Bulletin N° 1115
WE ALL LIVE ON JONES
PLANTATION
The
Film
by
(1:50:00)
“You
can control a man with brute violence but you can never truly OWN a man until
he's convinced that your word is law, and obedience is a virtue. A film
destined to be a cult classic, and at the forefront of American Dissident
Cinema.”
+
Jones Plantation
The
Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb8Rj5xkDPk
by Larken
Rose
(12:13)
“One
cannot change reality by changing the words you use to describe reality. Look
beneath the rhetoric, and glimpse the truth.”
+
Let Your Life Be a Friction
to Stop the Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Xh5eN2fXY
(22:51)
Grenoble,
France
September
1, 2023
Subject: “Summertime an' the livin' is
easy; the fish are jumpin’ an' the cotton is high ….”
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
We have been alerted by our ruling class authorities
that times are changing, that scarcity, including a drastic reduction in the
world’s population, will be the rule with which we can expect them to govern
us.
There is more than a problem of aesthetics here. We
are presented with an ultimatum, and our traditional leaders have betrayed us
for a variety of reasons, which no longer matter. We are beyond speaking truth
to power and must now turn to one another for advice and guidance, drawn from
deep experiences and self-knowledge. Our very lives and the lives of those we
love depend on this.
The 21+ items below are essays and articles
taken from critical Anglophone social media and which seek to stimulate
dialogue based on shared experiences and common observations. We live in a
period of flux, and the criteria for new alliances must include a consciousness
of conflicting social class interests. To avoid the fallacy of “misplaced
concreteness,” we must appreciate the diversities around us and conceptualize
the social and historical context in which we are living and are struggling to
understand more clearly (with a little help from our friends).
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
___________
Professeur honoraire
de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur des
Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego
http://www.ceimsa.org
a.
“James Corbett and I on a Zoom
call”
with Bruce de Torres and James Corbett
(audio, 23:10)
"Here,
deep into 2023, what are the worst things happening – the most dangerous and
important things that we’re facing – and what’s the good news? Who are the
people and organizations, besides you, who are trying to wake people up, so
more people can resist the total tyranny toward which we speed, and what are
some of the things people can learn and do to free ourselves from all that’s
trying to enslave and kill us?"
The
Corbett Report is listener-supported, commercial-free alternative media which
provides critical analysis of politics, society, history, and economics with
thousands of hours of audio and video content, including podcasts, interviews,
and articles about breaking news and important issues from 9/11 Truth and false
flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, the central banking
fraud, Covid-19, and more.
+
“The Milgram Experiment”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM
with Dr. Stanley Migram
(5:04)
+
“Ten Irrefutable, Devastating 9/11
Facts”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/ten-irrefutable-devastating-911-facts/5637525
by Elias Davidsson
and Craig McKee
Scholars who attempt to elucidate the crime perpetrated on
9/11 – who are commonly referred to as 9/11 truthers
– are often criticized for relying on conjecture and speculation in
support of their claims. Such criticism may at times be justified, though
often made in bad faith.
There is actually no need to resort to speculative arguments
that the official account of 9/11 is a fraud since there are hard facts
that support this conclusion. Here are 10 such undisputed facts:
1. U.S. authorities have failed to
trace, arrest, try (prosecute), and punish anyone responsible for the crime
against humanity committed on 9/11.
The mass
murder committed on September 11, 2001 represents, under international law, a
crime against humanity. The State where it was committed – in this case
the United States of America – bears the obligation to the international
community to trace, arrest, try, and punish individuals responsible for that
crime.
Since
2002, U.S. authorities admit they have detained a handful of persons at
Guantánamo Bay who are accused of helping to orchestrate 9/11. Their identities
remain in doubt; their alleged confessions were made behind closed doors;
and their trial by a military court does not fulfill minimal international
norms of due process.
U.S.
authorities claim to have sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life imprisonment for not having warned
the FBI about the preparations for 9/11, an allegation he denied. No evidence
was presented that he was involved in the preparations for 9/11 or knew
anything about these preparations. No evidence was presented that he even knew
the alleged hijackers. U.S. authorities also claim to hold, since 2003, a man
by the name of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed (KSM) in Guantánamo who allegedly
confessed to have masterminded 9/11 and more than 30 other terrorist
operations. He also allegedly confessed to having planned an attack on a bank
in Washington State that did not exist until after he was already in
Guantánamo. The man, whose identity remains murky and whose
connection to 9/11 is limited to what he said in his ludicrous confession, has
not been prosecuted, let alone sentenced. No one seriously expects him
to be ever brought to trial, let alone a trial fulfilling international norms.
2. When announcing to the United
Nations their decision to attack Afghanistan,
U.S.
authorities failed to provide evidence that the crime of 9/11 was in any
way connected to Afghanistan. In fact, such evidence has still not been
produced. . . .
+
“U.S Sponsored Neo-Nazi Ukraine
2014 EuroMaidan. The Hiring of Snipers”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/yakimenko-accuses-euromaidan-leaders-hiring-snipers/5830309
by Katya Gorchinskaya
This important Kiev Post article by Katya
Gorchinskaya (originally published on March 13, 2014)
in the immediate wake of the EuroMaidan, quotes
Ukraine’s Head of State Security of Ukraine Oleksandr
Yakimenko (under the Yanukovych
government) pointing to the hiring of snipers on February 20, 2014.
Yakimenko
also reviews how the U.S. provided financial support to the Protest
Movement.
***
Former State Security Head of Ukraine Oleksandr Yakimenko blames
Ukraine’s current government for hiring snipers on Feb. 20, 2014 when dozens of
people were killed and hundreds more wounded.
The victims were mainly EuroMaidan
Revolution demonstrations, but some police officers were also killed. This was
the deadliest day during the EuroMaidan Revolution, a three-month uprising that claimed 100 lives.
Yakimenko also blamed the United States for
organizing and financing the revolution by bringing illegal cash in using
diplomatic mail.
The U.S.
Embassy in Ukraine dismissed the charges as ludicrous, while another official
with the current government called the accusations “cynical” propaganda with no
factual basis.
The former
SBU chief is now wanted in Ukraine for his alleged role in organizing mass
murders in Ukraine, along with numerous other former top officials of deposed President
Viktor Yanukovych’s administration, including the ex-president himself,
former Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka,
former Interior Minister Vitaliy Zahkharchenko and former presidential chief of staff Andriy Klyuyev.
Read more:
U.S. Regime Now Applies Maximum Brutality to the Ukrainian People
+
“How that ‘wildfire’ so PRECISELY
burned out Maui's poorer residents—who may now be ‘resettled’ in a "15-minute
city” (Schwabspeak for ‘concentration camp’)
by Mark Crispin Miller
============
b.
“Depopulation Virtue Signaling: How To Kill Billions Without Being Ill-Mannered”
with Dennis Meadows, co-author of
Limits of Power
(10:32)
He says
the planet can support one billion people or at most two billion, then he describes things that “could” happen, such as
volcano eruptions or “epidemics” to kill a great many people.
+
“Elite’s Depopulation Agenda Is
Now Irrefutable”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/elite-depopulation-agenda-now-irrefutable/5758148
by Joachim Hagopian
and video with Laura Lynn Tylor Thompson (8:01)
First published October 10, 2021
By now – October 2021 – it’s more than evident that the Big Pharma-Great
Reset globalist elite are currently
committing human
genocide, carrying
out their eugenics depopulation
agenda. In spite of Big Media’s censorship
blackout as complicit murderers causing misinformed, lied to hundreds of
thousands of innocent victims to die from the killer vaccines already, in
response scores of leading medical doctors, expert scientists and insider
whistleblowers at great risk to themselves have been shouting from rooftops to
sound the apocalyptic alarm.
Early on
during the vaccine rollout, last February 2021 Dr. Sherry Tenpenny accurately predicted that by May through August, thousands of deaths from
the vaccines will be falsely blamed on the fake variants. Outspoken Dr. Carrie Medej is now speaking out against the vaccine dangers through nanotechnology
and the transhumanist elements of how AI through nanoparticles in vaccines are merging with genetically
modified GMO former humans.
Veteran
medical vaccine whistleblower Dr. Joseph Mercola exposes the “medical reset” within Klaus Schwab’s NWO reset. Top
international cardiologist, internist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough has been making big waves, in late August 2021 asserting that the
vaccinated carry 251 times the viral load than the nonvaccinated. Dr.
McCullough also promotes natural immunity
and benign drugs HCQ and Ivermectin instead of the harmful vaccines, just
declaring:
We’re in
the middle of a major biological catastrophe.
Even the mRNA and DNA
vaccine technology inventor, Dr. Robert Malone, MD rails against the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines as bioethically
irresponsible and highly dangerous:
We need to
confront the data [and] not try to cover stuff up or hide risks.
Canadian Dr.
Charles Hoffe was horrified to learn that 62% of his mostly First Nations patients
experienced permanent blood clot damage after receiving their vaccine.
Below is
his interview, with Laura Lynn Tylor Thompson (8:01)
+
Video: Dr. Naomi Wolf Uncovers
Pfizer’s Depopulation Agenda, as Evidenced by Its Own Documents
by The Vigilant Fox and Dr. Naomi
Wolf
“These people [powers that be] don’t
want us to be self-sustaining,” concluded Dr. Naomi
Wolf in front of a live audience at a recent VAC family event. “They
want us to be dependent and scared.”
What self-sustaining quality are
they targeting most? Our ability to reproduce, attested Dr. Wolf.
“One thing
people have been able to do for thousands of years is to have sex and have
babies without any intervention or help from anyone else. It’s a tremendous way
that the human race is self-reliant — that it can survive catastrophe. Well,
the Tech Bros. and probably China want to take that away from us. This is clear
in the Pfizer documents.”
“There’s a
section of the Pfizer documents in which Pfizer breaks down the adverse events
and concludes that women sustain 72% of them,” she continued. “And of those —
and these are Pfizer’s words — 16% are quote-unquote “reproductive disorders”
compared to 0.49% for men. So they’re very focused on reproduction, on female
reproduction.”
“It’s my
belief that they were trying to disrupt especially female reproduction,” Dr. Wolf determined. “And the question is, how do I know that? And the answer is from the structure
of what they looked at. Again, I’m a literary critic, but this is a mystery
novel in which the question is, how do we stop women from having healthy
babies? That’s the story of the Pfizer documents.”
“So in the Pfizer documents, there’s
a chart,” detailed Dr. Wolf.
“And as a
woman, this is one of the most painful things to see. And I’m Jewish. And my
grandmother lost nine brothers and sisters to the Holocaust. So I don’t say
this lightly, but this chart is a Mengele-type of
chart. It’s Mengele science.”
“Why is it
Mengele science?” she asked. “Because
they break down 20 different horrible things that can happen to women’s
menstruation.”
More reproductive adverse events are listed here.
Here’s a
fraction of the 20-something different ways Pfizer
admits the mRNA jab can dysregulate or affect women’s reproductive health:
·
Heavy menstrual bleeding – 27,685
cases
·
Menstrual disorder (pain, heavy
bleeding, or absence of menstruation) – 22,145 cases
·
Menstruation irregular (irregular
cycle lengths) – 15,083 cases
·
Menstruation delayed – 13,989
cases
·
Dysmennorhea (pain during menstruation) – 13,904 cases
·
Intermenstrual bleeding (bleeding in between periods) – 12,424 cases
·
Amenorrhea (absence of period) –
11,363 cases
·
Polymenorrhea (multiple periods) – 9,546 cases
·
Vaginal hemorrhage (excessive
bleeding of the female reproductive system) – 4,699 cases.
·
Oligomenorrhea (infrequent menstrual periods) – 3,437 cases
“I’m looking at ruined lives,”
grieved Dr.
Wolf.
“And they
[Pfizer] just note them calmly, one by one by one.”
+
Myocarditis, don't bother to report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVd6IonyI0Y&si=k4In9cXv3ezKnrv_
by Dr. John Campbell
(19:38)
+
“Pirola panic”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EdMMrCa_UE&si=KlVmPm2cAYcljzRW
with Dr. John Campbell
(15:26)
+
Are you Ready
to Get Injected?
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/are-you-ready-to-get-injected?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
by Robert W Malone MD, MS
Biden states that any new COVID-19
vaccines will be for All Americans...
The Biden
administration has requested funding from congress to develop a new COVID
vaccine and is recommending that all Americans get this mystery “vaccine”.
Please keep in mind that, despite years of intense effort, there has never been
a safe and effective human coronavirus vaccine
(including for the common beta-coronavirus cold)
developed. But despite this record, Mr. Biden now asserts that this (yet to be
developed product) will “work”.
According
to Mr. Biden, the plan will be for everyone to get the vaccine, including both
those who have received the existing products (which he appears to be tacitly
acknowledging did not “work”) as well as those who have never had a COVID-19
vaccine before.
Are we
going to be held down for administration, or will they just close down our bank
accounts?
============
c.
“Are they prepping for Plandemic
2.0?”
https://off-guardian.org/2023/08/22/discuss-are-they-prepping-for-plandemic-2-0/
by Off-Guardian
The buzz
around the alt-news sphere the last few days has been that the establishment is
planning to bring back pandemic restrictions. And, in fairness, this is some
evidence this could be true.
It started
with Alex Jones reporting that a whistleblower from the TSA had informed him
the US government was going to start bringing back Covid
restrictions in starting in October and going into full lockdown again by December.
There’s
also the fact we’re suddenly being told about “case spikes” and not one, not
two, but THREE new
variants – Eris, Pi and Pirola – have hit the headlines.
Meanwhile,
some places are bringing
back mask mandates already, such as Morris Brown College in
Atlanta.
It’s not just the US either, last week a hospital in Dublin re-instituted Covid rules
Just a few
days ago Robin Monotti posted this to Twitter. . . .
Apparently,
the UK government’s Health Security Agency is looking to hire a “Vaccine Supply
Operations Overseer” for the upcoming “largest vaccination programme”
which is to be “delivered at pace”.
