (Issue # 65), p.44, December 2010.
http://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/65/44-45.pdf

23. William Smith, A Smaller Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology, and Geography, 1878.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=fZUOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA235&dq=Smith+Classical+Dictionary+Lucifer&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=
Smith%20Classical%20Dictionary%20Lucifer&f=false

24. CAE has, for example, supplied training systems for at least 47 varieties of military helicopters, eleven varieties of military patrol/transport planes, six varieties of fighter jets, and five varieties of tanks and artillery. CAE also played a crucial role in “Missile Defense” weapons systems.

Helicopter Aircrew Training Solutions, p.3.
https://www.cae.com/media/documents/Helicopter_Aircrew_Training_Solutions.pdf

Portfolio of Experience, Patrol/Transport Program Highlights, CAE website
https://web.archive.org/web/20080309120710/http://www.cae.com/www2004/Products_and_Services/Military_Simulation_and_Training/Portfolio_of_
Experience/ptExperience.shtml

Fighter/Trainer Training Solutions
https://www.cae.com/media/documents/BM034_Fighter_Trainer_Aircraft_Training_Solutions_lowres.pdf

Land Training Systems Program Highlights, CAE website
http://www.cae.com/www2004/Products_and_Services/Military_Simulation_and_Training/Portfolio_of_Experience/ltsExperience.shtml

Richard Sanders, CAE Ltd., “Canada’s Role in so called ‘Missile Defense,'” #56 June 2005, pp.32-37
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/56/Articles/56_32-37.pdf

25. “Op Podium Air Component delivers,” April 21, 2010.
www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/v2/nr-sp/index-eng.asp?id=10457

26. Ibid.

27. Jerry Langton, “L-3 WESCAM and L-3 Communication Systems-West: Joining forces to supply critical systems for the Canadian Forces,” Canadian Defence Review, April 2010.
www.wescam.com/pdf/media/L-3Wescam_and_L-3Systems_West.pdf

28. Military freq for G20
http://forums.radioreference.com/ontario/184053-military-freq-g20-2.html

29. Canadians send message to G20 in re-cent Toronto violence
http://rabble.ca/babble/national-news/canadians-send-message-g20-recent-toronto-violence

30. G20 in Toronto
http://community.the-digital-picture.com/image_presentation1/f/15/p/4127/34973.aspx#34973

31 “Op Cadence,” Petawawa Post, July 8,2010.
www.cg.cfpsa.ca/cg-pc/Petawawa/EN/InformationandFAQ/Newspapers/PetPost/Documents/8July2010.pdf

32. Maj. K.Rennie and Capt. M. Crosbie ,“Tactical Air Control, TACP for Op Cadence,” Petawawa Post, July 8, 2010.

33. Major CMR Larsen, “14 Wing CP-140 Aurora participates on Operation NANOOK,” September 9, 2010.
www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/14w-14e/nr-sp/index-eng.asp?id=10962

34. “Local RCMP officer assists in security efforts at G8 and G20 Summits,” Shaunavon Standard, August 31, 2010.
www.theshaunavonstandard.com/news/lo-cal-news/192.html

35. Ibid

36. Pat Kolaf, “High alert guarding nuclear warheads,” Drumheller Mail, 11 Nov 2015.
https://www.drumhellermail.com/news/27705-high-alert-guarding-nuclear-warheads

37. Vision, Mission, and Creed
www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/19w-19e/sqns-escs/page-eng.asp?id=854

38. Ibid.

39. David Pugliese, “Heron and MQ-9 drones approved for Canadian military program,” Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 17, 2019.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/heron-and-mq-9-drones-approved-for-canadian-military-program

40. “Confirmed figures reveal the true extent of the destruction inflicted upon the Gaza Strip; Israel’s offensive resulted in 1,417 dead, including 926 civilians, 255 police officers, and 236 fighters”. Archived from the original on 12 June 2009. Retrieved 19 March 2009.. Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 12 March, 2009.

41. Canadian Forces Briefing on UAVs, Flight 8 Meeting, 24 June 2009
https://archive.vn/meNdh
42. David Pugliese, “Would Armed Heron UAVs Make Sense for the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan?” Ottawa Citizen, Nov 25, 2009.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/would-armed-heron-uavs-make-sense-for-the-canadian-forces-in-afghanistan

43. About Team SkyGuardian Canada
https://www.ga-asi.com/teamskyguardiancanada/about

44. Richard Sanders, “RQ-1 “”Predator,” Press for Conversion! (Issue # 52), October 2003. p.25.
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/52/25.pdf

45. About Team SkyGuardian Canada, op. cit.

46. Canada’s Role in the Militarisation of Space: RADARSAT – The Warfighters’ Eye in the Sky and its links to ‘Missile Defense ‘” Press for Conversion, Issue#58, March 2006.
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/58/58.html

47. Defence Production Sharing Agreement between Canada and the United States Of America, July 27, 1956.
https://www.ccc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/defence-production-sharing-agreement-en.pdf

48. King, Martin Luther, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” April 4, 1967.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam
49. “A Partial List of RCMP Files on Peace Groups,” Press for Conversion! Issue # 39 Dec. 1999. p.28-31.
http://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/39.pdf

50. Richard Sanders, Fictive Canada: Indigenous Slaves and the Captivating Narratives of a Mythic Nation, Issue#69, Fall 2017.
http://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/69/69_2-3.htm

All images in this article are from the author

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

As much as Covid-19 has been instrumentalized by the 0.001% to social engineer a Great Reset, the Beirut tragedy is already being instrumentalized by the usual suspects to keep Lebanon enslaved.

Facing oh so timely color revolution-style “protests”, the current Lebanese government led by Prime Minister Diab has already resigned. Even before the port tragedy, Beirut had requested a $10 billion line of credit from the IMF – denied as long as trademark, neoliberal Washington consensus “reforms” were not implemented: radical slashing of public expenses, mass layoffs, across the board privatization.

Post-tragedy, President Emmanuel Macron – who’s not even capable of establishing a dialogue with the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests in France – has opportunistically jumped in full neocolonial mode to pose as “savior” of Lebanon, as long as the same “reforms”, of course, are implemented.

On Sunday, France and the UN organized a videoconference to coordinate donor response – in conjunction with the European Commission (EC), the IMF and the World Bank. The result was not exactly brilliant: a paltry 252 million euros were pledged – once again conditioned by “institutional reforms”.

France came up with 30 million euros, Kuwait with 40 million, Qatar with 50 million and the EC with 68 million. Crucially, neither Russia nor Iran were among the donors. The US – which is harshly sanctioning Lebanon – and GCC allies Saudi Arabia and UAE pledged nothing. China had just a pro forma presence.

In parallel, Maronite Christians in Brazil – a very powerful community – are sending funds for the color revolution protests. Former President Michel Temer and industrialist tycoon Paulo Skaf even flew to Beirut. Former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel (1982-1988) maintained a lot of businesses in Brazil with funds he skimmed when in power.

All of the above points to neoliberalism taking no prisoners when it comes to keeping its deadly grip on Lebanon.

The Hariri model

Lebanon’s profound economic crisis, now aggravated by the Beirut port blast, has nothing to do with Covid-19 or the US proxy war on Syria – which brought a million refugees to the nation. It’s all about proverbial neoliberal shock and awe, conducted non-stop by the Hariri clan: former Prime Ministers Rafiq, assassinated in 2011, and Saad, chased out of power last January.

The Hariri model was focused on real estate speculation and financialization. The Solidere group, controlled by Arab investors and a few Lebanese, Hariri included, destroyed Beirut’s historical downtown and rebuilt it with luxury real estate. That’s the classical rentier neoliberalism model that always profits a tiny elite.

In parallel, the Bank of Lebanon was attracting funds from the tony Lebanese diaspora and assorted Arab investors by practicing very generous interest rates. Lebanon suddenly had an artificially strong currency.

A small middle class sort of flourished throughout the 2000s, comprising import-export traders, the tourism sector and financial market operators. Yet, overall, inequality was the name of the game. According to the World Inequality Database, half of Lebanon’s population now holds less wealth that the top 0.1%.

The bubble finally burst in September last year, when I happened to be in Beirut. With no US dollars in circulation, the Lebanese pound started to collapse in the black market. The Bank of Lebanon went berserk. When the Hariri racket imposed a “Whatsapp tax” over calls, that led to massive protests in October. Capital embarked on free flight and the currency collapsed for good.

There’s absolutely no evidence the IMF, the World Bank and assorted Western/Arab “donors” will extricate a now devastated Lebanon from the neoliberal logic that plunged it into a systemic crisis in the first place.

The way out would be to focus in productive investments, away from finance and geared towards the practical necessities of an austerity-battered and completely impoverished population.

Yet Macron, the IMF and their “partners” are only interested in keeping monetary “stability”; seduce speculative foreign capital; make sure that the rapacious, Western-connected Lebanese oligarchy will get away with murder; and on top of it buy scores of Lebanese assets for peanuts.

BRI or bust

In stark contrast with the exploitative perpetuation of the Western neoliberal model, China is offering Lebanon the chance to Go East, and be part of the New Silk Roads.

In 2017, Lebanon signed to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

In 2018, Lebanon became the 87th member of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Over the past few years, Lebanon was already taking part in the internationalization of the yuan, offering bank accounts in yuan and increasing bilateral trade in yuan.

Beijing was already engaged in discussions revolving around the upgrading of Lebanese infrastructure – including the expansion of Beirut harbor.

This means that now Beijing may be in the position of offering a renewed, joint rebuilding/security deal for Beirut port – just as it was about to clinch a smaller agreement with Diab’s government, focused only on expansion and renovation.

The bottom line is that China has an actual Plan A to extricate Lebanon from its current financial dead end.

And that’s exactly what was, and remains, total anathema to US, NATO and Israel’s interests.

The Trump administration recently went no holds barred to prevent Israel from having China develop the port of Haifa.

The same “offer you can’t refuse” tactics will be applied with full force on whoever leads the new Lebanese government.

Beirut is an absolutely key node in BRI’s geopolitical/geoeconomic connectivity of the Eastern Mediterranean. With Haifa temporarily out of the picture, Beirut grows in importance as a gateway to the EU, complementing the role of Pireus and Italian ports in the Adriatic.

It’s crucial to note that the port itself was not destroyed. The enormous crater on site replaces only a section quayside – and the rest is on water. The buildings destroyed can be rebuilt in record time. Reconstruction of the port is estimated at $15 billion – pocket money for an experienced company such as China Harbor.

Meanwhile, naval traffic is being redirected to Tripoli port, 80 km north of Beirut and only 30 km away from the Lebanon-Syria border. Its director, Ahmed Tamer, confirms “the port has witnessed during the past years the expansion work by Chinese companies, and it has received the largest ships from China, carrying a big number of containers”.

Add to it the fact that Tripoli port will also be essential in the process of Syria reconstruction – to which China is totally committed.

BRI’s Southwest Asia connectivity network is a maze including Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

China is already planning to invest in highway and railroads, further to be developed into high-speed rail. That will connect BRI’s central China-Iran corridor – fresh from the $400 billion, 25-year strategic partnership deal soon to be signed – with the Eastern Mediterranean.

Add to it the role of the port of Tartus in Syria – bearing a strong Russian naval presence. Beijing will inevitably invest in the expansion of Tartus – which is crucially linked by highway to Lebanon. The Russia-China strategic partnership will be involved in the protection of Tartus with S-300 and S-400 missile systems.

Historically, in a larger axis that went from Samarkand to Cordoba, with strong nodes such as Baghdad and Damascus, what slowly evolved in this part of Eurasia was a syncretic civilization superimposed over an ancestral regional, rural and nomad background. The internal cohesion of the Muslim world was forged from the 7th century to the 11th century: that was the key factor that shaped the lineaments of a coherent Eurasia.

Apart from Islam, Arabic – the language of religion, administration, trade and culture – was an essential unifying factor. This evolving Muslim world was configured as a vast economic and cultural domain whose roots connected to Greek, Semitic, Persian, Indian and Arab thought. It was a marvelous synthesis that formed a unique civilization out of elements of different origin – Persian, Mesopotamian, Byzantine.

The Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean were of course part of it, totally open towards the Indian Ocean, the Caspian routes, Central Asia and China.

Now, centuries later, Lebanon should have everything to gain by ditching the “Paris of the Orient” mythology and looking East – again, thus positioning itself on the right side of History.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Syria News

In light of today’s normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) warns that the threat of Israeli annexation remains as urgent as ever. A widely reported statement published today by the United States claims that Israel “will suspend” its annexation plans in exchange for normalization with the UAE. However, an Israeli official told the Times of Israel that Israel remains committed to annexation, and that “The Trump administration asked to temporarily suspend the announcement [of annexation] in order to first implement the historic peace agreement with the UAE.”

“Israel has not abandoned its plans to annex the West Bank, but has only agreed to a temporary pause,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “Canada must continue to raise its voice against Israeli annexation plans, which threaten to formalize Israel’s permanent control over Palestinian territory.”

CJPME notes that as the world waits for an official announcement on annexation, Israeli occupation and creeping annexation continue to confine Palestinians to an unacceptable apartheid reality.

“Without any concessions from Israel regarding its control over Palestinian territory, UAE’s agreement with Israel does nothing to advance peace in the Middle East, but only rewards Israel for its ongoing crimes of occupation,” said Bueckert.

CJPME urges Canadian politicians to intensify their opposition to annexation. To date, 68 Members of Parliament have signed a pledge to oppose Israeli annexation, urging the Canadian government to consider all reasonable diplomatic and economic options to stop annexation and prompt Israeli compliance with international law. Signatories include the entire caucuses of the Bloc Québécois and Green Party of Canada, 22 of 24 NDP MPs, and 10 Liberal MPs. The pledge campaign, sponsored by CJPME and Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), has been endorsed by over 60 civil society organizations. CJPME will continue to recruit additional MPs and strengthen Canada’s parliamentary opposition to annexation.

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Assim como os 0,001% instrumentalizaram a Covid-19 para engendrar o Grande Recomeço (Great Reset), os suspeitos de sempre já estão instrumentalizando a tragédia de Beirute para manter o Líbano escravizado.

O atual governo libanês liderado pelo Primeiro Ministro Diab já renunciou, ao encarar os protestos, tão oportunos, típicos de tantas revoluções coloridas. Mesmo antes da tragédia no porto acontecer, Beirute havia solicitado uma linha de crédito de $10 bilhões de dólares ao FMI – negado, já que as “reformas”, marca registrada do consenso neoliberal de Washington, não foram implementadas: cortes radicais à custa da população, desemprego em massa, privatização generalizada.

Depois da tragédia, o presidente Emmanuel Macron – que sequer foi capaz de estabelecer um diálogo com os camisas amarelas/gilets jaunes na França, surgiu sassaricando em modo neocolonial para posar de “salvador” do Líbano, desde que as tais “reformas” fossem impostas, claro.

Sábado, a França e a ONU organizaram uma videoconferência para coordenar uma rodada de doações – junto com a Comissão Europeia (CE), o FMI e o Banco Mundial. O resultado não foi lá tão brilhante – míseros 252 milhões de euros foram oferecidos – e novamente condicionados às “reformas institucionais”.

A França ofereceu 30 milhões de euros, o Qatar 50 e a Comissão Europeia 68 milhões. De maneira crucial, nem a Rússia nem o Irã estavam entre os doadores. Os EUA – que impuseram sanções duras contra o Líbano – e seus aliados do Conselho de Cooperação do Golfo, Arábia Saudita e Emirados Árabes Unidos não doaram. A China esteve presente apenas pro forma.

Paralelamente, uma poderosa comunidade brasileira, os Cristãos Maronitas, estão mandando dinheiro para os manifestantes da revolução colorida. O ex-presidente Michel Temer e o magnata da indústria Paulo Skaf estão voando para Beirute. O antigo presidente do Líbano, Amin Gemayel (1982-1988), tem inúmeros negócios no Brasil a partir de fundos que desviou quando no poder. Tudo indica que o neoliberalismo, quando se trata de manter o poder no Líbano, não faz prisioneiros.

Uma vista aérea mostra o dano maciço nos silos de grãos do porto de Beirute e na área ao redor dele na quarta-feira, um dia depois que uma grande explosão atingiu a área no coração da capital libanesa. Foto: AFP

O modelo Hariri

A explosão no porto agravou a já profunda crise do Líbano, mas nada tem a ver com a Covid-19 ou com a guerra por procuração dos EUA na Síria – que despejou um milhão de refugiados no país. Trata-se da proverbial tática neoliberal de shock and awe (choque e pavor – nt), conduzida em tempo integral pelo clã Hariri: o antigo primeiro ministro Rafiq, assassinado em 2011 e Saad, expulso do poder em janeiro.

O modelo Hariri privilegiava a especulação imobiliária e a financeirização. O grupo Solidere, controlado por investidores árabes junto com alguns libaneses, entre eles Hariri, destruiu o centro histórico de Beirute, substituindo-o por imóveis luxuosos. É o modelo rentista neoliberal clássico que beneficia sempre uma pequena elite.

Ao mesmo tempo, o Banco do Líbano estava atraindo fundos da pequena diáspora libanesa e investidores árabes variados ao praticar taxas de juros bem interessantes. De repente, o Líbano tinha uma moeda artificialmente forte.

Uma espécie de pequena classe média floresceu durante os anos 2000, compreendendo comerciantes de importação e exportação, o setor de turismo e operadores do mercado financeiro. Mas ainda assim, a desigualdade era o nome do jogo. De acordo com os dados da organização World Inequality Database, metade da população Libanesa possuía menos riqueza que os 0,1% no topo.

Finalmente, a bolha estourou em setembro de 2019, quando por acaso eu estava em Beirute. Sem dólares circulando, a libra Libanesa começou a desabar no mercado negro. O Banco do Líbano enlouqueceu. Quando a bagunça administrativa tocada por Hariri impôs a “taxa whatsapp” sobre as chamadas em outubro, desencadeou protestos massivos. O capital fugiu em voo livre e a moeda colapsou de vez.

Quem mergulhou o Líbano em uma crise sistêmica foi em princípio a lógica neoliberal e não há qualquer evidência de que o FMI, o Banco Mundial e “doadores” ocidentais/árabes variados irão liberar o Líbano, agora devastado.

Uma solução possível seria fugir da financeirização e focar em investimentos produtivos, voltados para as necessidades urgentes da população atingida pela austeridade e totalmente empobrecida.

Ocorre que Macron, o FMI e seus “parceiros” só estão interessados em manter a estabilidade monetária; atrair capital especulativo estrangeiro; assegurar que a oligarquia libanesa rapace conectada ao ocidente escape viva e acima de tudo comprar nacos dos ativos libaneses por ninharias.

Ou Iniciativa Cinturão e Estrada ou decadência.

Em flagrante contraste com a perpetuação exploradora do modelo neoliberal ocidental, a China está oferecendo ao Líbano a chance de partir para o Leste, para ser parte da Nova Rota da Seda.

Em 2017, o Líbano assinou compromisso de se juntar à Iniciativa Cintura e Estrada (BRI, na sigla em inglês – nt).

A seguir, em 2018, o Líbano tornou-se o 87º membro do Banco de Investimento em Infraestrutura da Ásia (AIIB).

Ao oferecer contas bancárias em Yuan e fazer crescer o comércio bilateral na moeda chinesa, o Líbano, nos últimos anos, passou a fazer parte da internacionalização do Yuan.

Pequim já discute a modernização da infraestrutura libanesa – incluindo a expansão do aeroporto de Beirute.

Isso significa que no momento, Pequim está em posição de oferecer um acordo conjunto de segurança/reconstrução totalmente novo para o porto de Beirute – na hora em que estava quase fechando um acordo de proporção menor com o governo de Diab, ligado apenas à expansão e renovação.

Resumindo, a China tem um plano “A” real para tirar resgatar o Líbano do atual beco sem saída financeiro.

É exatamente isso o que era, e continua sendo, total anátema para os interesses dos Estados Unidos, OTAN e Israel.

A administração Trump não respeitou barreiras para impedir que Israel tivesse o porto de Haifa desenvolvido pela China.

As mesmas táticas “uma oferta que você não pode recusar” serão aplicadas com força total sobre quem quer que seja que ocupe o novo governo no Líbano.

Beirute é centro absolutamente crucial na conectividade geopolítica/geoeconômica na Inciativa Cinturão e Estrada do Mediterrâneo Oriental. Como Haifa temporariamente está fora de alcance, Beirute cresceu em importância como um portal de entrada para a União Europeia, complementando o papel do Pireu e dos portos italianos no Mar Adriático.

É importante tomar nota que o porto em si não foi destruído. A enorme cratera no local representa apenas uma seção do cais. Os edifícios destruídos podem ser reconstruídos em tempo recorde. A reconstrução do porto foi estimada em $15 bilhões de dólares – dinheiro de trocado para uma companhia experiente como a China Harbour.

Por enquanto, o tráfico naval está sendo redirecionado para o porto de Trípoli, a 80 quilômetros ao norte de Beirute e apenas 30 quilômetros de distância da fronteira entre Síria e Líbano. Seu diretor, Ahmed Tamer, confirma que “o porto testemunhou nos últimos anos o trabalho de expansão das companhias chinesas, e recebeu navios de grande porte da China, levando containers em grande número”.

Acrescente-se que o porto de Trípoli também será essencial para a reconstrução da Síria – à qual a China está totalmente comprometida.

A rede de conectividade da Iniciativa Cinturão e Estrada do Sudoeste Asiático é um labirinto que inclui Irã, Iraque, Síria e Líbano.

A China já planeja investir em rodovias e ferrovias, as últimas desenvolver-se-ão depois em ferrovias de alta velocidade. Será a conexão do corredor central China/Irã da Iniciativa Cinturão e Estrada – que logo receberá o reforço dos $400 bilhões de dólares da parceria estratégica de 25 anos que será em breve assinado pelos dois países – com o Mediterrâneo oriental.

