Xi Jinping ends landmark KSA visit by calling on Arab states to embrace multipolar world
The Cradle | December 10, 2022
Chinese President Xi Jinping left Saudi Arabia early on 10 December following a three-day visit that saw him attend three different summits with leaders from across West Asia and Africa.
On Friday night, Xi headed the first China-Arab States Summit, which saw a large majority of Arab League heads of state attend in a bid to strengthen bilateral ties with the Asian giant.
“As strategic partners, China and Arab states should … foster a closer China-Arab community with a shared future, so as to deliver greater benefits to their peoples and advance the cause of human progress,” the Chinese president said during his keynote speech.
Xi also called on Arab states to remain “independent and defend their common interests,” adding that China “supports Arab states in independently exploring development paths suited to their national conditions and holding their future firmly in their own hands.”
“China is ready to deepen strategic mutual trust with Arab states, and firmly support each other in safeguarding sovereignty, territorial integrity and national dignity,” Xi said, noting that the two sides should “jointly uphold the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, practice true multilateralism, and defend the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.”
The Chinese leader also urged leaders from West Asia and Africa to embrace “synergy between their development strategies, and promote high-quality [cooperation in the Belt and Road Initiative].”
Launched nine years ago, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is considered the crown jewel of Xi’s long-term foreign policy agenda. The stated aim of the mega-infrastructure project is to bring capital and infrastructure to Global South countries while dramatically strengthening connectivity for commerce, finance, and culture.
The BRI also aims to secure markets for Chinese companies, stable supplies of inputs for Chinese factories, and productive outlets for China’s large foreign exchange holdings. Close to 150 nations across the globe have signed on to participate in the BRI.
For the first half of 2022, Saudi Arabia was the biggest recipient of China’s finance and investment spending in the BRI.
Ahead of the China-Arab Summit on Friday, the Chinese president met with leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). During this summit, he urged the oil and gas giants to conduct energy sales in the Chinese yuan, potentially divorcing the US dollar from bilateral transactions.
He also vowed to import more oil and natural gas from Gulf Arab states while not interfering in their affairs, a departure from Washington’s long-standing policy of interference and domination.
Xi later took the opportunity to express China’s support for the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and voiced frustration over the “historical injustice” suffered by Palestinians.
“It is not possible to continue the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinians,” the Chinese president said on Friday.
He went on to call on the international community to grant Palestine “full membership in the United Nations” and said Beijing “supports the two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Beijing’s emergence as a major superpower since the turn of the century has proven to be critically important for Arab states, prompting them to diversify their strategic objectives and balance themselves away from a decades-long Western dependency.
The Real Agenda Behind American Academy of Pediatrics: Weaponizing Children’s Mental Health and Vaccines for Profit
The Defender | December 8, 2022
As of 2019, roughly 72,000 physicians were actively working in pediatrics or pediatric subspecialties in the U.S., many of them members of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
Nominally, the AAP is a professional medical association (PMA), but more often than not, it functions as a corporate and government mouthpiece, including issuing policy guidance to its members stating that it is an “acceptable option to pediatric care clinicians to dismiss families who refuse vaccines.”
With total “revenue, gains and other support” amounting in 2022 to nearly $127 million — supporting a staff of 475 and a self-described role as the “#1 publisher of pediatric titles in the world” — the deep-pocketed AAP’s ability to broadcast policies desired by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and tout the wares of drug, vaccine and formula manufacturers is significant.
That the AAP’s megaphone is one-sided has long attracted the notice of critics, who point to the organization’s “preference for fashionable political positions over evidence-based medicine” and its pattern of “play[ing] both sides of the street” — with its “‘trusted’ medical advice” issued in the context of generous funding from agenda-setting foundations, corporations and government agencies.
Even in a study that the AAP itself published, which examined pediatric PMA transparency and compliance with best practice guidelines, the AAP got middling marks for both, despite benefiting from “a significantly higher average budget” compared to sister organizations that earned better scores.
Currently, the AAP is using its bully pulpit to hammer home messages about vaccination — especially COVID-19 shots — and about an AAP-fashioned children’s mental health crisis.
Plainly, both issues have the potential to be highly profitable for the drug companies that festoon the AAP’s list of top-tier donors. But the organization also appears to be on board with a more subterranean aim — weaponizing vaccination and mental health to achieve more “brave new world” control over children’s bodies and minds.
