Bulletin N° 955
"My Name is
Rachel Corrie"
https://youtu.be/sBqdEh66Uq4
(January 10, 2015)
&
Israeli soldiers
have depraved “fun” making “Rachel Corrie pancakes”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-soldiers-have-depraved-fun-making-rachel-corrie-pancakes
(July19, 2013)
&
Four eyewitnesses describe the murder of Rachel Corrie
https://electronicintifada.net/content/four-eyewitnesses-describe-murder-rachel-corrie/4460
(March 19, 2003)
Subject: When Entrepreneurs Rule the World: Creating
New Needs
for Private Profits,
by Provoking Chaos.
February 3, 2021
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
It is axiomatic
that class consciousness is premised on an understanding of the real conflict
of interests between the different classes that make up the society we inhabit.
As a corollary, we must assume that no such consciousness can exist if the
conflict of interest is not perceived. This proposition was established by E.P.
Thompson in his groundbreaking book, The Making of the English Working Class (1966).
More
recently, Shir Hever has brought this observation of class consciousness up to
date in his book, The Privatization of Israeli Security (2017), which is
indispensible reading for anyone wishing to understand how a segment of the ruling class has
mobilized their interests around the “national security state,” which involves
machinations by cynical and ruthless capitalist investors, driven by a quest
for maximum private profits and absolute control over the classes they seek to
exploit. By “[turning] violence into a commodity in order to preserve their
status and privilege. . .,” these owners of capital
have demonstrated a keen sense of class consciousness in opposition to the interests of their
victims, whom they seek to systematically dehumanize.
In this
tradition of Marxist humanism, we return to Joel Kovel’s
book, Overcoming Zionism (2007), to resume our presentation of his
challenge to the ideological force of this full-blown neoliberal
militarism, encapsulated in the concept of “national security” - the raison d’être of The National Security State.
In this book’s
sixth chapter, “The Partners in Zion,” Kovel employs once again his remarkable
skills at dialectical material analysis to explain the murder of Rachel Correi, an American non-violent protester, on Sunday afternoon, March 16, 2003, in Rafah, a city today of around 160,000 inhabitants located
on the Palestine-Egyptian border.
The story of Rachel Corrie
(1979 - 2003)
‘This is not at all what I
asked for when I came into this world.’
In the
Days When Israel was directly ruling Gaza it became notorious for the
demolition of homes that were deemed to stand in the way. The city most
afflicted by this process was Rafah, at the southern
end of the Strip, which has the awful distinction of being the poorest and most
dangerous place in the lands seized in 1967, with 60 percent of its140,000 inhabitants refugees in 2003. Because Rafah abuts the Egyptian border, Israel placed a wall
there, ostensibly to keep arms from being smuggled into Gaza. This one is
50percent higher than the infamous separation wall with which Israel has
surrounded the West Bank – 12 meters high and 8 deep, to be exact, with an
apron of 100 meters to ensure the free mobility of military vehicles. Since
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, there are many
houses within this perimeter, houses that must be removed according to the iron
law of the IDF, which insisted that a network of tunnels runs under them to
circumvent the above-ground barriers, even though the majority of the occupants
have had nothing to do with the uprising. From the beginning of the Second Intifada
in September 2000, until the spring of 2003, some 700 homeowners in Rafah heard the churning of the colossal 60 ton D9
bulldozers, made in the USA by the Caterpillar corporation expressly for house
demolition and paid for with US taxpayer dollars, come to destroy their
dwellings. Sometimes advanced notice was given, often no more than small arms
fire discharged by Israeli soldiers into houses, sometimes the bulldozer simply
materialized to annihilate a home, and sometimes this took place with the people
still inside, awakening to hear their walls being knocked down. In mid 2004 Rafah once more seized the anguished attention of the world
when, in the course of the complicated matter of Ariel Sharon’s plan to
evacuate Gaza, Palestinian guerillas from Rafah
succeeded in killing 13 Israeli soldiers. This unleashed a spasm of revenge as
the mighty IDF, fourth largest army in the world, attacked the town, killing
some 320 Palestinians, of whom more than 200 were civilians, including 85
children under the age of 18, and 27 women – such being what tends to happen
when one has ‘no choice’ but to suppress ‘terrorism’ by any means necessary,
and has been granted a green light by the United States to do so. But there was
another killing by the IDF a year earlier; and although no one human life I is
more important than t any other from the viewpoint of universality, there are
some deaths that focus consciousness in sharper ways than others.
On the bright Sunday of March 16, 2003,
Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old student from Olympia,
Washington who had been in Rafah for two months, had
posted herself as usual with a group of companions from the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM) to see what they could do to inhibit that day’s
devouring of homes. Stricken by the events of September 11, 2001, Rachel had
deepened her commitment to reduce the level of violence in the world and to
bear witness to the sufferings of the invisible. Being of that perilous
temperament that pursues things to their conclusion, her beliefs had brought
her to Rafah, the toughest place in the Occupied
Territories – though as she had reassured her worried parents before she went,
no one was going to harm a freshly scrubbed-looking Euro-American – and
non-Jewish – strawberry blond young woman like her. Indeed, that was the point,
to combine wholesomeness with resolution in the well-tested methodology of
nonviolent resistance, touching the heart and conscience of the adversary,
instilling in him fellow feeling, and moving him toward the recognition of a
common humanity.
Once in Rafah,
Rachel’s mood darkened under the impact of ongoing destruction. She wrote home,
‘Disbelief and horror is what I feel,’ and added that she had been having
nightmares about tanks and bulldozers. And on another occasion:
‘When I
come back from Palestine, I notably will have nightmares and constantly feel
guilty for not being here, but I can channel they into more work. Coming here
is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the
Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white
people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a
genocide which I am also indirectly supporting , and for which my government is
largely responsible.’
I know that March 16 was a sunny day in Rafah I have seen a large expanse of blue sky in a
photograph of Rachel standing between a giant bulldozer and the house she is
protecting. I also cannot help feeling very strongly that Rachel Corrie was a very beautiful and brave young woman with a
radiant soul. How could this have not been apparent to the soldier driving the
D9 as he approached another house selected for elimination, that of Rachel’s
friend, Doctor Samir,the
local pharmacist? The camera shows Rachel in plain view of the bulldozer,
wearing the bright orange vest of the ISM, waving to him and using a megaphone,
and as the giant blade picks her up, they are at the same eye level. Does he
look through Rachel as the blade turns her under like a clod
of dirt and crushes her? What can he have been thinking as he puts the D9 into
reverse and grinds her further into the ground before lifting his blade? What
has happened to this man?
I have also read four (of seven)
internally consistent accounts by eyewitnesses who were close enough to see
every detail and to hope, vainly, that their screams would have an impact on
the driver of the D9. They fill out the story with grief-stricken precision.