Há que se acrescentar o papel representado pelo porto de Tartus na Síria – com presença naval russa muito forte. Inevitavelmente, Pequim investirá na expansão de Tartus – crucialmente ligado ao Líbano por auto estrada. A parceria estratégica China/Rússia será amparada pela rede protetora de Tartus com os sistemas de mísseis S-300 e S-400.

Em termos históricos, o que se desenvolveu lentamente nesta parte Eurásia, uma faixa larga que ia de Samarqanda a Córdoba, com centros importantes como Bagdá e Damasco, foi uma civilização sincrética superposta sobre contexto regional, rural e nômade. A coesão interna do mundo muçulmano forjou-se a partir do século 7º até o século 11: foram estes os fatores principais que delinearam uma Eurásia coerente.

Um dos fatores essenciais de unificação, abstraindo-se o Islã – foi o árabe, a língua da religião, administração, comércio e cultura. Esse mundo muçulmano em evolução foi configurado como um enorme domínio econômico e cultural, cujas raízes conectaram o pensamento Grego, Semítico, Persa, Indiano e Árabe. Síntese maravilhosa que formou uma civilização única a partir de elementos de origem diferente – Persa, Mesopotâmica e Bizantina.

Dessa síntese, evidentemente faziam parte o Oriente Médio e o Mediterrâneo oriental, francamente abertos para o Oceano Índico, as rotas do Cáspio, Ásia Central e China.

Neste momento, séculos depois, o Líbano só terá a ganhar se abandonar a mitologia da “Paris do Oriente” e olhar verdadeiramente para Leste – mais uma vez, posicionando-se do lado certo da história.

Pepe Escobar

Imagem de destaque : Shutterstock

Artigo original em inglês :

Who Profits from the Beirut Blast?

Asia Times 7 août 2020

Tradução : Roberto Pires Silveira para Mondialisation \ Global Research.

The Deep State represents many wealthy capitalists who influence organizations like Big Pharma, the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, Big Oil, Big Agriculture, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, Wall Street, the Bilderbergers, and those that profit from the Federal Reserve instead of supporting a public banking system. But since the outbreak of Covid-19, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has clearly manifested as the braintrust kingpin that is orchestrating current world policy and events.  See links  #1-7 at the end of this article.     

Moreover, Cory Morningstar, a writer at the website www.WrongKindOfGreen.org has been explaining how billionaire capitalists and their organizations are hijacking the environmental movement and the Green New Deal, and they are the financial supporters behind the scenes of Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion. Read and listen to link #8 and #39.

Billionaire Capitalism and The World Economic Forum (WEF)

In many ways the World Economic Forum is on the cutting edge in describing health and environmental problems, for example, its website features the benefits of mindfulness meditation. Its website states that we are moving into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, some individuals have become alarmed by what appears to be a transhumanist agenda that may eventually require everyone to get vaccines and microchips. They fear that ultimately they could be turned into cyborgs as humans, artificial intelligence (AI), and other forms of advanced technology are merged together. See link #9.

To people still enamored with capitalism, who have no guilt aspiring to be millionaires with extravagant lifestyles on a planet with  limited resources, who think the United States needs to expand its military to sabotage and destroy any country advocating a socialist agenda–such people are alarmed when the World Economic Forum (WEF) talks about a wealth tax.

It was the influence of  progressives that brought us the New Deal and things like Social Security. Capitalists would never have offered those things out of the goodness of their hearts. With the current financial crisis, corporate and transnational capitalists and other members of the Deep State will most likely make further concessions in helping people who are now desperate, but they will certainly not relinquish their positions of top-down control, and that is the central problem for the 99.9% of humanity. See links 10-12.

Billionaire capitalists (with their NGOs, TV commercials, and documentaries) can say all the right words about ecological sustainability, but they will never voluntarily eliminate the capitalistic practices that keep them empowered. They will never fully address the ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor nationally and internationally as a major problem.

Billionaire capitalists actually think they can solve  environmental problems while they keep getting wealthier and more powerful at the same time. But social and environmental problems throughout the world will only be solved when the wealthiest One Percent (or the 1% of the 1%)–that is,  all the elements of the Deep State–are dethroned and disempowered.

Social Engineering

Today it would seem that the vast majority of “progressive” and “leftist” websites encourage people to follow the WHO and CDC guidelines about the wearing of face masks, maintaining social distancing, sheltering in place, and just waiting for a magical vaccine–while ignoring the fact that there are relatively inexpensive drugs available that can effectively treat Covid-19.

Censorship of Medical Doctors

Mostly it is the conservative websites that have provided videos and articles of medical doctors and other experts with outstanding credentials that disagree with the official narrative. But Facebook and YouTube are removing their videos–seemingly at warp speed now. See links 13-14.

Concerning the coronavirus, there are a few progressive websites that are posting the articles and videos of those  labeled by the mainstream media as “right-wing conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” and “covidiots.”

It is obvious that mainstream news channels are only allowing their official narrative to be presented–alternative viewpoints are not allowed.

Recently there was a massive protest of more than 1 million people against the restrictive measures related to  the coronavirus in Berlin. A few online newspapers covered it, but I didn’t see it mentioned on the mainstream, TV-news channel (CBS) that I watch. (See image below)

It is more true than ever before now that we no longer live in a free society because the corporate-controlled mainstream media is merely a mouthpiece for the corporate-controlled government. See links #15-39.

Conclusion

We do not need a New World Order autocratically imposed from the top-down by neoliberal, corporate plutocrats, but we do need a Democratic Federal World Government. The Earth Constitution (also click  here) is an excellent model for empowering democratic world law above national sovereignty. Currently we have 195 nations that are all militarized, competing and conniving against one another.

The U.S. is aspiring to become an empire, if it has not already become one. Instead of being controlled by an empire or by the Deep State, we should let the citizens of the world together decide how to create peace, justice, freedom, democracy, and happiness on this planet. See link #40.

The United Nations can never create world peace because it is based on a system of sovereign nations that do not respect any international laws if they do not feel like it.

The United Nations is certainly not  a democratic organization considering that its Security Council has 5 permanent member nation states (with the power of veto). The U.N. is powerless in stopping competing nations from spending astronomical amounts of money on the military. The countries of the world spent  $1917 billion (or almost 2 trillion) dollars  on the military in 2019!

Albert Einstein was a supporter of world government, but he had little faith in the United Nations, considering how it is structured. See link #41.

I want to share two thought-provoking videos (Annex below) about the lockdown and vaccines related to Covid-19 and also about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the agenda of transhumanism related to the World Economic Forum.

 ANNEX

Below are two videos from socially conservative and capitalist economic perspectives. I have provided summaries of each video. These videos provide an understanding of the crisis we are living.

Video: The Great Reset: Covid-19 and the World Economic Forum Plan to Impose a New World Order by Michael J. Matt–August 11, 2020.

Summary

The H1N1 Swine Flu (2005) killed 500,000. In August of 2020 so far 650,000 people worldwide have died from Covid-19. The Hong Kong Flu (1968) killed 4 million people! The country was not shut down over these other flu outbreaks. There was no quarantine. Why not? It is because Covid-19 is a politicized virus.  People are losing their jobs and mental health over this.  They can’t go to church.  Their kids aren’t going back to school.  There is a war on Hydroxychloroquine.  You mention it on Facebook or YouTube and you get taken down.  It’s been used for 60 years!  They don’t want it because it is not a vaccine that they can make money from.  It might fix the problem.  It is why the Frontline Doctors were banned from social media and are losing their jobs.  The only thing they did wrong was trying to fix the problem now.

If Covid-19 can be cured without 7 billion doses of Bill Gates vaccine, the “Great Reset” talked about in Davos, Switzerland [by the World Economic Forum] will be dead on arrival, and we would go back to life as we once knew it.  The US is in the way of this “Great Reset,” so they are destabilizing our entire country.  The Great Reset wants to implement massive socialist programs dealing with global climate change through the Green New Deal.  No country will be allowed to opt out of this because they would then endanger the whole world community when future pandemics, environmental catastrophes, and population increase.

Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and he is threatening to pull out of the World Trade Organization.  Trump is a capitalist, not a globalist.  The video shows economist Jeffrey Sachs who stated that the UN General Assembly routinely votes 185 against the United States on almost everything right now.  In November 2019 at the United Nations (before Covid-19 landed), Trump declared war on globalism. Trump said the future does not belong to globalists.  It belongs to patriots.  Shortly after that, the coronavirus was unleashed on the world, and Trump’s booming US economy went on life support.  Was that an accident?  The Russia hoax, the Impeachment hoax was all about removing Trump.  If Trump brings the economy back again, the Great Reset won’t happen.  Covid-19 is being used as an opportunity to implement the New World Order.

That is why they hate Trump. They hate God, the unborn, the traditional family, they hate you, and they hate Trump.  Trump’s political opponents are knocking down statues of saints to the ground.  They are beating up cops, and they are burning flags.  If you don’t like Trump’s personality, then at least look at the big picture.  The choice is simple.  Stand with America right now or fall with the NWO  [End of Summary].

 The Great Reset Plan Revealed:  How Covid Ushers in The New World Order–by Spiro Skouras from Activist Post.com–June 6, 2020.

Summary

The Hegelian Dialectic discusses the idea of Problem–Reaction–Solution.  If you have a goal of global governance, there may be some resistance to that.  So you engineer a crisis which produces a desired response–a controlled demolition of the whole economy that wipes out the middle class, creating more dependency on the government for stimulus money and bailouts.

The current lockdown is the conclusion of the Rockefeller lockstep document of 2010 on how to mitigate a pandemic crisis.  [According to  James Fetzer. org, the Lock Step scenario is the first of four narratives presented in the Rockefeller Foundation’s summary document, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development.”  It deals with a zoonotic viral pandemic that wipes out millions across the globe.]

We are also seeing massive unrest under the guise of seeking social justice, ending inequality and systemic racism.  In reality, these riots are nothing more than an organized destabilization operation, much like we have seen the US and the CIA carry out in countless countries before they topple their governments and install puppet regimes.  This is a planned operation.

The Problem–Covid-19.  The Reaction–economic collapse and civil unrest.  Now it is time for the predetermined Solution that is ready to roll out.  The Solution was just announced by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the same group who asked John Hopkins to host   Event 201 In October 2019.   Their solution is the “Great Reset,” an initiative that was just launched this week by the WEF.  Its longstanding global governance agenda ties to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which seeks to regulate, control, and redefine life as we know it.

And in June 2019, the UN and the WEF formed a strategic partnership to accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda.  See World Economic Forum and UN Sign Strategic Partnership Framework.

(3:09)  Back in January 2020, the WEF founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab, was asked what we can expect to be the focus of the Davos 2020, and he referenced his book written in 1970 which was about a new economic model called Stakeholder Capitalism which is now commonly accepted.  He states the original idea of Davos was to create a place where Stakeholders could meet, and we are now celebrating that Stakeholder Capitalism is becoming mainstream (4:25).  Schwab said (6:11), the Covid-19 crisis has shown us the old system is not fit anymore.  When the economy and the stock market were booming, people thought the old system was working.  Now people realize that the old system is not working with climate change and the loss of biodiversity.  In the past, we didn’t have a sense of urgency to address these issues.  It is hard to have a sense of urgency if the stock market is doing so well.

Spiro Skouras from Activist Post then states in the video, Now we have conditions comparable to the Great Depression due to the fallout from the corona lockdown.  Now we have a justification for the Great Reset and the 50-year plan by the WEF to have a new economic system. Just 3 days ago, the WEF hosted an online virtual summit for the Great Reset, and it included Klaus Schwab, founder and director of WEF, the UN Secretary General, Prince Charles, the head of the International Monetary Fund, a top representative from MasterCard, among many others.  And the general consensus was that we cannot afford to miss this window of opportunity to implement the Great Reset because Covid has shown that our current system is broken (6:06). Schwab states it is not fit anymore for the 21st century.

Now (6:23) is the historic moment of time, Schwab states, to not only fight the coronavirus, but to shape the systems for a post-coronavirus era.  Other prominent individuals in the video of the Summit say similar things.  Prince Charles said, “Climate change is a devastating reality for many people.  We have a golden opportunity to seize something good from this crisis.  It’s unprecedented (7:40) shock waves may well make people more receptive to big visions of change.  A lady from the IMF then said what we see is inevitably a very massive injection of a financial stimulus to help countries deal with this crisis…but it is paramount that the growth leads to a greener, smarter, and more fair world in the future.

In the WEF video clip, Klaus Schwab states, we have  another choice.  We can change our behavior to be in harmony with nature again and make sure that the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are best utilized.  In short, we need a “Great Reset.”  Spiro Skouras (9:56) from Activist Post then states that according to the WEF website, the Great Reset will have 3 components:  1) To steer the market toward fairer outcomes [copied from the video screen:  “Depending on the country, these may include changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition… The second component of the Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.]  Spiro Skouras (10:31) then says that the third component will be to harness the innovation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good by addressing health and social challenges.  This is also known as the transhumanist agenda to merge man with machine and force compliance with global governance initiatives laid out by Agenda 2030.

Skouras then states, now this might be a good time to note that 14 of  17 of the UN’s Sustainability goals include the use of vaccinations (10:53).  Skouras states that the third component which Schwab has written a book about is a longstanding transhumanist agenda which seeks to merge man with machine and artificial intelligence (AI), something that Elon Musk is already working on with his Neura Link Project.

Spiro Skouras then shares video clips from WEF’s website from about 3 years ago (12:14).  A woman in the video clip states, “The very idea of a human being a natural concept is really going to change.  Our bodies will be so high-tech that we won’t be able to really distinguish between what’s natural and what’s artificial.  Skouras states this is the merger of man and machine.  This is the transhumanist agenda from WEF official videos from their own YouTube channel.  Then a man speaks in the video clip, “Inside our heads is the most complex arrangement of matter in the known universe.”  A woman then speaks, “You might ask yourself, can we get to be superhumans?  The original industrial revolution was driven by the discovery that you could use steam engines to do all kinds of interesting things.”  A man speaks, “But that was followed by additional revolutions for electricity, computers, and communications technology.  We are now in the early stages of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (14:02) which is bringing together digital, physical, and biological systems.”

Then Klaus Schwab speaks, “One of the features of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is that it doesn’t change what we are doing, but it changes us.”  A woman speaks, “ With the ability to visualize brain activity, for example, through a simple consumer-based EEG device, it gives us access to ourselves in ways that we have never before thought possible.  It unlocks the black box of the brain and enables us to really truly be able to realize an identity that is aspirational (14:49).”  Then John Kabat-Zinn talks about the amazing benefits of mindfulness meditation on the brain genome and biological aging.  “Then you get the potential for a new renaissance that restructures itself in terms of our relationship to life, the planet, and work.”

A man from the WEF video clip states, “We need a different economic model–not capitalism vs. communism, but a shift in the system along the lines of the two big changes that happened in  the 20th century.  Keynesianism was a much greater focus on health and education and the world of government working with business.  Then the reaction to that in the late 1970s was Neoliberalism where the focus was on free markets and freedom of the individual and getting governments out of the way (15:35).  We then [now] shift to a new system that will allow us to meet the basic needs of every human on the planet.  We will live within our planetary means.  We will be fairer, and the focus will not be on growth per se, but on maximizing human well-being.  And history tells us that a value shift is triggered by a creation of a new story about how we want to live (15:58).

Skouras then interjects, they were talking about how this new model is not based on hard work or being a business owner or creating wealth and success.  They were talking about a new global economic order that will be fairer, they say.  They essentially redistribute wealth, your wealth, as they see fit to lower the standards where you are in your country and raise standards in other countries (16:19).  Are you beginning to see how this covid crisis (16:48) has accelerated between the 2030 Agenda and global governance and how they use public figures (celebrities) to help sell it to the public?  People do not otherwise trust governments as institutions (17:01).  Now the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be sold to humanity as a way to better “mankind,”  a word they don’t want you to use.  The UN doesn’t like that.  They want to use the word “humankind.”  They will make paralyzed people walk again.  They will help the blind to see, and while this is all amazing and great, history shows us time and time again that things that can be used to benefit humanity are often weaponized and turned against humanity.

A man speaks (17:33), “ Humans have always been using tools but because of the recent advances in technology, we are beginning to have machines that can augment us in interesting ways.”  A different man speaks, “I was the first person in the world to be able to voluntarily move my legs while stepping[?] into a robot (17:45) that executed the nervous system using an electrical stimulator to the spine.”  He went on to say we believe a cure for paralysis is possible in time.

A woman then states that “the prediction of 5 million jobs lost to technology is serious, but it is not the main question.  Instruction, manufacturing, services, public health–these industries will still exist, but the main question is what will be the future of work?  How will we define work?  How will we share wealth?”  A different woman speaks, “One of the things I think that is essential is a free and open society of thought, and up until now the conversation we have been having is freedom of speech.  But if we can access people’s thoughts, access their emotions, we have to create a space that enables people to think freely, to think divergent thoughts, to think creative thoughts.  And in a society where people fear having those thoughts, the likelihood of being able to enjoy progress significantly is diminished.”

Skouras think interjects, “Did you just hear that?  She said right now (18:53) the discussion has been around free speech, but basically once we get that out of the way–once we get access to people’s thoughts and emotions, we need to create a framework for people to think, so that people aren’t scared, but feel safe.  This is absolutely terrifying!  Talk about Thought Police!  They are fully intending and telling us right now that they plan to have direct access to your thoughts and emotions and will be able to manipulate them [implying a digitally implanted microchip?], of course, for the greater good (19:22).  This (19:46) is not about saving the planet.  This is about control.  Many of our jobs will be taken over by robots, so they will redefine work–they want to redefine what it means to be human and determine for you your role and your future of being essentially a transhumanist cyborg, integrated into this new control grid.  Now, right now, we are witnessing the control grid, the controlled demolition of our economic system by design in order to usher in this new transhumanist agenda.

Spiro Skouras continues, “This is the new system of global governance.  In this new digitized system of control, we will be unable to distinguish organic life from artificial life.  We won’t have access to our own thoughts.  Or we will have access to them, but we won’t be able to control (20:26) our own thoughts and emotions because they are going to do that for us because we will be tied into their grid system.  Now the current system was never meant to last forever.  It was meant to last only long enough to enslave humanity through debt–until technology caught up with the technocrats’ vision of the future.  And now it’s here.  Do you think the central banks will take responsibility for the collapse of the current system?  Do you think that governments will take responsibility?  No.  The virus is here to take the fall.  The virus will be the excuse to burn down this old system, as we are seeing happen right now, and out of the ashes, this new system will rise.  Do you think it is a coincidence that the central banks just so happen to have their new digitized currencies ready to go? They have  been rebuilding the whole infrastructure (21:13) for years to facilitate this new digital financial system.

Skouras continues, the new digital financial system of control is about to be rolled out on all of us right now at the same time they are rolling out the digital immunity passports.  The UN’s digital identity plan is being rolled out and worked on right now, and it is funded by Bill Gates.  There is so much more.  Global governance is at our doorstep.  It is being rolled out and justified by the Covid-19 crisis.  And at the end of the day, we the people do not have a say in our future according to them.  We don’t even get a vote according to them.  These technocrats are deciding the future of humanity for us right now.  And guess what?  The future of humanity isn’t human at all (end of video).

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

Roger Copple retired as a high school special education and elementary general education teacher in 2010 at age 60.  His website  World Without Empire. com contains  articles he has written about spiritual politics.  The website also shares links to information about yoga philosophy, mindfulness meditation, and Near-Death Experiences.

To further support the claims made above, here are 41 videos and articles that challenge the dominant, official, mainstream-news narrative about Covid-19 and the current financial crisis:

Notes

1. Professor of Economics (Michel Chossudovsky):  Video with Transcription:  The 2020 Economic Crisis. Global Poverty, Unemployment and Despair–18 minutes–June 30, 2020

2. YouTube:  The Global Research Report: The COVID-19 Lockdown:  Economic and Social Impacts:  Interview with Peter Koenig–38 minutes–July 17, 2020

3. Global Research.ca:  The Global Reset–Unplugged.  “The Deep State”–by Peter Koenig–July 9, 2020

4. Global Research.ca:  The World Economic Forum (WEF) Knows Best–The Post-Covid  “Great Global Reset”–  by Peter Koenig–July 28, 2020.

5. Global Research.ca: Facts Vs. Fake:  A Worldwide Lockdown of Everything–by Peter Koenig–June 3, 2020

6. Global Research.ca:  The Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) Is at it Again–Celebrating 50th Anniversary–by Peter Koenig–January 22, 2020.

7. Global Research.ca:  Now Comes the Davos Global Economy “Great Reset.”  What Happens After the Covid-19 Pandemic?–by F. William Engdahl–July 24, 2020

8. Global Research.ca:  “The Non-Profit Industrial Complex”  and the Co-opting of the NGO Environmental Movement by Michael Welch: A Conversation with Cory Morningstar–59 minutes

9. Vaccine Impact. com:  New World Order Continues to be Published:  The “Great Reset”–Transhumanism and the Fourth Industrial Revolution–August 10, 2020. The article also includes a 12-minute video entitled “What is the  Fourth Industrial Revolution?” that is produced by  the World Economic Forum

10. Professor Richard Wolff: The Coming Economic Crash Will Be Worse Than the Great Depression–13 min–July 15, 2020

11. Global Capitalism:  As US Capitalism Shakes, US Socialism Renews–Professor Richard D. Wolff–1 hour, 11 min–July 8, 2020

12. Richard Wolff:  The Crash Is Coming!  What To Watch For–24 minutes–July 15, 2020

13. Global Research.ca:  COVID-19:  We have a Treatment:  Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).  We do Not Need a Vaccine!  by Dr. Pascal Sacre–August 4, 2020

14. Global Research. ca:  Are Face Masks Effective?  The Evidence–by Swiss Propaganda Research–August 4, 2020

15. Children’s Health Defense.com:  A Timeline–Pandemic and Erosion of Freedoms Have Been Decades in the Making–May 21, 2020.