Presidential grandstanding
Throughout 2022, the AAP’s soon-to-be-outgoing president, UCLA professor Dr. Moira Szilagyi, Ph.D., was an obedient foot soldier on both the vaccination and mental health fronts.
Szilagyi was voted the AAP’s 2022 president-elect in June 2020, and throughout the pandemic, she shamelessly brandished her status as a grandmother to peddle pediatric COVID-19 shots.
In October 2021 — not long before stepping into the AAP presidency — Szilagyi opined in a CNN piece titled “Pediatrician: What I want this Covid vaccine to do for my grandchildren” that the data from the vaccine clinical trials in younger children were “very reassuring.”
But, she confessed, she felt an “undercurrent of anxiety” over the fact that her masked grandchildren, at ages 5 and 8, did not yet have access to “the best protection of all: vaccination.”
Barely a month later, the CDC’s advisors overrode concerns about Pfizer’s clinical data to unanimously endorse the jab for Szilagyi’s grandchildren and others in their age group.
In June 2022, under Szilagyi’s stewardship, the AAP issued an enthusiastic press release applauding the CDC’s recommendation of “safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines” for babies as young as 6 months old.
In October, Szilagyi even wrote to White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha to plead for reducing “the burdens of administering COVID-19 vaccines” to children, stating, “The nation’s pediatricians need to be supported as we attempt to vaccinate our nation’s youngest citizens against COVID-19.”
In that letter, Szilagyi — seemingly oblivious to the thousands of injuries and dozens of deaths already reported in children and adolescents who received COVID-19 jabs — expressed gratitude for babies’ and toddlers’ “access” to the shots and celebrated the imminent authorization of bivalent booster shots for kids.
In November, Szilagyi again took to CNN — this time trotting out her “heartbroken” feelings about crowded pediatric hospital wards and offering parents “reassurance” and the “advice” to get the whole family vaccinated for both influenza and COVID-19, “including boosters.”
Her actions over the past year also illustrated the AAP’s servile and co-dependent relationship with the CDC in other ways.
In 2017, BMJ editor Peter Doshi reported that the CDC is one of the AAP’s “steady funders”; from 2009 through 2016, the CDC shoveled $20 million in the AAP’s direction.
Returning the favor, Szilagyi testified in May 2022 before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, making a case for more than $746 million in new CDC and Health Resources and Services Administration funding for the AAP’s pet causes — not all of which even concern American children.
For example, lamenting “pandemic-related disruptions” to routine childhood vaccination overseas, Szilagyi called for nearly half (48%) of the proposed funding ($356 million) to be routed to the CDC’s Global Immunization division.
Szilagyi lobbied for another hefty $205 million (28%) for the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD), the center that is supposed to be “search[ing] for the causes of autism” but which consistently denies any vaccine-autism connection.
CDC’s current NCBDDD director, Karen Remley, was a recent AAP CEO (2015-2018). Her predecessor at the NCBDDD’s helm (until retiring in January 2020) was Coleen Boyle, known for her early-career cover-up of Agent Orange and dioxin toxicity and later, for helping cement the fiction that vaccines have nothing to do with developmental disabilities.
Also on Szilagyi’s funding priorities list was a smaller request ($12 million) to study “sudden unexpected” infant and childhood deaths, another outcome with a probable — though AAP- and CDC-denied — link to vaccination.
The mental health dragnet
Szilagyi has a lengthy history of engagement with “vulnerable children” in the U.S.’s corrupt and dysfunctional foster care system and likes to reference those credentials.
In June, after the AAP called for mental health screening for all children from birth through age 21, medical reporter Martha Rosenberg noted in The Defender that children in foster care (and other marginalized kids) are precisely the youth most at risk of overmedication with “lucrative and dangerous psychiatric drugs — some of which can cause suicide, especially in children.”
Additional risks of across-the-board depression screening, pointed out by psychiatric experts quoted by Rosenberg, include overdiagnosis, medicalization of the “normal” and “carelessly applied labels” that, once entered into databases, become impossible to shed.
Other critics, skeptical of the “supposed” mental health crisis in young people, agree on the need to “take care in widening the net of psychiatric surveillance” and argue for the promotion of resilience rather than the celebration of vulnerability.
They also point out how the “language of harm and trauma” can be harnessed for “political motives,” including using it to censor “undesirable ideas.”