However, and this is to the present point, this extremely well-documented and
horrific event had scarcely any impact on the larger world. The mainstream US
media hiccoughed for a day or two and then let the story sink like the
proverbial stone. The Israeli military refused to look at the photographs and
concluded that Rachel was not struck by the bulldozer at all but killed by
falling concrete, despite testimony that she was out in the open and under only
the sky as the incident unfolded. Later, after two more shootings in early
April of ISM volunteers – Brian Aver, of Albuquerque, who had much of his face
blown off, and Thomas Hurndell, of London, who was
left brain dead by an Israeli sniper while he was trying to help a little girl,
and eventually perished ten months later – the IDF reacted by demanding that
visitors to the Occupied Territories sign a waiver upon entry absolving Israel
in advance for any harm it may do them.
One would think that the brutal murder of
one of its citizens by a foreign state, and especially a beautiful young white
woman of the privileged classes, could have provoked a considerable reaction
from the United States government. Protection of its civilians abroad is, after
all, an essential function of the liberal state. The British government
actively pursued the killing of Thomas Hurndell and
eventually succeeded in getting Israel to punish the sniper who killed him. And
America will go to prodigious lengths to protect citizens abroad when
victimized by proper enemies. Recall the sensation caused about the same time
as Rachel was killed by injuries to and presumed abduction/rape of Private
Jessica Lynch in Iraq. In this case – which was 99 percent
pure disinformation and was swiftly thrown into history’s dustbin after Jessica
changed her story – the nation was roused to a frenzy of adoration for Jessica
and rage at her violators. The president was said to be ‘full of joy for
Jessica Lynch’; and her home-state Senator, Jay Rockefeller, told the Senate
that the case of Jessica proved that ‘we take care of our people.’
Not all of ‘our people,’ at least when the
perpetrator is a certain privileged state. After the killing, strenuous efforts
by Rachel’s family to reach the authorities succeeded in provoking some
lamentation from Washington State’s Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and
Patty Murray. When this liberal duo went back to the Capitol, however, they
must have been informed about the code of behavior governing relations with
Israel, for nothing further happened beyond a House initiative, HCR 111, which
called for an investigation into Rachel’s killing, and mustered all of 51
signatures over the next year. By the summer of 2003, 401 Congresspeople
had been mobilized for yet another resolution saying in effect that the United
States supported Israel across the board, where - and whenever it chooses to
set its hand against ‘terrorism.’ Rachel’s murder, therefore, was made
invisible; indeed, by August, a Peace Center in East Jerusalem dedicated to her
(along with a Palestinian woman also slain by the IDF) was facing demolition
by, of all things, another bulldozer.
Rachel had to be defiled over and over if
Israel and the United States were to escape responsibility for her murder. In a
striking example of Zionist propaganda, there appeared in June 2003, an op-ed
article in the Los Angeles Times under the signature of Martin Peretz, publisher of The New Republic magazine, and
among other things, a board member of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (WINEP), foreign policy arm of the powerful lobby, the American Israeli
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) . . . .
Peretz does not
attack Rachel head-on. He proceeds instead to discredit her cause, the
International Solidarity Movement. Exuding Weltschmerz for lost dreams, Peretz classifies ISM among the ‘deluded … political
pilgrims,’ the fellow travelers who followed ‘every failed revolution in modern
times.’ But since ‘[o]nly certified kooks are in the
business these days of changing the nature of man,’ our ‘present-day romantics,
who at home typically despise the idea of the nation-state and the realists of
national interest, are left with often contrived and almost always murderous
nationalisms to adore. The nationalism du jour is Palestinian nationalism.’
Now the black hole of Palestinian
terrorism yawns, to swallow the deluded fellow-travelers of ISM, Peretz is too circumspect to claim ‘that all Palestinians
are terrorists . . . .’ He will aver, however, that ‘polls show an overwhelming
proportion of them to be supporters of terrorism.’ Nor does Peretz
stop at mere polling data. No, he generously provides a theoretical
construction, viz., ‘terrorism happens to be the defining paradigm of the
Palestinian cause?’ in other words, its essence, a construction that
trivializes considerations like the fact of stolen land and the unlawful
military occupation. Therefore any whiff of sympathy for Palestinians or hint
of legitimacy to their cause means that one is objectively supporting the
‘defining paradigm’ of terrorism. It takes a Harvard-trained political scientist
to think this way.
There follows a passage accusing the ISM
of abetting Arab terrorism by ‘supporting the Palestinian right to legitimate
armed struggle’ on its wedsite and helping Hamas
terrorists move treely in and out of Israel (an
allegation that the group has repudiated), and then the real point, a reference
to an unnamed Rachel Corrie. Here is how Peretz puts it, in words of jaw-dropping callousness:
‘sometimes its own volunteers get hurt – or even killed, as one American was by
an Israeli bulldozer. The best you can say of them is that they are gulled. But
this is not bravery; it is stupidity.’
Peretz finishes
dolefully with a lament for the wretched Palestinian cause. He ‘concedes’ that
the Arabs do need a state, but blames their own campaign of ‘unrelenting
terror’ and the starting of ‘a bloody insurrection in the midst of negotiations
with Israel during the fall of 2000’ for its not having come into being. Then
he turns to a theme close to the Zionist heart. Why even bother with this
miserable people, who have contributed nothing to world civilization and are
merely one rather insignificant member of the set of stateless nations? In
fact, the only interesting thing about the Palestinians is that the Jews have
blessed them by being their neighbors.
‘The
truth is that no one who has had a real hearing among the Palestinians has ever articulated a vision of
Palestine that is premised on an idea of social justice, a new relationship
between the classes, among the clans and tribes; between the sexes. Believe me,
Palestine will not be a democratic state because Palestine is not a democratic
or tolerant society. This is in devastating contrast to the Zionist enterprise
that had true ideals about how human beings and political difference were to be
treated, ideals that were turned to realities.’
The Arabs should be grateful that such
fine folk live next door. The tolerant Zionist side is good because it has been
able to realize ‘true ideals about how human beings and political difference
were to be treated’; whereas the other side, lacking tolerance and being a pack
of inveterate terrorists, must be crushed. It is a splendid object lesson of
tolerance at work. A devastating contrast, indeed.
The story goes on. Three years later, a
play comprised of Rachel’s own words in letters and emails, which had done well
in London, was prevented from reaching a New York Off-Broadway theater in the
city with the world’s largest Jewish population; the producer, James Nicola,
saying that as a result of consultation with Jewish groups, ‘what we hared was that after Ariel Sharon’s illness and the
election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation. We found that our plan to
present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict,
that we didn’t want to take.’ It is as though the Diaries of Ann Frank
were to be postponed, or if Picasso had withdrawn Guerinca
because of fascist protest.
Once again the established press gnawed
away a Rachel, now in a review of the London engagement that replaced the New
York run of the one-woman play based on her writings. Writing of Rachel’s
‘sense of mission,’ the reviewer, Matt Wolf, commented that this ‘can, of
course, cause very real pain to others: a fascinating program essay . . . reveals
that Ms Corrie’s former boyfriend, Colin Reese,
committed suicide in 2004.’ One wonders how Mr
Wolf found out how, a year or so after
she was murdered by the D9 bulldozer, that Rachel’s sense of mission proved
fatal to her boyfriend. But then, Rachel was menacing even as a toddler: “it’s
hard not to be impressed – and also somewhat frightened – by the description of
her a 2-year old looking across Capitol Lake in Washington State and
announcing, ‘this is the wide world, and I’m coming to it.’” Pretty scary stuff.