16. Global Research.ca:  The COVID-19 Vaccine.  The Imposition of a Compulsory Vaccination with a Biometric Health Passport?–by Dr. Pascal Sacre–August 9, 2020

17. Amazing Polly. net:  The Global Health Mafia Protection Racket–May 8, 2020–39 minutes

18. OpEdNews.com:  The Stepford Wives Vaccine–Just Say No–11 pages with 4 minute video–by Lila York–May 22, 2020

19. James Corbett’s 4 videos on Bill Gates:  www.CorbettReport.com/Gates.

20. Breitbart.com:  Watch Live:  Silenced Frontline Doctors Hold Capitol Hill Press Conference to Challenge Big Tech–28 minutes–July 28, 2020

21. Love Productions. org:  Is Covid-19 the Biggest Pseudo Pandemic in Human History? 

22. Strategic-Culture.org:  German Official Leaks Report Denouncing Corona as “A Global False Alarm”:  May 29, 2020

23. The Freedom Articles. com: “Busted: 11 COVID Assumptions Based on Fear not Fact”  by Makia Freeman–July 2, 2020

24. The Healthy Truth with Dr. Andrew Kaufman–April 16, 2020–1 hr. 9 min

25. Where is the evidence for a new virus?  Dr. Andrew Kaufman–May 30, 2020–4 min 31 sec

26. Urgent:  The World’s Greatest Cover Up– interview of Dr. Andrew Kaufman–May 19, 2020–45 minutes

27. Kelly Victory, MD:  Breaking Down Covid-19–18 minutes–July 6, 2020

28. https://vaccine-injury.info/debunking-the-germ-viral-theory-of-disease

29. Podcast: David Parker and Dawn Lester, authors of  “What Really Makes Us Ill”  interviewed by Mark Devlin–1 hr, 30 min  Below is how one reviewer at Amazon described the authors’ book: The authors back up the central claim of this book that what are understood as “pathogens” are analogous to firefighters at the scene of the incident. Just as firemen don’t start fires, bacteria and viruses are the effects. The bottom line is that chemical toxicity in the environment is the cause of oxidative stress which is the cause of disease.

30. Global Freedom Movement: org:  Meet the Teachers:  Kevin Galalae

31. Kevin Galalae:  Part One:  The Pandemic Illusion–4 min, 34 sec

32. Kevin Galalae:  Part Two:  Why a Fake Pandemic?–1 min,  17 sec

33. Kevin Galalae:  Part Three:  The Pandemic Cure for Overconsumption–9 min

34. Kevin Galalae:  Part Four:  The Pandemic Cure for Overpopulation:  11 min 

35. Kevin Galalae:  Part Five:  The Pandemic Front of Decarbonization–20 min

36. Kevin Galalae:  Part Six:  Accomplishments of the Plandemic Strategy:  9 min

37. Kevin Galalae:  Part Seven:  Failures of the Plandemic Strategy:  19 min 

38. Global Research.ca:  A Warning from Dr. Carrie Madej about Covid-19 Vaccine–22 minutes–July 19, 2020

39. OpEdNews. com:  Improve the Green New Deal: Eliminate its Massive Growth and Neoliberalism: An Interview of Green Social Thought.org writers Don Fitz and Stan Cox–with Transcription provided by Roger Copple–May 3, 2019

40. Youtube videos of Professor Glen T. Martin speaking about the Earth Constitution

41. Global Research.ca:  The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals:  Global Schizophrenia–by Dr. Glen T. Martin, the President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association, the organization that created the Earth Constitution–October 6, 2015

Article first published by Gr on June 14, 2020

Abstract and Background

A publishing scandal recently erupted around the use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid 19.  It is also known as quinine and chloroquine, and is on the WHO list of essential medicines.[i] 

The bark of the South American quina-quina tree has been used to treat malaria for 400 years.[ii]  Quinine, a generic drug costing pennies a dose, is available for purchase online.  In rare cases it can cause dizziness and irregular heartbeat.[iii]

In late May, 2020, The Lancet published a four-author study claiming that HCQ used in hospitals to treat Covid-19 had been shown conclusively to be a hazard for heart death. The data allegedly covered 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals on six continents.[iv]

After the article had spent 13 days in the headlines, dogged by scientific objections, three of the authors retracted it on June 5.[v]

Meanwhile, during an expert closed-door meeting leaked May 24 in France, The Lancet and NEJM editors explained how financially powerful pharmaceutical players were “criminally” corrupting medical science to advance their interests.

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On May 22, 2020, the time-honoured Lancet[vi]– one of the world’s two top medical journals – published the stunning claim that 671 hospitals on six continents were reporting life-threatening heart rhythms in patients taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for Covid-19.

The headlines that followed were breath-taking.

Although wider access to the drug had recently been urged in a petition signed by nearly 500,000 French doctors and citizens,[vii] WHO and other agencies responded to the article by immediately suspending the clinical trials that may have cleared it for use.

North American headlines did not mention that HCQ has been on the WHO list of essential drugs since the list began in 1977.  Nor did they mention an investigative report on the bad press that hydroxychloroquine had been getting prior to May 22, and how financial interests had been intersecting with medicine to favour Gilead’s new, more expensive drug, Remdesivir.[viii]

The statistics behind the headlines

As a Canadian health sciences librarian who delivered statistics to a large public health agency for 25 years, I sensed almost immediately that the article had to be flawed.

Why? Because health statistics are developed for different purposes and in different contexts, causing them to exist in isolated data “stovepipes.”[ix] Many health databases, even within a single region or country, are not standardized and are thus virtually useless for comparative research.

How, I wondered, could 671 hospitals worldwide, including Asia and Africa, report comparable treatment outcomes for 96,000 Covid patients? And so quickly?

The Lancet is strong in public health and surely suspected this. Its award-winning editor-in-chief, Dr. Richard Horton, has been in his job since 1995.[x]

So how could the damning HCQ claims have been accepted?  Here is what I discovered.

The honour system in medical publishing

To some extent, authors submitting articles to medical journals are on the honour system, in which cited databases are trusted by the editors, yet are available for inspection if questioned.[xi]

On May 28, an open letter from 200 scientists to the authors and The Lancet requested details of the data and an independent audit. The letter was “signed by clinicians, medical researchers, statisticians, and ethicists from across the world.”[xii]

The authors declined to supply the data, or even the hospital names. Meanwhile, investigative analysis was showing the statistics to be deeply flawed.[xiii][xiv]

If this were not enough, the lead author was found to be in a conflict of interest with HCQ’s rival drug, Remdesivir:

“Dr. Mandeep Mehra, the lead co-author is a director at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, which is credited with funding the study. Dr. Mehra and The Lancet failed to disclose that Brigham Hospital has a partnership with Gilead and is currently conducting two trials testing Remdesivir, the prime competitor of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19, the focus of the study.”[xv]

In view of the foregoing, the article was retracted by three of its authors on June 5.

How did this fraud get past The Lancet reviewers in the first place?

The answer emerges from what has remained an obscure French interview, although it has been quoted in the alternative media.[xvi]

On May 24, a closed-door Chatham House expert meeting about Covid included the editors-in-chief of The Lancet and the NEJM.  Comments regarding the article were leaked to the French press by a well-known health figure, Dr. Philippe Douste-Blazy,[xvii] who felt compelled to blow the whistle.

His resulting BFM TV interview was posted to YouTube with English subtitles on May 31,[xviii] but it was not picked up by the English-speaking media.

These were The Lancet editor Dr. Richard Horton’s words, as reported by Dr. Douste-Blazy:

“If this continues, we are not going to be able to publish any more clinical research data because pharmaceutical companies are so financially powerful today, and are able to use such methodologies as to have us accept papers which are apparently methodologically perfect, but which, in reality, manage to conclude what they want to conclude.” [xix]

Doust-Blazy made his own comments on Horton’s words:

“I never thought the boss of The Lancet could say that. And the boss of the New England Journal of Medicine too. He even said it was ‘criminal’. The word was used by them.”[xx]

The final words in Doust-Blazy’s interview were:

“When there is an outbreak like Covid, in reality, there are people like us – doctors – who see mortality and suffering. And there are people who see dollars. That’s it.”[xxi]

The scientific process of building a trustworthy knowledge base is one of the foundations of our civilization. Violating this process is a crime against both truth and humanity.

Evidently the North American media does not consider this extraordinary crime to be worth reporting.

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Notes

[i] World Health Organization. “World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines, 21st ed.”, WHO, 2019, pp. 24, 25, 53 (https://www.who.int/medicines/publications/essentialmedicines/en/).

[ii] Jane Achan, et al., “Quinine, an old anti-malarial drug in a modern world: role in the treatment of malaria,” Malaria Journal,  24 May 2011 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121651/).

[iii] WebMD, “Quinine Sulfate” (https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-869/quinine-oral/details).

[iv] The Lancet, “RETRACTED: Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis, by Mandeep R. Mehra et al,” Lancet, 5 June 2010 (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext).

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Famous weekly British medical journal, founded in 1823.

[vii] Lee Mclaughlan, “Covid-19 France: petition for wider chloroquine access,” 6 April 2020 (https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Time-wasted-over-use-of-choroquine-coronavirus-drug-says-petition-by-former-French-health-minister).

[viii] Sharyl Attkisson, “Hydroxychloroquine,” Full Measure, 18 May 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB-_SV-y11Y). Attkisson is a five-time Emmy Award winner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharyl_Attkisson).

[ix] See “Stovepiping,” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stovepiping) (accessed June 12, 2020).

[x] Dr. Horton’s career, professionalism, and awards are shown at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Horton_(editor)(accessed June 12, 2020).

[xi] The Lancet and NEJM editors could not be expected to comb through data from 671 hospitals to verify their accuracy – especially when submitted by four doctors.

[xii] The full-text letter and signatories appear  at https://zenodo.org/record/3862789#.XuQiNmYTGhM

[xiii] Melissa Davey, “Questions raised over hydroxychloroquine study which caused WHO to halt trials for Covid-19,” The Guardian, 28 May 2020 (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/28/questions-raised-over-hydroxychloroquine-study-which-caused-who-to-halt-trials-for-covid-19).

[xiv] Melissa Davey et al, “Surgisphere: governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company,” The Guardian, 3 June 2020 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine).

[xv] 1. Alliance for Human Research Protection, “The Lancet Published a Fraudulent Covid-19 Study,” 2 June 2020 (https://ahrp.org/the-lancet-published-a-fraudulent-study-editor-calls-it-department-of-error/).

2. Brigham Health, “Two Remdesivir Clinical Trials Underway at Brigham and Women’s Hospital,” 30 March 2020 (https://www.brighamhealthonamission.org/2020/03/26/two-remdesivir-clinical-trials-underway-at-brigham-and-womens-hospital/).

[xvi] Vera Sharav, “Editors of The Lancetand the New England Journal of Medicine: Pharmaceutical Companies are so Financially Powerful They Pressure us to Accept Papers,” Health Impact News, 5 June 2020

(https://healthimpactnews.com/2020/editors-of-the-lancet-and-the-new-england-journal-of-medicine-pharmaceutical-companies-are-so-financially-powerful-they-pressure-us-to-accept-papers/).

[xvii] Dr. Philippe Douste-Blazy, MD, is a cardiologist, former French Health Minister; 2017 candidate for Director at WHO; and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.  See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Douste-Blazy.

[xviii] “(Eng Subs) Hydroxychloroquine Lancet Study: Former France Health Minister blows the whistle,” BFM TV, 31 May 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=ZYgiCALEdpE&feature=emb_logo). 

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Ibid.

Featured image is by Anthony Brown/Alamy Stock Photo

Was Donald Trump’s January 3rd drone assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani the first step in turning the simmering Cold War between the United States and Iran into a hot war in the weeks before an American presidential election? Of course, there’s no way to know, but behind by double digits in most national polls and flanked by ultra-hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump is a notoriously impetuous and erratic figure. In recent weeks, for instance, he didn’t hesitate to dispatch federal paramilitary forces to American cities run by Democratic mayors and his administration also seems to have launched a series of covert actions against Tehran that look increasingly overt and have Iran watchers concerned about whether an October surprise could be in the cards.

Much of that concern arises from the fact that, across Iran, things have been blowing up or catching fire in ways that have seemed both mysterious and threatening. Early last month, for instance, a suspicious explosion at an Iranian nuclear research facility at Natanz, which is also the site of its centrifuge production, briefly grabbed the headlines. Whether the site was severely damaged by a bomb smuggled into the building or some kind of airstrike remains unknown. “A Middle Eastern intelligence official said Israel planted a bomb in a building where advanced centrifuges were being developed,” reported the New York Times. Similar fiery events have been plaguing the country for weeks. On June 26th, for instance, there was “a huge explosion in the area of a major Iranian military and weapons development base east of Tehran.” On July 15th, seven ships caught fire at an Iranian shipyard. Other mysterious fires and explosions have hit industrial facilities, a power plant, a missile production factory, a medical complex, a petrochemical plant, and other sites as well.

“Some officials say that a joint American-Israeli strategy is evolving — some might argue regressing — to a series of short-of-war clandestine strikes,” concluded another report in the Times.

Some of this sabotage has been conducted against the backdrop of a two-year-old “very aggressive” CIA action plan to engage in offensive cyber attacks against that country. As a Yahoo! News investigative report put it:

“The Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a series of covert cyber operations against Iran and other targets since winning a secret victory in 2018 when President Trump signed what amounts to a sweeping authorization for such activities, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter… The finding has made it easier for the CIA to damage adversaries’ critical infrastructure, such as petrochemical plants.”

Meanwhile, on July 23rd, two U.S. fighter jets buzzed an Iranian civilian airliner in Syrian airspace, causing its pilot to swerve and drop altitude suddenly, injuring a number of the plane’s passengers.

For many in Iran, the drone assassination of Soleimani — and the campaign of sabotage that followed — has amounted to a virtual declaration of war. The equivalent to the Iranian major general’s presidentially ordered murder, according to some analysts, would have been Iran assassinating Secretary of State Pompeo or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, although such analogies actually understate Soleimani’s stature in the Iranian firmament.

In its aftermath, Iran largely held its fire, its only response being a limited, telegraphed strike at a pair of American military bases in Iraq. If Soleimani’s murder was intended to draw Iran into a tit-for-tat military escalation in an election year, it failed. So perhaps the U.S. and Israel designed the drumbeat of attacks against critical Iranian targets this summer as escalating provocations meant to goad Iran into retaliating in ways that might provide an excuse for a far larger U.S. response.

Such a conflict-to-come would be unlikely to involve U.S. ground forces against a nation several times larger and more powerful than Iraq. Instead, it would perhaps involve a sustained campaign of airstrikes against dozens of Iranian air defense installations and other military targets, along with the widespread network of facilities that the United States has identified as being part of that country’s nuclear research program.

The “Art” of the Deal in 2020

In addition to military pressure and fierce sanctions against the Iranian economy, Washington has been cynically trying to take advantage of the fact that Iran, already in a weakened state, has been especially hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Those American sanctions have, for instance, made it far harder for that country to get the economic support and medical and humanitarian supplies it so desperately needs, given its soaring death count.

According to a report by the European Leadership Network,

“Rather than easing the pressure during the crisis, the U.S. has applied four more rounds of sanctions since February and contributed to the derailing of Iran’s application for an IMF [International Monetary Fund] loan. The three special financial instruments designed to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid to Iran in the face of secondary sanctions on international banking transactions… have proven so far to have been one-shot channels, stymied by U.S. regulatory red tape.”

To no avail did Human Rights Watch call on the United States in April to ease its sanctions in order to facilitate Iran’s ability to grapple with the deadly pandemic, which has officially killed nearly 17,000 people since February (or possibly, if a leaked account of the government’s actual death figures is accurate, nearly 42,000).

Iran has every reason to feel aggrieved. At great political risk, President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei agreed in 2015 to a deal with the United States and five other world powers over Iran’s nuclear research program. That accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), accomplished exactly what it was supposed to do: it led Iran to make significant concessions, cutting back both on its nuclear research and its uranium enrichment program in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions by the United States and other trade partners.

Though the JCPOA worked well, in 2018 President Trump unilaterally withdrew from it, reimposed far tougher sanctions on Iran, began what the administration called a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Tehran, and since assassinating Soleimani has apparently launched military actions just short of actual war. Inside Iran, Trump’s confrontational stance has helped tilt politics to the right, undermining Rouhani, a relative moderate, and eviscerating the reformist movement there. In elections for parliament in February, ultraconservatives and hardliners swept to a major victory.

But the Iranian leadership can read a calendar, too. Like voters in the United States, they know that the Trump administration is probably going to be voted out of office in three months. And they know that, in the event of war, it’s more likely than not that many Americans — including, sadly, some hawkish Democrats in Congress, and influential analysts at middle-of-the-road Washington think tanks — will rally to the White House. So unless the campaign of covert warfare against targets in Iran were to intensify dramatically, the Iranian leadership isn’t likely to give Trump, Pompeo, and crew the excuse they’re looking for.

As evidence that Iran’s leadership is paying close attention to the president’s electoral difficulties, Khamenei only recently rejected in the most explicit terms possible what most observers believe is yet another cynical ploy by the American president, when he suddenly asked Iran to reengage in direct leader-to-leader talks. In a July 31st speech, the Iranian leader replied that Iran is well aware Trump is seeking only sham talks to help him in November. (In June, Trump tweeted Iran: “Don’t wait until after the U.S. Election to make the Big deal! I’m going to win!”) Indeed, proving that Washington has no intention of negotiating with Iran in good faith, after wrecking the JCPOA and ratcheting up sanctions, the Trump administration announced an onerous list of 12 conditions that would have to precede the start of such talks. In sum, they amounted to a demand for a wholesale, humiliating Iranian surrender. So much for the art of the deal in 2020.

October Surprises, Then and Now

Meanwhile, the United States isn’t getting much support from the rest of the world for its thinly disguised effort to create chaos, a possible uprising, and the conditions to force regime change on Iran before November 3rd. At the United Nations, when Secretary of State Pompeo called on the Security Council to extend an onerous arms embargo on Iran, not only did Russia and China promise to veto any such resolution but America’s European allies opposed it, too. They were particularly offended by Pompeo’s threat to impose “snapback” economic sanctions on Iran as laid out in the JCPOA if the arms embargo wasn’t endorsed by the council. Not lost on the participants was the fact that, in justifying his demand for such new U.N. sanctions, the American secretary of state was invoking the very agreement that Washington had unilaterally abandoned. “Having quit the JCPOA, the U.S. is no longer a participant and has no right to trigger a snapback at the U.N.,” was the way China’s U.N. ambassador put it.

That other emerging great power has, in fact, become a major spoiler and Iranian ally against the Trump administration’s regime-change strategy, even as its own relations with Washington grow grimmer by the week. Last month, the New York Times reported that Iran and China had inked “a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of Chinese investments in energy and other sectors, undercutting the Trump administration’s efforts to isolate the Iranian government.” The 18-page document reportedly calls for closer military cooperation and a $400 billion Chinese investment and trade accord that, among other things, takes direct aim at the Trump-Pompeo effort to cripple Iran’s economy and its oil exports.

According to Shireen Hunter, a veteran Middle Eastern analyst at Georgetown University, that accord should be considered a world-changing one, as it potentially gives China “a permanent foothold in Iran” and undermines “U.S. strategic supremacy in the [Persian] Gulf.” It is, she noted with some alarm, a direct result of Trump’s anti-Iranian obsession and Europe’s reluctance to confront Washington’s harsh sanctions policy.

On June 20th, in a scathing editorial, the Washington Post agreed, ridiculing the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran. Not only had the president failed to bring down Iran’s government or compelled it to change its behavior in conflicts in places like Syria and Yemen, but now, in a powerful blow to U.S. interests, “an Iranian partnership with China… could rescue Iran’s economy while giving Beijing a powerful new place in the region.”

If, however, the traditional Washington foreign policy establishment believes that Trump’s policy toward Iran is backfiring and so working against U.S. hegemony in the Persian Gulf, his administration seems not to care. As evidence mounts that its approach to Iran isn’t having the intended effect, the White House continues apace: squeezing that country economically, undermining its effort to fight Covid-19, threatening it militarily, appointing an extra-hardliner as its “special envoy” for Iran, and apparently (along with Israel) carrying out a covert campaign of terrorism inside the country.

Over the past four decades, “October surprise” has evolved into a catch-all phrase meaning any unexpected action by a presidential campaign just before an election designed to give one of the candidates a surprise advantage. Ironically, its origins lay in Iran. In 1980, during the contest between President Jimmy Carter and former California Governor Ronald Reagan, rumors surfaced that Carter might stage a raid to rescue scores of American diplomats then held captive in Tehran. (He didn’t.) According to other reports, the Reagan campaign had made clandestine contact with Tehran aimed at persuading that country not to release its American hostages until after the election. (Two books, October Surprise by Gary Sick, a senior national security adviser to Carter, and Trick or Treason by investigative journalist Bob Parry delved into the possibility that candidate Reagan, former CIA Director Bill Casey, and others had engaged in a conspiracy with Iran to win that election.)

Consider it beyond irony if, this October, the latest election “surprise” were to take us back to the very origins of the term in the form of some kind of armed conflict that could only end terribly for everyone involved. It’s a formula for disaster and like so many other things, when it comes to Donald J. Trump, it can’t be ruled out.

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Bob Dreyfuss, an investigative journalist and TomDispatch regular, is a contributing editor at the Nation and has written for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the American Prospect, the New Republic, and many other magazines. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.