Neil
Ferguson has even emerged from hiding to warn
against the Pirola variant.
So, those
warning we’re in for another “Plandemic” aren’t
panicking over nothing. There’s no smoke without fire, after all, and there’s a
lot of smoke here.
…a
suspicious amount of smoke, you might say. An “orgy of evidence” is always hard
to trust. And given how watchful Covid sceptics are likely to be, for the establishment to
advertise their intentions like that would be a
potential mistake.
But what
other explanation could there be? Realistically, we’re looking at three
potential plans here.
It really is just “Plandemic 2.0”. The reason
it looks like they’re gearing
up to redo covid…is that they’re gearing up to redo Covid. They’re not shy about making their agenda plain a
lot of the time, and this is just an egregious example.
+
Fauci Declares Lockdowns Were
'Absolutely Justified' and Suggests They Should be Used Again to Force
Vaccinations
https://www.globalresearch.ca/fauci-lockdowns-justified-used-again-force-vaccinations/5830213
by Jordan Schachtel
Recently retired government bureaucrat Anthony Fauci just appeared at a university virtual event titled,
“Pandemic Lessons and Role of Faculty in Pandemic Preparedness with Dr. Anthony
Fauci.” During the conversation, Fauci,
who is now affiliated with Georgetown University, made it clear that he still
supports locking down society in the name of a virus, adding that lockdowns are
a great tool to forcibly “vaccinate” people.
I’ll save
you 40 minutes of your life and quote some of the “highlights” from the
interview, in which a Wayne State University professor asks Fauci
about what he’s learned from his time overseeing a “pandemic response.” The
video of the chat is available via YouTube below . . . .
+
Stevens-Johnson
Syndrome After
Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/stevens-johnson-syndrome-pfizer-moderna-covid-19-mrna-vaccines/5830108
by Dr. William Makis
July 3, 2023 – BRAZIL – 52 year old singer and
composer Frank Aguiar is married to 31 year old
Caroline Aguiar, who revealed on social media on her
birthday that she had Stevens-Johnson Syndrome that
“burns the body” and was hospitalized in the ICU for 10 days, almost died.
+
You Have Every Reason To Question EVERYTHING You're Told About Variants, Vaccines,
Masks & PCR Tests
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/question-everything-variants-masks/
with Ryan Cristián
(2:54:29)
+
COVID mRNA Vaccine Injury Series:
Mysterious Strokes in Young Women
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-mrna-vaccine-strokes-young-women/5830199
by Dr. William Makis
UK – 23 year old Chandler
Plante, a magazine editor, had “mild COVID” in Dec.
2020, suffered a stroke in March 2021 and lost all vision in her right eye in
Nov. 2021. “No one understands why this has happened to me” (source).
This article blames the “mystery illness” on “severe
long COVID” which doesn’t make sense. She had mild COVID in Dec. 2020 and then
a stroke in March 2021. Chandler is presumed COVID-19 vaccinated (article would
focus on her being unvaccinated).
Her illness started as numbness in hands and
forearms and she was dismissed as having “anxiety”. By June 28, brain scan
showed big ischemic strokes.
By April 2023 she had infusion of a chemo drug rituximab and her side effects are improving significantly.
I suspect she had an autoimmune condition caused by
COVID-19 vaccines and her doctors either never figured it out or never told
her.
Aug. 24, 2023 – Calamvale,
QLD, Australia – Shermayne Peka
had headaches and a stroke in Dec. 2022 and her doctors blamed it on a “hole in
her heart” which they couldn’t find on later pre-surgery scans. When her
headaches returned in July 2023 she was diagnosed with Glioblastoma
Grade 4 (TURBO BRAIN CANCER) (source).
+
“Alex Jones Makes Frightening Covid Prediction!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMU3KD-RAPM&feature=youtu.be
with Craig “Pasta” Jardula
(13:00)
Alex Jones
is widely derided in mainstream circles as a crazed conspiracy theorist but
this reputation is belied by Jones’ record of accuracy in many of his predictions.
Now Jones is telling anyone who’ll listen that the powerful elites who actually
run things are planning to bring back pandemic restrictions including
compulsory mask-wearing and other lockdown measures.
+
Congressman CONFIRMS RFK’s
Targeted Bioweapons Theory!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rdYyuLys34&si=dplJnze7dgO7M4zp
with Craig “Pasta” Jardula
(20:36)
Remember
when RFK Jr. was raked over the coals in the media and called an antisemite for suggesting that biological agents were in
development that could target specific demographic groups? Well, it turns out
he was 100 percent telling the truth, something as diverse sources as the U.S.
Navy and Democratic Congressman Jason Crow have publicly acknowledged.
+
Russia & China BOTH Accuse
U.S. Of Planning Biowarfare!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkMlkB2JFv4
with Craig “Pasta” Jardula
and Kurt Metzger
(21:50)
Suspicions
have long been swirling surrounding the possibly nefarious activities going on
at the Wuhan Viral Institute, as well as the Ukrainian "biolabs" the U.S. government was so concerned about
falling into Russian hands. Now both the Russian and Chinese governments are
accusing the United States of conducting research into biological weaponry in
violation of a range of international treaties.
============
d.
A Book Review: “Canary in a COVID
World: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-propaganda-censorship-changed-world/5830045
by Elizabeth Woodworth
34 Thought Leaders Demolish the
COVID Propaganda Event
The inspired editors of this fascinating collection have
managed to gain the confidence and cooperation of 34 thought leaders who have
exposed all the elements of the systematic global health propaganda that
delivered the drumbeat message:
1.
The pandemic threatens the
survival of all humanity
2.
There is no therapy to cure the
sick
3.
It is necessary to confine the
whole population, and
4.
The delivery will come only from a
vaccine
This
propaganda and its attendant censorship occurred within the context of a corona
cold virus which, according to the World Health Organization, kills only 0.23%
of those infected (that’s 1 in 400, mostly elderly. Bull. WHO,
Oct. 14, 2020).
The
following list of leading public health scholars, whose essays appear in this
volume, were censored on media and social media from 2020-2023. This book (one
of the best I have read) is their story of Covd-19:
·
Dr. Harvey A. Risch,
epidemiologist, Yale School of Public Health (500+ articles in print)
·
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya,
epidemiologist, Stanford University (300+ articles), on the backlash and death
threats against his orthodox public health recommendations of “focused
protection” for the vulnerable
·
Dr. Robert W. Malone, vaccinologist, inventor of mRNA technology platform (155
articles)
·
Dr. Peter A. McCullough,
cardiologist, former Vice-Chair Internal Medicine, Baylor Univ. (600+ articles)
on “the terrible safety track record and trail of injuries, disabilities and
deaths” from the mandated mRNA injections.
·
Dr. Paul Marik,
Pulmonary & Critical Care specialist (500 articles, 80 book chapters, 4
textbooks)
·
Dr. Joseph Ladapo,
Florida Surgeon General (165 articles)
·
Dr. Norman Fenton, Prof. of Risk,
St. Mary’s University, London (343 articles) provides careful interpretation of
the number of deaths reported for the Covid-19 injections.
The
following eminent physicians and specialists were also silenced by censorship
when they sought to protest the unprecedented, unorthodox and counterproductive
global Covid pandemic policies whose ultimate origins
have yet to be traced:
·
Dr. Pierre Kory, ICU specialist
and co-founder of FLCCC (Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance)
·
Dr. Ryan Cole, pathologist and
laboratory-owner, who spoke out about disturbing trends in cancers after the
vaccine roll-out – and then was punished by his profession and his insurance
company
·
Dr. Aseem
Malhotra, NHS-trained Consultant Cardiologist, on
“How Pharmaceutical Overreach, Corruption and Health System Failures Birthed
COVID.” Both Dr. Malhotra and Dr. Harvey Risch contend that evidence-based medicine has been
hijacked by powerful vested interests.
·
Dr. James Thorp, Obstetrician and
Gynecologist, on “The Most Egregious Violation of Medical Ethics in the History
of Medicine.”
·
Dr. George Fareed,
a family physician in Southern California early-treated 7000 patients using
common repurposed drugs without incurring a single loss, insisting that “Covid is a treatable disease. If we treat Covid early, no one dies. All the patients we treated early
and who adhered to our treatments, lived.”
·
He and his colleague, Dr. Brian
Tyson, were heavily censored. “Why,” he asks, “Why would anyone want to stop
getting the word out when a pandemic that rocked the globe could be effectively
treated?”
·
Senator Ron Johnson reports that
although the US Government had a stockpile of hydroxychloroquine
before the vaccines arrived, even President Trump did
not have the power to release it because “the media was so in the tank for Fauci that Trump couldn’t contradict him.”
Johnson
reports on vaccinated people “suffering with internal vibrations so severe
they’re committing suicide.”
He
concludes,
“Right now
it’s all of us against the media. It’s all of us against the COVID cartel: the
administration, health agencies, big pharma,
mainstream media, and big tech social media giants. The body count is so high
they can’t afford to admit they’re wrong.”
The
courage shown by veteran family physician Dr. Mary O’Connor in protecting, from
the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, the identities and privacy of
her patients who had received vaccine exemptions is worth the price of this
entire book.
The
opposite of courage, fear accompanied by a loss of critical thinking, is
explored by novelist Colin McAdam and historian John Leake.
Dr. Peter Breggin, psychiatrist, author of 20 medical books and
expert witness at 100+ medial malpractice court
appearances, reports that SARS-CoV2 was a gain-of-function lab virus, and that
the WHO master plan for pandemics had been created by WHO super-funder Bill Gates and his vaccine development foundation
CEPI, in its 2017 Preliminary CEPI
Business Plan. Gates has long favoured Pfizer
and Moderna.
Read more:
An Open Letter to the Silent Doctor. The Worldwide “Weaponization of Health”
Therefore
Dr. Pierre Kory’s stunning exposé, “The Global Disinformation Campaign Against Ivermectin – The “Fix” at the WHO,” comes as no surprise,
with its breath-taking detective work showing how the WHO was insidiously
corrupted to recommend against using the almost magically effective antiviral Ivermectin – except in clinical trials.
Journalists speaking out:
+
INTERVIEW - Under the Wire - A
very special interview with Dr William Makis, Truth
Warrior: Vaccine injuries, Turbo Cancers & Spike Protein Detox
https://makismd.substack.com/p/interview-under-the-wire-a-very-special
with Dr. William Makis
MD and Meryl Dorey
(1:51:05)
+
What Really Happened Inside the
COVID-19 Vaccine Trials?
We all have had to pay the price
for the horrible things that were done to the trial participants.
Indeed. What did really happen? Why
did the mRNA genetic vaccine clinical trials fail to detect the many adverse
events and lack of efficacy in preventing disease and death from COVID-19? This
essay provides part of the answer - overt clinical research fraud. The other
key part of the answer is that the trials were under powered to reliably detect
outcomes relating to pathogenicity. The virulence of
the virus is relatively low except in some selected cohorts (which were not
selected for or "enriched" in the trials), so detection of any clear
protective effects would have required much larger enrollment numbers, more
time, and more treasure!
--Robert
W Malone MD, MS
Story at a Glance:
·
One strategy used by Big Pharma to gaslight those injured by pharmaceuticals is to
insist that there is no data linking the injury to the drug. Frequently
however, these injuries were, in fact, observed in the trial but simply covered
up to create the illusion the pharmaceutical was safe
·
For Big Pharma
to hide injuries that occur within a clinical trial requires them to
aggressively gaslight the injured participants. Despite the fact that this
ongoing practice had produced decades of bad data and severely harmed countless
trial participants, nothing has been done to address this issue
·
Numerous individuals have bravely
come forward to provide testimony that severe research misconduct occurred
throughout the COVID-19 trials. This misconduct resulted in a high human cost.
The misconduct observed is similar to what has happened in previous trials, and
proves that the COVID-19 vaccine approval was fraudulent.
Note: This is a revised and updated version of an article I previously wrote on the topic. Due to the importance of
bringing to light what happened in the COVID-19 trials, I felt it was important
to provide an update.
Recently,
I reviewed the horrendous subject of medical
gaslighting,
something that many have had to face throughout the pandemic, when one doctor
after another made the claim that COVID-19 vaccine reactions can’t exist and
your physical problems must all be in your head. Today I will discuss a central
foundation of medical
gaslighting.
One of the
major things that underlies almost all cults (along
with many other organizations that seek to control large numbers of people) is
that its adherents are trained to interpret everything they see through the
lens of their ideology, and deny anything they observe which challenges it.
Within the modern institution of science, this is accomplished by creating the
mythology that humans are irrational beings whose observations cannot be
trusted.
“Science,”
then solves this problem it created by providing “evidence” that is more
trustworthy than anyone’s individual “flawed” observations, and thus
effectively silences any challenges to the institution (e.g., those
inconvenient observations frequently made by members of the public).
Often in
medicine, we observe this issue because doctors will insist that there is “no
evidence” that an adverse reaction to a medical product could have occurred.
Rather, the injury must have been a coincidence or the product of a
pre-existing psychological problem. As you might expect, this mindset
incentivizes pharmaceutical companies to do everything they can to produce
doctored clinical trials that conceal any and all adverse events from their
product.
+
“Spike Protein Accumulates in
Brain and Skull and Causes Damage. Brand New Study!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmje9djPd5o
with Dr. Mobeen
Syed
(56:04)
============
e.
“COVID's over”? Not
as long as Dr. Death has anything to say about it...
by Mark Crispin Miller
The
Devil's favorite doctor is now popping up again, to help roll out
"Pandemic 2" (in hopes of getting millions "vaccinated"
even MORE, while forcing "vaccination" on the rest of us)
+
The CEO of Pfizer Is Now the World’s Highest Paid Pharma boss
https://www.globalresearch.ca/ceo-pfizer-world-highest-paid-pharma-boss/5830069
Albert Bourla,
the notorious snake oil salesman and horse doctor who serves as the CEO of
Pfizer, is now the highest paid executive in the entire Pharma
industry.
