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China Hit With Sobering Splash of Reality as Alaskan Talks Melt Under Heat of U.S. Belligerence

By Matthew Ehrett | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 24, 2021

They had some reason to make their hopeful assumptions as the U.S. State Department press releases announced that the meetings would “highlight cooperation that promotes peace, security and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.”

The Chinese certainly hoped that the sanctions imposed under Trump’s watch might be rolled back by the new administration and that the new team might respect China’s sovereign right to pursue its economic interests without being seen as an opponent to the decaying western empire. They have understandably gotten quite tired of dealing with the constant unipolar intimidation as has been so common since Obama’s Asia Pivot was first announced in 2012. In response to the pressure of a dying empire attempting to insecurely impose its will on a growing nation which will soon find itself as the economic leader of the world, China has responded consistently with class and restraint calling for cooperation and dialogue.

At various times over recent years, China has offered the USA and other western nations desperately in need of real economic development, opportunities to cooperate on the Belt and Road Initiative, space research and other sectors of win-win cooperation citing these domains as being inclusive of all and beneficial to all participants. The fact that the Chinese have made these offers isn’t surprising. The USA is economically bankrupt, sitting upon a derivatives-fueled hyperinflationary bubble ripe to blow, devoid of any significant manufacturing capacities it once enjoyed and militarily over-extended beyond belief. So it isn’t as if cooperating on the BRI isn’t in the interests of the USA… as a sovereign nation.

But the USA isn’t really a sovereign nation state these days. It’s something else.

This sad fact slapped the Chinese delegation across the face moment U.S. representatives Anthony Blinken and Andrew Sullivan opened their mouths during the keynote remarks and spewed nothing but belligerent poison at their Asian counterparts. Blinken began his condescending chastisements of China’s disruptive influence to “international rules-based order”, condemned China for its alleged cyber-attacks and the apparently vicious treatment of Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Tibetans and Taiwan. Sullivan followed suit promoting the importance of the anti-Chinese “Quad” (often dubbed the “NATO of the Pacific) and virtue signalled “American ingenuity” and leadership.

Using the best newspeak available to an American diplomat these days, Blinken condemned the “might makes right” outlook which has caused so much injustice over the years and which apparently guides China thinking, saying: “The alternative to a rules-based order is a world in which might makes right and winners take all, and that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.”

Of course, one might be confused by this claim since China has only one foreign military base in Djibouti, has started no new wars in generations and has lifted nearly a billion people out of poverty, but that’s only because you don’t receive quality CIA briefings like Blinken and Sullivan.

Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi’s responses provided a sobering sledgehammer of reality as both statesmen took the opportunity to spend 42 minutes laying out in stark terms the scale of hypocritical poison in extolling democracy abroad while not being able to win the support of its own population citing BLM. Jiechi also contrasted the USA’s obsessive use of regime changes and wars across the world in defense of the Washington-run “rules based order” with China’s track record in ending extreme poverty winning the support of its citizens and building great infrastructure projects abroad.

Calling out the disingenuous intention behind the U.S. delegation’s organization of the talks, Jiechi stated:

“isn’t this the intention of the United States – judging from what, or the way that you have made your opening remarks – that it wants to speak to China in a condescending way from a position of strength? So was this carefully all planned and was it carefully orchestrated with all the preparations in place? Is that the way that you had hoped to conduct this dialogue? Well, I think we thought too well of the United States. We thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols.”

Jiechi continued:

“So let me say here that, in front of the Chinese side, the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength. The U.S. side was not even qualified to say such things even 20 years or 30 years back, because this is not the way to deal with the Chinese people. If the United States wants to deal properly with the Chinese side, then let’s follow the necessary protocols and do things the right way.”

In the ensuing days of meetings, it should not come as a surprise that very little in the way of serious conflict resolution occurred. In fact, the only solid points of agreement which the U.S. side would permit involved two joint protocols that fall perfectly into alignment with the Malthusian closed system objectives of the Great Reset agenda attempting to reign in a post-nation state world order in the wake of the oncoming economic meltdown. These included 1) a joint program to coordinate more closely on fighting global warming via green finance and green energy grids and 2) coordinating on COVID-19 vaccination programs.

Nothing which China is doing that relates to actual scientific and technological growth, long term conditionality-free banking or poverty extermination was permitted by the U.S.-side for reasons which should be obvious to the informed reader by now.

While Blinken did announce in the post-conference press release that space cooperation between the two powers was discussed, it is a fact as true as gravity that the imperial technocrats running the Biden White House are so ideologically opposed to the sort of open-system programs which space cooperation creates that Blinken’s remarks are sure to remain dead words.

What is clear coming out of the Alaska meeting is that the Biden Administration is committed to accelerating the worst elements of the “hard imperial” practices of military encirclement of China while building up the QUAD military alliance on the one hand while also advancing the “soft imperial” practices of pulling China into unbreakable de-carbonization treaties and medical health regimes controlled by supranational technocrats on behalf of the Anglo-American oligarchy.

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March 24, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | 1 Comment

The U.S. Intelligence Community, Flouting Laws, is Increasingly Involving Itself in Domestic Politics

By Glenn Greenwald | March 24, 2021

A report declassified last Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security is raising serious concerns about the possibly illegal involvement by the intelligence community in U.S. domestic political affairs.