Featured image is by Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor

This month, the revolution against COVID-19(84) totalitarianism has been rising up with about a million protestors in Berlin and somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 in Montreal. While these are positive signs, I also am concerned that we are fighting fire with fire. And the tyrants have far more firepower than we can ever muster.

Are we not fighting state collectivism with an anarchistic form of collectivism? Media talk with alternative talk? Even if the majority started denouncing the COVID-19 narrative, such a vocal, unified movement, in itself, would not make what the WHO has done right or wrong. Such activism is focused on social persuasion rather than appealing to reason and conscience.

“Look, it’s been three months, four months, however long it’s been, and I’ve kept quiet,” says Rose Davidson in a viral video. “I’ve been like: You know, we gotta do what we gotta do. Blah, blah, blah…. I kept quiet. I’m not gonna be quiet anymore. Because I don’t want any more months of this. If we all grew some balls and did the right thing this wouldn’t have been happening… I wish I was saying exactly what I’m saying now on March 11.”

I think her words reflect the pent-up frustration many are now expressing. Yet we must be careful how we express it.

“We are a land of talkers;” says Gatto in his book Dumbing Us Down, “we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most and so our children talk constantly, following the public models of television and schoolteachers.”

Now, if you’ve ever watched a political debate, you know how hard it is to over-talk a politician. And the politicians have the media on their side. Or is it that the media has the politicians on their side? Regardless, is trying to out-talk the mainstream media really going to work?

I think a far better tactic is to get printed reading material in front of eyeballs. This may sound archaic. But that’s the point.

A 2009 study found that reading increases the amount of white matter in the brain, which aids in processing information and decision making. A 2009 study found that students scored 28% better who read their lesson on paper, versus hearing the same lesson on a podcast. An article in Scientific America says that at least a third of our brain is involved in turning letters into meaningful concepts. And the Hechinger Report says “most studies point to better reading comprehension from printed material [instead of on-screen].”

Therefore, instead of giving your masked neighbour a lecture on hypoxia or emailing your uncle a link he probably won’t click, try this instead: Print out on paper an article, flyer or study that cites evidence why masks (por ejemplo) do not reduce primary or secondary infections. You can then hand these black-and-white pages to friends, family and strangers. Simply say: “Can you read this and let me know what you think?”

You could also write a short cover letter and mail printed material to business owners, politicians, celebrities, authors, heads of charities, local hospital administrators, religious leaders, etc. The letter could be short and to the point: “It is no secret that forced masking is hurting retail businesses, society and children. I found this article about how scientists put mask wearing to the test. They conducted seven randomized controlled trials to see if a mask really keeps people safe from infection. Could you read it and let me know what you think?”

The same could be applied to other specific areas of the COVID-19(84) takeover. (Anit-)social-distancing. Fake death rates. The ventilator pandemic. Be specific. It’s a big, confusing mess. Just present one of the poorly fitting puzzle pieces at a time. Keep it focused and to-the-point. You can always send another letter next week.

Remember that scene in The Shawshank Redemption? Andy decides to petition the State Senate for funds to start a library in the prison. “I’ll write a letter a week. They can’t ignore me forever.” Six years and 312 letters later, they finally send him a cheque for $200, boxes of used books and a written request: “Please, stop sending us letters.” To which Andy grins and says: “From now on I’ll write two letters a week, instead of one.”

The fact you took the time to print and post a letter almost ensures the recipient will read it. And even if they trash the first one, will they trash the tenth? Finding anything in our mailbox these days is an event. Ah shucks, since he paid for the ink, paper and postage I can look this over while I eat lunch. Ink and paper are also harder to delete than an email.

Yes, printing out an article and writing a cover letter takes more time than calling someone a “zombie” or Bill Gates “the anit-Christ.” And it’s not as exciting as marching with a crowd down the street with masked police looming over you. But such actions, untempered by constructive appeals to reason and conscience, also risk a civil war.

Written words, on the other hand, calm and focus the mind, preventing people from zoning out or flaring up.

The written word was one of Mahatma Gandhi’s most important weapons of non-violence in the liberation of India. “I started my weekly observance of a day of silence as a means for gaining time to look after my correspondence,” he is quoted as saying in The Autobiography of a Yogi. Each Monday he abstained from talking and devoted the time to writing.

“[Gandhi’s] letters to the editors of South African dailies are a lesson… on how to fight injustice in a country where the laws are loaded against one section of the people, without giving offence to the rulers themselves,” says V.N. Narayanan in Peerless Communicator.

So, yes, I agree with Rose Davidson that we need to speak up. But, we can’t speak louder than the mainstream media. Instead, might we try appealing to people’s humanity through the act of reading on paper?

Reading is one of those acts which separates us from the animal kingdom. Indeed, reading activates the ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the brain, says The University of Oxford, which “is involved in many of the highest aspects of cognition and language, and is only present in humans and other primates.”

Today, we are in dire need of such a peaceful tool that stimulates the “highest aspects of cognition” when confronted with such grave cognitive dissonance.

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Daily Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novella, COVID-27: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca

Featured image is from Public Domain

Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko may have won a solid victory with 80.23% of the vote, according to the election commission, but the ground on which he is standing is not as firm as it once was. The President of Belarus says a hybrid war is being waged against his nation by outside forces; opposition activists claim he has rigged this weekend’s election result.

A night of protests followed the presidential election vote, after which opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, rejected her meagre 9.9% of the vote, stating ‘I will believe my own eyes – the majority was for us’. Tikhanovskaya, the wife of a YouTube blogger who was prevented from running in the election, has no previous political experience, but her message of change for Belarus and dissatisfaction with the current leadership clearly resonated with many.

The fact that a Belarussian housewife managed to pose any threat at all speaks volumes about the fragility of Lukashenko’s position. The President’s words and actions of late have raised eyebrows across the international arena, including surprise and dismay from Russia, after he accused his ally of sending mercenaries to support the opposition in the run-up to the election. Russian journalists from various news outlets were also held by police.

Russia’s President Putin, forever the diplomat, congratulated the Belarussian President with his election win and said that he was counting on the further development of mutually beneficial relations between the two nations. Gently reminding Lukashenko of their joint responsibilities as participants of the Eurasian Economic Union and also their military ties in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, he spoke of Russia and Belarus as ‘brotherly nations’ with mutual goals. Nevertheless, the protests which have dominated the headlines in the last days will perturb the Kremlin. It is neither in Russia’s or Belarus’ interest to see the instability which raged in Ukraine after the Euromaidan protests took hold in 2014, leading to a disastrous power grab by the opposition.  And yet this election campaign in Belarus has unleashed widespread exhibitions of social discontent which are proving difficult to pacify.

Levels of dissatisfaction with the current leadership peaked earlier this year as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the country.  President Lukashenko initially refused to accept the disease existed, branding the virus back in April as a ‘psychosis which will benefit some people and will harm others’. When questioned on his participation in an ice hockey game in the midst of the pandemic, he responded in an extraordinary way by saying ‘there are no viruses here, have you not seen that there are none flying about?’. As the death toll began to rise, Belarussians began to take matters into their own hands, maintaining social distancing and closing down cafes and restaurants of their own accord.

With no lockdown imposed it is surprising that the number of cases in Belarus has not exceeded the official 68,947 to date. But doubt has been cast on the reliability of official data. Earlier this year, a Russian journalist for Channel One reported on the lack of trust Belarussians had in official information on coronavirus as he showed footage of an abundance of freshly dug graves in the town of Stolbtsy. The incident led to the journalist losing accreditation from Belarussian authorities, in a move condemned by the Russian state broadcaster as ‘completely unfounded’. The matter left a stain on the countries’ relations.

President Lukashenko for his part has said that relations between his nation and Russia will not be ruined by third parties and that ‘if someone is waiting for our relations to sour, they are making a mistake’. Currently the internet is restricted in the country, with people only able to access news via state media TV channels or the Telegram app.  Lukashenko has said that the perpetrators of the internet block are foreign saboteurs, keen to escalate social tensions. Indeed it cannot be denied, that given Washington’s current strategic goals and hostility towards Russia, any attempt to undermine the Belarussian President and sow discord between Russia and Belarus would be in its interest.

Foreign agents or otherwise, Minsk is preparing itself for another wave of social unrest as demonstrators plan to continue anti-government protests. It was reported that 11,000 workers in a metallurgical factory in the town of Zhlobin have gone on strike in response to opposition calls and more such walkouts may be seen in the coming days.  Lukashenko may have won the election, but his biggest fight to retain power it seems, is yet to come. And for that, he’ll want Russia on his side.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

On August 11, 3 Israeli battle tanks crossed a technical fence on the Israeli-Lebanese contact line, the official Lebanese News Agency reported.

According to the Lebanese side, Israeli forces broke through the technical fence in the town of Mays al-Jabal and at least one of the battle tanks fired a phosphorous bomb was fired by one of the tanks.

Later, the battle tanks withdrew from the area. No casualties were reported.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) did not comment on the incident. The technical fence is an Israeli constructed fence along the 79 km contact line between Lebanese and Israeli forces.

In the recent weeks, tensions between Israel and Hezbollah/Iran were especially high on the Lebanese-Israeli contact line and in the Israeli-occupied area of the Syrian Golan Heights. The IDF announced that it had deployed additional forces there and several times threatened Hezbollah with strikes inside Lebanon. An earlier Israeli strike also killed a Hezbollah member in Syria.

The August 4 explosion in Beirut port contributed to even further escalation of tensions in the region. The Beirut explosion, that left more than 200 dead and 6,000 injured, caused a deep political and social crisis in Lebanon. While the official version is still that it was a result of the accident with poorly stored 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, the version about some ‘attack’ or ‘sabotage act’ in Beirut has been becoming more and more popular. Probably, the most interesting fact is that this version is supported by the United States on the highest level.

US President Donald Trump was among first to say that the Beirut explosion may have been a result of the attack. Trump described the incident as a “terrible attack.”

“It would seem like it based on the explosion,” Trump said. “I’ve met with some of our great generals and they just seem to feel that it was not a — some kind of manufacturing explosion type of event. This was a… seems to be according to them, they would know better than I would, but they seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.”

Later, Defense Secretary Mark Esper also confirmed that the United States is considering this version.

“The bottom line is we still don’t know” what caused the explosion, Esper told Fox News. “On the first day, as President Trump rightly said, we thought it might have been an attack, some of us speculated it could have been, for example, a Hezbollah arms shipment that blew up, maybe a Hezbollah bomb making facility, who knows?”

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This stance of the United States contributed to the speculations with both pro-Iranian/Hezbollah and pro-Israeli sources accusing each others of the tragedy. According to the Israeli version of the events, the explosion may have been caused by some incident at a Hezbollah weapon depot that triggered a larger explosion of ammonium nitrate. In own turn, pro-Iranian sources even accused Israel of conducting a missile or sabotage attack that resulted in the August 4 tragedy.

If one theoretically accepts this hypothesis as true, it would be interesting to look what players may have been interested in such a scenario.

1. Hezbollah and Iran cannot be interested in staging any such situation because the ongoing crisis in Lebanon in fact undermined their positions in the country. There are no doubts that the wide social instability and political crisis will impact negatively the popularity of Hezbollah as one of the main powerbrokers in Lebanon.

3. Hamas and forces affiliated with radical Sunni groups and movements operating across the Middle East also do not look like a real suspect. The blast and the following crisis undermined positions of not only Hezbollah and Iran, but also the Sunni elites in Lebanon.

4. Turkey and Gulf states play own regional games, but they prefer the controlled development of the situation in this part of the region rather than the new point of spreading chaos.

5. In these conditions, the only parties that could be really interested in the destabilization of Lebanon is Israel and the United States.

Tel Aviv is not hiding that the cornerstone of its regional policy is to undermine positions of Hezbollah and Iran, and neutralize this ‘threat’ to the Israeli regional expansion, based on the full-scale and unconditional diplomatic support from Washington and the US military power.

The instability in Lebanon will also allow Israel and the United States to achieve their tactical geopolitical goals more effective because the crisis will draw resources and attention of their main adversaries, and set conditions for additional diplomatic, economic and even limited military actions against them. This will be especially effective after the US-Israeli bloc accuse Hezbollah and Iran of being responsible for the tragedy.

A one more opportunity for Tel Aviv and Washington is to exploit the political crisis to impact the forming of a new Lebanese government (through clandestine measures for example) in order to get a more ‘pro-Western’ variant of it.

The increasing diplomatic and military presence of the US and its European allies in Lebanon under pretext of the humanitarian mission is not even a secret. The UK Royal Navy survey vessel HMS Enterprise is officially deploying to Beirut to supposedly survey the damage to the city’s port.

The @RoyalNavy survey ship @HMSEnterprise has arrived in Beirut this morning having sailed from Cyprus.

Her crew will support the people of #Lebanon by offloading vital supplies of aid and surveying the damage done to the port. @ukinlebanon https://t.co/lYWRkz1Er8 pic.twitter.com/0cywXPyUsx

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) August 10, 2020

Another known ally of the modern United States, France is deploying the Mistral-class helicopter carrier Tonnerre. The warship with an additional force of about 700 troops on board is set to deploy in Beirut on August 13. More foreign forces are expected to come.

Therefore, if one wants to speculate about the possible attack on Beirut on August 4, it’s easy to find what foreign forces may have been interested in it. Nonetheless, in this scenario, mainstream media outlets and the ‘democratic world’ will likely blame Hezbollah and Iran.

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If elected president in November, Joe Biden will be age-78 when entering office in January.

His political career since 1972 as US senator, vice president, and presidential aspirant elevated him to national prominence with high public name recognition.

He’s only the fourth Catholic-faith  (presumptive Dem) presidential nominee in US history — Jack Kennedy the only US Catholic president.

Biden was the only Catholic vice president. Now an evangelical protestant, Pence was raised Catholic.

Religion in US politics is much less of a factor than long ago, notably in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, notably was criticized for lacking religious conviction.

Catholicism was an issue for Jack Kennedy — based on the faulty notion that religion would interfere in the execution of his duties as president.

In 1960 v. Richard Nixon, JFK won the popular vote by a scant 113,000 majority, the Electoral College vote by a 303 to 219 margin.

According to Real Clear Politics, an average of polls in August shows Biden favored over Trump by 7.5 points, slightly down from an earlier 9 point advantage.

Some polls, including by Monmouth, Gu Politics, and YouGov, have Biden ahead by double-digits.

A mid-July Quinnipiac poll had Biden with a 15 point advantage over Trump.

No poll results are available so far since he chose Kamala Harris as a running mate.

Usually after these type announcements, presidential aspirants gain an approval bump, the same true after party conventions.

This year is unique in US political history, Dems and Republicans having virtual conventions.

For Dems, it’s from August 17 – 20, Republicans holding theirs from August 24 – 27.

How this procedure affects polls remains to be seen.

Last May, Professor of Psychology Christopher Ferguson asked:

“What’s the probability that the next president will have dementia?

Trump is the oldest first-term president in US history, currently age-74, showing no visible signs of slowing down physically.

According to Ferguson, there’s “an even chance of the next president experiencing cognitive decline,” adding:

Earlier US presidents had serious health issues.

After suffering a heart attack during his first term in office, Dwight Eisenhower was reelected for a second term.

Jack Kennedy was seriously ill numerous times in his life, three times given last rites.

Some close to him said “from a medical standpoint, (he) was a mess.”

Other US presidents were ill in office, some seriously.

Lincoln was elected to the nation’s highest office despite suffering from lifelong depression.

George Washington had health issues in office. John Adams was diagnosed with manic depression.

Jefferson, Madison, Chester Arthur, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan were ill in office.

Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, James Garfield, William McKinley, and Warren Harding died in office.

Ferguson explained that Reagan was diagnosed with alzheimer’s disease (the most common form of dementia) after leaving office, adding:

Symptoms began during his second term. The disease progresses slowly, most often not diagnosed until “noticeably impairing” daily activities.

Do Biden and Trump show signs of cognitive decline?

“Older adults may take longer to learn new technical things, may have more trouble forming new memories or paying attention to new tasks,” Ferguson explained.

“Speech fluency” may be adversely affected.

“Dementia involves cognitive decline in excess of what is expected for normal aging.”

“(I)t can also influence mood and decision making and cause paranoia and eventual loss of self-care.”

At times, Trump and Biden “mang(le) words,” but that alone doesn’t indicate dementia.

In the US today, dementia is less common than earlier, around “10%” for individuals in their 70s or older.

“Milder cognitive impairments not reaching the level of dementia may be more common” — one study indicating close to “20%” of people in this age category.

Ferguson: “(T)he probability of (Trump or Biden) having dementia is  is about 10%, the probability that choosing between them will result in a presidency under the influence of dementia is about 19%.”

“If we combine that 10% with the approximately 20% likelihood of milder cognitive impairment for an individual in their age category (thus 30% chance of some impairment overall for each man), the probability that one or both candidates has either mild impairment or dementia goes up to about 51%.”

If America’s president has mild or more serious cognitive impairment, history shows that the bureaucracy in place maintains things without missing a beat.

Ferguson calls this reality a “small comfort perhaps against the madness of kings.”

Biden notably had brain surgery twice earlier.

According to Science Daily, “(m)ajor surgery is associated with a small long-term decline in cognitive functioning.”

Today’s Geriatric Medicine explained that “younger healthier patients may be able to bounce back easily (in contrast to) the cognitive impact on older adults.”

Biden’s brain surgery occurred when in his mid-40s, clearly not an old man at the time.

So-called POCD (post-operative cognitive decline) can be short or longer-term.

In 1988, Biden had brain surgery twice to relieve severe neck pain caused by a pinched nerve, a viral infection, an aneurysm in the base of his brain, another aneurysm on the opposite side.

According to Capitol Hill physician Dr. John Eisold, he “recovered fully.”

Over the last dozen years, he reportedly experienced only minor health issues, including sinusitis and allergies.

According to Biden’s brain surgeon Dr. Neal Kassell, he suffered no brain damage from procedures performed.

His mangled and incorrect remarks at times give pause to others as to whether he shows signs of cognitive decline.

Enter Kamala Harris. Did Dem power brokers choose her with two possible scenarios in mind?

That if elected, Biden may be physically and/or cognitively unable to complete his term, or that at most he’d be a one-term president?

In either case or if Biden is elected, reelected and serves two terms in office, will she be party standard bearer ahead?

Note: In December 2019, a joint letter to Congress by 350 psychiatrists and other mental health experts (the number since then more than doubled) warned that Trump exhibited signs of mental health deterioration, saying in part:

He considers “(a)ny slight or criticism a humiliation and degradation.”

“To cope with the resultant hollow and empty feeling, he reacts with what is referred to as narcissistic rage.”

“He is unable to take responsibility for any error, mistake, or failing.”

“His default in that situation is to blame others and to attack the perceived source of his humiliation.”

“These attacks of narcissistic rage can be brutal and destructive.”

“We implore Congress to take these danger signs seriously and to constrain his destructive impulses.”

Trump v. Biden in November is less about them, more about which right wing of the one-party state will control the executive branch for the next four years.

The same holds for Congress.

On issues of war and peace, corporate empowerment, along with other domestic and geopolitical ones mattering most, continuity is certain whenever US elections are held.

Names and faces change. Dirty business as usual always stays the same.

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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.

On July 27, a next “complete and all-encompassing ceasefire” between Kiev troops and self-defense forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) started in eastern Ukraine. This is the most recent in a series of attempts to impose a complete ceasefire in the region.

Over two dozen previous ceasefires collapsed due to two main factors:

• First, the inability of Kiev to control its own troops, including neo-Nazi armed groups, that are deployed on the frontline with the LPR and the DPR;
• Second, the unwillingness of Kiev to support a political solution of the conflict with the DPR and LPR because the Ukrainian government uses military tensions in eastern Ukraine to achieve its own political and financial goals, including the justification of selling of the country’s sovereignty to the Euro-Atlantic structures, the mass censorship, and the persecution of opposition parties, media and activists.

The ability of the Ukrainian military to participate in ceasefires was recently demonstrated near the village of Zaitsevo. On July 14, a sabotage and reconnaissance unit of pro-Kiev forces violated the ceasefire regime entering the ‘gray zone’ preparing an attack on positions of DPR forces. However, the operation failed. At least 2 pro-Kiev fighters, including a citizen of Estonia, died and another one received injures. After this, Ukrainian media outlets launched an aggressive media campaign accusing the DPR of violating the ceasefire and Russia of committing one more ‘act of aggression’.

However, the Ukrainian leadership represented by President comedian Volodymyr Zelenski pretends that this time the situation will be different.

On July 26, Zelensky held a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin discussing the prospects of the ceasefire. The sides also discussed the Law on the Special Procedure for Local Self-Government in Certain Districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, which is being considered by the TCG political subgroup, and the Law on Decentralization, which provides for amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine.

Russia is the main supporter of the DPR and LPR and the only force directly opposing plans of Kiev and its NATO backers to launch a new large-scale advance in eastern Ukraine, which in the event of military success will inevitably lead to the mass killings of civilians there.

An overwhelming majority of the people in eastern Ukraine are ethnic Russians or speak Russian as the main language. All of them self-identify as Russian-speaking people.

Since the very moment, when the current political regime in Kiev came to power in 2014, Russian-speaking people and ethnic Russians were declared enemies of the state and ‘subhumans’ that must be neutralized or even killed in order to allow Ukraine to go forward on its ‘European way’. This policy faced an expected armed resistance leading to a civil war in the region of Donbass. Crimea evaded the bloodbath thanks to the involvement of Russian forces and the secession of the region to Russia.

In 2020, the ideas of ethnic cleansing of Russians and persecutions of the Russian-speaking population in the region of Donbass and Crimea still remained an integral part of the Ukrainian political mainstream and the ideology of various radical groups that receive direct financial, administrative support from the current regime and have access to weapons from the conflict zone.