In
Vivo has published the total compensation package for Bourla,
which last year reached an astronomical $33 million dollars. He has earned just
short of $100 million in salary since 2019. On top of that, Bourla
has earned tens of millions through the sale of Pfizer stock. At the end of
last year, he sold 222,328 shares of Pfizer stock, cashing out over $6 million.
He retains about a quarter million shares in the company.
Video: Vaccine Passports?. . . .
+
FDA and ivermectin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR4jEvuoF6I&si=pI7PABQR6ItSFFNo
with Dr. John Campbell
(15:22)
============
f.
“Billionaires Try to
Shrink World’s Population”: Secret Gathering Sponsored by Bill Gates, 2009
Meeting of “The Good Club”
(Is Worldwide Depopulation Part of the Billionaire's
"Great Reset")
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
For more than ten years, meetings
have been held by billionaires described as philanthropists to Reduce the Size of the World’s Population culminating with
the 2020-2022 Covid crisis.
Recent developments suggest that “Depopulation”
is an integral part of the so-called Covid mandates
including the lockdown policies and the mRNA “vaccine”.
Flash
back to 2009. According to the Wall Street Journal: “Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s
Population”.
In
May 2009, the Billionaire philanthropists met behind closed doors at the
home of the president of The Rockefeller University in Manhattan.
This
Secret Gathering was sponsored by Bill Gates. They called themselves “The Good Club”.
Among
the participants were the late David
Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and many more.
In May 2009, the WSJ as well as the
Sunday Times reported: (John Harlow, Los Angeles) that
“Some of America’s leading
billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to
slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health
and education.”
The emphasis was not on population
growth (i.e Planned Parenthood) but on
“Depopulation”, i.e,. the reduction in
the absolute size of the World’s population.
To
read complete WSJ article click here.
According to the Sunday
Times report :
The philanthropists who attended a
summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder,
discussed joining forces to overcome
political and religious obstacles to change.
…
Stacy Palmer, editor of the
Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the summit was unprecedented. “We only learnt
about it afterwards, by accident. Normally these people are happy to talk good
causes, but this is different – maybe because they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal,” he said.
Another guest said there was
“nothing as crude as a vote” but a consensus emerged that they would back a
strategy in which population growth
would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and
industrial threat.
“This is something so nightmarish
that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest.
…
Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without
worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an
alternative world government,” he said.(Sunday
Times)
Shrinking
The World’s Population
+
“List of 30 ‘Elites’
That Support and Promote Worldwide Depopulation”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/list-30-elites-that-support-promote-depopulation/5825634
by Michael Snyder and Alexander Light
This article was
originally published in 2018.
There is a clear consensus among
the global elite that overpopulation is the primary cause
of the most important problems that the world is facing and that
something desperately needs to be done about it. They truly believe that
humans are a plague upon the earth and that we will literally destroy the
planet if we are left to our own devices…
…The following are
30 population control quotes which show that the elite truly believe that
humans are a plague upon the earth and that a great culling is necessary:
1. UK Television
Presenter Sir
David Attenborough: “We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming
home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s
sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our
population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world
is doing it for us right now”
2. Paul
Ehrlich, a former science adviser to president
George W. Bush and the author of “The Population Bomb”: “To our minds,
the fundamental cure, reducing the scale of the human enterprise (including the
size of the population) to keep its aggregate consumption within the carrying
capacity of Earth is obvious but too much neglected or denied”
3. Paul
Ehrlich again, this time on the
size of families: “Nobody, in my view, has the right to have 12 children or
even three unless the second pregnancy is twins”
4. Dave
Foreman, the co-founder of Earth First: “We humans
have become a disease, the Humanpox.”
5. CNN Founder Ted Turner: “A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from
present levels, would be ideal.”
He was quoted
saying: “We’re too many people; that’s why we have global warming.”
Unfortunately for
him and other fervent depopulationists, both
the overpopulation myth and the man-made global warming hoax,
have been repeatedly debunked.
6. Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso about medical patients with serious
illnesses: “You cannot sleep well when you think it’s all paid by the
government. This won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die.”
7. David
Rockefeller: “The negative impact of population growth
on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.”
8. Environmental activist Roger Martin: “On a finite planet, the optimum population providing the best quality
of life for all, is clearly much smaller than the
maximum, permitting bare survival. The more we are,
the less for each; fewer people mean better lives.”
9. HBO personality Bill Maher: “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m
for whatever gets the freeway moving – that’s what I’m for. It’s too crowded,
the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”
10. MIT professor Penny Chisholm: “The real trick is, in terms of trying to level off at someplace lower
than that 9 billion, is to get the birthrates in the
developing countries to drop as fast as we can. And that will determine the
level at which humans will level off on earth.”
11. Julia
Whitty, a columnist for
Mother Jones: “The only known solution to ecological overshoot is to decelerate
our population growth faster than it’s decelerating now and eventually reverse
it — at the same time we slow and eventually reverse the rate at which we
consume the planet’s resources.
Is a Global Demographic Crisis Unavoidable?
+
“Not a Single Court
in the Western World Is Willing to Examine the Covid-19 Evidence. ‘Crimes
against Humanity’ Revealed by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich”
by Stephen Karganovic
+
“Scamdemic
2: The New Batch”
https://www.corbettreport.com/nwnw527/
with James Corbett and James Evan Pilato
(22:09)
============
g.
US post-9/11 wars caused 4.5
million deaths, displaced 38-60 million people, study shows
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57769.htm
by Ben Norton
Wars the
US waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September
11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million
people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown
University.
+
The Project for the New American
Century
https://web.archive.org/web/20030407091744/http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm
by William Rivers Pitt
The Project for the New American
Century, or PNAC, is a Washington-based
think tank created in 1997. Above all else, PNAC desires and demands one
thing: The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of
all nations. They chafe at the idea that the United States, the last
remaining superpower, does not do more by way of economic and military
force to bring the rest of the world under the umbrella of a new
socio-economic Pax Americana.
The fundamental essence of PNAC's ideology can be found in a White Paper
produced in September of 2000 entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses:
Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." In it, PNAC outlines
what is required of America to create the global empire they envision.
According to PNAC, America must:
* Reposition permanently based forces to Southern Europe, Southeast Asia
and the Middle East;
* Modernize U.S. forces, including enhancing our fighter aircraft,
submarine and surface fleet capabilities;
* Develop and deploy a global missile defense system, and develop a
strategic dominance of space;
* Control the "International Commons" of cyberspace;
* Increase defense spending to a minimum of 3.8 percent of gross domestic
product, up from the 3 percent currently spent.
Most ominously, this PNAC document described four "Core Missions" for
the
American military. The two central requirements are for American forces to
"fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars,"
and
to "perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security
environment in critical regions." Note well that PNAC does not want
America
to be prepared to fight simultaneous major wars. That is old school. In
order to bring this plan to fruition, the military must fight these wars
one way or the other to establish American dominance for all to see.
Why is this important? After all, wacky think tanks are a cottage industry
in Washington, DC. They are a dime a dozen. In what way does PNAC stand
above the other groups that would set American foreign policy if they could?
Two events brought PNAC into the mainstream of American government: the
disputed election of George W. Bush, and the attacks of September 11th.
When Bush assumed the Presidency, the men who created and nurtured the
imperial dreams of PNAC became the men who run the Pentagon, the Defense
Department and the White House. When the Towers came down, these men saw,
at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive
policy.
Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the
ideological father of the
group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for
Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position
with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
PNAC is staffed by men who previously served with groups like Friends of
the Democratic Center in Central America, which supported America's bloody
gamesmanship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with groups like The
Committee for the Present Danger, which spent years advocating that a
nuclear war with the Soviet Union was "winnable."
+
John Mearsheimer:
“Ukraine war is a long-term danger”
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/07/30/john-mearsheimer-ukraine-war-is-a-long-term-danger/
with Aaron Maté
(1:01:55)
The
scholar who famously warned in 2014 that NATO was provoking Russia in Ukraine
on the state of the war and the troubles ahead.
Read “The Darkness Ahead: Where The
Ukraine War Is Headed” by John Mearsheimer
+
“Geopolitical Ambitions - A Global
Struggle for Influence”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbcp24Alabs
with Jeffrey Sachs
(18:58)
Jeffrey
Sachs is a well-known American economist, academic, and public policy analyst
who has made significant contributions to the fields of sustainable development
and economic development. He has held various prestigious positions throughout his
career, including serving as the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia
University and as a special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General on
the Millennium Development Goals. Sachs has authored numerous
books and articles on topics related to economics, poverty reduction, and
sustainable development. Website: jeffsachs.org
+
Bombshell: NATO Says "War
Started in 2014". "Fake Pretext" to Wage War
against Russia? To Invoke Article 5 of Atlantic
Treaty?
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
This article addresses the implications
of a controversial statement by NATO to the effect that the Ukraine War “didn’t start in 2022”, “The war started in 2014”
It’s a Bombshell: NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed
(speaking on behalf of NATO) that the
“war didn’t start in 2022”.
In
an interview with The Washington Post, Jens Stoltenberg unequivocally confirmed that “the war started
in 2014″.
Jens Stoltenberg’s bold statement (which has barely been the object of
media coverage) has opened up a Pandora’s Box, or best described “A Can
of Worms” on behalf of the Atlantic Alliance.
Part
I of this article examines the legal implications of Stoltenberg’s statement on
behalf of the Atlantic Alliance.
Of
crucial significance: Having stated that “the war started in 2014”, NATO
can no longer claim that Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) of February
24, 2022 constitutes, from a legal standpoint, “an invasion”.
Part
I also addresses the issue of The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC).
Parti
II focuses on Stoltenberg’s twisted statement that Article 5 of the Atlantic
Treaty could be invoked as means to declare war against Russia.
“Article 5 of the Atlantic Treaty – its collective defence clause” declaring that an attack on one member
state is “to be an attack against all NATO members.” Article 5 is NATO’s doctrine of Collective
Self-Defense.
“The
Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or
North America shall be considered an attack against them all”.
In
regards to the invocation of Article V in relation to Russia, a
justification or fake “pretext” was mentioned by Stoltenberg in his
interview with the Washington Post.
Were
Article V to be invoked, this would inevitably precipitate the World into
a WWIII scenario, consisting of a war whereby all 30 member states of the
Atlantic Alliance, most of which are members of the European Union would
be involved.
+
Western press fetishizes
Ukrainian amputees as limb loss epidemic grows
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/08/15/western-press-ukrainian-amputees/
by Kit Klarenberg
With Ukrainian forces reportedly suffering
a level of amputations reminiscent of WWI, a New York Times proxy war
propagandist is spinning amputees as sex symbols and painting their gruesome
injuries as “magical.”
After 18 months of devastating proxy
warfare, the scale of the depletion of the Ukrainian military is so extensive
that even mainstream sources have been forced to concede the cruel reality. On
August 1, The Wall Street Journal reported
that “between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians” have “lost one or
more limbs since the start of the war.” What’s more, the outlet notes, “the
actual figure could be higher” because “it takes time to register patients
after they undergo the procedure.”
By comparison, around 67,000 Germans
and 41,000 Britons underwent amputations during the entire four-year span of
the First World War. The publication quotes the head of a group of former
military surgeons who train Ukrainian military medics who maintained that “Western
military surgeons haven’t seen injuries on this scale since World War II.”
While the implications of the
Journal’s report have largely been studiously ignored by Western media, at
least one mainstream journalist has displayed a keen interest in Kiev’s amputees.
The New York Times’ columnist and ardent liberal interventionist Nicholas Kristof practically fetishized
the mass disfigurement of Ukrainian combat veterans in the name of Washington’s
war du jour.
In a July 8 op-ed titled
“They’re Ready to Fight Again, on Artificial Legs,” Kristof insisted that rather than resenting being used as
cannon fodder, Ukraine’s newly-disabled veterans “carry their stumps with
pride.”
+
The Origins Of
The Neocons And Their Lunatic World View | A History
With Professor Michael Brenner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPecqAHgRqU&si=7ACvFfjx3Ss3q8Ym
by Neutrality Studies with Pascal Lottaz
(1:24:42)
Neocons are about the most dangerous
species in international relations today. They are the kind of people who would
rather see a million dead than chose a cooperative framework to resolve a
(perceived) problem. Let's remember the memorable words of Ultra-Neocon Madeleine Albright: When asked in 1992 at an
interview if half a million dead Iraqi Children which the US sanctions on the
country had caused was worth it, Albright replied: “I think that is a very hard
choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” (https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/20.... If Hitler came back, he'd be a neocon. In
this talk, professor emeritus Michael Brenner gives a comprehensive overview of
the genesis and development of US neocons and the
damage they are causing in international relations.
+
Neocons and Other Malignancies in the
American Body Politic
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57768.htm
by Philip Giraldi
It is
interesting to observe how, over the past twenty-five years, the United States
has become not only a participant in wars in various places on the planet but
has also evolved into being the prime initiator of most of the armed conflict.
Going back to the Balkans in the nineteen-nineties and moving forward in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Somalia there is almost always an
American leading role where there is bombing and killing. And where there is no
actual war, there are threats and sanctions intended to make other nations come
to heel, be they in Latin America like Venezuela, or Iran in the Middle East,
or North Korea in Asia. And then there is the completely senseless act of
turning major competitors like Russia and China, as we are now seeing, into
enemies, with a proxy war raging in Ukraine, threats over Taiwan, and the world
moving one step closer to a nuclear disaster.
It seems
to me that the transition from an America bumbling its way into war and the
current situation where wars are pursued as a matter of course coincides with a
certain political development in the United States, which is the rise of
neoconservatives as the foreign and national security policy makers in both
major parties. This has developed together with the evolution of the view that
the United States can do no wrong by definition, indeed, that it has a unique
and God-given right to establish and police the globe through something that it
invented, exploits and has dubbed the “rules based international order.”