Spelling out psychiatry’s long history of “acting as an instrument for psychological, social and political control,” psychiatrist Peter Breggin has noted:
“The contemporary widespread diagnosing of children is a subtler form of social control that suppresses children rather than providing them with what they need to fulfill their basic needs in the home, school and family. Instead of reforming our educational system and improving family life, we drug our children into more docile states.”
Mental health is lucrative, however. For example, in September, the AAP earned a cool $2 million from the mental health branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop resources focused on “social media and mental wellness.”
And in October, the AAP joined 100-plus other organizations in writing to the Biden administration to urge a “National Emergency Declaration in children’s mental health,” no doubt hoping for more millions to be sent their way to address the “emergency.”
In July, Szilagyi and co-authors laid some of the conceptual groundwork for a mental health dragnet in a paper published in the influential journal Health Affairs, titled “Combating A Crisis By Integrating Mental Health Services And Primary Care.”
Cloaking their arguments in the veneer of “whole-person care,” the authors made a case for more integration of “behavioral health” into primary care — claiming that up to half of “behavioral health disorders begin by age 14.”
Describing barriers to this approach, they noted the current difficulty of sharing patient information “across integrated care team members,” criticizing “overly restrictive interpretations of federal laws and regulations.”
Perhaps that is why the AAP’s president-elect for 2023 is a health informatics expert.
Dr. Sandy Chung, like Szilagyi, is bullish on mental health, framing it as a “long-simmering” problem that the pandemic merely helped catapult into the spotlight.
Chung’s curriculum vitae and professional biographies list her work in the areas of mental health, electronic health records, “data integration” and the creation of “a national registry of child health data” as some of her primary achievements, suggesting that she is on board for the type of pervasive mental health tracking and surveillance that is giving other child health experts the heebie-jeebies.
Unfilled positions and unfulfilled pediatricians
A June 2021 article in the AAP’s own journal Pediatrics outlined a somewhat dire outlook for the pediatric profession, noting, ironically, large vacancies in “developmental and behavioral pediatrics and adolescent and child psychiatry” as well as child neurology.
The author also noted fewer applicants and more unfilled pediatric residency positions, suggesting that “strategies to strengthen the pediatric applicant pool must include … understanding factors that impact the career decisions of trainees.”
Although a large proportion of pediatricians currently in practice appears to be generally copacetic with AAP policy positions — with half of pediatric offices reporting “a policy of dismissing families who won’t vaccinate their children” — that still leaves others whose opinion differs.
In fact, in a December 2020 article in Pediatrics, apparently published to let off a little steam, a trio of university-based authors scolded the AAP and its adherents for their stance on this issue, noting, “it is wrong for clinicians not to accept vaccine refusers because they want only compliant families” and characterizing this approach as “excessively paternalistic and inconsistent with patient- and family-centered care.”
A decade ago — cited by journalist Richard Gale in CounterPunch — pediatrician Ken Stoller described the CDC’s and AAP’s all-too-effective “propagandizing” on the topic of thimerosal in vaccines:
“Now we have a generation of pediatricians … who actually need to be deprogrammed to understand what the true nature of all the neuro-behavioral problems are that they confront without any understanding of etiology or potential interventions.”
Unfortunately, ominous trends like California’s recent legislation to take away the licenses of doctors who don’t toe the party line, and similar witch hunts against independent-thinking doctors in other states, do not bode well for future medical independence.
Nor can children and their parents hope for any help from the AAP, beholden as it is not just to Big Pharma and next-generation biopharmaceutical and “gene therapy” companies, but also to population-control-oriented foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, infant formula companies like the disgraced Abbott Nutrition and National Security Agency surveillance partner AT&T.
Gale’s 2012 conclusion still holds: The AAP “has failed to protect children from their greatest enemy — the pharmaceutical and chemical industrial complex. … [W]hen addressing the prevention of diseases that directly affect the medical industry, the AAP’s record is dismal.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
What did the biggest anti-terror raid in German history uncover?
Free West Media | December 10, 2022
Some 36 hours after the largest raid in the history of Germany, there are increasing indications that the investigators apparently did not find the expected arsenal of weapons. The Attorney General has offered no explanation.
The massive raid continues to make waves, especially after more than 3 000 police officers searched more than 150 properties across Germany on Wednesday. At least 27 people were arrested and another 25 are being investigated. They are said to have planned an extensive armed coup.
But what have the investigators actually found in this unprecedented large-scale operation?