The political process and constitutional reforms needed to de-escalate the situation in the east and grant autonomy to the DPR and LPR face strong resistance on the all levels of the governance system. Radicals attack independent journalists, bloggers, political activists, politicians and even people that visit the ‘wrong churches’.

On July 23, the house of Vitaly Shabunin, the head of the non-profit Anti-Corruption Action Centre, was set on fire. The Centre said it believed the arson was “an assassination attempt” targeting Shabunin and his family. The incident happened in the village of Gnidyn just outside Kiev.

On July 13, members of the “National Corps” political party (created on the basis of the “Azov Battalion” neo-Nazi armed group) attacked a house of the head of the opposition Shariy Party in Kharkov. According to the head of the party, Anatoly Shariy, the attackers were armed with firearms and injured at least 2 people. Earlier, on June 24, members of the “National Corps” attacked and beat an activist of the Shariy Party in the same city – Nikita Rojenko. After the attack, the man was in critical condition.

On July 26, Ukrainian radicals and supporters of the government-backed ‘independent’ Orthodox Church of Ukraine seized churches of the canonic Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy) in the villages of Novojivotove, Zabolotsy in Volyn Region. Police and local authorities in fact support the seizure violating the people’s right to freedom of faith.

The aggressive minority of political and religious radicals, including open supporters of neo-Nazy-styled ideology, with help from the government terrorize the peaceful population. This situation is encouraged by Kiev and its Western backers.

During the past months, top Ukrainian officials regularly criticized the Minsk agreements, proposed to withdraw from them or revise them to meet the vision of the situation by the current regime. The core of the contradictions over the Minsk deal is simple. Kiev seeks to gain control over the border with Russia and the entire territory of the DPR and LPR before the implementation of the political part of Minsk. In practice, this will mean the surrender of the DPR and LPR to pro-Kiev forces, the ‘neutralization’ of DPR and LPR resistance by force (likely with direct help from NATO) and mass killings and terrorizing of local populations by pro-Kiev radicals. The DPR, LPR leadership and population are apparently not interested in this scenario. Russia, for which the advance of Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine will mean millions of refugees and a humanitarian catastrophe on its own border, also cannot allow this.

As to European backers of Kiev, they seem to be also not happy with attempts of the Poroshenko and then Zelensky administrations to speculate on the escalation scenario to gain additional funding and political support from the European Union. This is especially clear from actions of leaders of European states like France and Germany. Meanwhile, the European bureaucracy affiliated with the Washington establishment play into the hands of the Ukrainian ‘instigators of war’.

These forces are not interested in the settlement of the conflict in eastern Europe because they use it as a pressure point in their efforts to suppress the resistance of national states, which increased amid the crumbling dominance of globalists. These contradictions, especially taking into account the US dominance over the Ukrainian leadership, raise serious concerns about the real motivation behind the recent political maneuvers of the Zelensky administration. However, most likely, the explanation is even more complex.

Ukraine is experiencing a deepening crisis that came amid the decreasing direct financial support from its foreign backers. During the past years, ‘European partners’ already decreased their support to Kiev, which was fueling fires of war in the interests of its own corrupt system and the Washington establishment. The modern US, led by the Trump administration, is also not interested in any large-scale investments in Kiev adventures against Russia or funding the Ukrainian ‘economic miracle’ for propaganda purposes.

Taking into account the global economic crisis and the expected second wave of the coronavirus outbreak, it is unlikely that foreign support to Kiev will increase anytime soon. It will be a gift if the Ukrainian leadership continues receiving foreign support at least at the current level. Therefore, the Zelensky administration is forced to at least formally search for ways that would allow the country to reduce its economic needs. The de-escalation of the conflict in the east is one of such opportunity.

On the other hand, from the political point of view, the ceasefire is needed for Zelensky to at least temporarily stabilize his approval rating which is falling dramatically. He came to power thanks to peace-making slogans, promises to contain censorship, street violence, and battle corruption. However, none of these things have happened. Instead, Zelensky immediately turned into Poroshenko 2.0 and his administration funds Poroshenko-era paramilitary groups to use them against its opponents.

By supporting the ceasefire initiative, Kiev also tries to please European partners that have been pressuring the regime to finally making at least some actions in the framework of the Minsk format. At the same time, the Zelensky administration understands that any laws or amendments to the Constitution granting the LPR and the DPR real autonomy and defending rights of the local population will not pass the Parliament. Therefore, interests of the Washington establishment, not interested in the de-escalation, will be secured.

The situation in Ukraine will likely remain in a state of a stable instability until the presidential election in the United States. If President Trump keeps his post, the Ukrainian conflict will likely remain frozen with Kiev forced to make at least some steps to de-escalate conflict, overcome the crisis and guarantee its own survival. At the same time, if the Democratic establishment once again comes to power in Washington, the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine will have increasingly high chances of turning into a hot war zone once again.

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It is necessary to study, how US color-techniques are applied for regime-change in Egypt (Tahrir) – Iran (Green Movement) and now Lebanon (Cedar Revolution + “Day of Rage”).

The US engineering of these all-but-spontaneous undercover “Color Revolutions” in East Europe is well described in this paper.

These US intervention techniques started during the cold war and afterwards in East Europe (Poland, Romania etc).

These US techniques were perfected in Serbia’s Bulldozer Revolution in 2000 (against Milosevic). The US “template” of “Color” regime-change was then transferred from Serbia to Georgia’s Rose Revolution, 2003 (against Shevardnadze) and the Ukraine Orange Revolution 2005 and Euro-Maidan Revolution 2014 (against Yanukovych) – in Ukraine’s case 2014 with aid from local Nazi groups, all while the US silenced Jewish groups (like ADL, the Anti-Defamation League) from criticizing the coalition of the US with local Nazism. That year, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League voicedly pointed out a single cultural person in France, while not mentioning the rise of Nazism in Ukraine with one word.

What is NOT generaly described, is now how the US has spread its subversive “color-techniques” to the rest of the world – incl. the Middle East and probably Africa (Mobuto in Zimbabwe?).

An Al Jazeera program from back then, described in detail how Egyptian Tahrir activists in 2013 (against Mubarak) were daily in video-contact to receive ideas and instructions from (US supported) activists in Serbia, who had learned how to topple a president (Milosevic). When it turned out later, that Egypt’s political winners after the US supported demonstrated toppled Mubarak would not be western supported “liberal” groups, but instead be Muslim politicians, the USA quickly reversed totally “on its support for Arab democracy” and reinstated Egypt’s social model from before.

“Popular” Green Movements in Iran seem to follow the same pattern – Made in the USA.

Epidemiologist Michael Marmot begins his August 10 piece in The Guardian on a sombre note.  It is drawn from The Plague by Albert Camus.  “The pestilence is at once blight and revelation; it brings the hidden truth of a corrupt world to the surface.”  Professor Marmot uses the UK’s inglorious record on combating COVID-19 as a mirror for both blight and revelation. 

“We are doing badly: dramatic social inequalities in COVID-19 deaths; rates in black, Asian and minority ethnic groups; and, now, the highest excess mortality rate in Europe.”

Marmot had already gotten his runs on the board of gloom with a report for the Institute of Health Equity, released before the virus fully bit. Its focus was upon an increasingly sickened England.  Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On, was a collective effort of monumental gloom.  It notes that, since 2010, “widespread and deep cuts in most areas of public spending” have taken place, a result of the austerity regime put in place in response “to perceived financial pressures.” 

As a percentage of GDP, government spending fell an astonishing seven percentage points between 2009-2010 and 2018-2019, from 42 percent to 35 percent.  Particularly stinging were those to local authorities.  Local government allocations declined some 77 percent between 2009-2010 and 2018-2019.  Expenditure on “social protection and education, both vital for health, have declined most – by 1.5 percent of GDP.”

The very fact of the cuts was less significant than their regressive and inequitable nature.  Those areas in need were strafed, harming health and deepening the divide in health inequalities in the short term and “are likely to do so in the longer term.” Public Health England had its budget cut by 40 percent from its founding in 2012 to 2019-2020.

The political picture is also telling.  Health had deteriorated in those constituencies that had voted for Brexit and came out in droves to vote for the Tory government led by Boris Johnson.  Such seats, despite leaving the Labour bosom and going blue, have a life expectancy of 60.9 years in good health, four years less than those in Tory strongholds and a pinch less than current Labour seats (61.4 years). 

When the report was released, a spokesman for Prime Minister Johnson drew heavily on the common book of platitudes.  “Every single person deserves to lead a long and healthy life, no matter where they are, where they live or their social circumstances.”  From his first day in office, he continued, Johnson had expressed a commitment “to levelling up the whole country.  While life expectancy is increasing we know that it isn’t for everyone, and so we must tackle the gaps that exist.”

Rather telling: life expectancy not being for everyone.  And so it showed with devastating effect, the coronavirus cutting its way through the country and making its deadly contribution.  Between March 1 and May 31, 2020, COVID-19 was assigned as the underlying cause of death to 43,763 people.  At one point, it looked like the statisticians of mortality would have had the addition of the prime minister himself, that buffoonish hand shaker of the first order so keen to meet all and sundry.

Now, the already poor record is even more blemished.  On July 30, the Office for National Statistics found that for the period between February 21 to June 21, the excess mortality rate for England was higher than in any European countries, even relative to those within the United Kingdom.

From 2010, the life expectancy in the UK had already started to slow, having been, for almost a century, increasing at a rate of one year in every four.  By 2018, it had stuttered to a halt.  As Marmot reminds us, compared with other states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “improvement in life expectancy in the UK from 2010 on was the slowest of all, except for the US and Iceland.”  This occurred in step with increasing inequalities; the narrowing gap in life expectancy between the poorest 20 percent of areas and the rest that had taken place during the 2000s was reversed after 2010.  A clear postulation can therefore be made, the effects of a “social gradient in mortality rates”.  COVID-19 merely served to sharpen it: unequal COVID-19 outcomes can be duly attributed to more general inequalities in health.

The policy of austerity, having weakened the UK and its means of dealing with the pandemic, has itself become a populist measure for the Tories.  In June, Johnson felt a touch of FDR about him, suggesting that a Roosevelt New Deal implemented in United States during the 1930s might be adapted in the UK to fight the effects of the virus.  Capital works were promised; infrastructure projects long ignored would finally be considered.  In doing so, he suggested that returning to a regime of austerity would be a “mistake”.  But ever true to his own knotted logic, Johnson refused to call it “austerity” himself (“it wasn’t actually austerity but people called it austerity”).

That same month, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid similarly warned against any temptation to return to such belt-tightening exercises. Unfortunately, his solution has been the usual trickle-down fare: cut taxes, thereby stimulating business, employment and spending.  “Tax employment less, and all other things being equal you will end up with more of it.”  Equality, never a word for the Tory policy book, is precisely the problem there. 

Britain should not be seen as a singular case of exclusive awfulness, though it is worth noting that all suffering societies are singular in their own way in how they have responded to the novel coronavirus.  Social inequalities, poor services and penny pinching dogmatists have been shown up.  The calamities in Brazil and the United States also serve to illustrate the huge problems in how the state delivers (or not) and harms its citizens.  This modern pestilence continues to hold up both mirror and revelation, and has found the idea and practice of austerity wanting.  A corrupt world has been exposed.

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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 TruePublica

Introduction

The rising toll of diseased and deceased from the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Bolivia particularly hard, in a continent that is now in the lead in global contagion rates. As of August 8, more than 100,000 cases were officially confirmed or suspected in that country, with 3,600 deaths among a total population of just over 10 million.

The coup government, installed in November, has mismanaged the crisis from the outset. Hospitals are understaffed and ill-equipped, testing is minimal, and the main response by the de facto authorities is to threaten lengthy jail terms for those who circulate “inaccurate” information about the pandemic – in a country where only a minority of workers are employed, the vast majority eking out a living in the “informal” economy of street markets and self-employment.

Typical of its approach, the interim regime headed by President Jeanine Añez was quick to expel more than 700 Cuban healthcare workers who, under the previous government, had provided needed services in remote areas and helped to train new medical staff.

Aggravating the misery is an unprecedented economic crisis. The coup regime paralyzed state development projects initiated by the previous government, privatized key state enterprises, and brought the IMF back with a $327-million loan. These policies, writes Bolivian journalist Oliver Vargas, have had “dramatic consequences for the ability of the country to weather the economic impact of COVID-19. 38% of the country has lost the entirety of their income, while 52% have lost a part of their income. The deliberate retreat of the state has meant that the 90% who are suffering during quarantine haven’t received any income support, the only gesture has been a one-off universal payment of US$70. In April, to last four months of lockdown.”

Remittances from relatives working abroad – crucially important for many families – have fallen by more than 30% in the first six months of this year, as many of the 3 million Bolivians living abroad in economic exile have lost their jobs.

“Bolivians are again experiencing shortages,” tweets deposed president Evo Morales from his Buenos Aires exile. “Long lines to buy food, drugs and gas amidst uncertainty and pandemic. The people have to struggle not only against the #Coronavirus but to survive as best they can, totally abandoned.”

“In the face of this desperate situation,” says Vargas, “voters were looking forward to ending the eight month coup experiment at the ballot box in September. Polls show that the MAS [the party led by Morales] is on course for a first-round victory, with Añez trailing behind in distant third. It might have been a peaceful end to a violent period. However, determined to cling on to power whatever the cost, the regime is using COVID-19 as an excuse to postpone those elections. Claiming that elections would spread the virus, even as public transport and most of the economy re-opens, they have pushed for further delays.”

When the new elections tribunal, the TSE, arbitrarily postponed the election to October 18, overruling the legislated date of September 6, mass protests broke out throughout the country, initiated by the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) and the Pacto de Unidad, the coalition of organizations allied with the deposed government party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). Starting August 3, more than 100 roadblocks were set up, with only vehicles delivering medical supplies being allowed through. Thousands of Bolivians have taken to the streets demanding the national elections be held September 6.

COB leader Juan Carlos Huarachi stated:

“We need a democratically-elected government so as to discuss new policies, not just for social issues, but also for economic issues… in eight months we’ve seen the collapse of our country. Sadly, this is the reality, with recipes from the IMF, by blackmailing the people, by blackmailing the legislature.”

The Añez regime has responded by charging MAS leaders with “terrorism, genocide, sedition” and “offenses against public health.” And it has supported demands that the TSE disqualify the MAS candidates from the election. The TSE has referred the matter to the Supreme Court.

The following article by Cochabamba-based journalist Fernando Molina, published before the most recent events, describes the political climate, the MAS reactions to its overthrow in November, 2019, and the difficult perspectives it faces, whether it wins or loses the elections. I have translated it from the July-August 2020 issue of the magazine Nueva Sociedad, edited by Pablo Stefanoni in Buenos Aires. I have supplemented Molina’s notes with a few of my own, for clarification, –signed R.F.

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What Outcome for Bolivia’s Crisis?

Elections and Political Reconfiguration

by Fernando Molina

Bolivia is heading toward presidential and legislative elections amidst a new political scenario. After the fall of Evo Morales and the blow suffered by his political force, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) has regained ground and could win again. Will it succeed? If so, can it return to power? Whatever the case, a polarized battle looms between the MAS and its adversaries.

Bolivia’s elections, scheduled at this point for next September 6, will express a huge political and social polarization. It is not unique in this: so will the US election in November. But while this is standard in the bipartisan US electoral system, it is unusual in Bolivia. Several parties will be participating, but the electorate will be divided according to a single alternative: for or against the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).

We still don’t know which party will manage to represent the anti-MAS voters. Various Center and Right-wing parties are competing, encouraged by Bolivia’s electoral laws, which allow for a second round of voting if no party wins a sufficient plurality. This opens space for the parties to make individual calculations – a practice that many MAS opponents consider outrageous, since it jeopardizes what was achieved with the overthrow of President Evo Morales last November, that is, the abrupt departure from office of the socio-political bloc that had managed the country since the early 20th century.

This is now the main concern of Bolivia’s economic, intellectual, and media elites: to prevent dangerous games between the old opponents of Morales (who resist yielding to each other and are unable to form a united front against “public enemy number one,” as a La Paz daily calls the former president¹) evoking the most terrifying specter for the upper classes: the “return of the MAS.”

Image on the right: Jeanine Anez receiving the presidential sash from a representative of the Bolivian military (photo: EFE).

These parties respond to their critics with claims that each is not only the very opposite of the MAS but has the unique ability to guarantee a definitive and sustainable victory over it.² At the same time, each of them seeks to show that their rivals are not trustworthy because their actions bring water to the mill of the MAS. The common accusation is that they are “functional to the MAS.” This was the tone adopted, for example, by the de facto government, which is running interim President Jeanine Añez as the presidential candidate of the Juntos group, toward opposition candidates Carlos Mesa and Luis Fernando Comacho, when they criticized Añez’s handling of the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.³

Conversely, the other opposition parties have accused the interim government of promoting the return of the MAS through its mismanagement of the crisis.⁴ The media are playing the same game, as indicated by this headline in El Deber, the main daily in Santa Cruz, when reporting on the former president and current candidate Carlos Mesa: “Mesa shares a forum with the President of Argentina Alberto Fernández, who gave refuge to Evo.”⁵

Hatred of the MAS

Abhorring the MAS is the dominant passion of the country’s traditional elites. The roots are found in a mix of memories of grievances suffered (the loss of spaces of power due to the dissolution of the technocracy of the 1990s and the devaluation of their “genealogical capital” for 14 years), ideological differences (liberal-republicanism versus national-caudillismo), and racism against the Indigenous and mestizo plebeians or “cholos.”

Hatred of the MAS began even before the coming to power of the “first Indigenous president” and the installation in the government of social movements that brought together Indigenous peoples, peasants and workers. This could already be felt in 2002, when the MAS became a serious alternative for office. Between 2006 and 2008, during the first two years of Morales’s government, it came close to unleashing a civil war between the north-western and south-eastern regions of the country. If this did not happen, it was due to the weight of the president’s popularity, although he did not manage to consolidate himself in government without first blunting the more radical edges of his program of state reforms and reducing to the minimum his program of redistribution of agrarian property.

Despite this, the abhorrence of the leftist party and its leader did not disappear. Even during the boom period, 2009-2015, while the country was experiencing the best economic moment of its history – the majority of Bolivians had more income, and social welfare increased – the animosity smoldered like a votive candle on the secret altars of the business organizations, social clubs, lodges, fraternities of the Santa Cruz carnival, the card games of wealthy women, and ultimately, in the multiple settings of private life in which the traditional white elites had not lost their primacy. Even if some bourgeois leaders “went over” to the MAS government or pretended they were fraternizing with it, or if most of the intellectuals and journalists were careful not to “overly criticize” the powerful regime, the class and racial enmity was always there, awaiting a better time in which to express itself.

The same thing occurred with racial prejudice. Although public expressions of this prejudice were tempered by fear that the government would implement the legal and moral sanctions it deserved, the country continued to be weighed down by the vestiges of the estates of the colonial order. The MAS even had to make realpolitik concessions to racism, for example, by appointing figures that were more picturesque than persuasive in the newly created Vice-Ministry of Decolonization intended to direct egalitarian policies, or by allowing the Armed Forces to maintain a rule that discriminated against sergeants and corporals, most of whom are of Indigenous origin.⁶

Those longing for the old powers and the old relations between the classes were gradually strengthened as the MAS government was weakened by the natural wear and tear of its prolonged stay in power, the errors it was making, and the limitations it revealed. Being “anti-MAS” became a sign of social and racial status, and therefore, began to be internalized by the lower middle classes as an “aspirational” element, that is, as a mechanism for social advancement.

What were the mistakes made and the limitations that the MAS government revealed? Its “electoralism,” which ended up reducing the social process to a succession of triumphs at the ballot box and the retention of power at all costs, even with authoritarian methods; its “peasantism,” which must be understood as a relative indifference to the demands of the urban sectors; its cooptation of unconditional “Evistas” as a part of the leadership; its corruption and bureaucratization; its ideological unclarity between extreme pragmatism and “national-Stalinism;”⁷ and above all, its caudillismo.

With his political, economic, and governmental success, Morales became the most important caudillo in a country that had been full of them; a country in which, as its most creative sociologist, René Zavaleta, put it, “the caudillo is the way that the masses organize.”⁸ The centrality of the president and the state cult of his personality attained levels as high as those achieved by other great national leaders, such as Victor Paz Estenssoro or José María Linares. If, at first, the official flattery of Morales corresponded in part to reality, it later became a mirage and a mechanism for ratification and manipulation of the Bolivian president’s narcissism to such an extent that he believed he was even strong enough to turn his back on the source of his power, the electoral majorities, if they were to oppose him.

That was what happened with regard to the constitutional referendum of February 21, 2016, which ruled out his re-election,⁹ and perhaps also with regard to the result of the elections of October 20, 2019, which, as most Bolivians perceived it,¹⁰ he had arranged to alter in order to avoid a second round (a notion, however, that Morales and the MAS deny and that is now a subject of dispute in the election campaign and the courts).¹¹

In any event, to assume that the undeniable strength of his figure was superior to Bolivians’ attachment to the vote – which in this country is key because it serves to resolve the everlasting disputes over the rents derived from natural resources – was a very serious misstep. It ended up confusing and fragmenting the social bloc that had backed the MAS government and which was already weakened by its long incorporation within the ruling party, with all the advantages and temptations that this situation implied.¹²

In the end, in the final hours of his government, the MAS, which had arisen from social struggles, was unable to mobilize its adherents. It had been transformed into an electoral machine that could still get out the vote but which no longer aroused any progressive fervor. Only the ultra-loyal cocaleros of the Chapare, the residents of the most Indigenous neighborhoods of the Aymara metropolis of El Alto, and certain groups of state functionaries, were willing to fight effectively to prevent Morales from falling.