This is the first instance I know of when a robust self-assertion of a toddler
has been taken as a sign of incipient terrorism. Such is the moral universe of
the Great War of Civilizations.
A very odd phenomenon has arisen in the
United States where questions about Zionism are concerned, and it is time to
examine it here….(pp.123-130)
The 15 + items below reflect the social
turbulence we are now witnessing worldwide (despite the obvious efforts at
censorship and the politics of cancel cultures). In
these articles and essays, we are constantly reminded of “Manufacturing Consent” and the
counterrevolutionary purpose of this mega-industrial-scale exercise of corporate population
control . . . .
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
___
Professeur honoraire de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur de
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.
The Vaccines, The Plunder, and
the Arrival of the Great Reset
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-vaccines-the-plunder-and-the-arrival-of-the-great-reset/5735912
with Michael Welch,
Dr. Chris Shaw, and Diana Johnstone
(audio, 59:12)
+
“The Year Ahead”
Part 1:
“Currency”
https://www.corbettreport.com/the-year-ahead-part-1-currency/
&
Part 2: “Biosecurity”
https://www.corbettreport.com/the-year-ahead-part-2-biosecurity/
&
Part 3: “Geopolitics”
https://www.minds.com/CorbettReport/blog/the-year-ahead-part-3-geopolitics-1202609932436316160
by
James Corbett
===========
b.
COVID-19 mutations way overblown
https://youtu.be/CY3AOEbadAM
with Rick Sanchez
(25:49)
+
Magic? Politics? Science? Did President
Biden Cure Covid?
https://youtu.be/ZdMS_GIciNs
with Ron Paul
(33:25)
+
Why Online Dems Hate Jimmy
Dore!
https://youtu.be/X_tpgGvUUro
with Glenn Greenwald
(22:38)
+
Pro-Biden Propaganda
http://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-pro-biden-propaganda
by Margaret Kimberley
The Democratic Party and its corporate media have already white-washed Biden, and nothing will be demanded of him except that he not be Trump.
“Biden will be like his old boss Obama, not a lesser evil, but a more effective one."
The bad orange man is now back in Florida. Donald Trump, known as “45” by people who refused to speak his name, is history.
His accidental presidency is now a bad memory and the sight of him taking his last flight onboard Air Force One was a moment of relief at the very least.
Unfortunately, there is too much joy and not enough analysis about his departure and the new Biden administration.
+
Biden’s Faux Revolution: “Green Energy” Slated to
Become World’s New Oil Industry
https://www.mintpressnews.com/joe-biden-mineral-mining-green-energy-to-become-worlds-new-oil-industry/274732/
by
Raul Diego
+
NBC Apologizes For Accurate Reporting on Biden!
https://youtu.be/_dXBi_CzCkM
with
Glenn Greenwald
(4:26)
+
First 100 Daze: A ‘new’
dance craze
http://www.blackagendareport.com/first-100-daze-new-dance-craze
by
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
===========
c.
Sujet: PFC'E | Dernière infos sur l'appel à
solidarité avec Mohammed Bakri
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021
De: Palestine - Filmer C'est Exister
<newsletter@palestine-fce.ch>
Rencontres cinématographiques "PALESTINE
: FILMER C'EST EXISTER" (PFC'E)
Dernière infos sur l'appel à solidarité avec
Mohammed Bakri 28.01.2021
URGENT
En solidarité avec le réalisateur Mohammed
Bakri
Lundi 11 janvier 2021, la justice israélienne
a interdit la diffusion de
"Jenin, Jenin" et saisit les copies
du documentaire réalisé en 2002 par
le cinéaste et acteur palestinien Mohammed Bakri.
"Palestine : Filmer C'est Exister"
(PFC'E) a choisi de rediffuser
"Jenin, Jenin" sur palestine-fce.ch
pour exprimer sa pleine solidarité
avec Mohammed Bakri face à la censure et condamnation
honteuse qu’un
tribunal de l’État d’apartheid d’Israël a prononcée contre lui,
en tant
que cinéaste, artiste et citoyen luttant pour la liberté et
la justice.
https://palestine-fce.ch/ptite-info/solidarite-avec-le-realisateur-et-acteur-mohammed-bakri/
Simultanément, PFC'E a lancé un appel à
soutenir financièrement Mohammed
Bakri pour participer aux frais de sa défense
(il va faire recours
contre la décision du 11janvier 2021), aux frais de justice qui
lui ont
été imposés par le tribunal et à lacompensation
à laquelle il a été
condamné.
En 2 semaines, le film a été vu plus de 900
fois sur notre plateforme et
près de CHF 3'000 de dons ont été récoltés.
* Vous pouvez encore visionner gratuitement
"Jenin, Jenin" jusqu'au
dimanche 7 février 2021 :
https://vimeo.com/500438426
* Vous pouvez toujours verser un soutien à Mohammmed Bakri sur le compte
postal de PFC'E mention « solidarité avec Mohammed
Bakri ». Un 1er transfert sera effectué le 9 février.
Merci de faire circuler cet appel urgent le
plus largement possible !
Le comité de "PALESTINE : FILMER
C'EST EXISTER"
---
Coordonnées bancaires de PFC'E :
Titulaire du compte: Palestine filmer c’est
exister
CCP (CHF): 14-952137-8
IBAN: CH9709000000149521378
Banque/BIC : Postfinance
/ POFICHBEXXX
====
Rencontres cinématographiques PFC'E
Maison des Associations
Rue des Savoises 15
· Genève 1205 · Suisse
https://palestine-fce.ch/
info@palestine-fce.ch
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/PalestineFilmerCestExister/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/festival_pfce/?hl=fr
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FestivalPFCE
---
Liste de diffusion des membre
du Collectif Solidarité Palestine de
l'Ardèche méridionale
===========
d.
Miriam Adelson now leads Sheldon's pro-Israel empire
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/miriam-adelson-now-leads-sheldons-pro-israel-empire
by Asa Winstanley
+
Why are Ireland's
police teaming up with Israel's torture ministry?
https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-are-irelands-police-teaming-israels-torture-ministry/32181
by Ciaran Tierney
+
It’s Still Early,
but Signs Point To an Israel-First Biden Presidency
https://www.mintpressnews.com/still-early-but-signs-point-to-an-israel-first-biden-presidency/274892/
by Miko Peled
+
B’Tselem’s Historic
Declaration: Israel’s Open War on Its Own Civil Society
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56257.htm
by Ramzy Baroud
===========
e.
Critique of Krugman on the US Economy
https://youtu.be/Bf1_FKYQocY
with
Richard Wolff
(7:36)
+
From an Economics
without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism
https://youtu.be/9aK4OztueuE
with Yanis Varoufakis
(1:30:43)
+
Don't Be Fooled:
The Official Unemployment Numbers Are a Lie
https://www.mintpressnews.com/dont-be-fooled-the-official-unemployment-numbers-are-a-lie/274731/
by Eleanor Goldfield
===========
|
f.
|
|
|
|
|
All
Global Research articles including the E-Book can be read
in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop
down menu on the top banner of our home page
(Desktop version).