+
Ex-CIA: US Pentagon TERRIFIED Over
New Russia Strike Plan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so99Q47AHok&si=e7aIsta5-dqpyv0b
with Stephen Gardner and
Larry Johnson
(34:23)
+
“Stupidity on a Massive Scale”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmH9MoZYdjk&si=ZtEMi2zXTGMylybl
with Scott Ritter
(49:45)
+
Russian Drones Sting Hiding
Ukrainian Soldiers In Donetsk Forests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhxI5lAgnw&si=6E0idgiVQA4QLogd
(5:00)
+
The West Keeps Whining That Ukrainians
Are Cowards
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/21/the-west-keeps-whining-that-ukrainians-are-cowards/
by Caitlin Johnstone
Amid continuous
news that the Ukrainian counteroffensive which began in
June is
not going as hoped, The New York
Times has published an article titled “Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine
War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say.”
Reporting
that Ukrainian efforts to retake Russia-occupied territory have been “bogged
down in dense Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and
helicopter gunships,” The New York Timesreports
that Ukrainian forces have switched tactics to using
“artillery and long-range missiles instead of plunging into minefields under
fire.”
Then the
article gets really freaky:
“American
officials are worried that Ukraine’s adjustments will race through precious ammunition
supplies, which could benefit President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and
disadvantage Ukraine in a war of attrition. But Ukrainian commanders decided
the pivot reduced casualties and preserved their frontline fighting force.
American
officials say they fear that Ukraine has become casualty averse, one reason it
has been cautious about pressing ahead with the counteroffensive. Almost any
big push against dug-in Russian defenders protected by minefields would result
in huge numbers of losses.”
I’m sorry,
U.S. officials “fear” that Ukraine is becoming “casualty averse”? Because safer
battlefield tactics that burn through a lot of ammunition don’t chew through
lives like charging through a minefield under heavy artillery fire?
What are
the Ukrainians supposed to be? Casualty amenable? If
Ukraine was more casualty amenable, would it be more willing to throw young
bodies into the gears of this proxy war that the U.S. empire actively provoked and killed peace deals to maintain?
Something
tells me that the U.S. officials speaking to The New York Times about their “fear” of Ukrainian casualty aversiveness do not know what real fear is. Something tells
me that if you marched these U.S. officials through Russian minefields under
constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships, then they would understand fear.
+
Ex-CIA: US Pentagon PANICS As
Ukraine Collapses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iUHwQ9PKiM
with Ray McGovern and Stephen Gardner
(39:31)
Russia
Ukraine war news update. Ex-CIA Ray McGovern and Stephen Gardner discuss the
collapse of Ukraine. The propaganda being put out by the New York Times to
cover for Biden's failings. The worry around using a small
tactile nuke in Russia. The real number of deaths in
Ukraine and in Russia. Pentagon worried over the possibility of being
dragged into the Russian conflict. f-16 jets won't
save Ukraine, won't be delivered for a year and Abram tanks are still not delivered
to Ukraine. We are witnessing a humanitarian crisis. This is your Russia
Ukraine war news update.
+
Most ‘experts’ pushing for endless
conflict in Ukraine share a common benefactor
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57765.htm
by Rachel Marsden
A whopping 85% of media quotes on US
military involvement come from someone paid by the defense industry
Experts
with important-sounding titles linked to academic-sounding entities have been
shaping hearts and minds in the press, both at home and abroad, in favor of
endless conflict in Ukraine. Guess what deep-pocketed benefactor lurks beneath
the surface?
During the
Iraq War, the Pentagon backed retired generals to
make the rounds of TV and radio shows as ‘military analysts’ to promote the
Bush administration’s agenda in the Persian Gulf. It was like inviting
Ronald McDonald on a program to debate and discuss the merit of Big Macs. You
could almost see the strings attached to the puppets, linked to the
military-industrial complex that benefited from war without an off-ramp.
Fast
forward 20 years, and the sales tactics have drastically changed. The generals
have been replaced by various experts with academic credentials, typically
linked to one or more ‘think tanks’. Far from the neutral academic centers of
intellectual integrity that the names suggest, these entities are little more
than laundromats for discreet special interests. I
should know – I used to be a director of one.
Every
Wednesday, some of the highest-ranking figures of the Bush administration would
come to our Washington, DC office to deliver their main agenda points for the
week, requesting assistance in placing and promoting them to both grassroots
activists sympathetic to the cause and to the general public. The experts
within the think tank were hired based on political litmus tests, no doubt to
ensure that their views aligned with the organization’s.
When they no longer do, you’re either fired or you leave.
The
donors, many of whom were well-known millionaires and billionaires driven by a
passion for certain issues, would come straight out and ask for bang for their
buck in exchange for the opening of their wallets. In some cases, an entire
project or department would be mounted at the think tank with the understanding
that it would be fully funded by a single donor. These rich, influential folks
typically had business or investment interests that benefited from shaping the
establishment narrative in their favor, and they wanted to do so without
leaving any footprints. What better way than to have it all fronted by a shiny
veneer of expert credibility?
So while
the generals of the Iraq War era had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer in
representing the interests of the military-industrial complex, the new salesmen
of endless armed conflict in Ukraine have overwhelmingly adopted the more
subtle model. A study published in 2020 found that the top 50 think tanks received over a
billion dollars from the US government and its defense contractors and
manufacturers, including some of the biggest beneficiaries of weapons
production today ‘for Ukraine’. The top recipients of this funding include the
Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings
Institution, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International
Studies, New America Foundation, RAND Corporation, Center for a New American
Security, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Stimson Center.
Some of
these black boxes are more ideologically-driven than others. The Heritage
Foundation, for example, leans overwhelmingly neoconservative and
interventionist. Others, like the Atlantic Council and German Marshall Fund,
are effectively force multipliers for NATO talking points. But the RAND
Corporation also houses systems analysts and scientists specializing in space
and computing. The fact that not all of these entities – or even the people who
work within some of them – can be tossed into the same basket and labeled mere
parrots for the special interests of their organization’s benefactors helps to
muddy the waters.
In an analysis published in June of media coverage related to US military involvement
in Ukraine, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that, when a
think tank is cited regarding the issue, 85% of the time it’s a think tank with
“financial backing from the defense
industry.” Taken at face value, this risks being interpreted by the
general public as expert ‘consensus’ on the need for US taxpayers to continue
flooding Ukraine with weapons, unaware that it’s really just a bunch of
Pentagon-backed actors agreeing with each other about the need to pursue the
most profitable course of action on behalf of their War Inc. sugar daddies.
Just like when climate scientists, who have parlayed climate change into
endless funding and a perpetual justification for their existence, aren’t going
to kill their cash cow by arguing that the climate can’t be controlled by man
and that throwing cash at the issue – or at them – is futile.
Many of
the Ukraine think tank experts are quick to attack analysis and information
published on platforms they don’t like – such as RT – as ‘Russian-backed’.
You’d have to be living under a rock these days to not know that RT is linked
to Russia. No transparency issues there. But there is far less transparency
around their own organizations’ financing. Where is
their insistence on being above board about the use of defense industry cash to
influence not just the general public but the course of the conflict itself?
Around a third of top foreign policy think tanks don’t disclose this Pentagon
funding, according to the Quincy
Institute. Nor is it unheard of for
these experts to springboard from
these establishment-friendly platforms and the public notoriety they provide,
right into public office – where they can translate the same agenda that they
promoted into actionable policy. Isn’t it important for voters to consider the
powerful hidden hand who helped to get them there?
+
Ukrainian Former Communist Leader
Arrested
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/22/ukrainian-former-communist-leader-arrested/
by Peoples Dispatch
Leftist
and progressive groups have condemned the arrest of veteran communist and
leader of the Ukrainian Anti Fascist Committee, Georgi
Buiko, by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
On Aug.
16, the SBU announced that they had arrested Buiko,
who is accused of participating in “anti-Ukrainian activities” and having
communist and “pro-Russian” publications in his home. The arrest of Buiko was first reported on Telegram by Bruno Amaral de Carvalho, a CNN
Portugal correspondent on the
ground in Donbass.
The persecution
of Buiko is a continuation of the crackdown unleashed
by the post-Euromaidan regime in Ukraine which has
been marked by de-communization attempts, and the banning of the communist
party and its publication.
Georgi Vladimirovich
Buiko, who turned 77 this August, was born in Zhytomyr and got acquainted with the Komsomol
— the youth wing of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU) — during his
student days at Donetsk State University. He
became a member of the CPSU in 1967.
He was
active in the Donetsk regional committee and was a key figure in the Communist
Party of Ukraine (KPU) in the post-Soviet period. He was the first secretary of
the Donetsk Regional Committee, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Communist Donbass,
and was also elected as deputy in the Donetsk Oblast Council or the regional
legislature. Between 1998 and 2006, he was elected twice as a member of the
Ukrainian parliament.
Since
2007, he has been the chairman of the Anti-Fascist Committee of Ukraine and
from 2008 was the secretary of the Central Committee of the KPU. Buiko was also an active member of the Union of Journalists
of Ukraine and the International Federation of Journalists.
With the
onset of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, the Volodymyr
Zelensky regime intensified its attack on communists
and critics within Ukraine, labeling them as Russian collaborators.
In March
2022, the SBU arrested Aleksander Kononovich and his
brother Mikhail Kononovich, leaders of the Leninist
Communist Youth Union of Ukraine (LKSMU), from the capital Kiev. The SBU
accused them of being propagandists, holding pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian
views with the goal of destabilizing the internal situation in Ukraine.
Mikhail Kononovich and his brother Aleksander. (Via
World Federation of Democratic Youth)
On July 5,
2022, the Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal in Lviv upheld the
ban on the KPU and ordered the state to seize the properties of the party. In
the same month, a show trial of the Kononovich
brothers started in
the Solomensky District Court in Kiev.
The court
sessions were continually postponed and the brothers were put under house
arrest and are facing death threats from Ukrainian nationalists. Progressive
youth groups across the world, including the World Federation of Democratic
Youth (WFDY), continue to organize campaigns demanding the release of
the Kononovich brothers.
Ukraine
has also started judicial proceedings against the first secretary of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Petro Symonenko,
who is currently said to be in exile in Russia.
The
Communist Party of Spain (PCE) condemned the arrest of Buiko
and termed it part of the ongoing persecution of communists and opponents of
the Zelensky-led regime in Ukraine under the guise of
national security.
============
h.
Niger Military Coup: There’s More Than Meets the Eye. Wagner -Niger -Washington… What’s
the Connection?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/wagner-niger-washington-what-connection/5830635
by Peter Koenig
There were several military coups in West Africa lately.
Mostly in former French colonies, and in many ways “neo-colonies” of France,
that do arguably more harm to the Sahel countries than the more than 300 years
of French “on-the-ground” colonies, or enslavement. Though, this latter crime
is not to be discarded at all. It has been an across-Africa
genocide of unimaginable proportions, that, so far went unpunished.
But the
new crime, the financial and military strategic econo-political
colonization, needs to be brought to the fore now.
Among the
coup countries are Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger,
but also Nigeria – a former British colony.
Of all
these “coups”, Niger gets by far the most attention, and seems to be at the
center of the controversy.
At the
outset it looked like the military staged a coup to get the France-friendly President
Mohamed Bazoum (image right with President
Macron), out of the way and to move away from French monetary hegemony, the
Franc CFA (Communauté Financière
Africaine, or African Financial Community). See also this and this.
On second
thought, however, another image emerged, especially after Madame Victoria Nuland’s, US Deputy Secretary of State (August 7, 2023)
personal visit to Niamey, Niger, where she was purportedly denied access to the
deposed President, and was apparently snubbed by the new military leader,
General Abdourahmane Tchiani.
The latter
is not very plausible, but is once more a “media coup” against the truth. Ever
more evidence emerges that Niger’s coup was supported by the US. Washington has
two military bases in Niger and at least between 3,000 and 4,000 military
personnel stationed in Niger.
One of the
US bases is a strategically important drone base, in the Agadez
region, known as Niger Air Base 201. Following its permanent base in
Djibouti, Niger Air Base 201 (image left ) stands as
the second-largest US base in Africa. See this.
The 201
Air Base is owned by the Nigerien military, built and financed for by the
United States. It is operated by the U.S. military as a drone base.
France
still has at least 1,500 military stationed in Niger. This, even though French
President Macron had promised to withdraw them, as soon as General Tchiani “requested” him to do so. Everything must be
questioned now. Did Tchiani really request a
withdrawal of French troops?
What
appears (almost) sure is that the US were supporting the military coup, if not
helping General Tchiani – who served as the chief of the Nigerien presidential guard (2011-2023)
– to the military take-over. See also this important analysis by Professor Chossudovsky.
The US Is Caught in a Dilemma with Niger. Scott Ritter
What’s at Stake?
+
French Ambassador Defies Order to
Vacate Niger
https://www.globalresearch.ca/french-ambassador-defies-order-vacate-niger/5830762
by Abayomi
Azikiwe
President Emmanuel Macron of France has publicly stated that
the National Council for the Safeguarding of Our Homeland (CNSP) government in
Niger has no right to withdraw the diplomatic credentials from Paris’
ambassador to the West African state.
Since the
order to leave within 48 hours was issued, the stakes have grown higher in the
month-long struggle between the new government in Niamey and several western
imperialist countries and their allies in the region.
After the
July 26 seizure of power by the presidential guard and the conventional forces,
there were immediate calls from France and the United States for a military
intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) aimed at
the reinstallation of ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.
The former leader was said to have been elected democratically by the people of
Niger and therefore the CNSP ruling council should not be recognized as the
legitimate government.
However,
since the change in government in Niger, neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali have
pledged their support to the CNSP. Both governments which
also came to power through military coups [supported by the Pentagon], have
stated that any attack on Niger would be viewed as a declaration of war against
Burkina Faso and Mali.
At the
same time several African states such as Algeria, which shares a long border
with Niger, are opposing military intervention by ECOWAS. Even within the
ECOWAS states such as the Federal Republic of Nigeria, there is broad
opposition to sending troops into Niger. The Nigerian Senate controlled by President
Bola Tinubu’s own political party, the All-Progressive Congress
(APC), refused to authorize the deployment of troops to neighboring Niger.