After his overthrow, the burning of buses, factories, and homes of opponents of Morales in La Paz, as well as the “siege of the cities” ordered by the ex-president from exile, aroused the age-old terror of the Bolivian whites of the “Indian thug” and raised the hatred of the MAS to the level of collective hysteria. It was then that there arose the ferociously anti-socialist narrative that still prevails today.

Pablo Stefanoni has singled out “three key words in it: ‘hordes’ (the MAS members are reduced to mere criminal shock troops); ‘waste’ (the widely praised macroeconomic management [of Morales] was simply virtual reality; and ‘tyranny’ (the last 14 years are said to have been pure state despotism).”¹³ This narrative has served, in part, as the motive and, in part, as the cover for the repression of the MAS carried out by the interim government. Groups that mobilized in support of ex-president Morales were dismantled by the combined forces of the Police and the Army, costing the lives of more than 30 people. Almost 1,000 leaders were temporarily detained. Several dozen former officials, among them Morales and his vice-president, Álvaro García Linera, had to leave the country for Mexico and Argentina. Hundreds have been investigated for corruption. Two ex-ministers were arrested and remain in jail. Seven MAS leaders took refuge in the Mexican embassy in La Paz, where they are stranded, having been denied safe conduct to leave the country.

At the same time, the public sphere has been taken over almost completely by the spokespersons – genuine and upstarts – of the “revolution of the pititas,” as the press called the protests that preceded the overthrow of Morales.¹⁴ Even intellectuals who had been linked with, and thrived from, the previous government have begun to practice target shooting against Morales, making him the “punching bag” of anyone who knows how to string together a few phrases to produce an opinion piece. The most important left-wing academics have been careful not to go against this climate of opinion, and have sought to exonerate themselves.¹⁵ From the outset, the Añez interim government has enjoyed hegemony over the mass media,¹⁶ and only recently has this begun to lessen due to the rapid erosion in the government’s management, although it is still unanimous if invoked against the MAS.

In this context, one would have thought that the MAS’s days were numbered, that its future would be that of a secondary political group and exclusively rural. However, early in the new year, notwithstanding the adverse conditions we have described, the MAS appeared to be heading the first surveys of voting intentions, even before it had named any candidates. The acronym attracted “hard-core” support – ideological and sociological – of massive scope. In January, 21% of the electorate was prepared to vote for it regardless of who its candidates were or what they were offering.¹⁷ In March, with its candidates now chosen, 33% of the population supported it.¹⁸

The workers, the plebeian sectors of the population, the Indigenous peoples, and even the cholos, who still are not upwardly socially mobile,, continued to see the MAS – although it had made no consistent self-criticism of its errors – as the only force capable of representing them and defending the statism, nationalism, and racial egalitarianism that the return to power of the traditional elites seemed to have put at risk. In addition, MAS ruleis associated with a period of unusual prosperity and political stability. That is why, among other reasons, the initiative of the most radical “pititas” to use the charge of fraud hanging over the MAS to veto its participation in the election went nowhere. This outcome was counter-intuitive. Despite everything that had occurred, the MAS continued to be at the centre of politics, and the other forces had to position themselves in relation to it. Not even the defeat of historic scope that the party had suffered last November had displaced it from this focal location. It was a surprising example of political resilience that no doubt expressed, as we have said, simultaneous processes of class and racial identification.

The MAS Response Since Its Fall

“Evismo,” or the admiration and loyalty – not always healthy – manifested for Evo Morales, on the one hand, and on the other, the possibility of obtaining an electoral victory in the coming elections are the two forces that have preserved the unity of the MAS after the terrible earthquake that its violent departure from government meant for this party. For those who suppose that its fall was due solely to the action of an external force (the “empire’s conspiracy to appropriate Bolivian lithium,” or the “police and military coup”), the unity of the Masistas may seem an obvious premise. But this is not the case because, as we have seen, the overthrow of the Morales government was the result of both external and internal causes. Furthermore, the MAS has never been an ideological party; it is “sindicalista,” and part of its appeal has been its ability to enable the social ascent of the most awakened and ambitious elements of the unions and the plebeian middle classes. So, the expectation of an early return to power has influenced its unitary behaviour.

Morales has also played a fundamental role in this by becoming the only reference for groups that without him would probably seek to compete with each other to express that 33% or more of the electorate that today leans to the left. This has always been the role of Morales. If the MAS managed to fulfil one of the most cherished hopes of the 20th century progressives, the “unity of the left,” it did this not on the foundations predicted (ideological hegemony, defensive front, etc.) but in the Bolivian style, around a guardian figure.¹⁹ Morales articulates the three main wings of his party, all of which are “Evistas.” This ensures that “they stay in the Political Instrument,” while at the same time avoiding the emergence of dangerous competitors for his charismatic leadership.

The three major factions of the MAS, each of which includes many minor groups, are as follows:

(a) The one formed by the workers and peasants’ organizations of the so-called “Unity Pact.” This is led, on the one hand, by David Choquehuanca, an Indigenous leader in the Altiplano who served as foreign minister between 2006 and 2018 and is now the MAS vice-presidential candidate, and on the other, by the young Andrónico Rodríguez, the effective leader of the cocalero union federations that Morales continues to head.

(b) The one formed by the numerous groups of militants that come from the traditional left; radical and “national-Stalinist” leaders predominate in this wing, although it also contains the more moderate candidate for President, the former Minister of Economy and socialist activist Luis Arce.

(c) The one formed by the neo-Marxist, post-modern, left-wing humanists and progressive democrats who joined the MAS just before and after it came to power and who, given their educational capital, played an important role in government management. A minority part of these middle-class elements have links with Choquehuanca, while another larger part is linked with García Linera (whose future role is uncertain).²⁰

The Indigenous and sindicalista wing read Morales’s departure from power in a purely racial key. In part, this sentiment was turned against the middle-class members of the MAS, whom the two wings considered opportunists who had taken advantage of the “government of the Indians” to build their fame and fortune. This was the context for the resurgence in popularity of Choquehuanca, who had been “in the freezer” for a couple of years after Morales kicked him out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when he was considered a possible successor for the Presidency just at the time when the Chief of State was seeking the unconditional support of his party for his third re-election. Choquehuanca had actually played an important role, as the coordinator of several rural-based NGOs, in promoting the rapid rise of the young “brother Evo” from peasant syndicalism to national politics.

When the MAS was founded, Choquehuanca was its main operator in the Aymara area of the country (the altiplano that includes La Paz and Oruro), while Morales, despite his Aymara origin, dominated the valleys of Cochabamba where the population was primarily of Quechua origin. Choquehuanca is a cultural Indianista and therefore a moderate, but he tends to gather political strength from the opposition between the Indigenous and the middle class of the MAS. Within the cabinet, he found himself in muted conflict with García Linera. In accordance with his racially-shaded view of the balance of forces within his party, Choquehuanca accused the then vice-president of being guilty of all the government’s failings, including his own departure from power, while absolving Morales, at least in public.

After losing control of Foreign Affairs, Choquehuanca’s supporters were removed from the government, and Choquehuanca himself was sent into “golden exile” in Venezuela as executive secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). After Morales’s ouster, the Unity Pact nominated him and Andrónico Rodríguez as candidates for President and Vice-President, respectively. The party approved this nomination along with the list of candidates determined by the Unity Pact – demonstrating which of its wings was the strongest. However, Morales objected to this formula, and instead, imposed a middle-class figure who was close to him, Luís Arce, shifting Choquehuanca to second position. Unlike Choquehuanca, Arce has no social base of his own, and if elected, would be dependent on Morales. Characteristically, the former foreign affairs minister accepted Morales’s decision in public but was reluctant about it in private and attributed it to an intrigue by García Linera. His compliance, hypocritical or not, prevented a clash between the Unity Pact and the exile in Buenos Aires, which would have been very dangerous for the MAS.

However, the tensions among “workers,” “professionals,” rural “founders,” urban “guests,” “nationalists,” and “communists” continue to exist and will surely be expressed more openly in the future, whether the MAS wins or loses the elections.[…]

Another political figure who has emerged from the social organizations is the President of the Legislative Assembly, Senator Eva Copa, who has upheld the Indigenista claims and has led the MAS parliamentarians with a certain independence from both Arce and Morales. She can not easily be classified among the Choquehuanca supporters. Shortly after the November overthrow of Morales, Copa reached certain agreements with the Añez government that she did not coordinate with her comrades in Bolivia or, in some cases, with those in Buenos Aires. And she has criticized publicly middle-class leaders like Senator Adriana Salvatierra despite the fact that she was in a difficult personal situation.²¹

None of this has been disavowed by Morales. He, like so many other caudillos, maintains relations with all groups and individuals that he can use to achieve his plans. Evo’s attitude – and, on the other hand, the interim government’s lack of interest in or commitment to achieving this – has prevented the defection of the MAS caucus in the legislature. After the most crucial moment of the repression, when this defection seemed imminent, had passed, the parliamentarians regained the initiative and launched what some observers have viewed as a counter-attack by the national-popular bloc.²²

The extreme tolerance and even the ideological neglect of the MAS are due to the fact that this party is profoundly electoralist. At the same time, these characteristics determine that it remains as such: amorphous, and thinking that the solution to all its problems – or, better yet, that its only problem – lies in winning the coming elections. Obviously, this has forestalled any systematic debate on the causes of its political defeat, learning from its mistakes, or improving…. If Morales, very reluctantly, came to accept that he had been wrong in trying to re-elect himself for a third time,²³ he has now changed his mind in view of the slight improvement in his situation in Bolivia, owing to the problems of administration confronting Añez, among them those related to the health crisis. Morales has just said, once again, that he was not mistaken in running once again.

Can the MAS Return to Power? Is This Advisable in the Medium Term?

Can the MAS return to power in September? Technically, yes. It needs to win more than 40% of the votes – not impossible, given that it now polls between 33% and 35% – and hope that Mesa and Añez, running separately, do not rise far above the 20% support they now have. The major obstacle lies in the possibility that the anti-MAS electorate, on the eve of the elections, turns massively in favour of either of those candidates. This is what happened in October 2019, and the polling does not discount it. Should the MAS be forced into a run-off second round with either Mesa or Añez, the intense polarization would probably result in a slim victory for the anti-MAS candidate.

Should the MAS win, could it take office? In Bolivia’s history, there is a period with similarities to the current one. In the late 1940s, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), which had co-governed with nationalist military officers between 1943 and 1946, likewise faced the hatred of the elites. In the 1951 elections, Mamerto Urriolagoitia, the outgoing president, did not accept the victory of Paz Estenssoro, and instead, handed over power to a military junta. This maneuver went down in history as the “mamertazo.”

Is there room for a new “mamertazo” in Bolivian history? Today, of course, the international situation is quite different. However, very powerful forces could resist with all the resources at their disposal the return of “Bolivia’s cancer” – as a columnist has called the MAS, among them, a section of the Army.²⁴

At that time, Urriolagoitia argued that the MNR victory could not be recognized because the “communists” could not be allowed to take power. Today some might argue that it should not be given to “narcoterrorists,” or that the rise of a party that tried to cheat the country with a fraudulent election should be prevented, perhaps by banning it before the elections are held. Morales has warned of this possibility, referring to it as their “Plan B.”²⁵

The more democratic section of the Bolivian elites, however, would see a re-edition of a “mamertazo” as the repetition of an error. Bear in mind that a few months after Urriolagoitia’s action, the National Revolution exploded, and Paz Estenssoro returned from his Argentine exile to take office as President. An even more interesting (if naïve) question is whether an immediate return to power is advisable for the MAS. It is conceivable that in such a case it would not have time or space to overhaul itself, recover from its wounds, establish a healthier relationship with its “President Evo,” that is, it could not avoid making the same errors and suffering the same damage as before. On the other hand, it is also true that as a party now hemmed in by the state security services, staying out of government could end up decimating and dividing it. One can be certain that such a thing as the “advantage of losing” is not in the mind of Morales, Arce, and the other MAS leaders, and much less in the minds of the Masistas involved in trials, imprisoned, or exiled.

What would Arce and Choquehuanca do if they came to govern? What would they have to face in 2020-2025? Some forecasts: they would face resistance, at least initially, from the state security agencies; the relentless campaign against them by the economic, social, university and media elites; the constant mobilization of certain sectors of the middle class that would not want to retire to their winter quarters after having tasted again the fruits of power; a divided parliament; a MAS agitated and eroded by the battle between “revanchists” and “conciliators”; and above all by the blows of the pandemic and one of the worst economic crises in the country’s history.

In this context, there is no doubt that Arce would be lucky if he could stop the restoration process that his enemies have begun, and administer the state from the perspective of those below. Assigning him any other objective would be unrealistic. And if he failed in this, it would probably compromise even further the possibilities of mounting a far-reaching leftist project in the future. In any case, as the annals and epics testify, the generals have never heeded the fortune tellers when they have already decided to go into battle.

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Fernando Molina is a Cochabamba-based journalist.

Notes

1. Robert Brockmann, “El enemigo público No 1,” Brújala Digital, June 18, 2020.
2. “[Carlos] Mesa: mi responsabilidad es ganarle al MAS en elecciones para evitar que siga gobernando el país,” ANF, June 24, 2020.
3. “Samuel [Medina Dorado, Junto’s vice-presidential candidate] accusa a ‘Camacho, Mesa y el MAS’ de conformar un bloque contra el Gobierno,” Correa del Sur, May 26, 2020.
4. Erika Segales: “Camacho, Mesa y Tuto pasan a la ‘ofensiva’ contra Añez,” Página Siete, May 26, 2020.
5. Marcelo Tedesqui, “Mesa comparte foro con el presidente de Argentina, Alberto Fernández, qui dio refugio a Evo,” El Deber, June 20, 2020.
6. For example, they were not allowed to eat in the same canteens as the officers. See Fernando Molina, “Patria o muerte. Venceremos. El orden castrense de Evo Morales,” Nueva Sociedad No. 278, November-December 2018.
7. That is, a stereotypical anti-imperialism, inclined to fantastic conspiracy theories, with little attachment to democracy and a tendency to organize internal purges.
8. Zavaleta, “La Revolución Boliviana y la cuestion del poder [1964],” Obras completas Tomo I, (Plural, La Paz), p. 112. [See also Moira Zuazo, “The MAS government in Bolivia: Are the social movements in power?”]
9. After its narrow loss in the effort to overrule the constitutional re-election limitations, the MAS chose not to select other candidates for president and vice-president but instead to devote its energies to finding ways to circumvent the popular verdict. In the end it got the Supreme Court to adopt a dubious international legal precedent ruling out re-election limits for all elected positions in the country. – R.F.
10. Katiuska Vásquez, “El 70% cree que Evo se fue por revuelta y 62% que hay fraude,” Los Tiempos, December 23, 2019.
11. Claims of fraud have been refuted by several studies. See, for example, “New York Times and New Report Confirm CEPR Analysis Refuting OAS Claims of Flawed Bolivian Election Results,” CEPR, June 7, 2020. – R.F.
12. Pablo Stefanoni, “Las lecciones que nos deja Bolivia,” Sin Permiso, March 14, 2020.
13. Pablo Stefanoni, “Bolivia: anatomía de un derrocamiento,” El País, January 21, 2020.
14. An allusion to the strings and thin ropes used to block streets, obviating the need to mobilize many demonstrators – a custom of the Bolivian middle classes ridiculed by Morales in one of his last speeches as President.
15. For example, see Luis Tapia, “Crisis política en Bolivia: la coyuntura de disolución de la domination masista. Fraude y resistencia democrática,” CIDES-UMSA, November 19, 2019.
16. Fernando Molina, “Hegemonía instantánea: la prensa en la crisis boliviana,” Contrahegemonía, on-line, December 3, 2019.
17. Paula Lazarte, “Ciesmori perfila al candidato del MAS como ganador en encuesta,” Página Siete, January 2, 2020.
18. “Arce aumenta ventaja y Mesa afianza el segundo lugar, según encuesta de Ciesmori,” Página Siete,March 15, 2020.
19. Fernando Mayorga, Mandato y contingencia. Estilo de gobierno de Evo Morales, Fundación Friedrich Ebert (La Paz, 2019).
20. The exiled García Linera has accepted an academic position in Argentina. – R.F.
21. Salvatierra, Senate president at the time of the coup, was next in line for President following the resignations of Morales and García Linera. She promptly resigned too, alleging later that she was instructed to do so by her party leader Evo Morales. – R.F.
22. Fernando Mayorga, “‘Elecciones ya’: ¿el MAS recupera la iniciativa?,” Nueva Sociedad, June 2020.
23. Deutsche Welle, Evo Morales: “Fue un error volver a presentarme,” January 17, 2020.
24. Isabel Mercado, “El plan del MAS es «sacar esta ley, maniatarnos y crear milicias»,” Interview with Añez’s Minister of Defense Fernando López, Página Siete, June 29, 2020.
25. Natalio Cosoy, “Evo Morales cree que puede haber un ‘golpe’ si el MAS gana las elecciones en Bolivia,” France 24, March 17, 2020.

Featured image: COB mobilization marches through El Alto. [Photo by La Razón]

Belarus in turmoil, after an election where the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko – 25 years already in power (in office since 1994) – has won with 80% of the popular vote. That’s what the official stats and media say. True or false? Does it matter? – The margin is large enough that it cannot be contested or questioned by “recounters”. So, people take to the streets. First police reaction against protesters is violent.

Washington reprimands Belarus – to calm the police violence – at the surface protecting the protesters. Overall western reaction towards the election is negative. Unilaterally they say “elections were unfair and rigged”. This may be true – or not.

The west has been critical for years about Lukashenko’s human rights records. Isn’t it kind of ironic, every time the west has a criticism for which they don’t have a real foundation, they claim “human rights abuses”. That flies just about with everybody. Russia, China and all those associated with these two evil countries have horrible human rights records. Hardly a substance the west brings forward, or if it does, because pressed, they invent the “substance”. China is a case in point.

Just on a sideline – did anybody ever question or even criticize western Human Rights records? Let’s just think of all the western initiated wars and ‘sanctions’ in the Middle East – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine via proxy Israel, Somalia; aggressions against Iran, Lebanon; depriving Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea of vital and essential medication, food – and spare parts that could keep their economy running – let alone the smearing and sanctions and aggressions on China and Russia. No one in the west dares say beep. The Anglo-American controlled media are silent. – Where are the real human rights abusers, in giant proportions more severe than those in Russia, China and the rest of the world combined? – Food for thought.

Let’s stay with Belarus. Belarus is also an ‘ally’ of Russia. Or let’s put it another way: Belarus is a buffer zone between Russia and NATO. So, Belarus’s alliance with Russia is important. It is also important for the west to break it. To get a step closer to the Kremlin’s doorstep.

And that’s precisely what’s happening. The fact is that Pompeo went to visit Lukashenko at the beginning of 2020 shaking hands and smiling and pledging friendship – and “democratic assistance”. Despite the Human Rights critique, most western sanctions have been lifted on Belarus, because Lukashenko has freed some political prisoners. Pompeo’s discourse is that Washington supports Belarus’s independence, while they are aware of Minsk’s close links to Russia.

Pompeo said (a Reuters quote): “There’s a long history with Russia. It’s not about picking us between the two. We want to be here.” How wise. The “picking” will be done by Washington’s arm-twisting, or worse, if necessary.

Just coincidentally, when Russia and Belarus had a disagreement over oil deliveries and contract extension in late 2019 and early 2020, Washington immediately offered alternative supplies. Pompeo again:

“The United States wants to help Belarus build its own sovereign country. Our energy producers stand ready to deliver 100% of the oil you need at competitive prices.” – And, “Your nation should not be forced to be dependent on any one partner for your prosperity or for your security.”

But an oil contract agreement was reached with Moscow, and deliveries resumed on January 4, 2020.

In anticipation of Pompeo’s visit to Minsk earlier this year, the Trump Administration intimated,

“this [Belarus] is an era of great power competition and an opportunity to compete for influence.”

There you have it. Elections are often strategic moments to hit a country when you want to dominate it. Who knows whether the US were behind the election results, directly or by proxy – manipulating them, knowing quite well, that Lukashenko’s popularity has shrunk to a low. Lukashenko has run his country like a police state. Another Lukashenko win could (and should – wished by the west) cause civil unrest – that like in other places of the universe – like Hong Kong, to mention just an ongoing one – can be provoked by Washington and its minions and extended as long as it takes to bring about regime change – which is what Washington dreams of in Belarus.

Belarus without natural resources to speak off, except its strategic location – buffer zone for Russia – depends economically on Russia. Russia has not failed her support to Belarus. It is very unlikely that Russia would interfere in Belarus’s election, despite what Washington says about political and election interference by Russia, it’s not Russia’s style, but it clearly is Washington’s style to interfere in elections around the world. There has been not one “free” election – “free” meaning, without interference, directly or indirectly, of the United Sates, in the last few decades. Not one.

Contrary to the Ukraine, in Belarus there is no visible EU / IMF interference at this point. Just the US at the fringes, by Pompeo’s visit to Minsk on February 1, 2020. But we don’t really know what went on behind closed doors, what agreements were signed “verbally”.

However, whatever secrets the Pompeo visit may have entailed, this looks like a new kind of Color Revolution in the making. One, where the instigators are not visibly Washington and / or their NATO-controlled allies, the European Union. But rather a “third party” close ally of the US, one whose survival depends on the United States, like Ukraine. It is possible that Ukraine, directed by Washington, infiltrated their secret service people and other trouble-makers (possibly with Russian passports) into Belarus, mainly Minsk, before the elections, to orchestrate Lukashenko’s landslide win, as well as the subsequent civil unrest – which as of this day has not abated.

It may not be coincidence that Lukashenko’s only real opponent, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (who got only 10% of the vote) fled to Lithuania, where she was “safe”, as Lithuanians Foreign Minister said.