***
Did CDC Deliberately Mislead
Public on Allergic Reactions to Moderna
Vaccine?
By Dr. Meryl Nass and John Stone,
January 29 2021
On Jan. 13, California health
officials issued a hold on 330,000 doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine after “fewer
than 10” people at San Diego’s Petco
Park stadium vaccine clinic suffered allergic reactions to the
vaccine. Santa Clara County officials lifted the
hold on the vaccine lot in question on Jan. 21.
|
|
|
Biden Will Likely Try to Politically Influence
Venezuela by Re-engaging with It Economically
By Paul Antonopoulos, January 29 2021
After
the EU, the U.S. could also end its recognition of the
self-proclaimed interim president and change its sanctions policy
with a new one that is more conducive to normalization. Washington
will most likely try and strengthen American economic presence in
the devastated Venezuelan economy and convert that into political
influence.
|
|
|
If US Foreign Policy Toward Palestine Is Any
Indication, “Trump Is Here to Stay”
By Rima
Najjar, January 29 2021
As
I watch the unfolding political drama of the impeachment trial in
the US Senate, the glimmer of hope for change I had following the
incredible scenes at the Capitol on Jan 6 is being dimmed. The
question in my mind now is whether it is even possible, with the
tools being used by Joe Biden, to turn the tide on Trump’s
movement.
|
|
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Relations Between India and Russia on the Rise
By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida,
January 29 2021
Military
relations between Russia and India are increasing and this can
bring a series of significant changes in international society.
However, this is unlikely to be pleasing to Washington, which
sees New Delhi as a key partner in its strategy for the Indo-Pacific
region.
|
|
|
“Western Civilization”: The Culture of Slavery vs.
the Culture of Resistance
By Caoimhghin
Ó Croidheáin, January 29 2021
The
general problem of culture today is its ability to facilitate and
support negative aspects of society through encouraging escapism,
diversion and ignorance regarding many important issues of
contemporary life, such as economic crises, repressive
legislation, poverty, and climate chaos.
|
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CRG
| PO Box 55019, 11 Notre-Dame Ouest, Montreal, Quebec Canada
|
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===========
g.
We
Are Entering
a
New Totalitarian Era
https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-entering-new-totalitarian-era/5735750
by
Ajamu Baraka and Ann Garrison
+
In
this interview for Pacifica Radio’s Covid, Race and Democracy , Ajamu Baraka
warned of a new era of totalitarian neoliberalism. “Anybody who is in
opposition to the hegemony of the neoliberal project is at some point over the
next few years going to experience the heavy hand of the state.”
+
Where
Trumpism Lives
http://www.blackagendareport.com/where-trumpism-lives
by
Jacob Whiton
+
In
the Wake of the Riots: The Blowback from Defeating Trump was Criminalizing
Dissent
https://www.mintpressnews.com/blowback-january-6-riots-criminalizing-dissent/274750/
by
Roger D. Harris
+
Return
to the Source: Democracy is Dead
http://www.blackagendareport.com/return-source-democracy-dead
by
the Editors of Black Agenda Report
+
Noam
Chomsky on Donald Trump
https://www.newframe.com/noam-chomsky-on-donald-trump/
by
Charles Leonard
===========
h.
Poor
Nations Left Reeling After Bill Gates Advised Oxford to Ditch Open Source COVID
Vaccine
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bill-gates-oxford-ditched-plans-open-source-covid-19-vaccine/274698/
by
Alan Macleod
+
U.S.
COVID response ranks among WORST in world: US comes 94th place (out of 98)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56264.htm
by
Jack Newman
The
US has had the fifth worst response to the Covid pandemic in the world, a
think tank has claimed.
The
Lowy Institute ranked nearly 100 countries on their management of the
global crisis after their hundredth confirmed case.
The
US came 94th out of 98, followed only by Iran, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil in
last place in the study by the Lowy Institute.
To
date, the US has recorded 25.6million cases and 429,125 deaths, according to
the Johns Hopkins Institute.
Both
figures are the highest of any country in the world, with India registering the
next highest total infections with 10.7million, and Brazil the second most
deaths with 220,000. Measured per million, the US has the eighth highest death
toll in the world.
===========
i.
UN
expert: “Crippling US sanctions on Syria are illegal and hurting
civilians"
https://youtu.be/ArZ4q1CqTWw
with
Aaron Maté
(34:47)
+
US
bombers fly across Persian Gulf
https://youtu.be/yv-GtsQoDIc
(3:19)
+
U.S.
General manipulates media to push for war with Iran
https://youtu.be/ndnUedWhCMc
with
Anya Parampil
(26:06)
+
Demilitarizing
Our Democracy
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56262.htm
by
Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung
+
Doomsday
Clock Moves Ever Closer to Midnight
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56259.htm
by
Editors
===========
j.
Why
#ForceTheVote Was Important To Understanding POWER
https://youtu.be/RXT7AgHvI6Q
with Jimmy Dore and Matt Stoller
(21:51)
+
Biden
Must End the War on Kids
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56263.htm
by
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J S Davies
+
“The Working Class VS Social Justice Warriors”
https://youtu.be/wHl_JVitRZE
with
Yanis Varoufakis with Russell Brand
(10:14)
+
Fred
Hampton/Black Panthers
Joined
White Bigots In Class Unity
https://youtu.be/49JptDawziM
with
Daryl Davis
(18:23)
+
Populist
Right & Left Joining Forces Against Establishment
https://youtu.be/-OP5OLBauCg
with Jimmy Dore
(12:48)
+
“Class Solidarity or "Deplorables?”
The
Left's Failed Messaging
https://youtu.be/qptXBgkF8R8
with Jimmy Dore
(45:39)
+
Civil
Rights Leaders Join With Far Right To Shut Down Vegas Strip
https://youtu.be/GcPBnsOe_ao
with Daryl Davis
(7:28)
+
Dems Say “No Stimulus Checks Until March”
It’s GENERAL STRIKE Time!
https://youtu.be/DLZcGd6yF8I
with Jimmy Dore
(11:33)
===========
k.
Senate
Kabuki theater
and
a joke impeachment trial
https://youtu.be/5JalYnPN-sA
with Alexander Mercouris
(21:44)
+
Where
the Left Goes After Trump
(2021
Interview)
https://youtu.be/Huy82PVaCzs
with
Noam Chomsky
(54:26)
===========
l.
Daniel
Korski: The Intelligence-Linked Mastermind Behind the UK’s Orwellian Healthtech
Advisory Board
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/10/investigative-reports/korski/
by Whitney Webb
===========
m.
Another
Mega Group Spy Scandal? Samanage, Sabotage,
And
The SolarWinds Hack
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/01/investigative-reports/another-mega-group-spy-scandal-samanage-sabotage-and-the-solarwinds-hack/
by Whitney Webb
===========
n.