According to the Federal Criminal Police Office, weapons were found in 50 of the 150 locations searched. That sounds like an operation with a high risk potential, but conveys very little. In the past, baseball bats, Swiss army knives and brass knuckles were also considered “weapons” in comparable large-scale operations.
It is still not clear if the authorities have found machine guns, grenades or actual firearms. It would presumably take more than a handful of kitchen knives to launch a so-called planned military coup.
Attorney General is unusually unresponsive
Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit therefore sent the Federal Public Prosecutor a comprehensive catalog of questions about what items had been confiscated, how many firearms were among them and which of them were illegal. In view of the extent of the raid and the importance that Nancy Faeser’s (SPD) interior ministry has attached to it, it can be ruled out that the authorities do not know this already.
However, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office refuses to respond to the JF request: A spokesman asked “for your understanding that we are currently not commenting on the evidence found during the search measures – which have not yet been completed”.
It is apparently completely unclear why questions are raised in this regard or when the public will be informed. As a reminder, Faeser spoke of an “abyss of terrorist threat” from the rightwing.
These are strong words in a country where the RAF swept through Germany in the 1970s and where an Islamist with a truck killed twelve people and injured dozens more while driving into pedestrians at a Berlin Christmas market in 2016. It would be in Faeser’s interest to back up her peculiar comments with facts as soon as possible.
Service weapons found
According to German daily Welt, so far “a firearm”, stun guns, prepper supplies and thousands of euros in cash have been found. That sounds like a rather meager yield, especially since “thousands of euros” distributed over 150 houses searched certainly is no indication of the formation of a terrorist group. Notably, the Ministry of the Interior, in view of the risk of power cuts, has itself called for cash to be kept at home at all times.
The same applies to the supposed “prepper supplies”. The government has recommended that citizens prepare themselves extensively for emergencies due to risks associated with German support for the war in Ukraine.
It is therefore not clear where crisis prevention ends and supposed “prepping” starts. Since some of the suspects are said to have gun ownership cards, the discovery of stun guns is not surprising in the least. As a reminder, no parliament can be stormed with the latter.
The representatives of the Interior Committee in the Bundestag were said to have been informed a little more extensively on Friday. According to media reports, two rifles, a pistol and swords, stun guns and flare guns were confiscated. Even service weapons from accused police officers were taken. It is not yet known whether there were gun permits for the various weapons.
More and more media outlets have doubts
Meanwhile, doubts are growing in the media as to whether the historical raid was really appropriate. The editor-in-chief of Cicero, Alexander Marguier, wrote on Wednesday: “Today I spoke to a number of colleagues from other media – including those media that were at the forefront of the exuberant coverage of the treasonous plan. In unison (and of course only in confidence) it was said: It all seems completely exaggerated to us, but when the competition reacts so dramatically, we can’t take a tepid approach.”
The reporter Anna Schneider spoke on Twitter of an “extremely peculiar hysteria and staging of this spectacle”.
The former head of the parliamentary office of the Bild newspaper, Ralf Schuler, wrote on the social network that he could only hope that those responsible for the “giant raid” would also provide evidence of the alleged coup attempt.
The fact that numerous media had apparently been informed about the raids for some time can be considered proven in view of the fact that they arrived with camera teams on site at the same moment as the police task forces.
‘Organized media support’
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) commented: “The historical large-scale operation and the accompanying media reporting raise questions.”
The author noted: “In political Berlin it has been heard for days that there is ‘a big thing in the bush’. Some media obviously knew about the impending raids and arrests, because many editorial offices published extensive reports on the breaking news, which was actually quite new, almost at the same time – as if after an embargo.”
She considered the “organized media support of the operations” to be fundamentally problematic. “It indicates that the matter wasn’t that dangerous after all. In the latter case, the impression could arise that this is primarily – or also – a political public relations exercise.”
A ‘show’
The domestic policy spokeswoman for the Left Party in the Bundestag, Martina Renner, criticized the handling of the Interior Ministry with the raid by 3000 police officers. The so-called “anti-terror operation” against 25 suspects around the 71-year-old Heinrich XIII living in Frankfurt am Main, Prince Reuss shouldn’t be a “show”, said the politician, who has been in the Bundestag since 2013.
What Is CISA and Why Does It Matter?
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | December 10, 2022
On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk fired Vijaya Gadde from her job at Twitter where she was general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust. It became quickly obvious to him and others on his team that it was she who drove the censorship policy within the company, including that which blocked all information about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election and otherwise shut down critics of government Covid policy.