Entitled “Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021,” the March 1 Report from the Director of National Intelligence states that it was prepared “in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security—and was drafted by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).”

Its primary point is this: “The IC [intelligence community] assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.” While asserting that “the most lethal” of these threats is posed by “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs),” it makes clear that its target encompasses a wide range of groups from the left (Antifa, animal rights and environmental activists, pro-choice extremists and anarchists: “those who oppose capitalism and all forms of globalization”) to the right (sovereign citizen movements, anti-abortion activists and those deemed motivated by racial or ethnic hatreds).

The U.S. security state apparatus regards the agenda of “domestic violent extremists” as “derived from anti-government or anti-authority sentiment,” which includes “opposition to perceived economic, racial or social hierarchies.” In sum, to the Department of Homeland Security, an “extremist” is anyone who opposes the current prevailing ruling class and system for distributing power. Anyone they believe is prepared to use violence, intimidation or coercion in pursuit of these causes then becomes a “domestic violent extremist,” subject to a vast array of surveillance, monitoring and other forms of legal restrictions:

Department of Homeland Security report, Mar.1, 2021

It goes without saying that violence of any kind — including that which is politically motivated — is a serious crime under U.S. law, and it is the proper role of the U.S. Government to investigate and prevent it. But there are real and important legal and institutional limits on the authority of the intelligence community to involve itself in domestic law enforcement, or other forms of domestic political activity, that seem threatened here, if not outright violated.

In particular, the Report’s acknowledgement that it was compiled by institutions including “the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)” has alarmed numerous members of the House Intelligence Committee. On Thursday, all ten minority members of that Committee wrote a previously unreported letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines “to raise serious concerns about the production of this document by the Intelligence Community (IC) and to seek clarification of the facts related to its production.”

Among the issues raised was that the DHS Report was not subject to the standard rigors of an intelligence community finding, yet continually makes sweeping claims that it prefixes with the authoritative phrase “the IC assesses.” The Committee members found this “to be misleading,” adding: we “urge you to clarify which elements in the IC concurred with this judgement and the intelligence basis, if any, for that concurrence.” In other words, Haines claims that these dubious assertions about various threats faced by Americans are the findings of the intelligence community when that is not true: just like the originally false claim widely spread by the media that “all seventeen intelligence agencies” endorsed the 2016 election findings about Russian interference when, in fact, it was only a few which had done so. Haines’ claims have support only from a few agencies as well.

But the more substantive danger is the role played by the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the domestic politics of the U.S., all in the name of fighting “domestic terrorism” (similar dangers were previously created by the Bush and Obama administrations in the name of fighting “international terrorism”). As the committee members’ letter details:

The Intelligence Committee members, citing the fact that the intelligence community is “subject to longstanding prohibitions against domestic activities,” then demanded answers to a series of questions based on this substantive concern:

Involvement of the intelligence community in the domestic activities of U.S. citizens is one of the most dangerous breaches of civil liberties and democratic order the U.S. Government can perpetrate. It was after World War II when the CIA, the NSA and other security state agencies that wield immense and unlimited powers in the dark were created in the name of fighting the Cold War. Legal and institutional prohibitions on wielding that massive machinery against the American public were central to the always-dubious claim that this security behemoth that operates completely in the dark was compatible with democracy. As the ACLU noted, “in its 1947 charter, the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans, in part because President Truman was afraid that the agency would engage in political abuse.”

Since then, Truman’s fear has been realized over and over. Some of the worst post-WW2 civil liberties abuses have been the result of breaches by the CIA and other agencies of this prohibition. As the ACLU documents, the CIA in the 1960s was caught infiltrating and manipulating numerous domestic political activist groups. Under the auspices of the War on Terror, entire new bureaucracies (such as the Department of Homeland Security) and new legal regimes (such as the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act) were designed to erode these long-standing limitations by dramatically increasing surveillance powers aimed at U.S. citizens. And by design, the infiltration of these security state agencies in U.S. domestic politics has dramatically escalated.

As the first War on Terror was escalating, The Washington Post — under the headline “CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations” — reported in October, 2002, that “The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its domestic presence, placing agents with nearly all of the FBI’s 56 terrorism task forces in U.S. cities.” The Post added that in the name of that War on Terror:

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recently described the new arrangement as his answer to MI5, Britain’s internal security service. Unlike the CIA, MI5 is empowered to collect intelligence within Britain and to act to disrupt domestic threats to British national security. “It goes some distance to accomplishing what the MI5 does,” Mueller told a House-Senate intelligence panel last week in describing the new CIA role in the FBI task forces.

In the years following, two NSA whistleblowers — William Binney and Edward Snowden — both cited their horror over the turning of the surveillance machinery against American citizens as the reason for their decision to denounce their agency. One of the aspects that most disturbed me about the Russiagate conspiracy theory from the start was that it was created and disseminated by the CIA and related agencies with the intent, first, to alter the outcome of the 2016 election, and then to undermine the elected president with whom they were at war. Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) went on The Rachel Maddow Show to warn — or more accurately: threaten — Trump that the CIA would destroy his presidency if he continued to criticize or otherwise oppose them:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/505WGUrCp10?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0

It is encouraging to see Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee starting to express serious concerns over the dangers of intelligence community involvement in domestic politics. That is underscored by their approving citation to the mild mid-1970s reforms of the intelligence community ushered in by the Senate’s Church Committee, once primarily a liberal cause. Indeed, many of the same House Republicans who wrote this important letter to the DNI have in the past supported laws that allow greater involvement of the CIA, NSA and other agencies in activities on U.S. soil — including the Patriot Act.