The Virus of Mass Destruction
https://dunidalmar.medium.com/
by Duni Dalmar
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Global Research, January 26, 2021 |
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When fear of covid-19 was at its peak, we were told it was killing 3.4% of those who got the disease, similar to the famous “Spanish flu” of 1918, which killed 60 million people worldwide. The New York Times editorial board said this was a world war 2 level problem that deserves an equal level of national commitment, they claimed that in the worst case scenario over 1.7 million Americans would die from the virus.
On cable news stations on the right and the left there was a constant ticker on the bottom of the screen showing how many cases and deaths there were, something we’d never seen until this pandemic. There were videos of people “panic buying” necessities at the start of the lockdowns or stay at home orders, & later videos of filled hospitals or body bags being carried out of hospitals.
First it was China locking down, then Italy, then eventually the rest of the world (no longer a handful of countries). We were told we had no other choice. Many have forgotten now, but even right wingers were down with the program this spring, 42 states including the majority of the ones with Republican governors, had “stay at home” orders. These states made up 95% of the us population. Tucker Carlson was on Fox News telling his viewers to be terrified of the new coronavirus, and apparently he even personally drove to go see President Trump and tell him how serious this was. Soon after, Trump himself was talking about how deadly the virus was and how serious of a problem it was, he also supported stay at home orders. There was non stop talk about a “new normal”.
Certain terms have become ubiquitous, like “social distancing”, and “flattening the curve”. How scared is the public? A recent vox poll showed 52% of Americans support a 1 month national lockdown. Back in April, at peak level of panic, an AP poll showed 87% of Americans supported stay at home orders, including 78% of republicans! America wasn’t so polarized then, was it? And obviously it’s not just America, the rest of the world is frightened to and has been since last February. Many people across the world think covid has already killed off a decent chunk of humanity. |
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A survey taken in July asked 1 thousand people in several different countries what percentage of their country they thought was killed off by covid, answers ranged from 3% in the us to 9% in Germany, this is several times the actual percentage and something you’d see in a scifi movie. Even after the public was told in some reports maybe this virus really didn’t kill 3.4%, and that we were missing a lot of asymptomatic cases, we were still told to be terrified (and most media outlets kept using the higher death rates when discussing COVID-19 anyway).
It was still considered “at least 10 times deadlier than the flu” (1 % vs .1%) and anyone who compared it to the flu was ridiculed, despite the similarity in symptoms. We were told that the experts overwhelmingly supported the stay at home orders, that anyone who was against them was akin to a climate change denier who did not respect science, or, just a psychopath.
There was also the question of the origin of the virus, while technically a mystery, it was said that the virus having come from a lab was highly unlikely. The virus was first noticed in Wuhan, China, which happens to also have a high level bio research lab, this obviously had many thinking of the possibility the virus snuck out. The most commonly accepted theory is this virus somehow jumped from a bat or some other closely related animal, but we don’t know for sure. This mysterious element of the story almost certainly added to peoples fear and paranoia. The thing is, this was all a farce, we were and are not dealing with anything comparable to the 1918 flu. We were dealing with something more like a normal bad flu season in some parts of the first world, and a very light one in most of the world.
Most experts and peer reviewed papers were not calling for mass quarantines or “stay at home” orders. Most places were not “following the science”. The most logical conclusion that can be made is that the virus has been exaggerated so big business can swallow as much of small business as possible and so the ruling class can move forward with its fourth industrial revolution or “great reset” at a rapid pace. This involves things like the increased use of automation, artificial intelligence, 3d printing, increased online shopping & working from home, the move toward ending paper money, & increased big tech censorship. This has all happened when it’s happened most likely because the super rich were going to end up needing another giant bailout, and they knew people weren’t going to accept that under normal circumstances. Here’s what Michael Parenti would call a “conspiracy analysis” of this crazy situation.
Let’s start with the lies about the lethality of the virus.
At this point it’s settled science that covid mainly kills the old and the frail (this doesn’t mean it can’t kill young people, just that it’s extremely rare). An unusually high percentage of covid deaths are in nursing homes where studies show the average person only lives 6 months after entry anyway. In the us nursing home patients make up less than 1% of the population but are 39% of covid deaths.
A recent peer reviewed study published by the WHO showed that when you look at antibody studies done worldwide, which is the best way to see who has and hasn’t been infected, the virus actually only kills about .2 to .3% of those who get it. In the third world the number was much lower, and for people under 70 worldwide it was .05%. That’s a 1 in 2000 chance of dying after catching covid if you’re under the age of 70. To put this in perspective, that’s the infection fatality rate for about 90% of the world and about 80 to 85% of the richest countries.
So, how is it that this virus I just described has scared people so much? How have they been convinced this virus kills at several times the actual rate?
Well, as already mentioned, there was mass media hysteria, the constant case/death numbers on the screen, the constant anecdotal evidence, but propaganda by omission has also been huge. Many people either aren’t aware or seem to have forgotten death is a daily thing, it’s always sad when it’s a loved one but it happens, about 150,000 people die every day on average. This is the type of context that was never given to the covid case and death numbers on local and cable news.
Reports of full hospitals in covid hot spots like NYC and cities in northern Italy weren’t given context either, those are places that constantly have full hospitals during the winter. Another big factor is the under estimation and misunderstanding of influenza or “the flu”. For starters, there isn’t just one flu, there’s a bunch strains of influenza, some more deadly than others.
Us regular folks outside the medical community just call all of them the flu. Many influenza strains are also more deadly than .1% according to many experts. The German network for evidence based medicine and the German health ministry says 2017/2018 flu season was .4 to .5% infection fatality ratio.
According to the CDC covid would only be a level 2 out of their 5 level pandemic severity index, showing that influenza strains clearly get higher than 0.1% . The WHO says up to 650k per year die of influenza like viruses and a bad year can obviously be much worse. Another thing the average person probably doesn’t understand, because of the mainstream media, is that there are many coronaviruses too.
The “common cold” is usually either a coronavirus or a rhinovirus (usually the latter). Yet at the beginning of the pandemic and to a lesser extent now, people have referred to this virus as THE coronavirus. This is extremely deceptive and makes Covid-19 seem more unique and deadly than it is, which causes panic.
Not only is it not very unique but it’s not even the most deadly coronavirus. SARS and MERS, both of which are coronaviruses that have been dealt with in the last 20 years are far more deadly than Covid-19. Why would it be referred to as THE coronavirus if it’s not the most deadly? Of course deaths aren’t the only measure of lethality, there’s been tons of stories of people getting sick for longer periods of time with covid, but this can happen with different kinds of influenza as well, it’s called post viral syndrome. There are also things like myocarditis, and the even more rare instance where something crazy can happen like becoming paralyzed. These headlines about covid causing these things in rare instances frighten people but once again, influenza can do these things too. Since they’re rare, people don’t fear monger about them.
As far as the full hospitals, since covid is more of a nursing home problem than most influenza strains and hits kids a lot less hard, it actually has caused less hospitalizations than a normal bad winter season in several places. According to CDC numbers more people were hospitalized during the 2017 /2018 flu season in the United States than during the worst stretch of covid (an estimated 800k hospitalizations in 6 months that season), there were less hospitalizations the first 6 months of covid (hospitalization rate doesn’t equal 800k here).