Her termination from Twitter did not leave her unemployed and homeless. A year earlier, she had already been tapped as an advisor to CISA, which is the government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency headed by Jen Easterly, who was chosen to head the new agency (created in 2018) out of her tenure at the National Security Agency. As Freddy Gray puts it in the UK Spectator, “That seems fishy, to put it mildly.”
Easterly was called to give a deposition in the case brought by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana but the government rejected the idea. Fauci and others could be called but not the head of CISA. According to Epoch Times, the judge “ruled that three of the individuals—Murthy, Easterly, and Flaherty—will no longer be required to appear for a deposition after a federal appeals court blocked the move last month, stating that the judge had failed to consider whether alternative and less ‘intrusive’ means could be used to obtain the information being sought.”
Don’t want to be intrusive, right? That would be inhumane. Can’t make such a demand of the head of CISA.
And yet, it was CISA itself that gave the whole of the initial advisory in 2020 for all the stay-at-home orders that were imposed around the country. The agency is also the one primarily responsible for the division of the whole of the American workforce into sharp lines between essential and nonessential. It was a clear sign that something had gone very wrong, even to the point of feeling like martial law.
I’ve puzzled about where this all came from for almost three years. Thanks to research done by many Brownstone writers, we now know. It was CISA from the very beginning. Indeed the webpage laying it all out still survives, including a video. You can look at it all here.
The initial edict was issued March 19, 2020, three days following the catastrophic press conference that announced the need for universal social distancing and issued what is surely one of the most totalitarian edicts in the history of public policy: “indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”
CISA explained the exception. It includes this helpful graphic of those who were entitled or even required to work while everyone else stays home.
Note the inclusion of communications, which of course, means all media, and of course information technology, which means all Big Tech. As for “commercial facilities” that ended up meaning big-box chain stores while small businesses were brutally shut. Reinforcing the Trump administration’s fatwa against “bars, restaurants, and gyms,” they were closed immediately following the release of CISA’s order.
But of course, and consistent with all this machinery, CISA was careful to note that “This guidance was provided to clarify the potential scope of critical infrastructure to help inform decisions by state and local jurisdictions, but does not compel any prescriptive action.”
Further: “This guidance is not binding and is primarily a decision support construct to assist state and local officials. It should not be confused as official executive action by the United States Government.”
This way, like Fauci, CISA can claim that it didn’t force the shutdown of anything. It only made recommendations and state-level agencies took it from there. And yet here is a FAQ to give you a sense of the military footing that the whole country entered up on in the course of only a few days.
How is this different than traditional disasters or emergencies impacting critical infrastructure?
COVID-19 is different than any emergency the Nation has faced, especially considering the modern, tightly interconnected economy and American way of life. In traditional emergencies, government coordinates with the private sector to get businesses back to business. In this case, as the government works with partners to slow the spread of COVID-19, the economic goal is maintaining resilience of the Nation’s foundation—its critical infrastructure.
In retrospect, the whole thing seems truly hard to believe, all for a respiratory virus with an infection fatality rate that compares with the flu except with a huge risk gradient by age. A military-style cooperation was unleashed on the entire country even as basic therapeutics were completely neglected and concern for collateral damage to health, culture, education, and enterprise were tossed out the window.
The initial lockdowns were followed by quarantine rules, travel restrictions, violations of religious freedom, forced masking and eventually forced medicalization of quickly approved shots that most of the population never needed and vast numbers now regret.
As CISA said, this crisis was “different than any emergency the Nation has faced.” Instead of keeping business going, the response this time was massive destruction of everything except “critical infrastructure.”
Indeed, the whole country fell into complete shambles and trauma for the better part of 2020, leading up to the November elections that gutted Republican control of Congress and flipped the White House. We are now finding out with piles of evidence that this was the ambition of many employees at Twitter, including the general counsel who ended up as a consultant to the very agency that issued the stay-home advisory.
CISA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, created only in 2018 with an act signed by President Trump. As is clear from the text of the law, the whole point was to protect the nation against cyber attacks and develop a response. Nowhere in the text could one discern a broad edict to divide the whole workforce, crush civil liberties, smash businesses, and trample on the Bill of Rights, much less shepherd into being a vast machinery of censorship that would effectively nationalize all major tech platforms on behalf of regime priorities.