The head of the Church Committee, Sen. Frank Church (D-ID), made clear in his iconic quote on Meet the Press in 1975 that those reforms were primarily motivated by fears that the U.S. Government would one day turn its vast intelligence powers onto the American people, rendering core civil liberties an illusion:

In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (…) We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

(That quote from Sen. Church was the first one that appeared in my 2014 book on the NSA reporting I did with Edward Snowden, and the title of that book, No Place to Hide, was a nod toward Church’s chilling warning, now come true).

As I have been repeatedly noting over the last two months, the Biden administration, along with leading Democrats such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), have been stating explicitly that one of their top priorities is the adoption of new laws designed to import the Bush/Cheney/Obama War on Terror onto U.S. soil for domestic purposes. As recently as February 14, The Washington Post — under the headline: “The agency founded because of 9/11 is shifting to face the threat of domestic terrorism” —noted that Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is now demanding that homeland security resources be re-directed toward domestic extremists, and “lawmakers of both parties spoke favorably of new legislation to specifically address domestic terrorism.”

Nobody from the Biden administration or Congressional members demanding enactment of Schiff’s proposed new “domestic terrorism” law can identify any activities that are not now criminal that they believe ought to be. Unless it is to permit intelligence agencies to start policing constitutionally protected speech and associational activities among U.S. citizens, why are any new laws needed? Unless it is to empower them to escalate their already-aggressive use of War on Terror tactics against U.S. citizens, what do they want security state agencies to be able to do on U.S. soil that they cannot now do?

But just as the fear of international terrorism was constantly inflated to place such questions off limits when it came to the War on Terror, and just as critics of the excesses of the first War on Terror were constantly accused of downplaying the threat of Islamic extremism if not harboring outright sympathy for it, the same tactics are being used now. Anyone raising civil liberties concerns about what is being done in the name of combating “domestic extremism” is vilified as ignoring and even supporting such domestic extremism.

No matter: there are few dangers more acute than the weaponization of these security state instruments against U.S. citizens for political ends. The DNI should provide full, complete and truthful answers to the important questions posed by these Intelligence Committee members, and should do so promptly. The evidence of growing incursions by the intelligence community in U.S. domestic politics is already strong and ample, and further incursions would be both dangerous and illegal.

March 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment

Boulder Shooter Threatened Fake Hate Crime Charges Against Classmates He Attacked

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | March 24, 2021

The gunman in Boulder who killed 10 people at a supermarket would routinely threaten his classmates with threats of filing fake hate crime charges after violently attacking them, eyewitnesses told the media.

As we highlighted yesterday, Ahmad Al-Issa would typically be described as an “anti-racist activist,” with his Facebook page having featured criticism of Donald Trump, advocacy for refugees and Muslim immigrants.

Despite the gunman’s family telling the Daily Beast that the reason for his rampage was as a result of him being the victim of “bullying” in high school, Al-Issa’s classmates say the opposite is true.

A Fox 31 report reveals that Al-Issa once punched a classmate and continued to hit him as he lay on the ground.

Al-Issa tried to justify the attack by claiming the victim “had made fun of him and called him racial names weeks earlier,” although no other classmates could corroborate this.

The shooter’s wrestling team classmate Dayton Marvel also told the Denver Post that in Al Issa’s senior year, “during the wrestle-offs to see who makes varsity, he actually lost his match and quit the team and yelled out in the wrestling room that he was like going to kill everybody.”

“Nobody believed him. We were just all kind of freaked out by it, but nobody did anything about it,” said Marvel.

“He would talk about him being Muslim and how if anybody tried anything, he would file a hate crime and say they were making it up,” he added.

Given this history and the fact that Al-Issa was an avid reader of mainstream media, questions now must be asked about his real motivation given that all the gunman’s victims were white and whether he was radicalized by anti-white racism that has been institutionalized by the press.

March 24, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Dark New Dem Bill Uses “Counter American Intelligence” To Wage War on MAGA

revolver | March 23, 2021

Last week, HBO released Part 1 of its 6-part docuseries “Q: Into The Storm.” It’s the latest douse of lighter fluid on a growing pyre of Regime Media agitprop against “conspiracy theories tearing democracy apart.” 

Not to be outdone, CNN Clockwork Orange’d the country’s airport terminal captives with another round of “She’s losing her parents to QAnon. Listen to her plea”:

Evidently, “When parents become strangers: How QAnon is tearing families apart” and “’They’re unrecognizable’: One woman reflects on losing her parents to QAnon” were such box office blockbusters the industry keeps churning out sequels.

In turn, the right-wing internet trended the meme “Blue Anon,” a counter-concept designed to mock left-wing conspiracy theories. The results were predictable: Google banned the term Blue Anon from the front page of its search results. Internet slang repository Urban Dictionary banned the entry for the term “BlueAnon” altogether. … continue

March 24, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

11 Million School-Age Children To Be Vaccinated By Autumn

By Richie Allen | March 24, 2021

The Telegraph claims that it has seen provisional government plans to begin vaccinating children as early as August. Two sources told the paper, that August is the earliest that children under-18 could receive a vaccine.