In fact,
throughout the entire region diverse voices have spoken loudly against the
French scheme to reimpose Bazoum.
A recent session of the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC)
failed to reach an agreement on endorsing an invasion into Niger.
Therefore,
the rationale being used by Macron to stage a diplomatic incident has no basis
in the reality now permeating the West and North Africa regions in particular
and the continent as a whole. Since the CNSP administration does not have the
blessing of France, Macron claims that their diplomatic personnel, military
units along with strategic economic interests must continue to operate in Niger
despite the widespread sentiment against the neo-colonial status-quo.
In a
speech to French ambassadors on August 25, Macron reiterated that he would
support an ECOWAS military invasion into Niger. Ambassador Sylvain Itte of France has refused to meet with the new leadership
in Niamey. Consequently, the CNSP believes that the ongoing presence of Itte would be a threat to the security and well-being of
the country.
Read more: Tens of Thousands Pledge to Resist an Imperialist-backed Intervention in Niger
Macron told his foreign
service personnel that:
“France and
its diplomats have faced particularly difficult situations in some countries in
recent months, from Sudan, where France has been exemplary, to Niger at this
very moment and I applaud your colleague and your colleagues who are listening
from their posts. I think our policy is the right one. It’s based on the
courage of President Bazoum, and on the commitments
of our ambassador on the ground who is remaining despite all the pressure,
despite all the declarations made by the illegitimate authorities.”
This response
to the existing crisis of legitimacy for France in West Africa illustrates the
imperialist posture of Macron. In his discourse, he asserts that Paris has
acted in an exemplary manner in the region. Judging from the recent political
events many are disputing this perceived notion of benevolence from a former
colonial power.
+
“Is There a
Genuine ‘Anti-Imperialist People’s Movement’ in West Africa? -- Niger’s Military Government is Supported by the Pentagon”
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
According to
reports, “An Anti-imperialist People’s Movement” has unfolded spontaneously
across francophone West Africa in support of Niger’s Conseil
National pour la sauvegarde de la Patrie
(CNSP) (National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland) which came to power
on July 26, 2023 in a military Coup d’Etat against
the elected government of President Mohamed Bazoum.
Demonstrations
in Niger by supporters of the CNSP government have largely targeted France
calling for the withdrawal of French troops:
“Protesters
attempted to storm the French embassy to express their outrage at the decades
of colonial and neo-colonial domination their country has suffered.” (Liberation News)
“Nigeria’s
President Bola Tinubu, … who is now the chair of the 15-member Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS), had threatened just days after the ascendancy
to power of the CNSP to lead a military intervention to reimpose
Bazoum. (Black Agenda Report, emphasis added)
In recent
developments, thousands of young people have gathered
in Niamey’s stadium, to sign up as volunteers in
defense of their country.
ECOWAS
threats have contributed to “building greater animosity against France and the
U.S.”
Is This
“Anti-Imperialist Movement” a Reality? Or is it Fake?
Whereas
ECOWAS is portrayed as an organization which (unofficially) serves the
neocolonial interests of both France and the U.S. people across West Africa
have been deliberately misled regarding the role of Niger’s Conseil National pour la Sauvegarde
de la Patrie (CNSP).
The so-called
“Anti-imperialism People’s Movement” (integrated by anti-war progressives) has
been the object of manipulation. Niger’s military junta is not committed
to combating US sponsored neocolonialism in sub-Saharan Africa. Quite the
opposite: The CNSP military leadership is (indirectly) controlled by the
Pentagon.
At least five
senior members of the Niger military Junta received their training in the
U.S. . . . .
+
From Chi-Town
bagman to ECOWAS chairman: meet the former money launderer leading the push to
invade Niger
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/08/05/bagman-ecowas-chairman-invade-niger/
by Alexander Rubinstein and Kit Klarenberg
Since the
overthrow of Niger’s US-friendly government, West African nations of the ECOWAS
bloc have threatened an invasion of their neighbor.
Before
leading the charge for intervention, ECOWAS chair Bola Tinubu
spent years laundering millions for heroin dealers in Chicago, and has since
been ensnared in numerous corruption scandals.
Hours after
Niger’s Western-backed leader was detained by the country’s presidential guard
on July 28, Nigerian President and chair of the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) Bola Tinubu leapt into
action, warning that the
group of nations “will not tolerate any situation that incapacitates the
democratically-elected government.”
“As the
Chairperson of ECOWAS…I state without equivocation that Nigeria stands firmly
with the elected government in Niger.”
Two days
later, ECOWAS imposed severe
sanctions on Niger, and the bloc issued a stark ultimatum: if the
newly-inaugurated junta won’t reinstall the ousted president in a week’s time,
the group’s pro-Western African governments will — by military means, if
necessary.
On Saturday,
July 6 — one day before the deadline — ECOWAS leaders approved a plan to
invade the country, with the ominous caveat that they are “not going to tell
the coup plotters when and where we are going to strike.”
+
The 21st
Century will be decided in Africa
https://therealnews.com/the-21st-century-will-be-decided-in-africa
(44:23)
News stories
about Africa and the 1.4 billion people who live there, about 17% of the
world’s population, have always been systematically de-prioritized in Western
media. But it goes deeper than that:
For people living in the West and the Global North, especially for those living
in the heart of US empire, Africa and Africans have been permanently relegated
to the outskirts of our imaginations. Why? Why is it so hard to get people to
pay attention to this vast, diverse, important swathe of the world? And as we
enter a new era, a 21st-century realignment on the stage of global competition
for economic, political, and military influence in Africa from the likes of the
US, China, Russia, India, Turkey, and more, and as Africa itself becomes one of
the critical sites of resource extraction in the fossil fuel and green energy
wars, and as Africans themselves bear a disproportionate amount of the
disastrous effects of the climate emergency, will that perpetual relegation of
Africa to the status of second-class concern change? And if so, will it change
for the better?
TRNN
Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Nii Akuetteh. A Ghanaian-born
policy analyst and activist, Akuetteh is the founder
of the Democracy & Conflict Research Institute based in Accra, Ghana, and he is
the former executive director of Africa Action and Editor at TransAfrica.
This conversation was recorded on June 30, 2023.
+
Africa's NATO? How ECOWAS Became a Tool for Western Imperialism
https://www.mintpressnews.com/beyond-niger-how-ecowas-became-tool-western-imperialism-africa/285495/
by Alan Macleod
+
Case studies:
US Military Assistance in Africa Doesn’t Work
US Embassy
Niger
https://www.blackagendareport.com/case-studies-us-military-assistance-africa-doesnt-work
by Jim Lobe
The recent
series of military coups across the Sahelian region
should prompt a major reassessment of U.S. military and security assistance to
fragile African states, according to a new report by the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs that calls for a much greater focus on
improving governance.
“Military action might suppress the problem of terrorism, but it will not
relieve the underlying conditions that feed it,” according
to the report. “Only improved governance can address these grievances, which
means good governance is the foundation for long-term stability.”
“It’s time to flip the script,” argue the report’s authors. “US policy in
Africa has for too long prioritized short-term security to the detriment of
long-term stability by prioritizing the provision of military security assistance.
Yet this strategy has neither produced security in Africa nor reduced threats
to the United States and its interests.”
Among other recommendations, the 67-page report, entitled, “Less is More:
A New Strategy for US Security Assistance to Africa,” which includes several
case studies, calls for “rein[ing] in its use of
security assistance with partners that fail to demonstrate commitment to the
reforms necessary to build long-term stability.” And it worries that the new
paradigm of “great-power competition” between the U.S. and Russia or China
could result in even greater reliance on military assistance.
“The rise of great-power competition exacerbates the risk that the US
national security establishment will double down on its security cooperation
strategy in the region out of concern that doing otherwise would leave a vacuum
that America’s competitors might fill,” according to the report. “In reality,
however, the argument for being more selective in distributing security
assistance is even stronger with the return of great-power competition, as
values and reputation become increasingly important in attracting support for
the United States over other great powers.”
The report, authored by Elizabeth Shackelford, Ethan Kessler, and Emma
Sanderson, comes on the heels of a military coup against a democratically
elected president who had cooperated particularly closely with both Paris and
Washington in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts both in Niger and
the wider Sahelian and West African regions. Niger,
which has hosted a drone base staffed
by some 1100 U.S. soldiers, has received about $500 million in U.S.
security and military assistance since 2016.
+
BRICS 2023: The Africa Roadmap, Opportunities and Way Forward
https://www.globalresearch.ca/brics-2023-africa-roadmap-opportunities-way-forward/5830190
by Prof. Arnold Boateng and Kester Kenn Klomegah
+
German Courts
Are Going FULL Dystopia
https://off-guardian.org/2023/08/23/german-courts-are-going-full-dystopia/
by Off-Guardian
It’s been an
astonishing couple of days for German judges. Well, “astonishing” if you’ve
been living in a cave for the last four years.
Many of you
likely already know that satirist and playwright (and frequent OffG contributor) CJ Hopkins is being prosecuted in Germany
for “disseminating propaganda, the
contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National
Socialist organization,”
All because the cover of his book has a swastika on it.
Needless to say, the charges are absurd. Insultingly
so. You can read CJ’s first-hand account of this nonsense here and here.
Anyone who isn’t a) stupid or b) delusional can plainly see these charges
have nothing to do with a
stock-image swastika, and everything
to do with the content of the book. In short, they are politically motivated
charges brought against an author for criticizing the state. The
very essence of dystopian tyranny.
…and yesterday he was convicted.
+
The Road to Totalitarianism – Part 3
https://off-guardian.org/2023/08/24/the-road-to-totalitarianism-part-3/
by CJ Hopkins
So, the
Germans are putting me on trial for my thoughtcrimes,
and, apparently, I’ve already been found guilty and sentenced. Bear with me and
I’ll try to explain.
The Berlin
District Court has issued a so-called “penalty order” or “order of punishment,”
in which I am advised that I am now officially a criminal in Germany, for
tweeting two Tweets. According to my attorney, a trial will now be scheduled,
at which my attorney will argue the case before the judge that just issued the
“order of punishment.” At this trial, the judge will listen attentively to the
arguments my attorney has already made in writing, consider them carefully, and
find me guilty, again. Then the judge will reaffirm the “order of punishment.”
Go ahead,
read that paragraph again.
After my
Kafkaesque trial has concluded, my attorney will file a series of appeals,
which will fail, at which point I will have to decide whether to pay a fine of
3,600 Euros or go to German prison for 60 days.
+
RESPONSE TO:
Lawrence S. Wittner’s “Spinning Illusions: The
Anti-American Left and the Ukraine War” – a new McCarthyism
by Sara Flounders, Joe Lombardo
Recently
articles have appeared on the front page of the New York Times that try to
smear Code Pink, The People’s Forum and TriContinental
as Chinese agents. The Times article was followed by a statement from
Senator Marco Rubio calling for investigation of the people mentioned in the
article.
Another
article using similar McCarthyite tactics, by
Lawrence S. Wittner, appeared in CounterPunch,
Foreign Policy in Focus and The Daily Kos. Each are considered “progressive” publications. This attack uses
the exact terminology of HUAC - the House on Un-American Activities Committee. Wittner's attack is titled: “Spinning Illusions: The
Anti-American Left and the Ukraine War”
The article
targeted the United Antiwar Coalition - UNAC, International Action Center, Code
Pink, The Peace in Ukraine Coalition. UNAC and
IAC are called “campists” and “anti-American.”
These attacks are designed to silence critics of the U.S. at a time that
we are seeing an escalating U.S. / NATO war in Ukraine and as the U.S.
continues its aggression towards another nuclear power,
China.
We must stop
this new Cold War and this move back to McCarthyism. We must not be
silent.
============
i.
Why Is the U.S. Now Favoring Accelerating the Formation of a Force to
Intervene in Haiti?
https://www.blackagendareport.com/why-us-now-favoring-accelerating-formation-force-intervene-haiti
by Narciso Isa Conde
+
Haiti Under Attack from Imperialism in Black Face
https://www.blackagendareport.com/haiti-under-attack-imperialism-black-face
by Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
(21:05)
Austin Cole
is a graduate student in City Planning and Business Administration,
and the Political Action Co-Chair of the Black Graduate Student Association at
MIT. He is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, and co-coordinator of its Haiti/Americas Team . Austin Cole joins us to talk about
the Haiti/Americas Team efforts to mobilize against the impending occupation of
Haiti which will use African and Caribbean nations to do U.S. bidding in the
latest imperialist attack on that country.
============
j.
Japan
Releases First Fukushima Wastewater Amid Protests
https://www.commondreams.org/news/first-fukushima-release
by Olivia Rosane
At around
1:00 pm local time Thursday, the Tokyo Electric Power Company began to
discharge wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear
plant, in keeping with the schedule Japan announced Tuesday.
In response, South Korean protestors attempted to enter the Japanese
Embassy in Seoul, and China said it would ban the import of all Japanese ocean
products.
"The ocean is the common property of all humankind, not a place for
Japan to arbitrarily dump nuclear-contaminated water," Chinese foreign
ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said ahead of the
first release of water Thursday, as The
Guardian reported.
Wang also called the decision "extremely selfish."
China suspends all aquatic products from Japan over Fukushima
contaminated water dumping
In this aerial image, nuclear-contaminated water is released from the
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the
ocean on August 24, 2023 in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan. Photo: VCG
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202308/1296932.shtml
by Xu Keyue, Zhang Yuying and Xing Xiaojing
Calls for Kishida to step down mount at home and abroad as Tokyo
defies public concern
China has
with immediate effect banned import of all aquatic products originating from
Japan starting from Thursday, when Japan started dumping nuclear-contaminated
wastewater from crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea - a
move by the Asia island nation that will be "nailed to history's mast of
shame," decried stakeholders and the wider public at home and abroad.