On the weekend of March 14-15, 2020, Trump surrounded himself with a handful of advisors including Fauci, Birx, Pence, Kushner, along with a few outside consultants from pharma and tech, and agreed to “15 days to flatten the curve.” It seems highly unlikely he knew that he was approving a complete takeover of the country by the national security arm of the government, much less empowering this one agency with the task of crushing the whole economy except that which government called essential.
We are finding out ever more about what went on behind the scenes, especially thanks to the exceptional research of Debbie Lerman, who has fleshed out the underlying shift that occurred in these days. We went from being a normal nation with all the usual struggles to a country under quasi-martial law, ruled by administrative bureaucrats drawn from the national security arm of government. CISA was an agency that led the charge. Did Trump have any idea what he had approved? I would say it is highly doubtful.
I’ve been unable to find out anything about the agency’s budget or payroll but we do know that it is hiring: “CISA is always searching for diverse, talented, and highly motivated professionals to continue its mission of securing the nation’s critical infrastructure. CISA is more than a great place to work; our workforce tackles the risks and threats that matter most to the nation, our families, and communities. With more than 50 career fields available CISA offers multiple opportunities as well as multiple tracks for employment.”
Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He has written 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press.
Iran against the West’s hybrid warfare
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 10.12.2022
Western countries, above all the United States, are seeking to replicate Afghanistan and Iraq scenario in Iran, creating chaos to destroy the country and loot its resources, Scott Bennett, a former US Army Special Operations Officer, said honestly and truthfully. “The West is fully committed to an absolute chaotic breakdown of Iranian government, religious, and military sectors in Iran, as they did in Afghanistan and then Iraq, in order for chaos to be created and Iran be divided up into regions for national resources theft,” Scott Bennett told the Tehran Times. He also stressed that Israel is the main instigator of Western hostility and maneuvers against Iran, using these tensions to carry out its attacks in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
It is becoming increasingly clear that a campaign of domestic terrorism is being unleashed against Iran under the guise of fake protests allegedly in defense of “human rights,” as has been done in Syria by the United States, Israel and NATO. The same powers are using similar methods and the same mercenaries to participate in the attempted color revolution, the operation to change the Iranian regime. Most likely, these terrorists are a combination of Wahhabi fanatics, Israeli Mossad, Likud party supporters, supported by the US CIA, British MI6 intelligence and some elements in Iraq, terrorists from al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, not destroyed ISIS (that is, the three banned in the Russian Federation), other mercenaries and thugs hired and paid for by the West.
The plan is for foreign terrorists to infiltrate Iran and cause internal strife, tribal and sectarian enmity, conflict between Shia, Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Jews and Kurds living in Iran. The main areas targeted for fomenting unrest, conflict and violence are precisely in those parts of Iran where there is a mixed population. Mobile phones, social media and Western media are heavily used in the process. The beginning was the emergence of a women’s protest movement over a false allegation that a woman had allegedly died under police torture, when in fact she had died of medical complications caused by a previous serious illness.
The specifics of hybrid warfare, as Scott Bennett argues, are a combination of small-scale operations that take the form of diplomatic, information, military and economic action against Iran to create leverage that can then be used to destabilize the government and create chaos in Iran. On the diplomatic front, hostile statements in the United Nations, various NATO and European Union structures will increasingly be used to spread propaganda and disinformation to other countries about Iran, about alleged abuses of “human rights,” about nuclear programs aimed at undermining Western hegemony and security.
Numerous analysts acknowledge that NATO and the EU are strengthening their defense capabilities not only in Europe, but also abroad, including in the Gulf region. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen recently outlined elements of a new European security doctrine, the EU and NATO approach to security in the Persian Gulf. Her remarks at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on November 18 reflect what is widely seen as a new and aggressive approach aimed at further escalating tensions in the region, taking advantage of the extremely hostile attitude of many countries there towards Iran.
One can also see how Israel under the Netanyahu regime is stepping up aggressive air attacks against Syria and continuing to invade Iraqi and Persian Gulf airspace as probing maneuvers against Iran. The Israeli and US air forces will conduct their biggest joint air exercise in years, simulating strikes against Iran. Fighter aircraft from both countries will simulate long-range flights and strikes against distant targets, enhancing readiness for combat scenarios with Iran. In recent years, the Israel Defense Forces and US Central Command have already conducted several joint exercises, practicing strikes against Iran.