Oxford University is currently trialling covid vaccines on children. Safety data is expected sometime in June or July. If the data is positive, the government will roll-out the jabs for children.

It has been estimated that at the current vaccination rate, roughly three million jabs a week, most of the country’s 11 million schoolchildren could be vaccinated before the Autumn term.

Government advisers are keen to vaccinate every child in the country, claiming it’s the best way to limit the spread of infection. Critics point to the fact that the virus barely brushes children. Kids are unlikely to contract covid-19 and those who do, rarely fall ill.

In fact, the government admitted last week, that children returning to school has not led to a rise in infections. Of the 2,762,775 lateral flow tests that were carried out on secondary pupils since they went back, just 1,324 were positive, according to the first official figures.

That’s right. Millions of tests were given to secondary school children and only 0.05 per cent of them tested positive for the virus. Kids don’t get it. Kids don’t carry it. Kids don’t pass it on.

So why vaccinate them? Why vaccinate anyone? UK Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty admitted last night that most people who get covid have mild or no symptoms. “It’s very difficult to find” he said.

No sane parent would allow their child receive an experimental treatment for an illness that presents no risk whatsoever to children.

March 24, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Professor: Britain Can’t Be Held To Ransom By Vaccine Refuseniks

By Richie Allen | March 24, 2021

Writing in the Daily Mail today, Brendan Wren, Professor of Vaccinology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said that “a third wave caused by vaccine refuseniks would devastate our return to normality.” He also said that “there is no excuse” for not having a vaccine. He writes:

… a worryingly high proportion of British people will continue to refuse the jab — preventing us reaching the crucial ‘herd immunity’, whereby the virus cannot spread because it cannot find enough people to infect.

We know, for example, that more than three million over-55s — including half a million over-65s — have still not been vaccinated, even though all are eligible and could surely have had the vaccine if they wanted it.

In both Britain and Europe, the costs of this vaccine hesitancy are now all too clear. France’s history of ‘anti-vax’ thinking — up to 60 per cent of French people have previously said they wouldn’t take a Covid jab — is now surely playing its part in the country’s third wave.

Here, we know, sadly, that vaccine hesitancy is particularly high in certain sections of the black, Asian and minority ethnic [BAME] communities.

Wren goes on to say that while he “ordinarily baulks” at the idea of compulsory vaccination, he does support making covid jabs mandatory for care workers. He then writes that Britain cannot be held to ransom by refuseniks:

Though I do not believe we are there yet, a third wave caused by vaccine refuseniks would devastate our return to normality. Britain cannot be held to ransom because of a minority who don’t understand the value of the vaccines, risking their own health and that of others in the process.

There it is. We, who will never take their experimental medicines, which are already causing real harm, will be blamed for delaying the exit from lockdown. We’ll be blamed for future lockdowns too. They’ll use every trick in the book, to get us to roll up our sleeves.

We know that Covid Status Certificates or Vaccine Passports are a reality. That’s effectively mandating by coercion.

Now a leading scientist is saying that the country cannot be held to ransom by refuseniks. This will lead to families, friends and neighbours falling out and singling out those of us who won’t have a jab. It’s going to get uglier, that’s for sure.

March 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

Palestinian Rockets: The Hidden Facts

If Americans Knew | March 15, 2021

U.S. media reports focus on Palestinian rockets fired into Israel from Gaza, but the reports leave out essential facts, making the aggressors seem like victims, and the victims like aggressors.

For facts and citations see https://iakn.us/rockets​ and https://ifamericansknew.org/history/​

For ongoing news and analysis see https://israelpalestinenews.org/​.

For information on the Israel lobby, see http://iakn.us/aList​ and https://youtu.be/AC8pJvY8Wdo​ and https://youtu.be/6PsGZz19cHk​

For information on media distortions on Israel-Palestine see https://ifamericansknew.org/media/​ and https://israelpalestinenews.org/media…​ .

A video showing Israel’s strategies for manipulating Americans is at https://youtu.be/RvH47pAm1MA​

For a thoroughly sourced book on the early days of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, see http://iakn.us/AOBJ-book​

Also see this video letter to Congress woman Manning: https://youtu.be/Glc0GjobM9M​

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Irish Doctor Suspended for Refusing to Vaccinate Patients With Experimental COVID Jab

21st Century Wire | March 23, 2021

An Irish GP who describes himself as a ‘conscientious objector’ has been suspended by the country’s medical licensing body for refusing to vaccinate his patients with the new experimental COVID-19 jab.

Dr. Waters told The Irish Times, “My problem primarily is that I don’t think the pathogenicity of Covid is sufficiently severe to A) cause lockdowns or B) use a messenger RNA [vaccine],” expressing concern his over the unproven safety record of the new vaccines.

The government agency is threatening to target any doctor which they deem to be spreading ‘misinformation’ or not following the government’s ever-changing and arbitrary guidelines relating to the ‘global pandemic’ or its mass vaccination campaign.

Irish Post reports…

Last month, we reported on Kildare GP Dr Gerard Waters of the Whitehorn Clinic in Celbridge, who faced backlash after admitting he would not be vaccinating his patients and also does not refer anyone for Covid-19 tests even if they are exhibiting symptoms.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Liveline in February, Dr Waters said he was a ‘conscientious objector’ and said he disagreed with how quickly the vaccines had been developed and how it had been handled by authorities.

He went on to say that he would have no issue if his patients went on to receive the vaccine from somewhere else, but he would not put anything in his patient’s arms that he would not put in his own.

Now Dr Waters has been suspended by the Medical Council after they made an application to the High Court under the Medical Practitioners Act 2007, The Irish Times reports.

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | | 1 Comment

Lockdown One Year On – It doesn’t work, it never-worked & it wasn’t supposed to work

Light up the lone candle on the saddest birthday cake in the world! The most destructive public policy of the century is growing up and doesn’t look like slowing down.

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | March 23, 2021

And so we come to March 23rd, and lockdown’s first birthday. Or, as we call it here, the longest two weeks in history.

1 year. 12 calendar months. 365 increasingly gruelling days.

It’s a long time since “2 weeks to flatten the curve”, became an obvious lie. Sometime in July it turned into a sick joke. The curve was flattened, the NHS protected and the clapping was hearty and meaningful.

… and none of it made any difference.

This was not a sacrifice for the “greater good”. It was not a hard decision with arguments on both sides. It was not a risk-benefit scenario. The “risks” were in fact certainties, and the “benefits” entirely fictional.

Because Lockdowns don’t work. It’s really important to remember that.

Even if you subscribe to the belief that “Sars-Cov-2” is a unique discrete entity (which is far from proven), or that it is incredibly dangerous (which is demonstrably untrue), the lockdown has not worked to, in any way, limit this supposed threat.

Lockdowns. Don’t. Work.

They don’t make any difference, the curves don’t flatten and the R0 number doesn’t drop and the lives aren’t saved (quite the opposite, as we’ve all seen).

Just look at the graphs.

This one, comparing “Covid deaths” in the UK (lockdown) and Sweden (no lockdown):

Or this one, comparing “Covid deaths” in California (lockdown) and Florida (no lockdown):

From Belarus to Sweden to Florida to Nicaragua to Tanzania, the evidence is clear. “Covid”, whatever that means in real terms, is not impacted by lockdowns.

Putting the entire population under house arrest doesn’t benefit public health. In fact, it’s (rather predictably) incredibly counter-productive.

The damage done by shuttering businesses, limiting access to healthcare, postponing treatments and diagnoses, postponed surgeries, increasing depression, soaring unemployment and mass poverty has been discussed to death. The scale of the impact cannot be overstated.

Dr David Nabarro, World Health Organization special envoy for Covid-19, said this of lockdowns back in October:

We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of the virus[…]just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry… look what’s happening to small-holding farmers […] it seems we may have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition […] This is a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe.”

A terrible, global catastrophe. A doubling of childhood malnutrition.

The “pandemic” didn’t do that, lockdowns did that. They were never going to achieve their stated aims. And what’s more, they were never intended to achieve those aims.

Too often soft language in the media talks about “misjudgments” or “mistakes” or “incompetence”. Supposed critics claim the government “panicked” or “over-reacted”. That is nonsense. The easiest, cheesiest excuse that has ever existed.

“Whoops”, they say, with an emphatic shrug and shit-eating grin “I guess we done messed up!”. Unflattering, but better than the truth.

Because the truth is that the government isn’t mistaken or scared or stupid…they are malign. And dishonest. And cruel.

All the suffering of lockdown was entirely predictable and deliberately imposed. For reasons that have nothing to do with helping people and everything to do controlling them.

It’s been more than apparent for most of the last fifty-two weeks that the agenda of lockdown was not public health, but laying the groundwork for the “new normal” and “the great reset”.

A series of programmes designed to completely undercut civil liberties all across the world, reversing decades (if not centuries) of social progress. A re-feudalisation of society, with the 99% cheerfully taking up their peasant smocks “to protect the vulnerable”, whilst the elite proselytise about the worth of rules they happily admit do not apply to them.

And we’ve all had lives ruined and a year of precious time wasted. For nothing. You’ve been locked up for two weeks that lasted 365 days. For nothing.

…or rather, for everything. Because that’s what they are trying to take from us. Everything. And the only way to stop them is not to let them. To simply refuse consent.

Let’s not let lockdown get a second birthday.

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

The Probe into the Israeli Vaccine Policy and its Outcome is beyond Damning

By Gilad Atzmon | March 23, 2021

In Israel yesterday, an independent legal body that calls itself the Civilian Probe (CP)* published its finding regarding the catastrophic impact of the Pfizer vaccine on the nation.

In their report, which they submitted to the Attorney General and the Health Minister, the committee listed a chain of critical legal and ethical failures that point at a possible attempt to mislead not just Israelis but also the entire world. Since the beginning of January I have been reporting on an undeniable correlation between vaccinations, cases and deaths (here , here, here and here ). The CP confirms my suspicions but their study also presents alarming medical findings regarding the scale of lethal side effects.