On Thursday 1 pm local time, the start of the dumping of around 540 Olympic
swimming pools' worth of water over several decades marked a big step for Japan
in decommissioning the still highly dangerous site 12 years after one of the
world's worst nuclear accidents in Fukushima Prefecture, according to media
reports.
+
“A Concrete
Solution for Fukushima”
https://www.corbettreport.com/solutionswatch-fukushima/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
with James Corbett
(39:33)
============
k.
Bolsonaro's Butchery: CIA Fingerprints Are All Over Brazil’s Indigenous Genocide
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bolsonaro-butchery-cia-fingerprints-brazil-indigenous-genocide/285536/
by Kit Klarenberg
From April
1964 to March 1985, a military junta ruled Brazil with an iron fist. Its crimes
against humanity throughout this period were extensive, including
institutionalized torture, imprisonment, forced disappearances and mass murder.
Typically, the victims were political opponents of the regime,
although the country’s indigenous population was a specific, dedicated
target.
In most cases, their crime was objecting to economic “reform” projects
that destroyed their homes or simply living in the wrong place at the wrong
time. With the backing and direction of the World
Bank, the junta forcibly displaced indigenous people and desecrated their lands
to extract valuable natural resources for Western capital. Along the way, these
communities routinely endured brutal repression, pogroms, and massacres.
Much of this barbarity was doled out by the Rural Indigenous Guard, a
lethal elite police force covertly created by the CIA.
The Agency also constructed a system of indigenous prisons, which played a
pivotal and horrifying role in the junta’s policies of indigenous cleansing.
============
l.
Taliban's Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along
https://www.mintpressnews.com/taliban-successful-opium-eradication-afgahnistan-fentanyl/285451/
by Alan Macleod
The Taliban government in Afghanistan – the nation that until recently
produced 90% of the world’s heroin – has drastically reduced opium cultivation
across the country. Western
sources estimate an up to 99% reduction in some
provinces. This raises serious questions about the seriousness of U.S. drug
eradication efforts in the country over the past 20 years. And, as global
heroin supplies dry up, experts tell MintPress News
that they fear this could spark the growing use of fentanyl
– a drug dozens of times stronger than heroin that already kills more than
100,000 Americans yearly.
+
Does an Old
H.A.K. Require Rehabilitation?
https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/26/does-an-old-h-a-k-require-rehabilitation/
by Rebecca Gordon
Henry Alfred
Kissinger turned 100 on May 27th of this year. Once a teenage refugee from Nazi
Germany, for many decades an adviser to presidents, and an avatar of
American realpolitik,
he’s managed to reach the century mark while still evidently retaining all his
marbles. That those marbles remain hard and cold is no surprise.
A couple of months after that
hundredth birthday, he traveled to China, as he had first done secretly in 1971
when he was still President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser. There —
in contrast to the tepid reception recently given to U.S. officials like
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Special
Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry — Kissinger was welcomed with full
honors by Chinese President Xi Jinping and other
dignitaries.
‘That ‘lovefest,’”
as Daniel Drezner of the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy wrote at Politico, “served the interests of
both parties.” For China, it was a signal that the United States would be
better off pursuing the warm-embrace policy initiated so long ago by Nixon at
Kissinger’s behest, rather than the cold shoulder more recent administrations
have offered. For Kissinger, as Drezner put it, “the visit
represents an opportunity to do what he has been trying to do ever since he
left public office: maintain his relevancy and influence.”
Even as a
centenarian, his “relevancy” remains intact, and his influence, I’d argue, as
malevolent as ever.
Rehab for
Politicians . . . .
============
m.
USDA is not
your friend
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/usda-is-not-your-friend?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
by Robert W Malone MD, MS
“Who controls
the food supply controls the people”
-- Attributed
to Henry Kissinger
"I'm
with the government, and I am here to help": WEF, Big Ag and Corporate
food processors
The world's
food supply is controlled by just a handful of companies, and the concentration
of power in the food industry has increased over time. In the United States,
less than 1% of the population is employed in agriculture, and most of the food
sold in the country is controlled by a few large corporations.
The food
cartel exercises a significant degree of control over domestic agricultural
economies, especially in the processing industries. This includes the milling
and packing/slaughtering industries, which are controlled by a few large
companies. For example, in the case of grains and soybeans, the top four
millers controlled 41% of the industry in 1979, and they now control 92%. In
addition, four of the six leading grain cartel companies own 64% of America's
grain elevator storage capacity, which means that farmers must sell their grain
to these companies, and these firms collude to set the price to the farmer at
the lowest possible level.
The food
cartel's power must be broken, as they control the supply of raw materials, and
above all, food. The food cartel apparently seeks to turn back the clock of
history, and reduce mankind from the 7 billion population
it currently enjoys to the state of a few hundred million semi-literate souls
scratching out a bare existence. The full truth about the food cartel must be
known, and the extreme globalization of the food chain must be eliminated.
Nations have been forced into dependence on food from hundreds and thousands of
miles away, and this is not sustainable in the long term.
+
“THE
INSPECTOR OF ABU GHRAIB”
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-inspector-of-abu-ghraib?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
When the US
Army can't face a painful truth about itself, it kills the messenger.
NOTE: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian
mercenary leader who died this week in a plane crash outside Moscow, was the
subject of previous dispatches here and here.
It could have
been a feel-good story—something badly needed in America today—about a bright
Army general who did the right thing at a tough time and was duly rewarded. The
general is Tony Taguba, a two-star officer who was
born in the Philippines and made his way to college in America on a ROTC
scholarship and, after graduation, began a 34-year career that brought him,
after rapid promotions and high accolades, to the American war in Iraq in 2003.
Taguba was serving in the US military’s headquarters in Kuwait
in 2004 when word of an impending scandal—one that was immediately understood
to have implications as severe as the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam—stunned
the top command. It concerned the Abu Ghraib prison,
located twenty miles west of Baghdad. The notorious jail had long been
shuttered prior to the US invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It
was renovated by the US and now held as many as 50,000 detained men and women.
Most of them were believed to be linked to or have knowledge of the Al Qaeda
opposition. The prisoners were confined in 12’-by-12’ cells that were, as I
reported two decades ago, little more than holes in the ground.
I first
learned of the tortures and other abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib late in 2003 while interviewing an ousted senior
officer of the Iraqi air force. He took a dangerous seven-hour taxi ride from
Baghdad to Damascus, where we met in an out-of-the-way hotel for three days. He
wanted a way out of Iraq for his wife and two children, and I passed his name
and contact information to various officials in Washington. One evening he
brought up Abu Ghraib, about which I knew nothing,
and told me that the US military, desperate to learn about the opposition in
Iraq, had taken to seizing mothers and their children and jailing them there.
The women were sending messages asking family members in Baghdad to come and
kill them because they had been sexually abused by their American guards and
interrogators.
Sometime
around the New Year’s holiday, an unhappy and friendless American military
police prison guard came forward to alert his superiors of the abuses taking
place at the Abu Ghraib prison. He was a member of a
National Guard unit that was trained in traffic control but was reassigned with
little or no instruction to serve as prison guards. The guards were teamed with
members of an experienced and more senior American military intelligence unit
at the prison. Its mission was to break down young male Iraqi prisoners and get
them to tell what they were assumed to know about Al Qaeda activities. The
young men and women prison guards, perhaps flattered by the attention or
perhaps eager to show that they could “get tough” with the prisoners, began
abusing and tormenting the prisoners, photographing the abuse, and sharing the
photos.
============
n.
2023 Gaza
Freedom Flotilla, 'The Handala,' completes first leg
by Dimitri Lascaris
The Freedom Flotilla
Coalition’s flagship vessel, The Handala,
concluded the first stage of the 2023 Gaza Freedom Flotilla voyage this past
week when it arrived in Oslo, Norway. According to the Coalition, The Handala has visited 12 ports
in a number of European countries over the past two months carrying the
Palestinian flag and raising awareness of its mission to end the illegal
Israeli blockade of Gaza. On board The Handala, TRNN
contributor, lawyer, and freelance journalist Dimitri
Lascaris speaks about the Flotilla and the global
movement for Palestinian liberation with fellow passengers Hege
Bae Nyholt, a member of the
Norwegian Parliament, representing The Red Party of Norway, and Aram Zaheri, Deputy Leader of the Red Party of Norway (Oslo
section).
+
Blind Loyalty
or Selective Blindness? American Politicians' Perplexing Support for
Apartheid Israel
by Miko Peled
+
RFK Jr staff block Israel-Palestine
dialogue after the candidate agreed
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/08/03/rfk-jr-israel-palestine-dialogue/
by Max Blumenthal
+
NYC mayor
“proud to sit” with apartheid prime minister
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/nyc-mayor-proud-sit-apartheid-prime-minister
by Michael F. Brown
+
Israel
settlers attack Palestinians, property in West Bank
https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-settlers-attack-palestinians-property-west-bank
by The New Arab Staff
Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday evening.
The Israelis
targeted homes and cars, causing damage and leaving people injured in the
village of Burqa near Nablus, The New Arab's Arabic-language sister service Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported. The settlers also closed the main
road between Nablus and Jenin.
Burqa council chief Ziad Abu Omar
said dozens of settlers who had returned to nearby Homesh
- an illegal settlement evacuated in 2005 but which there have recently been
efforts to restore - were responsible for the attack.
"The
settlers divided themselves into groups, with one group attacking homes with
stones and another damaging cars, leading to a young
man being injured by a stone to the head and taken to hospital," he added.
"When
the locals tried to help the families who were under settler attack, the
[Israeli] occupation army arrived and targeted the residents with tear gas
canisters."
+
Six Tropes to
Look Out For that Distort Israel/Palestine Coverage
https://www.globalresearch.ca/six-tropes-look-distort-israel-palestine-coverage/5830224
by Lara-Nour Walton
“I asked @OpenAI whether Palestinians deserve to be free,” he said.
The natural-language processing tool responded to Abusaada’s
query ambivalently:
As an AI
language model, I do not have personal opinions, feelings or beliefs. The
question of whether Palestinians deserve to be free is a complex and
controversial issue with many different perspectives and opinions….
But then he
posed the same question about Israelis. This time, the chat box did not
equivocate:
Yes, like all
people, Israelis deserve to be free. Freedom is a fundamental human right that
should be protected and guaranteed for all individuals, regardless of their
nationality, ethnicity or religion. It is essential that Israelis, like all
people, are able to live their lives free from violence, oppression and
discrimination….
“Explanation?”
demanded Abusaada.
The
explanation lies in the overarching attitudes of the 570 GB of data that
ChatGPT scrapes from the internet. And, with news
media being one of the primary sources of
information that the bot is trained on, Abusaada’s experience is hardly surprising.
To say that
US news skews pro-Israel raises many an eyebrow, since the public has been
conditioned to believe otherwise. With outlets like NPR vilified as “National
Palestinian Radio” and papers like the New York Times castigated by pro-Israel
watchdogs for lending “the Palestinian narrative” undue credence (CAMERA, 10/15/13), the myth
of pro-Palestine bias appears plausible.
Yet such
claims have been litigated, and the
verdict is plain: US corporate media lean in favor of Israel. As Abeer Al-Najjar (New Arab, 7/28/22) noted: “The
framing, sourcing, selection of facts, and language choices used to report on
Palestine…often reveal systematic biases which distort the Palestinian
struggle.” Some trends are more ubiquitous than others, which is why it is
vital that news readers become acquainted with the tropes that dominate
coverage of the Israeli occupation.
1.Where Are the Palestinians?
In 2018,
416Labs, a Canadian research firm, analyzed almost
100,000 news headlines published by five leading US publications between 1967
and 2017. The study revealed that major newspapers were four times more likely
to run headlines from an Israeli government perspective, and 2.5 times more
likely to cite Israeli sources over Palestinian ones. (This trend was further
confirmed by Maha Nassar—+972,
10/2/20).
Owais Zaheer, an author of 416Labs’ study told the Intercept (1/12/19) that his
findings call attention to “the need to more critically evaluate the scope of
coverage of the Israeli occupation and recognize that readers are getting, at
best, a heavily filtered rendering of the issue.”
In its media resource guide, the Arab
and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) counseled reporters: “Former
US diplomats, Israeli military analysts and non-Palestinian Middle East
commentators are not replacements for Palestinian voices.”
The exclusion
of Palestinian voices from corporate media reporting does not stop at sourcing.
For example, contrary to its pro-Israel critics, NPR’s correspondents are
rarely Palestinian or Arab, and almost all reside in West Jerusalem or Israel
proper (FAIR.org, 4/2/18). Editors
also overlook obvious conflicts of interest, like when the son of the New York Times‘ then–Israel bureau chief Ethan Bronner
joined the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) (Extra!, 4/10).
When Times
public editor Clark Hoyt (2/6/10)
acknowledged that readers aware of the son’s role “could reasonably wonder how
that would affect the father,” Times executive editor Bill Keller rejected this advice,
saying that having a child fighting for Israel gave Bronner
“a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries that someone with
no connections would lack,” and might “make him even more tuned-in to the
sensitivities of readers on both sides.” It’s hard to imagine Keller suggesting
this if Bronner’s son had, say, signed up with Hamas.
Isabel Kershner, the current Jerusalem correspondent for the
Times, also had a son who enlisted in the IDF (Mondoweiss,
10/27/14). Moreover,
her husband, Hirsh Goodman, has worked
at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) (FAIR.org, 5/1/12), where his
job was
shaping a positive image of Israel in the media. An examination of articles that Kershner
has written or contributed to since 2009 reveals that she overwhelmingly relies
on the INSS for think tank analysis about events in the region.
When establishment media outlets privilege one narrative over another, public opinion is likely to follow. Thus, the suppression of alternative viewpoints is among today’s most concerning media afflictions.
2. Turning
Assaults Into ‘Clashes’. . . .
+
Revealed:
Israel charity funded Campaign Against Antisemitism
by Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt and Asa Winstanley
The Campaign Against Antisemitism recently
took credit for persuading UK trade union Unite to cancel the Bristol launch of Asa Winstanley’s book Weaponising Anti-Semitism, alongside an associated screening
of the film Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie.