In July this year, President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Yair Lapid signed a joint declaration on the US-Israeli strategic partnership, also known as the Jerusalem Declaration. It emphasizes the US commitment “never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that it is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that.” Subsequent joint exercises were the subject of meetings in Washington between IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi and US officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and CENTCOM Commander General Michael Kurilla.
Some NIS 3.5 billion ($1 billion) has been allocated from the IDF’s NIS 58 billion ($17 billion) defense budget for military activities next year related to alleged strikes on Iran. Outgoing Minister of Defense Benny Gantz had earlier warned newly appointed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “consider issue very carefully” before launching a strike on Iran. “Israel has the ability to act in Iran. We have the readiness, development capabilities, and long-term plans we are managing. We need to prepare for this possibility, and we will also need to consider this issue very carefully before carrying it out,” he said.
All of the above quite clearly supports the argument that it is Israel that is the main source of Western hostility and maneuvering against Iran and is using these tensions to carry out attacks in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq.
Color revolutions are usually the target of aggressive campaigns by the West, and hybrid wars are smoke and fire to create cover and distractions to create conditions, chaos and tensions to launch these color revolutions. Hybrid wars include the conflict the US has created in Iraq between various tribes and religious sects, and in Libya and Syria, where foreign mercenaries from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and Turkey were hired, funded and trained by the CIA and Pentagon under General Lloyd Austin, now Secretary of Defense. The aim of these operations was to create tension, chaos, conflict and enmity between peoples in the regions so that natural wealth could be stolen. Suffice it to look at the history of these operations over the past 20 years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. And now Ukraine and Iran of course represent the next target of this Western program of color revolutions, and therefore an international coalition is needed to counter such hostile actions.
Alberta passes ‘Sovereignty Act’ despite backlash from leftists, mainstream media
Alberta Premier leadership candidate Danielle Smith – Dave Cournoyer / Wikimedia Commons
Life Site News – December 9, 2022
EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s “Sovereignty Act” legislation was passed Thursday in the province’s legislature, despite pushback from left-wing critics including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
United Conservative Party (UCP) MLAs under Smith put their full support behind the bill to quicken its passage, which will now become law once it receives Royal Assent.
The act was passed with minor amendments made to it by the UCP, namely to make sure that Alberta’s regular legislative process is followed should a resolution be brought forth under the act.
The now-passed Sovereignty Act intends to prevent “unconstitutional” federal government overreach into matters of provincial jurisdiction, including but not limited to “firearms, energy, natural resources and COVID healthcare decisions.”
Smith had introduced the legislation, formally named Bill 1: Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act, just nine days before its passing.
The bill will most notably help the province push back against federally-imposed rules that impact the region’s oil and gas sector, a major backbone of the western Canadian economy.
At the time of its introduction, the government explained that the act “will be used to push back on federal legislation and policy that is unconstitutional or harmful to our province, our people and our economic prosperity,” with Smith herself explaining that there is a “long and painful history of mistreatment and constitutional overreach from Ottawa has for decades caused tremendous frustration for Albertans.”
The bill was opposed by Alberta’s opposition party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), under former Premier Rachel Notley. The NDP claimed Smith’s Sovereignty Act was dangerous but did not bring forth any amendments to the bill.
Trudeau also took issue with the bill, threatening to take action against the Albertan government, saying all options remain on “the table.”
After the act passed yesterday, Trudeau slightly changed his tune and said his government would now work with Smith, but once again warned of Alberta’s efforts to “push back at the federal government.”
“We are not going to get into arguing about something that obviously is the Alberta government trying to push back at the federal government,” said Trudeau. “We are going to continue to work as constructively as possible.”
While many on the political left provided pushback, former Canadian Supreme Court justice John C. Major put his support behind the Sovereignty Act, rhetorically asking, “what’s so terrible about the province saying, ‘if you want to impose on us, you better be sure you’re doing it constitutionally?’”
Smith’s Sovereignty Act was a trademark of her campaign for leader of the UCP and premier of Alberta, promising throughout her run that if elected, she would table legislation to help make Alberta as independent from Ottawa as possible while staying in the Confederation.
Many have pointed out that Trudeau’s opposition to provincial autonomy, particularly with respect to the overseeing of natural resources in the western provinces, seem to mirror aspects of his own father’s policies.
In 1980, Trudeau’s father, then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, famously attacked Alberta’s oil and gas sectors by introducing the much-hated national energy program (NEP), which severely hampered Alberta’s and other provinces’ energy industries.
French energy major makes costly exit from Russia
RT | December 10, 2022
French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies has announced on Friday it is giving up its stake in Russian gas producer Novatek and withdrawing its two representatives from the company’s board.
The exit will result in a “record” impairment of about $3.7 billion in the fourth quarter as Total will “no longer equity account for its 19.4% stake in Novatek.”
The French company said in a statement that the two directors have had to abstain from voting in Novatek board meetings, “in particular on financial matters,” due to Western sanctions imposed on Russia.
Unlike BP and Shell, which left Russia shortly after the conflict in Ukraine began in late February, TotalEnergies had held on to its projects in the country and faced international sanctions.
“Under these circumstances, the Board of Directors of TotalEnergies has decided to withdraw the representatives of the Company from the board of PAO Novatek with immediate effect,” the company announced.
The French energy major also said it cannot sell its stake in the Russian firm as “it is forbidden for TotalEnergies to sell any asset to one of Novatek’s main shareholders who is under sanctions.”
Apart from the stake in Novatek, the French company has minority holdings in Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG. According to Reuters estimates, exiting Russian projects will bring total impairments of TotalEnergies this year to $14.4 billion.
In addition, Total will no longer book reserves for its interest in Novatek, with an impact on the company’s reported proved reserves at the end of 2021 of 1.7 billion barrels of oil.
Moscow: US to Spend $11 Billion on Cyberattacks Against ‘Unwanted’ Governments
© AP Photo / Department of Defense, Cherie Cullen
Samizdat – 10.12.2022
MOSCOW – Washington plans to spend around $11 billion next year on carrying out cyberattacks with the aim of controlling unfriendly governments, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said in an interview with Sputnik.
“Western countries want to use information and its carriers – big data and software tools for their transmission – to subjugate unwanted governments through cyberattacks,” Syromolotov said, adding that the “Pentagon’s budget alone for these purposes in 2023 will be more than $11 billion.”
The deputy foreign minister pointed out that, according to the new doctrinal documents released in October, the administration of US President Joe Biden has “declared the whole world and the global information space to be its sphere of interest.”
On October 12, the Biden administration released the 2022 National Security Strategy that characterized China as being the most consequential geopolitical challenge for the United States. According to the document, Beijing is Washington’s sole rival allegedly seeking to increase its economic, diplomatic and military capacity to change the international order.
Syromolotov’s comments come in the wake of the earlier statement by the Russian Embassy in the United States that blasted Washington’s sanctions against Moscow as an attempt to exert pressure on governments that are “inconvenient” for the US.
The Russian diplomatic mission said that Washington is attempting to force “other countries to adjust their foreign policy,” disguising these attempts as efforts to defend human rights.
The Pentagon released its National Defense Strategy (NDS) in October, stating that China remains the top competitor of the United States and warning that Beijing-Moscow collaboration might threaten US interests. The document also characterizes Russia as an acute and more immediate threat to US interests and values than China, which is characterized as a “pacing challenge.”
On Friday, the US Treasury Department announced that the United States was sanctioning over 40 individuals and entities from nine different countries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China, for alleged links to corruption and human rights abuses.
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Why vaccines for children are Big Pharma’s holy grail – Part 1
By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | October 18, 2023
James A Shannon, director of the US National Institutes of Health 1955-68, said: ‘No vaccination can be proven safe before it is given to children.’
When he made that statement, it was still possible in the US to sue vaccine manufacturers under tort law for vaccine-induced deaths and injuries, which is no longer the case.
Today the US has the world’s most aggressive vaccine schedule and ranks as the sickest country, with the highest infant mortality, in the developed world. The UK does not lag far behind.
Vaccines carry three separate areas of potential risk. Firstly, they artificially stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies, which temporarily inhibits another part of the body’s defence mechanism. In an infant, whose immune system is just developing, this high demand of energy can in some cases overwhelm its metabolic reserves, and cause brain inflammation. The brain is the highest energy-consuming tissue in the body, followed by the gastro-intestinal tract and the immune system.
Secondly, vaccines contain chemicals, metals and drugs. Thirdly, according to the former pharmaceutical R&D executive Sasha Latypova, traditional vaccines are consistently contaminated with plant and animal proteins which hyper-sensitise the body, especially in children, giving rise to allergies.
In the US in the 1970s there were three inoculations recommended for children… continue
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