In the document the CP points at a government attempt to conceal its dealing with Pfizer. The document states that “the Pfizer-Israel agreement is suffocated with redacted segments, consequently, it is not possible to analyze it legally and/or fully grasp Its implications as far as public health is concerned… This concealment casts a heavy shadow over anyone who took part in the (Israeli/Pfizer) negotiations…”

The CP then continues arguing that “in order to generate demand (amongst the people) for the vaccine, the government and the Ministry of Health have launched an unprecedented aggressive campaign, aiming to make Israelis rush to ‘get vaccinated.’ During that campaign all the basic rules of medical caution and ethics were disregarded, and with them also key guidelines formed after WWII regarding participation in medical trials (the Nuremberg Code). Instead of transparent and clear explanations, the public was misled by repeated official statements that the (Pfizer vaccine) has been ‘approved by the FDA’ after passing ‘rigorous tests.’”

The CP is accusing the state of Israel of intentionally reckless conduct… “Monitoring systems that enable the detection of side effects are a basic and critical condition for granting a permission for mass use of any new medicine, certainly when a mass operation of treatment that is defined as experimental is given to millions, and especially when this treatment is given to an entire country…”.

But Israel failed to set such a monitoring system.

“On the one hand, the state did not inform the citizens that Pfizer’s vaccine is in experimental stages that have not yet been completed, and that at this stage they are actually taking part in the experiment. On the other hand, the state did not maintain transparent and open control and monitoring systems for the public. As a result, there is a serious concern that this critical and negligent omission stems from: (a) the fear that such disclosure could interfere with the fulfilment of the objectives that may be implied by the Israel-Pfizer agreement or (b) the fear of diminishing demand for the exceptional number of vaccines that were purchased by Israel in advance, and / or (c) the fear of revealing unflattering results of the ‘experiment’ being carried out in Israel.”

The CP is brave to admit that the lack of a monitoring system isn’t just a potential crime against the Israeli people, it may also be a crime against the rest of the world (i.e., humanity):

“In the absence of a transparent monitoring system that reports on side effects, not only have the Israeli government and the Ministry of Health failed citizens by providing them with misleading information, the Israeli government have failed both Pfizer and the rest of the world awaiting the results of the (so called) ‘real world experiment’ (that is taking place in Israel).”

To remove any doubt, the CP alerts the Israeli Attorney General to the possible criminal act implied by Israel’s vaccine policy.

“This is an alleged deception, suspiciously criminal, which should be thoroughly examined before the Attorney General allows the Israeli government to continue the alleged campaign of deception of Israel’s citizens and the (rest of the) world.”

The CP extended their study well beyond the legal realm, as it also attempts to fill the wide hole created by the State’s lack of a monitoring system.

“What do we learn from the facts on the ground?” the CP report asks. “An examination of mortality data published by the government shows that there is a correlation between number of vaccinations and the number of deaths. The excess mortality is noticeable among people up to 70 and also among adults over the age of 70, and remains even after offsetting the deaths attributed to Corona. In the population over the age of 70 – in January 2021 an excess mortality of 19.5% was observed compared to October 2020 – the month when the corona data were highest, and 22.4% compared to January 2020. In the younger population – an excess mortality of 7% was observed in January 2021 compared to the month October 2020 – the month in which the corona death numbers were the highest, and 7% compared to January 2020. It should be noted that this trend continues in the following month as well.”

As mentioned above I have been writing about the devastating correlation between vaccines and deaths since early January. In Britain and the USA, we detect identical correlation between mass vaccination and death. However, far more problematic is the realm of side effects, something which governments, the WHO, the corrupted pharmaceutical industry, and of course social media giants attempt to suppress in the most Orwellian manner. The Israeli CP seems to have produced the first robust report on Pfizer’s vaccine side effects. They published a table of their findings, which they summarize here:

“As one can detect looking at the table – there are close to 200 deaths, and this – only by examining about 800 reports of cases of serious side effects. As mentioned, the CP is still working on analyzing side effects and we have hundreds of additional reports that are subject to analysis. Our study so far indicates that about 25% of deaths are from people under the age of 60. About 15% of them are under 50 years old. 7 of the deceased are at young ages – below age 30. Also, the study identified 27 cases of heart problems in people under the age of 60, of which 24 cases are among young people aged 17-30.  Regarding the issues to do with female medical complications (including labor-complication, delayed menstruation or irregular menstruation, etc.) – it should be noted that the committee has about 200 additional reports that have not yet been included in the final list of our findings.”

For many years, I doubted whether there was a force in the middle east that could face, let alone defeat, Israel. I am pretty convinced now that with Netanyahu at the helm and Pfizer taking care of the nation’s wellbeing, Israel doesn’t really need enemies. However, every world citizen who is concerned about the future of humanity should be alarmed by the CP’s findings and particularly by the desperate and relentless attempts to suppress free academic, scientific and ethical discussion about Covid, the so-called ‘vaccines’ or anything else.

*To read the CP report click here

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

The Nakba of Sheikh Jarrah: How Israel uses ‘the law’ to ethnically cleanse East Jerusalem

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | March 23, 2021

A Palestinian man, Atef Yousef Hanaysha, was killed by Israeli occupation forces on 19 March during a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion in Beit Dajan, near Nablus, in the northern West Bank. Although tragic, this news reads like a routine item from occupied Palestine, where the shooting and killing of unarmed protesters is part of the daily reality. That reality, though, is part of a wider, more sinister development.

Since right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced in September 2019 his intention to formally and illegally annex nearly a third of the occupied Palestinian West Bank, tensions have remained high. The killing of Hanaysha is only the tip of the iceberg. In occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a massive battle is already underway. On one side, Israeli soldiers, army bulldozers, and illegal armed Jewish settlers are carrying out daily missions to evict Palestinian families, displace farmers, burn orchards, demolish homes and confiscate land. On the other side, Palestinian civilians, often unorganised, unprotected and leaderless, are fighting back.

The territorial boundaries of this battle are largely located in occupied East Jerusalem and in so-called “Area C” of the West Bank — which covers nearly 60 per cent of the total area of the occupied territory — which is under complete and direct Israeli military control. No other place represents the perfect microcosm of this uneven war than the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem.

On 10 March, fourteen Palestinian and Arab organisations issued a “joint urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Procedures on forced evictions in East Jerusalem” to stop the Israeli evictions in the area. Successive decisions by Israeli courts have paved the way for the Israeli army and police to evict fifteen Palestinian families — 37 households of around 195 people — in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni area in Sheikh Jarrah as well as Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhood in the town of Silwan.

These imminent evictions are not the first, nor will they be the last. Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem in June 1967 and formally, though illegally, annexed it in 1980. Since then, the Israeli government has vehemently rejected international criticism of the occupation, declaring instead that Jerusalem is the “eternal and undivided capital of Israel”.

To ensure that its annexation of the city is irreversible, the Israeli government approved the Master Plan 2000, a massive scheme that was undertaken to rearrange the boundaries of the city in such a way that it would ensure the permanent demographic majority of Israeli Jews at the expense of the city’s indigenous inhabitants. The Master Plan was no more than a blueprint for state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, which saw the destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes and the subsequent eviction of numerous families.

While news headlines occasionally present the habitual evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and other parts of East Jerusalem as if it is simply a matter of counterclaims between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers, the story is, in fact, a wider representation of Palestine’s modern history. Indeed, the innocent families which are now facing “the imminent risk of forced eviction” are re-living their ancestral nightmare of the Nakba, the very deliberate ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine in 1948.

Two years after the native inhabitants of historic Palestine were dispossessed of their homes and lands and ethnically cleansed, Israel enacted the so-called Absentees’ Property Law of 1950. The law, which has no legal or moral validity, simply granted to the State the properties of Palestinians who were driven out or fled from the war, to do with it as it pleases. Since those “absentee” Palestinians have never been allowed to exercise their legitimate right of return, as enshrined in international law, the Israeli law was state-sanctioned theft on a grand scale. It aimed ultimately to achieve two objectives: to ensure that Palestinian refugees do not return or attempt to claim their stolen properties in Palestine; and to give Israel a legal fig leaf for permanently confiscating Palestinian land and homes.

The Israeli military occupation of the remainder of historic Palestine in 1967 necessitated, from an Israeli colonial perspective, the creation of fresh laws that would allow the State and the illegal settlement enterprise to claim yet more Palestinian properties. This took place in 1970 in the form of the Legal and Administrative Matters Law. According to the new legal framework, only Israeli Jews were allowed to claim lost land and property in Palestinian areas.

Many of the evictions in East Jerusalem take place within the context of these three interconnected and strange legal arguments: the Absentees’ Property Law, the Legal and Administrative Matters Law, and the Master Plan 2000. Understood together, we can easily decipher the nature of the Israeli colonial scheme in East Jerusalem, where Israeli Jewish individuals, in coordination with settler organisations, work together to fulfil the vision of the State.

In their joint appeal, Palestinian human rights organisations describe how the flow of eviction orders issued by Israeli courts culminate in the construction of illegal Jewish settlements. Confiscated Palestinian properties are usually transferred to a branch within the Israeli Ministry of Justice called the Israeli Custodian General. The latter holds on to these properties until they are claimed by Israeli Jews, in accordance with the 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law. Once Israeli courts honour Jewish individuals’ legal claims to the confiscated Palestinian lands, these individuals often transfer their ownership rights or management to settler organisations. In no time, the latter utilise the newly-acquired property to expand existing settlements or to start new ones. All settlements are, of course, illegal under international law.

While the Israeli State claims to play an impartial role in this scheme, it is actually the facilitator of the entire process. The final outcome manifests in the ever-predictable scene, where an Israeli flag is triumphantly hoisted over a Palestinian home and a Palestinian family is assigned a tent from the UN and a few blankets.

While the above picture can thus be dismissed by some as another routine, common occurrence, the situation in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has become extremely volatile. Palestinians feel that they have nothing more to lose and Netanyahu’s government is more emboldened than ever. The killing of Atef Hanaysha, and others like him, is only the beginning of an imminent and widespread confrontation.

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

The ‘Rules-based international order’ is dead

Unless West finds new way to accommodate Russia & China, it will reap a whirlwind

By Glenn Diesen | RT | March 23, 2021

The gloves are off? The hostile exchanges at the China-US meeting in Alaska last week had striking similarities with the combative recent meeting between the EU’s foreign policy chief and the Russian foreign minister in Moscow.

Both disastrous encounters have demonstrated that after years of animosity it is not possible to return to the previous format for cooperation. Rudyard Kipling famously once wrote “east is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet.” That doesn’t have to be true, but it’s a fair summation of where we are now.

Returning to a bygone era?

If you believe the preliminary messaging, the new US government sought a more pragmatic relationship with China as its diplomats went to Alaska, while the EU endeavoured to improve relations with Russia on the trip to Moscow. What was on the agenda to restore more friendly relations?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced before the talks that the US would “discuss our deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjian, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion of our allies.” In Moscow, the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell similarly sought to lecture Russia about its domestic affairs and various perceived bad behaviours in international affairs.

As both the meetings predictably ended in spectacular failure, China was accused of having “arrived intent on grandstanding” and Russia was charged with having prepared the “humiliation” of the EU.

But why did Washington and Brussels believe it was appropriate to set an agenda that interfered in the domestic affairs of the other and focusing solely on transgressions by one side? The West also has mounting domestic challenges and is hardly innocent in military adventurism, cyber attacks or economic coercion. However, the meetings were not intended to be between equals and cooperation was not meant to establish common rules for mutual constraints.

A liberal international system becomes synonymous with liberal hegemony, and relations are organised between a political subject and a political object, between a teacher and a student, between police and a suspect. Cooperation is defined in pedagogic terms as the one side correcting the “bad behaviour” of the other side.

Liberal hegemony or a rules-based order?

From the Western perspective, a rules-based order requires the West to uphold liberal values and thus become a “force for good”. Blinken cautioned that “the alternative to a rules-based order is a world in which might makes right and winners take all”. For China and Russia, the unipolar era has been one where might makes right and liberal values has merely legitimised unilateralism. For example, witness how Moscow’s concerns about Western military adventures in Iraq, Syria and Libya, all of questionable legality under international law, to various degrees, were ignored.

Liberal hegemony as a value-based international order contradicts the concept of a rules-based order. A rules-based system infers the consistent application of international law, while a values-based system endows the liberal hegemon with the prerogative of selective and inconsistent application of international laws and rules.

The system of liberal hegemony demonstrates that values and power cannot be decoupled. Western states, like all other nations, formulate and pursue foreign policies based on national interests, and values are adjusted accordingly. In Kosovo it was decided that self-determination was more important than territorial integrity, and in Crimea it was decided that territorial integrity was more important than self-determination.

The same rules don’t apply to everybody, equally. It’s “asymmetrical,” not symmetrical. So, when Russia intervened in Syria at Damascus’ request and the US entered Syria, without Syrian or UN permission, Moscow was judged to have broken the rules.

While democracy and human rights should ideally have a place in international relations, the application of these values are always aligned with power interests. Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny is nominated for the Nobel peace price, while Julian Assange rots away in a British cell without such accolades. Washington’s abandonment of a four-decade long One-China Policy in terms of Taiwan, claims of “genocide” in Xinjian and support for the Hong Kong riots are also evidently motivated by geoeconomic rivalry. A rules-based system does not entail mutual constraints, but a system where the West as the political subject will police China and Russia as political objects.

Accommodated or contained?

Were Russia and China accommodated in the post-Cold War international order? This question is rarely asked, yet it should be considered the most important question in contemporary international relations.

Since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger “opened China” in the 1970s, every American administration believed that China has been accommodated in the international political and economic order. Likewise, both the EU and the US believe that they have sought to include Russia in Europe since it emerged as an independent state in 1991.

Yet, both Russia and China consider themselves to have consistently been contained. Answering the aforementioned question should be of the greatest importance. When the Cold War ended, the West enjoyed abundant political legitimacy and the leading foreign policy objective of both Moscow and Beijing was to cultivate friendly relations with Washington – two and a half decades later the two Eurasian giants formed a strategic partnership to construct a Greater Eurasia to reduce reliance on the US.

After the Cold War, both Russia and China were confronted with the dilemma of accepting the role as political objects and perpetual students in the Western-led order, or be contained as enemies of the liberal international order.

In the absence of a common European security architecture, an expansionist NATO and EU filled the vacuum. But Russia’s reaction to Western expansionism and unilateralism subsequently returned Moscow from the role as a compliant, civilising object to an enemy of the liberal international system that had to be contained.

China was in a much more favourable position as it did not face the same revisionism along its borders. China thus implicitly accepted temporarily foregoing a significant role in the international system. Deng Xiaoping famously defined China’s “peaceful rise” as entailing “[to] bide our time and hide our capabilities” by focusing on internal development whilst avoiding provoking the great powers. This approach was always temporary, as China would one day outgrow the US-dominated system. In 2010, China had become too powerful and Barack Obama announced its “pivot to Asia” to contain China, which escalated to an economic war under Donald Trump.

Between unipolarity and multipolarity

The current international disorder is caused by an interregnum – the world is currently stuck between a unipolar and a multipolar format. The West is pushing for a return to the unipolar era that existed before sanctions on Russia and the economic war against China. However, the two Eurasian giants, Russia and China, have spent the past years adjusting to a multipolar system.

The West will insist that on maintaining liberal hegemony due to a commitment and belief in liberal values, among elites (although that is no longer uniform), while Russia and China will reject a value-based system that is instrumental to impose an untenable unipolar order. There is no going back as the world has moved on, although the West is not yet ready to move forward.

Glenn Diesen is a Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. 

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

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