Stanford professor John Ionniadis, one of the most cited infectious disease experts on earth, called this a “once in a century evidence fiasco” back in March. As I said earlier, politicians around the world were not “following the science” as we were told in the mainstream media, how do we know? Simple. As former NY Times reporter Alex Berenson has pointed out in his book unreported truths, before COVID-19, the WHO had prepared for the possibility of pandemics of airborne viruses deadlier than this. What did they recommend? Nothing close to a lockdown/stay at home order, in fact they weren’t even confident in basic things like mask wearing or hand washing. They changed their tune radically in early 2020 without scientific justification. |
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In the US the CDC had pandemic guidelines too, and again, they prepared for airborne viruses more deadly than this, and did not recommend lockdowns even in the worst imaginable scenario. Similar things happened in other countries, many of them first world countries with even better health care systems than the United States. It’s leaked out in the media that Norway, Denmark, Italy, Russia, all ignored their health ministers and went with lockdowns that were not recommended, in the case of Denmark, because not locking down would be “politically undesirable”. The UK downgraded the status of covid, taking it off the “high consequence infectious disease” list the day before it locked down on March 19. Who downgrades a viruses lethality while upgrading the measures taken against it? Another country with an elite health care system, Singapore, went far beyond what was recommended too. Their health ministry didn’t recommend anything close to what Europeans were doing at the very beginning of the pandemic, and even commissioned a study that ended up in the lancet medical journal that didn’t call for anything close to the harsh lockdown they ended up doing.
In late March right before most of the world shut down the WHO expert group on mass gatherings said in the lancet medical journal that there wasn’t enough evidence to shut down mass gatherings like concerts or sporting events and warned of the possible negative effects of stopping these events. All over the world there are plenty of examples of political leaders not following their own rules, which is extremely shady to say the least . It’s as if they know the truth, that we aren’t really in as much danger as they tell us we are. To make matters worse, we have dealt with much more damaging airborne viruses in recent history. The ’57 and ’68 pandemics are not really known outside the medical community but both of those pandemics killed much more than what Covid-19 has on a global scale adjusted for population growth.
In the United States, which has the most total covid deaths, the number of deaths is slightly higher than in ’57. But this was a year life went on as normal, and seniors old enough to remember the year don’t discuss it as a pandemic year. Furthermore those older pandemics were much more deadly for kids and working age people which technically makes it worse for society. All these restrictions are outrageous, even if you accept their death count, which many experts don’t since you can die of other causes while having the virus.
As I mentioned earlier, the experts who are calling for lockdown are in a minority, and many prominent ones who publicly call for them have gone back and forth or are clearly politically or financially motivated. Take for example the “John snow memo” which calls for harsher restrictions and was made in response to “the great barrington declaration” which was signed by thousands of experts and calls for allowing life to continue as normal outside nursing homes. This was obviously political. Not because they responded, but because while listing examples of countries that “did it right” they listed japan, which has the least restrictions of any first world country including Sweden.
They listed it next to New Zealand which had an extremely harsh lockdown, Japan didn’t do any of the mass testing they wanted and kept almost its entire economy open. It looks like they just chose a random country with a low death count and said “hey, do it this way!”. So far the great barrington declaration has gotten more signatures than the John snow memo. The same exact mistake regarding Japan was recently made by Dr. Michael T Osterholm, an infectious disease expert from the university of Minnesota and member of Joe Biden’s new covid task force. He’s one of the top experts in the country and one of those peculiar cases I was talking about. On March 10 he went on the Joe Rogan podcast and it was viewed by millions of people. In this interview he basically said there was nothing we can do about the virus, that cloth masks were useless, and that it was going to kill 450k Americans before we know it. About 2 weeks later, he wrote an op Ed in the Washington post saying lockdowns would cause way too much damage and weren’t worth it. Months later he was calling for a lockdown himself. |
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The man who many say is the top infectious disease expert in the country, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is also in the same boat. In late March the New England journal of medicine published a paper by Dr. Fauci where he only recommends possible school closures, working from home *when possible*, and *voluntary isolation*. Compare this with his comments months later, where he’s praised New York’s harsh stay at home order and told people not to have a normal thanksgiving. What’s causing all these doctors to do this?
Aside from political or personal reasons, like the fact that panic sells and some people just like being on tv. There could be big conflicts of interest, for example with pharmaceutical companies. This was recently brought up by the editor in chief of the British medical journal. He said “Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain.
Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health”. What kind of damage have covid restrictions done? Globally, there will be more extra deaths from other diseases being neglected than from covid itself. Many more malaria, hiv, and tuberculosis deaths. The increase in starvation deaths worldwide will also single handedly outnumber covid deaths. In the first world there will be many preventable deaths coming from things like missed cancer screenings and a huge drop in blood donations. There have already been plenty of deaths from people being too scared to seek care because of Covid-19 and dying of a stroke or a heart attack. Aside from all the death these restrictions have caused, there is also the long term effects of unprecedented economic collapse worldwide.
Quality of life is very important and there are multiple studies that have shown the huge gap in life expectancy between the top and bottom one percent in places like the United States, so many people who weren’t poor before the pandemic who lost their job because of it are almost certainly going to have years taken off their life as they stay unemployed for an extended period of time. There’s about 3 million people in the United States in that category, along with another 17 million who have become “food insecure” during the pandemic. An additional 135 million have become food insecure globally, too.
Depression is also on the rise all over the world, and also lowers quality of life as well as life expectancy, a recent CDC survey showed that 1/4th of young Americans aged 18 to 24 contemplated suicide recently. The closing of many schools and universities for a long period of time will have incalculable effects on children, young adults, and society as a whole. Elective surgeries are way down since the pandemic started as well. These aren’t surgeries which you may not need to survive but skipping them can have a terrible effect on your quality of life and maybe even keep you from working.
On rare occasions the the truth can be found about this pandemic in mainstream media but it’s outnumbered by the craziness, on top of flooding the zone, there has also been some crazy censorship (Both mentioned in event 201 here from about 9:20 to 9:55). YouTube at one point censored one of the ten most cited scientists on earth, Stanford epidemiology professor John Ioannidis, before having to put the video back up after a large amount of complaints. He was presumably censored because he said covid was similar to seasonal influenza, but who has YouTube hired that’s more qualified than him? YouTube also recently censored the former chief scientific advisor for Pfizer, again, presumably because he said covid wasn’t that deadly.
Facebook censored Dr. Carl Hennegan, a professor of evidence based medicine at Oxford university. What did he do? Say the earth is flat? No, he attempted to post his article from the website the spectator where he cites and discusses peer reviewed studies. With all this censorship of expert opinion, and cherry picking by mainstream media, most people think covid restrictions have saved lives. The truth is, if you look at deaths per capita by country on the widely used “worldometer” website, you have to go down pretty far to reach a non lockdown country. If these harsh restrictions worked, there would be some correlation between them and deaths per capita but there isn’t.