This was only
the latest in a long series of attacks by the Israel lobby group targeting the Palestine
solidarity movement and the wider left.
But The
Electronic Intifada can today reveal that the CAA has been given almost half a
million dollars by the UK partner of the Jewish National
Fund, Israel’s quasi-governmental
settler-colonial agency.
The donations
were hidden in obscure Charity Commission documents uncovered by our research.
In an email to The Electronic Intifada, the CAA confirmed it had been in “past
receipt of donations from JNF UK” but denied current JNF funding.
“JNF UK has
never exercised or sought to exercise any influence over our activities,” the
CAA claimed.
The 2018 and
2019 donations were later reclassified by the JNF as fundraising costs,
implicating the CAA in Israeli settler-colonization efforts.
Founded in
1901, the JNF – known in Israel as Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael – is committed
to colonizing historic Palestine.
It is one of
Israel’s four key
“National Institutions” which, since 1948 have worked
“to advance the Zionist enterprise.” The JNF has been described by noted
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé
as a “colonialist agency of ethnic cleansing.”
Founded in
Britain in 1908 and
registered in 1939 as a charity
operating in “Israel” – a state which had not yet been established – the JNF’s
British partner group JNF UK says it has been
“building Israel for over a century.”
It does so by fundraising in the UK and passing the
money collected onto Israel, primarily for projects in the southern Naqab desert, displacing
Palestinian citizens of Israel in favor of Jewish settlers.
JNF UK has also funded a number of
projects supporting illegal settlements in the West Bank – a war crime under
international law.
JNF funding
to CAA
+
Over 200
Palestinians Killed in Occupied West Bank in 2023
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/22/over-200-palestinians-killed-in-occupied-west-bank-in-2023/
The U.N.’s
Middle East envoy, Tor Wennesland, told the U.N.
Security Council in a special briefing on Monday that Israeli occupation forces
have killed over 200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank this year,
surpassing the total number of deaths last year (167). This
year’s death toll is already the highest since 2005, Wennesland
noted.
[Wennesland said nearly 30 Israelis have
been killed so far this year.]
+
Podcast Ep 82: Will Visa Waiver Program allow Israel to keep racist
entry policies?
by Nora Barrows-Friedman
(21:44)
+
Video:
Soldier shoots Palestinian man in back of head
by Maureen Clare Murphy
+
Gaza
photographer captured and tortured by Israel
https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-photographer-captured-and-tortured-israel/38371
by Mohammed Hamo
Hatim Abu Sharia is a photographer
who was attacked while doing his job.
On 28 May
2018, Hatim was covering the Great March of Return –
regular protests called to demand respect for basic Palestinian rights.
Accompanied
by a fellow photographer, he was close to Gaza’s boundary with Israel, when
Israeli snipers began firing toward them.
Hatim and his colleague managed to find a hiding place, where
they could avoid the snipers’ bullets.
While they
were spared death, the two men were soon found by Israeli troops.
The soldiers
captured both men and took them to the boundary.
“They made us
take off all our clothes, except our underwear,” Hatim
said. “They kept hitting us until my glasses were broken.”
Hatim and his colleague were handcuffed and driven to Erez, an Israeli military checkpoint.
“Even on the
road, they [Israeli soldiers] kept beating us,” Hatim
said.
That evening,
the two men were taken to a prison in Ashkelon, a city in Israel. When they
arrived, the prison’s administrators claimed it was too late for them to enter.
They had to
spend the night outdoors, with Israeli personnel watching over them.
“We were
still wearing only our underwear and handcuffed,” Hatim
said. “And we were blindfolded.”
As it was
Ramadan, the two men had been fasting all day. They were not offered anything
to eat or drink by their captors that evening.
The following
morning, the two men were brought into the prison.
It was the
beginning of a lengthy period during which Hatim was
subjected to extreme violence, both overtly physical and psychological.
“In almost
every interrogation, they beat and tortured me,” he said.
Cramped
conditions
Hatim was placed in solitary confinement. His conditions were
extremely cramped.
“Sometimes
they put me in a cell that was just 1.5 meters long,” he said. “I am 1.95
meters tall.”
Hatim was eventually put on trial in May 2019 – a year after
his arrest.
He was
charged with entering Israel unlawfully and photographing military facilities
without authorization. He was sentenced to five
years imprisonment (the sentence included the year he spent in pre-trial
detention).
When he heard
of his sentence, “I felt like I wanted to cry,” Hatim
said. “But I didn’t want to break down in front of the Israeli authorities.”
During the
trial, Hatim was kept in Nafha
prison. The conditions there were a little better than in Ashkelon.
“I found
people to speak with,” he said. “I could cut my hair and take a shower, after
spending 53 days without bathing.”
Many other
prisoners who he met had been handed sentences of 20 or 30 years. Knowing that his own sentence was shorter eased things slightly.
Hatim was held in Eshel – a prison in
the city of Beersheba – but later transferred to Ketziot,
which is located in the Naqab region. He was not
given any reason for the transfer.
“Your name
suddenly comes up for transfer,” he said. “They move you on a whim. You’ve
built up friendships and suddenly you’re with new people.”
“They didn’t
like seeing us happy”
Hatim found ways of defying his jailers.
Using
smuggled mobile phones, he applied to sit the tawjihi, an exam taken before
going to university.
Israel does
not allow textbooks into prisons. To challenge that ban, Hatim
had school books smuggled to him.
The books’
covers and initial 10 pages were altered so that the prison authorities would
think that they belonged to the categories of permitted reading material.
Many other
prisoners also sat the exams. As the number of textbooks were
available, they developed a system whereby each prisoner would have a book for
a week and then hand it over to others.
Exam papers
are also not allowed. So one prisoner would have to communicate with a
particular school, find out the exam questions and then circulate them among
other prisoners.
Being able to
overcome obstacles created a sense of camaraderie among the prisoners. When Hatim learned he had passed the exam, an
impromptu party ensued.
Hearing prisoners break into song, the prison authorities demanded
to know why so much noise was coming from the cells.
“They didn’t
like seeing us happy,” Hatim said.
+
Bombing
Palestinians is a "public function," top Dutch court rules
by Ali Abunimah
+
The US Biden
Administration Desperately Attempts To Push
Israeli-Saudi Normalization
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/us-desperate-israeli-normalization/
by Robert Inlakesh
+
Why are
colleges "civil" to Israel?
https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-are-colleges-civil-israel/38176
by Rod Such
Boycott
Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and
Liberation by Nick Riemer,
Rowman & Littlefield (2023)
Australian
scholar Nick Riemer explains the focus of his new
in-depth study of the academic boycott of Israel by saying that “almost
everything in the politics and culture of higher education works against
academics boycotting Israel.”
Indeed, the
obstacles presented by that culture are what’s mainly
addressed in Boycott Theory and the
Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation as
he delves into the history of the academic boycott.
Academics,
especially in the United States, have been denied work or tenure because of
their advocacy for Palestine, a story presented in We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of
Israel’s Critics – an anthology of testimonials from
repressed scholars published in 2017 but still relevant today.
Riemer describes the origins and early successes of the academic
boycott, predating the 2005 Palestinian
civil society call for BDS with the formation of the
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) a year earlier.
Even earlier, in 2002, Riemer notes, “several hundred European academics and
researchers called for a moratorium on European funding of Israeli cultural and
research institutions.” By year’s end, the University of Paris 6, now part of
the Sorbonne, called for cutting off the European Union’s research agreement
with Israel.
Other victories followed, including
the University of Johannesburg in South Africa severing ties with
Israel’s Ben-Gurion University in 2011. Numerous academic associations adopted
pro-BDS resolutions in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Ideology of
the academy
But unlike
the BDS movement against apartheid South Africa, which resulted in many US
universities actually divesting from companies doing business with the country,
nearly all Western universities and colleges have resisted calls from faculty
and students to cut ties with Israel.
Riemer locates many of the reasons why, including university
links to the military-industrial complex. But he reserves most of his critique
for the dominant ideological narrative of “academic freedom” and the “civility”
and “collegiality” reasons given for maintaining ties with Israeli academic
institutions.
+
Masafer Yatta’s time bombs — ticking
and latent
https://electronicintifada.net/content/masafer-yattas-time-bombs-ticking-and-latent/38356
by Fayha' Shalash
Muhammad Tibneh can’t forget the incident that changed his life
while he was grazing his sheep in the plains of Masafer
Yatta, south of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.
A few years
ago, the shepherd, now 53, went to some fields near his village, Umm al-Daraj, where he found a strange metal object lying on the
ground. The Israeli military had recently concluded a training exercise there.
“I tried to
move it so as not to endanger the animals. I didn’t know what it was. And when
I touched it, it exploded in my hand,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
The explosion
caused severe bleeding and Tibneh ended up having
three fingers amputated from his left hand.
This is
neither the first nor will it be the last incident in which Palestinians have
incurred injuries as a result of intensive Israeli military exercises in
occupied territory for which the Israeli army confiscates land to use as
so-called military zones.
In 1981,
Israel announced a decision to convert several Palestinian villages and
communities in Masafer Yatta
into such military zones, despite the presence of a local population. Indeed,
then agirulcture minister Ariel Sharon was quite explicit about
wanting to remove locals to prevent the “spreading of the Arab villagers on the
mountainside toward the desert” – or forcible expulsion – while keeping the
area in Israeli hands.
There are 19
hamlets in Masafer Yatta
and its surroundings, in which approximately 2,500 people live.
In 1999, part
of Sharon’s plan was implemented, with 700 villagers forced to leave their
homes. A year later, Israel’s high court issued an injunction to stop further
implementation.
+
Spyware
exposé lets Israel off the hook
https://electronicintifada.net/content/spyware-expose-lets-israel-hook/38161
by Refaat Alareer
Pegasus: How
a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud,
Henry Holt and Co. (2023)
The TV host
Rachel Maddow describes Pegasus and the story it tells as “freaking compelling stuff.”
Maddow writes – in the book’s introduction – that “it’s an
edge-of-your seat procedural about the heroes who found this dragon and then
set out to slay it.”
Authored by
Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud from the
investigative journalism group Forbidden Stories, Pegasus is the outcome of a probe initiated by the leak of
50,000 possible surveillance targets.
The
investigation aimed to uncover the unlawful usage of Pegasus spyware against
noncriminal figures, including human rights activists and journalists. Pegasus
was developed by the Israeli company NSO – the initials of Niv,
Shalev and Omri, its
founders’ first names.
The book’s
authors do a fine job providing readers with an insider’s perspective of the
events during the investigation.
The Pegasus
investigation team was led by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International’s
Security Lab and involved a partnership with 17 media organizations worldwide
to reach out to journalists and gather evidence of Pegasus attacks.
The book
documents the tremendous efforts by Amnesty’s cybersecurity
specialists, Claudio Guarnieri and Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, to design
the security protocols that kept the investigation under wraps until
publication and develop the forensic tool used to trace Pegasus in infected
mobile phones.
Pegasus raises ethical worries around licensing the spyware to
clients with poor human rights records and highlights the cases of journalists
who have been abused by their governments, such as Omar Radi
(from Morocco), Khadija Ismayilova
(from Azerbaijan), and “the golden get” – as Dana Priest from The
Washington Post described it – the case of Jamal Khashoggi and evidence implicating Pegasus in his murder.
The style of Pegasus is mostly anecdotal or
exploratory, which allows for engaging storytelling. The personal connections
to the story are emphasized.
Without
doubt, the book can appeal to a broader audience beyond technology experts,
given that the authors avoid technical jargon and explain complex concepts in a
way that is easy to understand.
Pegasus is a tool for hacking and monitoring smartphones,
compromising individuals, groups, and even entire governments. It can turn
a device that we carry in our pockets or handbags every day into a spy.
The use of
the spyware was initially reported in 2016.
Over time, it has become more technically sophisticated with advanced
features that enable it to infect phones without any action
required from the target.
Rachel Maddow outlines in the book’s introduction the enormous
amount of information that Pegasus can steal: “That includes all text and voice
communications to and from the phone, location data, photos and videos, notes,
browsing history, even turning on the camera and the microphone of the device
while the user has no idea it’s happening.”
“Vast sums”
Later in the
book, its authors delve into NSO’s history.
They note,
for example, that NSO was set up in 2010. One of its founders Niv Karmi was at that time a
“recently retired Israeli military officer, who specialized in intelligence.”
In 2019,
Benjamin Netanyahu – then (as now) Israel’s prime minister – bragged that his
government had invested “vast sums of money in military intelligence.” These
vast sums went to Israel’s army – which has a specialist technology division
known as Unit 8200 – and to its spying agencies Mossad
and the Shin Bet.
The book
exposes how Israel uses Pegasus as a bargaining chip when developing relations
with other governments. It is no coincidence, the book suggests, that
Netanyahu’s alliance with Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s
prime minister, became noticeably stronger “right around the time NSO licensed
Pegasus to Hungarian authorities.”
Laurent
Richard highlights the role technology has played in Netanyahu’s efforts to
“create a united front against Iran in the Middle East.” Richard explains that
the Israeli government made sure to include “military-grade spyware” as part of
Israel’s “package of goodies” offered to tempt and seduce “prospective allies.”
The Israeli
government bore responsibility for approving licenses for the export of
Pegasus. As the book states, Israel’s defense ministry “had
discretion to permit sales of the Pegasus system” so long as the identities of
end users were kept secret.
Esther Hayut, the president of Israel’s high court, has commented,
“Our economy, as it happens, rests not a little on that export.”
While
researching the use of Pegasus, Richard interviewed Edward Snowden, who blew
the whistle 10 years ago about a major surveillance program run by the National
Security Agency in the US. Snowden lamented the lack of oversight mechanisms
over Pegasus usage.
“There’s no
limitation,” he said. “There’s only Israel pinky promising that they’re going
to have their Ministry of Defense or whatever review
the export license.”