Though, the US officially condemns Lukashenko’s police brutality, but in secret, they want Lukashenko to remain in power, until the appropriate moment, when the control is sufficiently advanced, as was the case with Ukraine. In the meantime, they may groom Svetlana to eventually take over from Lukashenko – when the time is ripe for another “Maidan” – Belarus style.

No doubt, President Putin is aware of this – and probably of other likely scenarios. Learning from the Ukraine experience, he may opt to ‘replace’ Lukashenko before it’s too late. Because if Belarus falls – and with Ukraine at the southern doorstep, Moscow would be in real danger.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Since the May 25 police execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest racist violence.

Cities across the United States were impacted by the blocking of streets and highways along with the creation of cultural forms of resistance utilizing visual arts such as murals, posters, placards notwithstanding spoken word and music.

Some of these manifestations take on a violent character when people attack private property, police vehicles and law-enforcement personnel. In Chicago on August 2-3, thousands of youth in response to the police shooting of a 20-year-old African American on the South Side, engaged in the widespread liberation of consumer goods, including food and drinks, while fighting off attempts by the police to apprehend them.

These actions in Chicago and other cities throughout the U.S. are condemned by city officials, business interests and the corporate media as criminal conduct unrelated to other forms of resistance which do not deliberately seek to inflict physical harm on the racist-capitalist system and its institutions.

Not only are there ongoing attempts by the state and its ruling class masters to divide the renewed anti-racist movement operating largely under the banner of Black Lives Matter (BLM), oppressed people of color are still being profiled, arrested, imprisoned, beaten and killed by the criminal justice system. African Americans and other sectors of the working class are today subjected to rising unemployment, the threats of eviction and foreclosure as well as the loss of healthcare coverage due to joblessness.

At present the federal government is incapable of reaching agreement on continued assistance to millions of people living in the U.S. who are experiencing financial ruin. The divisions between the two dominant ruling class parties, the Democrats and Republicans, is preventing the adoption and implementation of minimal policy measures which could literally save the lives of more than 50 million people thrown out of work due to the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Arms Displayed in Recent Gatherings

Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the response to the current social crisis in the U.S., as far as the ruling class interests are concerned, is the apparent growth in armed organizations among the Black population. Two high profile events in recent weeks taking place in Stone Mountain, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky brought to public view hundreds of armed African Americans, staging their own independent action to symbolize the need for self-defense.

On July 4, the proclaimed Independence Day celebrated in the U.S., hundreds of members of NFAC descended on to Stone Mountain, a designated area in Georgia to purportedly honor the people who fought with the Confederate States of America during the years of 1861-1865 in their failed attempt to preserve African enslavement. NFAC is said to mean “Not F-ing Around Coalition”. The organizational spokesperson, Grand Master Jay, has given interviews to express their views on the current situation in the U.S.

In Louisville on July 25, there was another demonstration demanding justice in the police killing of Breonna Taylor, an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), shot to death in her bed while police executed a no-knock warrant at the wrong location. Reports from Louisville officials indicate that one police officer involved in the execution has been terminated while at the same time not one law-enforcement member or official responsible for the death of Taylor has been indicted on criminal charges.

Jay in response to information he received from the Louisville District Attorney was that the investigation into the brutal killing of Taylor would take another four months to conclude. The NFAC leader told 350 armed members in Louisville on July 25 that he warned the authorities saying “you do not have four months.”

Later Jay emphasized in Louisville:

“There was no crime scene. There was no report. There was no ballistics. There was no blood and toxicology. Matter of fact, there wasn’t nothing. So when they gave it to the AG, and he said, ‘Where’s the case?’ The mayor said, ‘I gave you enough. Do your job. And they thought that [EXPLETIVE] was gonna go away. But you mother-[EXPLETIVE]s ain’t stupid.” (See this)

In response to the presence of NFAC at Stone Mountain on July 4, a right-wing group labeled the III% has called for their own action under the guise of defending the Confederate monuments. The Atlanta Journal Constitution noted in an article that:

“Hundreds of members of a Black militia turned heads July 4 as they marched with assault rifles, shotguns and other firearms, on Stone Mountain and its famous Confederate memorial. Now several far-right groups, including militias and white supremacists, are planning an answer rally on Aug. 15, and a broad coalition of leftist anti-racist groups are organizing a counter-demonstration. Local authorities, who have been closely monitoring online chatter about the rally, are bracing for possible conflict.” (See this)

Another organization called the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named after the co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was formed in 2014. The organization has made several public appearances with firearms during protests aimed at defending the African American community.

Huey P. Newton Gun Club cadre with arms

According to its website:

“The Huey P. Newton Gun Club is a coalition of members from various different groups/organizations coming together in unity to practice our 2nd amendment right ‘To bear Arms’. Our mission is to educate the masses of people on the necessity of self. That includes self-preservation, self-defense, and self-sufficiency through militant culture. Safety, caution, and attention to detail are at the core of our way of life. We desire a world of peace, justice, and equality for all humanity, and specifically people of color.” (See this)

A Historical Legacy of Armed Resistance

There is a centuries-long tradition within the broader Pan-African struggle against slavery, colonialism and imperialism where Black people have taken up arms in defense of their lives and for their freedom. All through the period of enslavement and colonialism in Africa and the Western Hemisphere, there have been revolts to end slavery, colonialism, racism and other forms of injustice.

The Huey P. Newton Gun Club says in its mission statement that:

“At this point in history we realize that Black people in the western hemisphere have always promoted armed self-defense first with rebellions on slave ships and most notably with the Haitian Revolution that began in 1791. In the spirit of the Maroons societies throughout the Americas, that worked towards liberation of our people and the various insurrections that we are aware of and also unaware of, we formed the Huey Percy Newton Gun Club…. Using Huey’s name is logical to us based on this point in history where Black men and women are murdered wholesale by various police agencies around the United States. We strive with you to STOP these atrocities that affect our community, and are elated you desired to work with us to put in place a defense component with eventual offensive capabilities. “

Africans escaping from enslavement during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries fought alongside the Seminole Indians in the Southeast region of the country, now known as Florida, against the U.S. government for many years. There is the legacy of the rebellions against slavery in Louisiana in 1811, the Nat Turner led insurrection in Virginia during 1831, Africans participated in the raid launched by John Brown at Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

Black Panther members protest gun control at the California State Capitol on May 2, 1967

During the Civil War, enslaved Africans fled the plantations in the multitudes. Nearly 180,000 Black people joined the Union Army to fight for the abolition of the slave system. Many of the African veteran militias in the South were deliberately disarmed during the period after the conclusion of the Civil War. (See this)

Image on the right: Robert and Mabel Williams armed against racism during the 1960s

In the 1950s and 1960s, groups like the one formed by Robert F. Williams, who headed the NAACP in Monroe, North Carolina, formed armed units to protect their communities against violence perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan. Later the Deacons for the Defense arose in Louisiana and provided security for the historic Mississippi March Against Fear in June 1966 where the Black Power slogan was advanced by Willie Ricks and Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, would help found the original Black Panther Party as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) in Alabama during 1965-66 where armed militants would guard polling places during elections. Other groupings such as the Republic of New Africa (RNA) founded in Detroit in 1968 and the Black Liberation Army (BLA), which grew out of the Black Panther Party in 1971, engaged police and federal forces in their campaigns for social justice and self-determination.

As the struggle for African American liberation intensifies there will inevitably be a broadening diversity of tactics. The oppressed peoples of the U.S. and indeed the world are destined to reach their own conclusions about the most appropriate and effective means to utilize in their struggle for emancipation.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army was granted political asylum in Cuba; all images in this article are from the author

Iraq’s new Prime Minister Mustafa al Khadimi’s, decision to make Saudi Arabia rather than Iran his first destination abroad contradicted with what all his predecessors had done. It was designed to send a clear message indicating that he has not only sympathised with Trump-MBS outrage that Iraq’s previous PM – Adel Abdul Mehdi – has tilted the balance of power in favour of their arch foe Iran, but he is also determined to take practical steps to rein in what they perceive as Iranian perilous influence. In response, Iran dispatched its Foreign Minister Javid Zarif on 19 July, to Baghdad to underline that while Tehran would shield its interests in Iraq, it would nevertheless back Khadimi’s quest to mediate between Tehran and Riyadh.

And while Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) – King Salman’s young son, who is the de facto ruler – cited his father’s sudden illness as an excuse for cancelling Kadhimi’s visit, yet in reality Riyadh has made no secret that it regarded Kadhimi’s steps to curb Iranian influence woefully short of achieving its overarching goal, namely dismantling the Popular Mobilisation Forces PMF, a government controlled grouping of predominantly Shia paramilitary units – formed after Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani fatwa in 2014 – that have spearheaded Iraq’s fight-back against ISIS. And given the unprecedented dire economic challenges facing Riyadh – largely due to MBS’s futile unwinnable war on Yemen and tumbling oil prices precipitated by coronavirus – MBS was keen to avoid financially propping up Khadimi’s government.

With Khadimi’s visit to Tehran on 20 July under the spotlight, he emphasized that Iraq is hell-bent on balancing US-Iranian competing interests, urging both sides to refrain from turning Iraq into a battlefield. His appeal comes amid an escalating confrontation that was triggered on 3 January, by the US assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps near Baghdad airport. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei fired back reminding Khadimi that the US had not merely assassinated your guest Suleimani on Iraqi soil – the ultimate humiliation according to Arabic tradition –, but also defiantly bragged about it. More significantly, however, he insisted that Iran expects Khadimi to implement Iraq’s Parliament resolution issued on 5 January, demanding the full withdrawal of all foreign troops.

As ever, the latest waves of protest that have been rocking the Shia heartland since 1 October 2019 were sparked by almost non-existent public services, widespread unemployment and endemic corruption, but in the face of a vicious crack down by Abdul Mahdi’s government it spiralled out of control, prompting al Sistani to explicitly instruct  the parliament to replace Abdul Mahdi with an uncontroversial new PM, whose primary task would be preparing the ground for a fair elections.

As part of the increasingly aggressive Trump-inspired and MBS-sponsored strategy Iraq, instead of Syria, became the central battlefield for rolling back Iranian influence. Brett McGurk, who was US Envoy to Iraq, successfully managed – after the last 2018 parliamentary elections –to forge a coalition of Shia political blocs comprised of Muqtada al Sadr, Ammar al Hakim, and Iraq’s ex-PM Haider al Abadi. But, Soliamani’s intervention derailed his attempts to install a US–friendly PM.

Buoyed by Soleimani’s assassination and emboldened by US-Saudi support, Ammar al Hakim – who is increasingly becoming Riyadh’s main Shia point man – scrambled to revive his alliance with al Sadr and Abadi while also  conspiring with Barham Salih – Iraq’s Kurdish President – to promote al Khadimi’s candidacy and simultaneously thwart attempts by Iran-friendly political leaders, namely Hadi al Amiri and Nouri al Maliki, to appoint an Iran-backed PM. Faced with an unparalleled existential threat, the leaders ( God Fathers ) of the Mafia-like family-controlled political blocs concluded that the only conceivable way to shore up the unravelling political system was mollifying Trump by appointing Khadimi on May 9 Prime Minister and striking a deal enabling Washington to keep a fraction of its troops in Iraq. Yet ironically, the strategic dialogue which took place on 11 June, amounted to a declaration of Iraq’s unconditional surrender. The US not only refused committing itself to a withdrawal timetable but far worse demanded Iraqi protection for its troops. As expected, this provoked a dramatic surge in rocket attacks targeting US interests, including its embassy in the Green Zone (GZ) – home of Iraq’s government –, hence calling into question al Khadimi’s legitimacy and credibility. And amid growing US pressure on Khadimi to retaliate, he ordered Iraq’s counter terrorism forces ( ICTF ) on 26 June, to raid Kataib Hezebollah – part of PMF – Headquarter and arrest 14 members. In reprisal the PMF rapidly stormed the GZ, forcing Khadimi to backdown, releasing those detained and thereby exposing the limitations of his powers despite US support. Alarmed by calls for Khadimi to resign after his raid backfired, al Hakim sought to fend off such moves by forming on 29 June, a new parliamentary bloc ( Iraqis ) whose task was securing al Khadimi’s position in parliament.

Against this backdrop the US felt it was necessary to test on 4 July, its C-Ram system above the GZ to demonstrate that it was not relying on al Khadimi for protection, despite being aware that such action would further erode Khadimi’s authority. To fix that, Gen. Kenneth Mackenzie the commander of US CentCom stressed – after meeting Kadimi on 7 July – that the US endorsed al Khadimi’s attempts to take on the PMF and he was confident that Khadimi would ask US troops to stay. But he opened the door for further negotiations by saying a smaller US force could do the job, thus signalling that Kadimi has done enough to secure a meeting with Trump.

Khadimi’s call for early elections on 6 June 2021 was an attempt to placate violent protests – which were inexcusably met with deadly force on 26 July – and also to quash accusations that he was dragging his feet over early elections while also shifting the blame to the leaders of political blocs, who are ultimately responsible for passing the new electoral law in parliament.

Trump’s overriding priority has implacably been winning the 2020 US elections. In his book this means US troops must not pull out of Iraq, as he has consistently scolded Obama for doing so in 2011, regarding it the chief reason behind the resurgence of ISIS. But with the US economy reeling, unemployment soaring, anti-racism protests raging and a spectacular failure in combating coronavirus, all of which are increasingly boosting the prospects of a Joe Biden triumph, therefore it is doubtless that Trump will utilise Khadimi’s trip to Washington on 20 August, to push him to further tighten the screw on Iran’s already faltering economy, hoping it would compel Iran to succumb to US relentless campaign of maximum pressure and sanctions by renegotiating a new nuclear deal. Of course, Trump will press Khadimi to expeditiously end Iraq’s dependency on Iranian electricity by replacing it with Saudi sources. But while Trump will demand tougher concrete steps to strip the PMF of its weapons, he will consider a timetable for reducing US troops if Khadimi can get Iranian assurance that rockets targeting US interests – which reflects Trump’s powerlessness as a commander-in-chief – would cease. Khadimi, in turn, will highlight that no previous PM has ever dared to tackle Iranian influence or challenge armed groups. Surely, he will call for much more tangible support in the economic, commercial, energy and security sectors as well as help in combatting coronavirus. He will also urge Trump to intervene, complaining that Riyadh has not just resisted helping Iraq but also continued stoking sectarian and ethnic divisions.

Khadimi’s meeting with Tump may consolidate his position in the short term, but it would not ease tensions or dampen growing calls for a sweeping overhaul of the political system and an outright ousting of the ruling families who have brought Iraq to its knees.

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‘Startling and confusing’ proclaimed Science magazine. ‘Reckless and foolish’ said US vaccine scientist Peter Hotez. ‘Dangerously rushed’ said the journal Nature.  Western scientists are in denial. The first vaccine against the disease which has dominated all our lives for the last few months – Covid-19 – has been unveiled, not by a western nation, but by Russia.

President Putin announced the registration of the vaccine, named ‘Sputnik V’, on Tuesday, and said that his own daughter had already tried the vaccine on herself, and found it to be safe and effective. Russia plans to begin rolling out the immunisation programme over the next coming weeks, offering it in the first place to medics on the front lines of the coronavirus epidemic, on a voluntary basis.

The vaccine underwent clinical trials in June and July, and is based on an existing formula on which many other contemporary vaccines have been produced. The Russian health ministry has said that experience of other similar vaccines has shown that they can provide immunity for up to two years. The head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitryev, has said that Russia has already received requests from 20 different countries from Latin American, the Middle East and Asia, for one billion doses of the vaccine.

For many this is obviously a ground-breaking and positive moment in what has been a dark period in our lives. It is a light at the end of the tunnel. And yet, we are living in a time in which almost everything is politicised, including the race to discover a coronavirus vaccine. We already heard earlier this year allegations from the UK that Russia was attempting to ‘steal’ information about its vaccine programme, and yet no evidence was ever produced to support the claims.  It could only be expected that in this competition to create the first vaccine, that any achievement by Russia in this regard would be rejected outright.

Even without having any of the data regarding the Russian vaccine to hand, experts such as Trump’s chief advisor on coronavirus and Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Antonio Fauci, have dismissed it.

“I hope that the Russians have actually definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective,” he said, “I seriously doubt that they’ve done that.”

Why he should doubt it, is not clear. Why would a government risk releasing a vaccine that wasn’t safe and effective? The consequences would be disastrous, and not worth the gamble.  President Vladimir Putin for his part has said

‘I know that it works quite effectively, forms strong immunity, and I repeat, it has passed all the needed checks’.

The urgency with which the vaccine has been created does suggest something of the concern which Russian authorities may have about a resurgence of coronavirus this coming winter. The UK is also deeply worried. So far it has no vaccine ready, and at the same time a steady number of coronavirus cases. The country reached the highest daily number of Covid-19 cases since June of 1148 on Tuesday, although figures now are difficult to obtain as the government no longer publishes the statistics. The number breaches the official government threshold of 1000 cases a day which it said was needed if the country was to contain the epidemic.

In addition it was revealed on Wednesday that the UK is facing its greatest ever economic recession, and the largest to be faced by any European country since the beginning of the pandemic. The pressure will now be on the British government to get a grip on the situation, as years of underfunding the health and social care system has been exposed during this crisis, meaning the nation has suffered considerably. The latest economic figures also do not bode well for paving a way out of the current quagmire, as the government will have to make more cuts at a time when people are struggling the most. Boris Johnson is under more pressure than ever before to find a solution to the current crisis. Never before has good news been needed so badly, whether it’s in the form of a vaccine or otherwise…

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

A new report published in South African newspaper The Mail and Guardian has shed light on the opaque world of the American military presence in Africa. Last year, elite U.S. Special Operations forces were active in 22 African countries. This accounts for 14 percent of all American commandos deployed overseas, the largest number for any region besides the Middle East. American troops had also seen combat in 13 African nations.

The U.S. is not formally at war with an African nation, and the continent is barely discussed in reference to American exploits around the globe. Therefore, when U.S. operatives die in Africa, as happened in Niger, Mali, and Somalia in 2018, the response from the public, and even from the media is often “why are American soldiers there in the first place?”

The presence of the U.S. military, especially commandos, is rarely publicly acknowledged, either by Washington or by African governments. What they are doing remains even more opaque. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) generally claims that special forces go no further than so-called “AAA” (advise, assist and accompany) missions. Yet in combat, the role between observer and participant can become distinctly blurry.

The United States has roughly 6,000 military personnel scattered throughout the continent, with military attachés outnumbering diplomats in many embassies across Africa. Earlier this year, The Intercept reported that the military operates 29 bases on the continent. One of these is a huge drone hub in Niger, something The Hill called “the largest U.S. Air Force-led construction project of all time.” The construction cost alone was over $100 million, with total operating costs expected to top $280 billion by 2024. Equipped with Reaper drones, the U.S. can now conduct cross border bombing raids all over the North and West of Africa.

Washington claims that the military’s primary role in the region is to combat the rise of extremist forces. In recent years, a number of Jihadist groups have arisen, including Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and other al-Qaeda affiliated groups. However, much of the reason for their rise can be traced back to previous American actions, including the destabilization of Yemen, Somalia, and the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.

Martin Vizcarra, Peru’s president, has announced that “[t]his government has taken up the challenge and has been working on the approval of a new regulation for mining procedures in order to streamline those procedures.” The regulation “aims to provide certainty for investors in order to boost private investment” and will satisfy the demands of mining magnates who “have requested that the procedures be expedited in order to unlock mining projects and allow the sector to contribute to the economic reactivation.”

The current government decision to elevate extractivism as the engine of economic reactivation is a blessing for extractive elites who have been pushing for deregulation, a secure investment climate and a faster economic re-opening. On 20 July 2020, Carlos Gálvez, former president of mining and energy association SNMPE, said, “To recover we have to immediately activate the portfolio of mining projects, as mining will drive the entire economy.” In a similar manner, on 23 June 2020, Víctor Gobitz, the president of Peru’s Institute of Mining Engineers and executive president of local precious metals producer Buenaventura, said that “we must look at the crisis as an opportunity.”

Gobitz went on to add, “A more expeditious licensing and permit system is required,” a demand that the government has diligently fulfilled. Gobitz also made it clear that the political and social climate in Peru needed to be overhauled. While speaking on the problems of mining, he said that many mining projects “confronted social problems and were halted.” He tells the interviewer that the root of this problem is the system “that generates local leaders without a long-term vision or a comprehensive vision of the country.” In order to stall this system, Gobitz suggests, “[i]n the long term we have to work to mature the political system, to have fewer political parties and to be more responsible with the country.”

Aggressive Extractivism

While the state and the power bloc have harmoniously merged to aggressively advance an agenda of extractivism, the working class and indigenous people have been entirely erased from the blueprint of “development.” Through the installment of new regulations aimed at intensifying mining, providing certainty for investors (eliminating resistance) and streamlining procedures (authorizing accelerated ecological damage), the Peruvian state has formally set the seal on a slow exploitation that has already been going on for a long time. Even before the present-day governmental announcements, Peru had been witnessing the onslaught of “economic reactivation.”

This ruthless reactivation started in June when mining companies decided to operate at 80% of production capacity by the end of June. To achieve this production level, mining companies reworked shift patterns and started testing the workers for COVID-19 at the sites. Meanwhile, unions for mine workers opposed this production plan and “voiced concerns that some planned shifts are too long while testing and protective measures need to be strengthened.” Jorge Juárez, leader of Peru’s mining and steel workers’ federation, stated, “Rapid tests [at mining sites] aren’t reliable, so we want molecular tests that give more accurate diagnosis.”

As predicted by Jorge Juarez, mining sites became new hubs of infection as corporations intransigently insisted on maintaining “operational continuity” and reviving the economy. At the Santander mine operated by Canada’s Trevali Mining, 30% of the total workforce tested positive for COVID-19. Hochschild, a London-based corporation, halted its operations at the gold and silver Inmaculata mine after a number of workers tested positive. Despite the obvious endangerment of mine workers that is taking place, the government has chosen to casually coerce the workers into reactivating the economy, and Peru’s Energy and Mines Minister Susana Vilca has said that the country’s mines will resume operating at 100% production capacity by the end of July.

Indigenous Resistance to Mining Operations

The programme of merciless mining has not gone unopposed, and even during the COVID-19 pandemic, resistance is amplifying. Since July 15, the people of Espinar province have been protesting against the Swiss company Glencore, which owns the Antapaccay mine, and recently, protestors torched two vehicles coming from the Las Bambas mine to draw attention to their plight. In Espinar, the residents presented “a proposal that consisted of delivering food vouchers, medicines, and biosecurity equipment against COVID-19 and microcredits at zero percent interest.” Through the Espinar Framework Agreement, Glencore was duty-bound to financially support the Espinar people “under conditions of a humanitarian emergency.” Now, the company is refusing to help the people and on a “technical basis,” has concluded that the demands of the Espinar residents are null and void.

The technical basis on which Glencore is predicating its arguments is starkly inhumane. As per the Espinar Framework Agreement, Glencore is supposed to help in sustainable development, and the contribution of 3% of profit before tax to a community fund is a primary modality for doing so. This 3% contribution, instead of a being a wholehearted attempt at improving people’s livelihoods, is a strategic method of defusing class struggle. The annual revenue of the Antapaccay mine is $1.15-billion, and the net worth of Ivan Glasenberg, the CEO of Glencore, is $5.4-billion. In comparison to these astronomic figures, 3% is next to nothing.

Through a narrow focus on the 3% profit contribution, Glencore is saying that it is “technically” not obliged to help the people of Espinar escape from the coronavirus-caused deaths and misery. The audacity with which Glencore is rebuffing the people’s demands derives from the strong protection the state guarantees to any mining initiative. Companies like Glencore can authoritatively air-brush the oppressed because they know that the state is on their side and will help in obfuscating demands and crushing mutinies.

From the Espinar case, we also observe how corporatist arrangements, being entirely devoted to capital accumulation can’t compromise their “technical integrity” even to save innumerable people from death. Furthermore, the incalculable suffering and damage that the Antapaccay mine has brought to Espinar province morally and legally binds Glencore to pay reparations to the people and end its destructive operations.

According to a report entitled “Diagnosis of Human Environmental Health in the Espinar-Cusco Province,” the people living in the region had detectable levels of the following four toxic materials in their body: arsenic, mercury, lead and cadmium. The presence of lead, in particular, is highly worrying because it has been found that “[e]xposure to lead can seriously harm a child’s health, including damage to the brain and nervous system, slowed growth and development, learning and behavior problems, and hearing and speech problems.” On top of the direct degradation of human health, mining in Espinar has contaminated “surface waters and sediments of the Camacmayo, Tintaya and Collpamayo waterways.”

Mass protests in Espinar against the adverse impacts of mining had begun as early as 2000 when BHP Billiton was operating in the region. Through these protests the people of Espinar were able to establish a Framework Convention, an agreement that later proved to be entirely ineffectual. In 2006, Xstrata took over BHP Billiton’s mining activities and soon started receiving complaints from the locals, who stated that mining activities were resulting in the births of deformed animals. These complaints went unheeded by the company.

Unconcerned about anything, Xstrata continued to ceaselessly pollute the region, and as reports started coming in of the company’s involvement in the degeneration of Espinar’s ecosystem, the people finally chose to stage an indefinite strike. In response to these strikes and protests, the state used its emergency powers to disperse the blockade of Tintaya mine and quell incipient demonstrations. During the emergency, the state deployed 1500 police officers of the Peruvian National Police (PNP) in the region, and these “public security forces were illegally detaining and mistreating 22 civilians in the Tintaya Marquiri mine site, including women, minors, and two human rights workers… Later, the illegal detainees were freed – claims that they suffered torture while under detention were not investigated, however, the government preferring to charge them with terrorist offences.”

At the end, three protestors were killed and 12 were severely wounded. In 2017, villagers from the area adjacent to the mine where violence took place told the UK High Court “that Xstrata gave the PNP logistical assistance, including equipment and vehicles, encouraged the PNP to mistreat the protesters, and that Xstrata failed to take sufficient measures to prevent human rights violations.” At the behest of Xstrata, PNP“used excessive force including the use of live ammunition, beat and kicked protesters, subjected them to racial abuse and made them stand for prolonged periods in stress positions in the freezing cold.”

In 2013, Glencore acquired the mining projects of Xstrata by absorbing the latter through a takeover. While the Tintaya copper mine closed down in 2013, a new Antapaccay mining project, started in 2012, compensated for its closure. Antapaccay mine’s production consists of 80,000 tons of copper per day. Its visible environmental impacts include “Biodiversity loss (wildlife, agro-diversity), Soil contamination, Waste overflow, Groundwater pollution or depletion, Large-scale disturbance of hydro and geological systems.” Protests have occurred against Glencore’s Antapaccay mine, and on “27 March 2015, two thousand affected inhabitants of Espinar peacefully protested against the mining operations. They asked the Peruvian government to establish the cause of the contamination and to address the water pollution.”

Like Xstrata, Glencore has turned a deaf ear toward the community and is continuing to mine copper in an environmentally unsustainable way. In December 2018, Cusco Regional Health Directorate (DIRESA) published a report stating that a high level of metal contamination had been found in potable water. Correspondingly, in February 2019, the Regional and Municipal Councils of Espinar declared a health emergency for 90 days, and the governor of Cusco was asked to cooperate with the Ministry of Health and Environment to redress this problem.

Despite DIRESA’s report that the water sources in Espinar region are contaminated, a “technical table,” comprising various technocratic and non-elected components of the state apparatus, has concluded that the drinking water in the Espinar province is still suitable for human consumption. This shows the extent to which Glencore enjoys state protection and is able to mould governmental departments to create a stable “investment climate” in which the contradictions of class struggle have been explosively contained for a period of time.

Besides state protection, Glencore is also utilizing regularized violence to facilitate its mining operations. In late December 2018, Liderman, the security company hired by Glencore, attacked the Alto Huarca community and specifically targeted women. In April 2018, a number of police officers and 8 officials of the Glencore Antapaccay mine, numbering 40 in total, intimidated and used coercive methods against the Alto Huarca community living in the Yauri district. The aim was to evict the community from their own lands and enable the planned expansion of mining projects.

The Looming Water Crisis

Peru’s government, by choosing to speed up the mining sector, has spurned OHCHR’s (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) key recommendations that asked governments to ensure “indigenous territorial protection and the health of indigenous peoples during the pandemic by considering a moratorium on extractive mining, oil, and logging activities.” Through a mining-led offensive against indigenous people, Peru is slated to provoke an enraged indigenous opposition.

“Without water there is no life let’s take care of it.”

The current deregulation of the mining sector bears an extremely frightening resemblance to what an adviser of a former minister of energy and mines said a few years back: “We have to be practical … you cannot … [conduct] consultations everywhere. That is stupid. It only creates chaos, disorder, lack of governability.” By deregulating the mining sector and expediting procedures, the current government is giving the message that mining can’t be impeded by the unreasonable demands of indigenous people.

Moreover, by normatively linking the weakening of procedures to the positively framed notion of “economic reactivation,” the administration is culturally colonizing the indigenous people through a rationalized-economic ideology. Alan Garcia, the former president of Peru, had once said that “there are millions of hectares of forests that are idle, millions of hectares that communities are not farming … there are many resources that … do not receive investments and not produce jobs.

And all of this is due to the taboo of old ideologies, laziness, intolerance or the law of the dog in the manger: If I do not use it, no one will.” He had later added that “[We] must defeat the absurd pantheistic ideologies that believe that walls are gods, that the air is god, the return to these primitive forms of religion, where they say do not touch that mountain because it is an apu [God] and full of a millenarian spirit… That we are advancing does not mean that all our ancient forms of thought have been overcome.”

While not overtly crude like Alan Garcia, the present government is advancing a similar agenda of anti-indigenous development by ideologically intertwining economic reactivation with the violence of extractive capital. In a manner reminiscent of the National Development Plan “Peru Toward 2021,” Vizcarra’s government has embarked on a neocolonial civilizing mission. The aforementioned plan, developed by the National Centre for Strategic Planning (CEPLAN), stated its objective of “overcoming the culture of ‘limited good’ and ‘equalizing downward’ which are the vestiges of a culture of underdevelopment that hinders productive and inclusive modernization.” The present-day government, too, is attempting to modernize the indigenous people and thus, rob them of their existence.

In addition to indigenous resistance, Peru is likely to witness a general uprising of the oppressed, with water scarcity acting as a catalyzing factor. Through the lethal legalization of intensified mining, the state is exacerbating an already acute water crisis caused by “water extractivism.” Water extractivism is defined as “the practice to singularise and standardise water into the category of ‘resource’ in order to master it and extract as much economic value from it as possible.” With the buttressing of the mining sector, water extractivism and the consequent scarcity is set to aggravate. It is estimated that “every year, mining and metallurgy release over 13 billion cubic meters of effluents into Peru’s water courses.” Due to this water contamination, many Peruvians are suffering from fatal diseases, and in the Central Andes, for instance, the contamination of rivers by arsenic and other heavy metals is causing carcinogenic diseases among Peruvian adults and children. Tragically, “children are most vulnerable to acute and chronic effects of heavy metal and arsenic intake. This is due to the fact that children consume more water per unit of body weight than adults.”

Rondera Bianca, a female activist living in El Tambo, Peru, beautifully expresses the heart-rending existential impacts of mining on children:

Ourchildren tell us
Mamita, I want to live
Throw out the miners
Because I don’t want to die
I tell my children
That’s why I’m going to fight
So that they can have life
And water to drink
To Peru and the whole I want to ask
That they respect our rights

Instead of being spatially confined to the rural regions, mining-induced water scarcity is a phenomenon that also afflicts the urban areas. Lima, for example, is the second driest capital in the world after Cairo, receiving“less than an inch of rain per year and relying on three rivers for potable water.” The three rivers on which Lima relies, the Rimac, Lurin and Chillon, have all been contaminated by mining operations. It has been found that 60% of contamination in the Rimac River is due to mining activities. Similarly, uncontrolled garbage disposal and heavy metal contamination by the extractive sector have polluted the Chillon River where “12 times the maximum permissible levels of pollutants for drinking water” were found. In the Lurin River, water contamination has reached such an extent that the water has to be boiled before consumption. In 2013, Peru’s Ministry of Environment, as a late acknowledgement of the role of mining in contaminating the Lurin River, announced a plan of multi-level governmental coordination to specifically manage mining as a major polluting source.

As Peru’s government stirs the hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic in the authoritarian amalgam of extractivism, a new volatile mixture of resistance is being created. In the current period, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the utterly undisguised rapacity of mining companies and has sharpened the edges of class struggle.

Using Pablo Neruda’s words, one can say that Peruvian workers and indigenous people are realizing that extractivism “crushes them, covers them with malignant spittle, casts them out to the roads, murders them with police,… imprisons them, spits on them, buys a treacherous president who insults and persecutes them, kills them with hunger on the plains of the sandy immensity.” With this realization, a working class-indigenous alliance is being constructed, vowing to revolt against the extractive elites.

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Yanis Iqbal is a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at [email protected]. 

All images in this article are from The Bullet unless otherwise stated

The American constitution does not grant the vice president much power. Other than the ability to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate, the VP’s main responsibility is to assume the presidency in case of a sudden vacancy in the Oval Office.

But being so close to the centre of action, vice presidents can forge substantial roles for themselves. Mike Pence leads the Trump administration’s coronavirus taskforce. Joe Biden oversaw Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw thousands of American troops from Iraq. And Dick Cheney all but ran George W Bush’s White House.

At 77, Biden would become the oldest American president on his inauguration day if elected in November. So his vice president, Kamala Harris, would likely play an active role in the government.

Moreover, serving as vice president would put her in an advantageous position to seek the presidency herself in the future.

The Biden administration is expected to reverse some of Donald Trump’s moves in the Middle East and some foreign policy responsibilities may fall on Harris as vice president.

Who is Kamala Harris?

The daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, Harris was born in Oakland, California. After graduating law school, she started her legal career as a local prosecutor in Alameda County. In 2003, she successfully ran to become San Francisco’s district attorney.

Seven years later, she was elected as California’s attorney general becoming the first Black woman to serve in that position.

Harris, 55, burst to the national scene in 2016 after being elected to the Senate, emerging as an outspoken adversary of President Donald Trump.

In 2019, she announced a presidential run that ended before the first votes were cast in the Iowa primaries as she struggled to amass support in a crowded field of candidates.

In March, she endorsed Biden’s presidential campaign as most Democrats rallied behind the former vice president against left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders who had won the first three primary contests.

Harris brands herself as a progressive, but she has garnered some criticism from the left over her record as a prosecutor and staunch support for Israel. Here’s where she stands on Middle East issues.

On Israel-Palestine: Staunch supporter of Israel

Harris has been a staunch supporter of Israel. Months after being sworn into the Senate in 2017, she delivered a speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) describing the bond between Israel and the US as “unbreakable”.

“Israel should never be a partisan issue. And as long as I’m a United States senator, I will do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel’s security and right to self-defence,” she said.

One of her first legislative actions as a senator was to co-sponsor a bill objecting to a UN Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Obama-Biden administration had allowed that resolution to pass, opting against vetoing it, months earlier.

Asked by the New York Times last year whether she thinks Israel meets international human rights standards, Harris said: “Overall, yes.”

Early in 2019, she was one of 23 Democrats to vote against a bill that encouraged states to restrict the right to boycott Israel.

Like most Democrats, she has voiced opposition to Israeli government plans to annex parts of the West Bank, framing the move as a “unilateral” action that harms Israel.

“My support for Israel’s security and the ten-year $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is unwavering,” she wrote in a letter to Trump in June.

“In light of this support, I am deeply concerned by the warnings of some of Israel’s most prominent former defense and intelligence leaders regarding annexation, which they believe could result in serious conflict, the further breakdown of security cooperation with Palestinian security forces, and the disruption of peaceful relations between Israel and her neighbors, Jordan and Egypt.”

On Saudi Arabia: Riyadh ‘must be held accountable’

Since Trump fully embraced Saudi royals after entering the White House, most Democrats have grown critical of Washington’s ties with Riyadh. Harris is no exception.

After the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi government agents in 2018, she joined her Democratic colleagues in denouncing Riyadh and demanding answers from the Trump administration.

“The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was a tragedy and represented an attack on journalists everywhere,” Harris said last year after co-sponsoring legislation demanding a report on the intelligence community’s findings on the murder.

In 2019, she also voted in favour of resolutions to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and block arms sales to the kingdom. Both measures passed in Congress but were vetoed by Trump.

“What’s happening in Yemen is devastating. Last year, the war killed on average 100 civilians a week, and thousands of children have died of starvation – Congress must take a stand,” she said at the time.

While running for president, Harris told the Council on Foreign Relations that Washington should end its involvement in the Yemen conflict.

“The United States and Saudi Arabia still have mutual areas of interest, such as counterterrorism, where the Saudis have been strong partners. And we should continue to coordinate on that front,” she said.

“But we need to fundamentally reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia, using our leverage to stand up for American values and interests.”

On Iran: Supports nuclear deal

Harris rebuked Trump in 2018 for withdrawing from the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran, which saw Tehran scale back its economic programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against its economy.

“Today’s decision to violate the Iran nuclear deal jeopardizes our national security and isolates us from our closest allies,” she said in a statement after Trump withdrew from the accord.

Early in 2020, after a US strike killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, Harris co-sponsored legislation aiming to prevent funds to the Pentagon from being used in military action against Iran in an effort to avert war with the Islamic Republic.

“Make no mistake: Soleimani was an enemy of the United States, but Trump’s actions have further enflamed tensions and destabilized the region,” she said at the time.

“It is essential that Congress take its constitutional responsibility seriously and work to de-escalate the situation.”

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Ramping up his incendiary rhetoric towards his 2020 opponent, President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that China would be in control of the United States if former Vice President Joe Biden wins this November. Better get ready to speak Chinese, the president told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

“All they’re waiting for, and China too, is that I’m defeated. Because if I’m defeated, China will own the United States,” Trump bellowed. After wondering aloud whether Biden’s team is engaging in “backchannel talks” with China, Trump added: “If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States—you will have to learn to speak Chinese!”

The president’s claim that Biden will hand the United States over to China comes on the heels of Trump accusing the ex-veep—who is a devout Catholic—of being “against God” and wanting to “hurt God.” Elsewhere in the off-the-rails interview, Trump also claimed that he was so popular prior to the coronavirus pandemic that even “George Washington would have had a hard time beating me.”

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One might make the case that Donald Trump was elected president on the antiwar vote. Running against Hillary the Hawk it was, of course, relatively easy to position oneself as a critic of the endless wars started and sustained under the Bush and Obama administrations. Even though we Americans had heard similar noises from those very same gentlemen when they were running for office, many socially conservative voters like myself were nevertheless attracted by yet another a presidential candidate who pledged to bring home the troops and might actually have meant what he said.

Well, the bloom is off the rose after nearly four years of blundering, but it is still surprising to hear an occasional voice raised defending the foreign policy of the president. Their argument starts with some generally legitimate observations, to include the fact that an Obama orchestrated conspiracy led by the intelligence and security agencies were out to delegitimize Trump and his team from the time he became a candidate until after he was actually inaugurated. Combine that with a hostile media and a Democratic Party that has been seeking revenge since the Clinton defeat, up to and including a phony impeachment, and it is easy to understand why Donald Trump has had to play defense since he took office.

And it is also true, and sometimes cited, that there was a significant number of hold-overs in the bureaucracy from the Obama eight years who were resistant to change and, as loyal Democrats, did what they could to sabotage proposals emanating from the White House. But even conceding all those points, that is where those who are making excuses for Trump generally drift off into space, insisting that it has taken the president nearly four years to clean house of his enemies. Given another four years and he will fulfill the promise that got him elected in 2016.

Well, that is a load of nonsense. Apart from anything else, Donald Trump’s demeanor has alienated nearly all of America’s traditional allies while most of the world regards him as a dangerous sociopath who is also something of a joke. The Trump supporters should be looking at his actual record, instances where he could have acted but didn’t and other occasions when he did things that were from the git-go clearly not in the U.S. national interest. I am thinking particularly of the ruined relations with Russia and China, the pandering to Israel and also the inexcusable attacks on Syria. But the biggest mistake of all might have been the abrupt withdrawals from international agreements and bodies, to include the disastrous departure from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). When the Washington Post’s leading Zionist Jennifer Rubin attacks you for leaving the nuclear agreement with Iran, in an op-ed which was published last week, you should know that it was the wrong move.

But Trump’s seemingly aimless foreign and national security policies are only part of the problem. More to the point, the president keeps appointing people to senior level positions where they have a hand in shaping the policies ranging from hardline on civil liberties issues to complete interventionism vis-à-vis America’s role worldwide. The list is long and includes John Bolton, Rick Grenell, Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook, James Jeffrey, Robert O’Brien, John Ratcliffe and Gina Haspel. And one might suggest that the latest move might very well be the worst of all, naming Eliot Abrams as Special Envoy on Iran.

The promotion for Abrams is due to the resignation of the incumbent in the position Brian Hook. Hook’s tenure was particularly undistinguished. Daniel Larison, who describes the appointment of Abrams as “appalling,” observes how “He was responsible for lies about Yemen, cringe-inducing video messages, promoting the administration’s weird fixation with Cyrus the Great, and embarrassing historical revisionism about the 1953 coup. When he wasn’t trying to bribe ships’ captains to steal Iranian cargo, he was insulting our intelligence with phony claims of wanting to normalize relations with Tehran. Last year he came under fire from the State Department’s Inspector General for his role in the mistreatment of Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who was the target of political retaliation at the department on account of her support for the JCPOA and at least partly because of her Iranian heritage.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed the new assignment last Thursday. Abrams, who is already the Special Envoy for Venezuela and also a noted Iran hawk, will hold both positions. Hook and Abrams had been tasked with executing the administration’s “maximum pressure” policy against the governments in Caracas and Tehran. In Venezuela, the U.S. became involved in a military coup that never got started while completely failing to advance the prospects for its “recognized” president of the country, Juan Guaido. The White House’s objective in Iran was and still continues to be squeezing the economy to bring about an uprising by the long-suffering Iranian people that would force the government to negotiate surrender terms with Washington. That has also failed to materialize.

Current U.S. policy on Iran has come down to threats to use military force if there is any evidence that the Iranians are seeking to develop a nuclear weapon. Both Hook and Abrams were disinterested in engaging in diplomacy within their respective operational areas. In spite of the lack of any results Pompeo praised the departing Hook saying that “Special Representative Hook has been my point person on Iran for over two years and he has achieved historic results countering the Iranian regime… [he has] also served with distinction as the Director of Policy Planning and set into motion a range of new strategies that advanced the national security interests of the United States and our allies.”

Abrams is best known due to having pleaded guilty in 1991 as part of the Iran-Contra affair. He was subsequently pardoned by President George H. W. Bush. While assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Abrams had testified before Congress and lied, saying that the U.S. had not been involved in arming the right-wing Contra rebel group against the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He later admitted that he had withheld information and entered into a plea agreement for a reduced sentence of two years in probation. His felony did not hurt his political career as he later served in the George W. Bush administration and currently with Trump.

The promotion of Abrams confirms that Donald Trump cares not at all for diplomacy or even for treating foreign countries with respect. This attitude has done serious damage to American interests around the world. It is past time to stop making excuses for the president and instead begin to consider what needs to be done to repair the damage.

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