A study in the Lancet medical journal by researchers from the university of Toronto found “Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people” on a global scale, which again we could see just from looking at the worldometer site, it’s been obvious for awhile. Even in the United States, there is no correlation between restrictions and deaths. South Dakota basically did nothing and they rank 9th in deaths per capita while New York and New Jersey are 1 and 2, with a per capita death rate that is much much higher. All of this clever deception, lying, suppression of scientific debate, and over the top fear mongering has been going on for economic reasons. The biggest corporations and financial institutions were headed for another huge crash similar to ’08 before this virus arrived. People all over the world would would not have accepted another giant bailout of the biggest financial institutions and corporations again under normal circumstances, political crisis would emerge. There was likely to be a left populist backlash from this (pink tide, or Corbyn style movements).
Now, after the scam has got rolling, a total restructuring of the global economy that has been in the works for years can get fast tracked. All those stats about the economy doing terrible, people starving, they don’t tell us how the ruling class is doing. Wall Street profits are up over 80% this past year, big tech companies are doing better than ever, the biggest corporations either didn’t stop running during the pandemic or got paid as a part of a federal reserve program that gave the biggest companies in the country 500 billion dollars. They weren’t even required to preserve jobs to get this money. Similar bailouts are taking place all over the world. Furthermore, small business has been destroyed, which opens up more opportunities for the biggest companies in the world as their competition shrinks and their market share grows.
As of June, 3 million American small businesses were closed, 40% of jobs lost during the pandemic are gone for good, similar patterns can be seen in other countries. Billionaire wealth has increased this year even after a gigantic stock market crash in the end of winter/early spring. As well as the ruling class is doing now, there was a huge crisis in 2019. In order to understand how this crisis was going to go global and how there could be global coordination in the exaggeration of COVID-19 one must understand how the world is run on a macro level. For starters, there’s 3 main global powers (us and its “ally democracies”, China, Russia), each with a sphere of influence, the United States & it’s minions having by far the largest one. This is who runs the world sans a handful of places. This isn’t controversial, it’s mainstream political science. And who runs these countries? Big money, simple, the biggest companies, financial institutions and asset managers are who runs the show, and they get help from their puppet governments/national security states when ever necessary. Their number one goal? Make more money. In China, they may call themselves communist, but the reality is there are plenty billionaire in the Chinese “communist party”, and there are giant companies like alibaba with huge influence. The inequality there is now approaching us levels according to economist Thomas piketty, it’s been on the rise for the last 40 years, working conditions are terrible as well. How about Russia? Inequality there is also terrible and in the west we even ironically make fun of them for “oligarchs”. The US, the biggest global power, is also ran by big giant corporations and billionaires.
A Princeton study in 2014 came to the conclusion that the US isn’t a democracy but an oligarchy ran by a small group of rich powerful people. Senator Bernie Sanders, and even at times Donald Trump would constantly complain about the power of “political donors”. The US allies have some big multinational corporations but they’re tied at the hip with the US security state and the US elite are invested heavily in these companies too. Like Samsung, or BP. Even though these powerful countries like us and China are technically enemies, there is still plenty trade between them (especially the us and China), us/China financial systems are also intertwined in many ways. In this financialized/globalized economy if one of them crashes it could domino effect to the entire world as happened in 08. Most of the big central banks are intertwined in someway, and the federal reserve is the most powerful of them all. Now, to the crisis. Instead of public debt or “the trade war” causing a crisis, it’s once again corporate debt, private banking, and lack of regulation that caused the crisis.
There was a repo loan crisis, caused mainly by the big 6 us banks who were no longer confident in lending to each other or to other financial institutions. Once the system reaches this point in the United States, a global meltdown isn’t far off. Pam and Russ martens at Wall Street on parade have been covering this more than anyone in their ongoing series on the financial crisis. They describe in detail the conspiracy, how the mainstream media is complicit with their silence from September 2019 to February 2020 when the fed opened up emergency programs it hadn’t opened since the last crisis and spent trillions before the cares act or any covid related shut downs.
According to CNBC 2019 also set a record for most ceo departures, even more than 08 which was second, they referred to it as a ceo exodus. The repeal of glass steagall made this possible, as the biggest commercial banks are allowed to make risky investments with deposit money. The federal reserve is a private institution collectively owned by the biggest banks, and has bailed out private financial institutions with trillions of dollars the public will have to pay back in the long run. All this without a vote, before the cares act, and to make matters worse they put the biggest asset manager on earth (blackrock) in charge of choosing who gets bailed out. The federal reserve is buying corporate debt and junk bonds at their direction.
Congresswoman Katie porter has called out some of this corruption but not all of it. She referred to the fed as corrupt for their relationship with Blackrock. I don’t think she mentioned Blackrock had been overseeing 25 million of fed chairman Powell’s money & 7 trillion in assets under management overall before getting control of the feds huge corporate bailout program. They also wrote the bailout program that ended up getting rolled out before anyone knew there was even a crisis in August of last year, the people at blackrock who authored the bailout were former central bankers from some of the most powerful countries.
Much like the last crisis it looks like the big banks and the super rich kept a coming collapse secret. Blackrock is incredibly powerful owning a portion of big media companies, and now having several former employees in important positions in the new Biden administration. An analysis by political scientists from the university of Amsterdam 3 years ago showed how the big 3 asset managers, of which black rock is the biggest, own a big portion of corporate America and coordinate their investments. They’ve only grown bigger in influence since. They also look after assets from rich people not just in the us but all over the world and even have influence with some us enemies like China. The asset managers and billionaires are also the biggest shareholders of big pharma stocks and have made a killing on the vaccines. |
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Vaccines, that’s a topic I’ve not touched on yet, many big corporations are planning on requiring vaccinations for people to come in their place of business, odds are you’ll need to be vaccinated to do a lot of things. There’s been some talk of attempting to vaccinate everyone on earth. I don’t believe there’s some evil plot to kill billions of people or anything, but i do believe vaccine profits play a role in this. I think it’s just simply about the money, in 2010 the WHO was called out by the British medical journal and an official eu medical organization for their advisors having big pharma ties which led to overproduction of vaccines for the swine flu. Bill Gates, his foundation and other billionaires and their foundations are big investors in big pharma and are set to profit off this as well.
One of the worlds richest men Warren Buffet is also a big investor in big pharma, as is Jeff Bezos. Bezos Washington post has posted some good stuff about covid but for the most part they’ve fear mongered heavily, and he’s profiting big in multiple ways from covid panic likely including the vaccine. Even the nation magazine and the Colombia journalism review have talked about Bill Gates big influence over media/public health and his cashing in on the pandemic (not just “conspiracy theorists”). Odds are, there won’t be many deaths from the vaccine, but the thing is with something that kills only .05% of people under 70 and hospitalizes less than one percent of those who get it worldwide.
Is mass vaccination even necessary? Is it worth the risk for kids even with an extremely small chance of injury? For kids, it’s probably more likely they develop a fever from the vaccine than from covid based on trial results. The old and the weak taking it is fine but everyone taking it seems like a money grab. This constant advertising, the demonization of people worried about the safety of this rushed new vaccine as “anti vax” is meant to protect a 40 billion dollar profit for big pharma. Worrying about their safety is perfectly normal, VP Kamala Harris has worried about it, so have many medical experts like Pfizer’s former head of respiratory research Dr. Yeadon, or Dr. Sucharit Bhkadi, or Professor Caumes. All of this global coordination is possible through organizations like the world economic forum, most of the worlds elite meets and discusses the future right in front of our faces in lavish places in davos. Also through big asset management firms who are connected to the rich all over the world.
The old saying goes “never let a good crisis go to waste” and it appears that’s what the world’s richest have done. They flipped a crisis to their advantage, and now they have a good amount of public approval for their new fourth industrial revolution or “great reset” of capitalism where the 0.1% will have an even greater strangle hold on the world. This is something they’ve had in the works and have talked about publicly, but with the financial crisis the process was sped up. They make talk a good game about climate change, but some of the biggest oil companies are a part of the club. They may talk a good game about inequality, pretend to care about it, make up feel good phrases like “stakeholder capitalism instead of shareholder capitalism”, but at the end of the day the mega multi national corporations (and the puppet governments that work for them) only care about maximizing profit.
Marx’s predictions about competition and capitalism inevitably leading to monopoly have turned out to be right, even before covid in 2017 Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz was talking about the big monopoly problem in the us.
He said “There has been an increase in the market power and concentration of a few firms in industry after industry”. A Washington post article from may headlined “the end of small business” put it nicely, “Since the late 1970s, the income share of the top 1 percent of earners has risen from 11 percent to more than 20 percent of national income. Those gains have been almost exactly balanced by losses among the bottom 50 percent. There are many reasons for this trend, including corporate concentration, the private-equity boom and technology, which both displaces lower-skilled workers and enriches a highly skilled elite. But the coronavirus amplifies the importance of all of them. The pandemic could compress decades of economic change into a matter of years.”
International institutions like the IMF and World Bank will be giving out loans to both poorer and richer countries to help with the ”recovery” from the economic crash and of course there will be loans given out to help distribute the vaccine as well. This will seem friendly and benign but it will almost certainly require what’s called a structural adjustment. These international programs impose austerity on countries according to many economic experts. The EU and some other first world countries have already been known to be deficit hawks before the pandemic and this will most likely be a perfect excuse to switch to an even harsher version.
Former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn recently said he expects all these first world countries to turn to “harsh austerity” after running these deficits up, and that the third world was headed for “brutal restructuring” and should expect another attack on their public sector. (10:45 here) The President of Belarus, a country that did not lockdown, said that the IMF told them they’d only give them assistance if they locked down. The head of the IMF didn’t really deny this, he said he told them that they had to follow WHO orders, but the WHO changed to a lockdown policy in the spring. So, this is basically blackmail, in today’s globalized economy even just China alone locking down would’ve caused a recession that would require a stimulus for most countries.
Surveillance is another thing many have become paranoid over, and rightfully so, but even then this is just an ongoing process being turbo charged. This is the next step in the evolution of surveillance which the empire has been using since the beginning, historian Alfred McCoy has written a lot about this process that has been going on over one hundred years. Of course, there’s also the Snowden leaks which exposed the gigantic modern surveillance state. Liberals and leftists who usually cry all day about the “far right” don’t at all find it strange that orban in Hungary, bibi in Israel, modi in India, the Saudi and gulf dictators, and duterte in the Philippines all went along and supported harsh lockdowns in the name of public health at one point or another? Gop governors in the us who didn’t support simple Medicaid expansion in Obamacare all of a sudden care about public health and lock their residents inside because of it? This is absurd, of course they don’t, they’re just helping chase more profit for their big corporate donors and billionaire friends.
In fact Bolsonaro in Brazil was probably the only far right leader to not be pro lockdown and even in Brazil local areas were still shutting down anyways. In many places people were forced to wear masks, even though it used to be considered a debatable issue. In some East Asian countries masks were recommended during flu season, in most other places they weren’t, the WHO wasn’t recommending them for everyone during flu season either. Oxford evidenced based medicine professors said there wasn’t enough evidence to say either way and the issue had been politicized. Well, why was debating the effectiveness of masks made a kin to saying the earth is flat? Some seem to think it’s some type of psychological tactic by people in power, and maybe that’s possible. I can’t help but I think of the money though, the disposable mask market went from under 1 billion dollars to start 2020 to over 166 billion by the end of 2020, there are definitely groups of wealthy people who have cashed in on the mask mania.
Dr. Fauci and Dr. Osterholm, whom I mentioned earlier, both separately said masks were useless in March, and switched up months later.
Fauci even admitted he lied in March allegedly to stop a mask shortage.
Many other doctors around the world did similar things. Even if this virus wasn’t engineered and let out of a lab on purpose or on accident, both of which are very possible as Sam Husseini has written about in Salon, this is the mother of all of conspiracies. Even in the most benign scenario where the virus jumped into humans through nature naturally, this global scam is still a crime against humanity that makes the weapons of mass destruction scam look light in comparison. We should start calling it “the virus of mass destruction”. I can’t remember exactly where I first heard the phrase, but it’s a fitting name for this. Now the difference is instead of pretending to fight terrorism we have leaders all over the world pretending to care about public health. This is class warfare kicked up a notch, it’s gone from conventional to nuclear.
Many people have figured out they’re being lied to, the problem is they can’t put their finger on exactly why so we end up with crazy conspiracism. Everything that has happened isn’t so the most powerful people can have more power just for the sake of it, and of course most people aren’t going to accept that theory, it’s ridiculous.
The lack of economic analysis in covid conspiracy circles probably comes from the fact that in the west most people against covid restrictions are libertarians, and obviously they aren’t going to blame capitalism or even understand that’s what caused all this. That’s why you have idiots calling the covid lockdowns “communism”, because for many libertarians anything they don’t like is communist, even if it’s being done by multi billion dollar corporations.
With that being said, I think the person who believes in 5g conspiracies or is obsessed with Bill Gates (he’s obviously extremely powerful, but he did not start this craziness on his own) is more reasonable than the perfectly healthy person who’s locked themselves inside their home and is scared to death of covid. At least they can see something isn’t right, and are willing to fight for their basic rights.
To me, the saddest thing I see is Leftists taking it as axiomatic that lockdowns work even though they don’t, and that they hurt the rich when in fact they do the opposite. Or how about race obsessed people saying things like covid kills black people more often than white people, as if a respiratory virus can be racist, and as if there are only blacks and whites in the US (black Africans have been dying less per capita than white Europeans). There is more of a correlation between obesity and covid deaths than race, and globally richer countries like the US have more obesity, but at the country level its the poor American who is more likely to be obese and black Americans are disproportionately poor.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog page.
Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook
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o.
Trust
WHAT Plan?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNI0va6kkK0&feature=youtu.be
with
reallygraceful
(5:43)
+
#SolutionsWatch:
“TheGreatReopening”
https://www.corbettreport.com/thegreatreopening-solutionswatch/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CorbettReportRSS+%28The+Corbett+Report%29
with
James Corbett
(23:31)