The Pegasus
Project investigation team successfully identified more than 1,000 people from
an initial list. As well as human rights activists and journalists, they even
included Emmanuel Macron, the French president.
While NSO’s
stated goal is “saving lives,” it has contributed massively to the weaponization of cyber-surveillance by oppressive
governments. The book demonstrates that NSO’s denials that Pegasus was used to
spy on Jamal Khashoggi and his loved ones were lies.
Litmus test
Despite
acknowledging the role played by spyware exports in Israel’s international
relations, the book misses an opportunity to shed light on these relations’
negative impacts on Palestinians and their rights.
A January
2022 article published in
The New York Times Magazine by
Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti revealed how Israel
used Pegasus to earn diplomatic gains. After being equipped with Pegasus,
Mexico abstained from voting on several “pro-Palestinian” United Nations
resolutions.
Bergman and Mazzetti noted that Panama supported Israel against
Palestinians after installing NSO systems in 2012, while India shifted its
position on Palestine after agreeing on the importation of intelligence
equipment, including Pegasus. India opposed granting observer status to a
Palestinian human rights organization at the UN’s Economic and Social Council
in 2019 despite India’s past support for the Palestinian cause.
Front Line
Defenders, a human rights organization based in Dublin, revealed in 2021 that
Israel used Pegasus to spy on six Palestinian activists. That revelation is
only briefly mentioned in the book’s epilogue.
In total, the
words “Palestinian” or “Palestinians” are mentioned only twice in the book and
the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement only once. The words
“Palestine,” “West Bank” and “Gaza” do not feature at all.
This is not
just about words, of course.
The book
ignores how Israel’s weapons and surveillance technology have been “battle
tested” – as makers of that technology say in their
promotional brochures – on Palestinians. It is as if Palestinians do not exist
or are not deemed to be worthy sources.
Similarly, Pegasus does not tackle Israel’s
history of spying on Palestinians. Unit 8200 is known to intercept
private data about Palestinians – including information on their sex lives,
medical issues and personal finances – so that the Israeli military can recruit
collaborators through blackmail and extortion.
Palestine is
a litmus test for journalists. Are they prepared to expose Israel’s crimes
against Palestinians, even if it means their own career prospects may suffer?
The authors
of Pegasus fail that test.
============
o.
“Choosing to Evolve”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/23/choosing-to-evolve/
by April M. Short
Ours is a
critical time in the cultural evolution of humanity that is likely to shape our
long-term future, or lack thereof. As a species, we have been on a
self-destructive trajectory that has led us to our current polycrisis of
unlivable economic conditions, worsening climate disasters and the potential of
an unspeakably devastating war, as the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 puts it.
The changes
we all need to make, if we want subsequent generations to enjoy life, will most
likely require big shifts toward improving connections with each other and the
planet, and away from extraction and individualism.
The good news
is that humans evolved often as cooperative and “prosocial”
beings, so looking to the past and better understanding our cultural evolution
as a species might help illuminate the best ways forward across the board.
This is the
basis of a paper published
in April in the journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences titled, “Multilevel Cultural
Evolution: From New Theory to Practical Applications.” Rather than focusing on
the genetic code and physical evolution of humans, the paper explores the
advanced and groundbreaking — but seldom discussed — field of cultural evolution.
[Related: The Way Out]
The paper’s
senior author David Sloan Wilson, a distinguished professor emeritus of biological
sciences at Binghamton University, New York, and the founder of the
school’s Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program, told the
Independent Media Institute in May that the authors of the article wrote
it “to show that a synthesis, which has already taken place for the study of
biological evolution, is now in progress for the study of human cultural evolution, with wide-ranging practical applications.”
Looking at
humanity through a lens of cultural evolution shows that “we are neither
cooperative nor selfish,” Wilson says.
“We are
capable of both — so becoming cooperative requires providing the right
environmental conditions. Also, cultural evolution helps us to recognize the
common denominators that apply across all contexts of our lives — our families,
neighborhoods, schools, businesses, and so on, and at all scales, from small
groups to the planet. This is very empowering.”
He shared the
example of a program for
at-risk high school students that he helped to design in 2010 at Regents
Academy in Binghamton, New York.
“By providing
the right social environment, kids who flunked three or more of their classes
during the previous year [2010] performed as well as the average high school
student in the district [in 2011],” he says.
Wilson
explained in an article published
on the Binghamton University website in April 2023 that evolutionary science is
made up of a triad: variation, selection and replication — and that triad is
also visible in the evolution of culture, “from economics and business, to
engineering and the arts, and the functioning of society at all levels.”
He added that
“knowing how cultural evolution happens also means we can harness it for the
larger good, creating a more just and sustainable world.”
While
evolution has been at the core of biological sciences over the last century,
evolutionary science is rarely part of the conversation when it comes to
understanding culture and the modern-day problems of society.
+
The Climate
Crisis, Part 1
https://www.blackagendareport.com/climate-crisis-part-1
by Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
(16:55)
Forrest Palmer is an electrical engineer residing in Houston, Texas. Outside of
his professional life, his personal concern is about environmental issues and
their increasing impacting on daily life, as well as the past and current
ethnic hierarchy that is the basis of systemic global racism. Forrest Palmer
joins us from Houston to discuss the record-breaking warming of the earth and
its impact on Black people.
+
“Does ‘Rich
Men North of Richmond’ Manifest the Radical Center?”
https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/24/does-rich-men-north-of-richmond-manifest-the-radical-center/
by Sam Husseini
The good
folks over at Decensored News brought
to my attention a bit ago how Oliver Anthony’s hit “Rich Men North of Richmond”
was potentially setting off something of a political wildfire and it took me a while to give it the listen it
deserves . . . . (
+
“A Voice Heard
in the Land”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/25/diana-johnstone-a-voice-heard-in-the-land/
by Diana Johnstone
The song
“Rich Men North of Richmond” is a personal lament, a cry of pain and despair
over the state of the “new world”.
The fact that
Oliver Anthony’s powerful voice and frank lyrics immediately resonated with
millions of listeners tells each of us something about the rest of us. On the
simple but deep level of sensibility, millions of very different people found
they shared something in common.
Exactly what
this might be and where it might lead is a mystery, but there is potential
political meaning in the subjective unity aroused by this song.
No, not unity
but division! – promptly decreed liberal establishment
opinion-makers. It’s the “right wing” that loves it, ruled The Guardian and the rest.
Scrutinizing the lyrics for rightwing extremist stigmata, critics jumped on
just these lines.
Lord, we got
folks in the street
Ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare
But God if
you’re five foot three
And you’re three hundred pounds
Taxes ought not to pay
For your bags of fudge rounds
North of Richmond, where lobbyists and legislators play, this may seem to
be all about welfare payments, good on the left, bad on the right. But in its
way, this is a poem, and as such it calls for a more poetic interpretation.
+
Shaking Up
the Two-Party System: Cornel West's 2024 Presidential Bid, with Jill Stein
https://www.mintpressnews.com/shaking-two-party-system-cornel-wests-bid-2024-jill-stein/285443/
with Alan MacLeod
(1:00:00)
============
p.
“From Wallet to War Machine: The Startling
Truth About Your Tax Dollars Revealed”
with Alan MacLeod and Lindsay Koshgarian
(50:11)
Have you ever
wondered just how much of your hard-earned tax dollars go to funding our
bloated war machine? On today’s episode of “The MintCast,”
Lindsay Koshgarian lays out the staggering expense
that American taxpayers fork out each year to keep the U.S. empire going.
“The average
person is paying over $2300 per year for our military, plus another $700 for
veterans’ [benefits]. So that’s over $3000. To put that in some other
perspective, that’s more than twice what the median rent is for a two-bedroom
apartment is in this country… It’s a really significant expense for individual
taxpayers,” she told “Mintcast” co-host Alan MacLeod.
+
Visualizing
Global GDP in 2050
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-future-global-economy-by-gdp-in-2050/
by Marcus Lu
According to
a recent report from Goldman Sachs, the balance
of global economic power is projected to shift dramatically in the coming
decades.
More specifically, analysts believe that Asia could soon become the
largest regional contributor to world GDP, surpassing the traditional economic
powerhouses grouped together in the Developed Markets (DM) category.
+
Controlled Banking System Demolition? Whitney Webb on CBDCs, WEF &
Internet Privacy, CEO Jamie Dimon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfio3hRQ7M0&t=25s
with Natalie Brunell and Whitney Webb
(1:16:33)
+
BOMBSHELL!
Jamie Dimon Is Part Of
Jeffrey Epstein’s Web Of Corruption!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSd4RcRk0GA&t=11s
with Jimmy Dore
and Whitney Webb
(27:43)
JP Morgan
Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is being forced to testify in a
civil suit about his connection to late financier/sex trafficker Jeffrey
Epstein. As journalist Whitney Webb explains, the sordid ties between not only
Epstein and Dimon, but also many of the biggest names
in the growth of the financial service sector over the past 40 years, along
with the government and organized crime reveal an unprecedented web of
corruption and sleaze.
+
The Mafia,
CIA & Jeffrey Epstein Worked TOGETHER To Traffic Minors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3rhlXhvf-c&t=593s
with Jimmy Dore and Whitney Webb
(47:28)
There is much
more to the Jeffrey Epstein case than an island for sex trafficking, flight
logs and a suspicious “suicide.” As journalist Whitney Webb unravels in her
two-volume “One Nation Under Blackmail” series, ties between the CIA, organized
crime, international arms dealers and sex traffickers date back to before World
War II and the Epstein connection merely represents the latest chapter in an
unbelievably sordid, many-tentacled tale of money,
sex, violence, power and blackmail. Jimmy and Whitney discuss the historical
connection between the military, the CIA and organized crime as well as
Epstein’s ties to Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Victoria’s Secret founder Les Wexner, among many other miscreants and malefactors.
============
q.
“Collapse 2.0”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/21/collapse-2-0/
by Michael T. Klare
In his 2005
bestseller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, geographer
Jared Diamond focused on past civilizations that confronted severe climate
shocks, either adapting and surviving or failing to adapt and disintegrating.
Among those were the Puebloan culture of Chaco
Canyon, New Mexico, the ancient Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica, and the
Viking settlers of Greenland. Such societies, having achieved great success,
imploded when their governing elites failed to adopt new survival mechanisms to
face radically changing climate conditions.
Bear in mind that, for their time and place, the societies Diamond
studied supported large, sophisticated populations. Pueblo Bonito, a six-story
structure in Chaco Canyon, contained up to 600 rooms, making it the largest
building in North America until the first skyscrapers rose in New York some 800
years later.
============
r.
News from Underground by Mark Crispin Miller
“In memory of those who "died suddenly" in the United States
and worldwide, August 15-August 21, 2023”
by Mark Crispin Miller
Musicians in
US (4), Canada, Germany, Slovakia, Thailand, Indonesia; politicians in US,
Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Thailand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea; pilots in
Chile, Italy, India (2); & more
+
Multiple Family Members or Couples Suffering COVID-19
Vaccine Injuries or Sudden Deaths.
by Dr. William Makis
+
“In memory of those who 'died suddenly' in the United States and worldwide, August 22-August 28, 2023"
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-ed4?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
by Mark Crispin Miller
Athletes: US (5), DR, UK, Ireland (2), Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Russia; musicians: US (5), UK, Ireland, Czech R., Spain (2), Italy, S. Africa, Russia; cops: US (2), UK, India, Nepal; & more
+
“With deaths spiking and births crashing, we (the people) must DEPOPULATE the caste that did this to us”
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/with-deaths-spiking-and-births-crashing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
by Mark Crispin Miller
They've never kept their goal a secret, though (of course) they've always talked around the brutal means required to realize it
=======
r.
“How I
Stopped Worrying About Tyranny And Started Laughing At
Tweets About The ‘Mugshot’; Black Humor Saves America
From Democrat Despots”
Working
Theory: America Is un-Killable
We have a
saving grace in this country: We perform, create, and interpret, all the time—way faster than tyrants
can tyrannize. We find the punchline.
What I now
think will save us, (is saving us right now,) is our sense of the absurd, the ridiculous and above all, the
hilarious.
Art is a big
word. We’re a performative
culture, not a pious one. If we’re “great,” surely it’s because of the music
that happened here—and the comedy. And all kinds of things.
It’s not because we drive big cars. It’s because we’re a teenager who refuses
to be serious.
============
s.
The Dark
History ‘Oppenheimer’ Didn't Show
https://www.wired.com/story/the-dark-history-oppenheimer-didnt-show/
+
“Soros Signals Shift as EU Op Wraps
Up”
https://www.corbettreport.com/nwnw526/
with James Corbett and James Evan Pilato
(22:38)
+
Take Back Our Tech - #SolutionsWatch
with James Corbett
(37:23)
============
t.
Whitney Webb
Part 1: How Government Steals From Us, Bombshell Epstein Book & Bitcoin For Sovereignty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf978q67pQs
with Natalie Brunell and Whitney Webb
(1:46:39)
+
Europe's Deindustrialization: Ukraine
War's Ripple Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2JPSm9vN2I
with David Woo
Unbound
(14:34)
A former top-ranked Wall Street
global macro strategist tells it as it is. You may not agree with everything he
says but he will make you reassess everything you thought you knew.
=======
u.
Global
Research: Selected Articles – August 24, 2023
+
Global Research:
This Week's Most Popular Articles – August 25, 2023
https://www.globalresearch.ca/this-weeks-most-popular-articles-110/5830185
+
December 18, 2020
The Jimmy
Dore Show
https://www.youtube.com/@thejimmydoreshow
"If Not Now, When?"
The Nation is in crisis. We need
people with courage. Power concedes nothing without a demand.
+
August
30, 2023
The Real News
Network
+
Global Research: Selected Articles –
August 30, 2023
“History of American Hegemony: USA as
‘Global Greatest Power’. From Alaska (1867) to Europe (1917)”
+
August 29, 2023
“Employers Walk Back Mask Mandates Amid Employee, Public Backlash”
+
George Galloway Archives
https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgeGallowayOfficial