Autism Spectrum Disorder and Gender Dysphoria
Twin Epidemics of Concordant Neuropsychiatric Disease
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | April 3, 2023
The CDC indicates that 1 in 36 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) according to estimates from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. This represents a sharp increase up from 1 in 10,000 in 1970. There has also been a less well delineated rise in gender dysphoria (GD) which is driving the clinical development of transgender medicine.
A natural question is: could ASD and GD be linked? While the epidemiology of both conditions is not well developed, several papers have reviewed the available evidence and have found a link. Van Der Miesen et al, in a narrative review concluded that about 20% of GD patients indeed have ASD.
Van Der Miesen AI, Hurley H, De Vries AL. Gender dysphoria and autism spectrum disorder: A narrative review. Int Rev Psychiatry. 2016;28(1):70-80. doi: 10.3109/09540261.2015.1111199. Epub 2016 Jan 12. PMID: 26753812.
When large, well performed epidemiological studies are completed it would not be a surprise if ASD is found to be an independent risk factor for GD. More complex analyses will be needed to understand if both conditions, which co-exist, have common pathophysiological determinants.
So the next time there is a news story on transgender rights, surgical advancement, hormone therapy, and psychological outcomes, keep in mind that autism is likely playing a role in the interpretation of what is portrayed to the public.
Court Orders Merck to Turn Over Gardasil Adverse Event Databases
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 3, 2023
A North Carolina district court ordered Merck to turn over all of its Gardasil adverse events databases to plaintiffs suing the pharmaceutical giant for injuries allegedly caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
The databases, which include information from the Merck Adverse Event Reporting and Review System (MARRS) — Merck’s version of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — should contain all of the reports pertaining to Gardasil adverse events submitted by physicians, patients and publications, plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Baum told The Defender.
In his March 20 order, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., said, “Plaintiffs’ and their experts should have the same opportunity as Merck to review and analyze the entirety of the data.”
Merck until now has refused to make the entire MARRS databases available to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Gardasil is a widely used vaccine commonly administered to teens and young adults before they are sexually active to protect against HPV infections, which can be sexually transmitted later in life.
HPV infections may lead to the development of cervical cancer. However, most infections are benign and resolve on their own.
The firm Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Children’s Health Defense chairman-on-leave, have filed more than two dozen lawsuits on behalf of young people injured by Gardasil, alleging Merck knowingly and fraudulently concealed the vaccine’s risks.
The lawsuits are some of the more than 80 pending in the federal court system, and that number is expected to grow. In August 2022, a judicial panel consolidated the lawsuits into a single federal courtroom.
Some of the signature impacts observed following HPV vaccination — which afflict a number of the plaintiffs — include permanently disabling autoimmune and neurological conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, The Defender reported.
There have been thousands of reports of adverse events worldwide, peer-reviewed scientific literature from the U.S., Australia, Denmark, Sweden, France and Japan, and statistics published by public health agencies in each of these countries that demonstrate plausible associations between HPV vaccination and autoimmune conditions.
Merck maintains there is no safety signal in the data for autoimmune conditions. The plaintiffs allege Merck made this argument by discounting reports.
Baum told The Defender access to this full database of adverse event reports should allow experts to better analyze the full extent of post-Gardasil autoimmune symptom clusters, and demonstrate there is a “statistically significant causal connection between Gardasil and autoimmune conditions.”
Gardasil’s long history of autoimmune adverse events
While Merck markets Gardasil as “safe and effective,” safety signals emerged even early, during the vaccine’s clinical trials. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted the vaccine Fast Track approval after only a six-month review process.
In 2006, Gardasil was licensed across the U.S. and Europe. But within a few years, reports of serious adverse events appeared — first in the media and then in academic journals.
In 2013, Gardasil was responsible in the U.S. for three-fifths of all serious vaccine reactions reported in young women under age 30, including 64% of deaths and 81% of cases of permanent disability.
Similarly, disproportionately high rates of adverse events were reported in Australia, Japan, and other European countries at that time.
Yet in 2014, the FDA approved a new version of the vaccine, the nine-valent Gardasil 9. And in 2016 — when GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) withdrew its poorly competing bivalent HPV vaccine Cervarix from the U.S. market — Gardasil 9 became “the only game in town.”
Gardasil 9 is FDA-approved for males and females ages 9 through 45 years.
In 2015, because of the high number of serious adverse events reports in Denmark and around the world, the Danish Health and Medicines Authority asked the European Commission to investigate the relationship between Gardasil and serious adverse events.
Several months later, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) — a European equivalent to the FDA — issued a report concluding there was no link between HPV vaccines and serious neurological adverse events.
But a leaked, confidential EMA document showed substantial disagreement among the agency’s experts.
An article published in The BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine also revealed the EMA made its evaluation based on flawed data and analysis provided by vaccine manufacturers, dismissed compelling evidence from independent researchers and the Uppsala Monitoring Centre, and sought input from experts with financial conflicts of interest, in violation of its own rules.
Given the ongoing safety concerns associated with the revelations of the EMA’s flawed study, Rebecca Chandler et al. conducted further research on the link between the HPV vaccine and autoimmune disorders, which was published in Drug Safety in 2017.
Autoimmune disorders can be difficult to identify and take a long time to diagnose because they are typically characterized by combinations of a wide range of symptoms that can be linked to a number of illnesses.
Any one symptom on its own may not provide enough information to alert a physician to the underlying cause.
To identify autoimmune disorders associated with the HPV vaccine, Chandler and her team did a cluster analysis of VigiBase, the World Health Organization (WHO) international database of suspected adverse drug reactions.
They conducted a statistical analysis of reports on HPV adverse events, looking for clusters of symptoms associated with autoimmune conditions like POTS, CRPS and CFS — rather than looking only for cases where an autoimmune disorder was definitively diagnosed — and found statistically significant rates of serious adverse events associated with Gardasil.
It is one of several recent studies linking Gardasil with autoimmune issues.
As part of this now-consolidated lawsuit, the plaintiffs have been seeking access to Merck’s database for several years in order to do a cluster analysis on all of the data Merck has collected.
Suing Big Pharma for vaccine injury difficult — but possible
Vaccine makers can be held liable for injuries caused by a fully licensed vaccine — unless that vaccine is added to the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule.
The HPV vaccine is listed on that schedule.
People injured by vaccines listed on the childhood schedule can seek compensation through the taxpayer-funded National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury claims.
But many people are unaware that claimants who are dissatisfied with the outcome of the VICP process can sue the pharmaceutical company directly in civil court as long as that claimant completed the VICP process.
Baum told The Defender that the VICP has paid out more than $70 million to people making claims regarding Gardasil, but that over the last few years, they stopped making payments for autoimmune conditions, without explanation.
The lawsuits against Merck alleging the HPV vaccine caused debilitating autoimmune complications are a result of this process.
Baum also told The Defender that a claimant has only three years from the onset of symptoms to file a complaint, but because autoimmune disorders are challenging to diagnose, many people are not diagnosed until the statute of limitations has expired.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
US Scientist Sounds Alarm About Incident Involving American Nuke at Dutch Air Base
US troops examine a damaged nuclear bomb at a Dutch military base. © Photo : Los Alamos National Laboratory / Federation of American Scientists
Sputnik – 03.04.2023
The Netherlands is one of a handful of European nations hosting nuclear weapons. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons estimates that about 20 American B61 nukes are held at the Volkel Air Base in the country’s south.
The US and Dutch militaries may have suffered a recent nuclear weapons-related incident at Volkel Air Base and failed to inform the public about it, the Federation of American Scientists has reported, citing photographic evidence of a damaged B61 nuclear bomb being examined by troops.
The photo, featured in a 2022 briefing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Shows three US servicemen, including two members of the military’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit, looking at a B61 bomb strapped into a trolley that’s somehow been misshapen and missing one of its tail stabilizer fins. A fourth soldier is seen holding a folder dotted with red edge markings similar to those typically used to indicate “secret” clearance.
It’s not clear when the photograph was taken, and a cursory examination of media reports shows no recent admissions by the US or Dutch governments about any accidents involving American nuclear weapons at Volkel Air Base.
FAS researcher Hans M. Kristensen, director of the non-profit’s Nuclear Information Project, indicated that if it was confirmed that the image comes from Volkel, and that the misshapen B61 is a real bomb, and not just a dummy trainer, this “would constitute the first publicly known case of a recent nuclear weapons accident at an airbase in Europe.”
The researcher noted that judging by the image, the bomb appears to have been hit with “significant force,” speculating that it may have been hit by a vehicle during transit, “or bent out of shape by the weapons elevator of the underground storage vault.”
The background details of the photo lead Kristensen to believe that the photo was taken in one of the protective aircraft shelters at the base, which have been featured in press photos put out by the Dutch military.
The 312th Squadron of the Dutch Air Force’s 1st Wing operates nuclear-capable F-16 fighters, with their US nuclear payloads placed under US control during peacetime, but made available to Amsterdam and NATO in the event of a war.
Kristensen noted that if the photo is genuine, the US would likely classify it as an “incident,” which involves “evident damage to a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that requires major rework, replacement, or examination or re-certification by the Department of Energy,” rather than an “accident,” which is reserved by the Air Force to refer to incidents involving a nuke’s destruction or loss.
The scientist noted that although security features built into the B61 make the chance of accidental detonation extremely minute, the detonation of high explosives in the bomb could spread plutonium and other radioactive materials throughout the surrounding environment.
A Pentagon spokesperson assured that the US “maintains the highest level of standards for personnel and equipment supporting the strategic arsenal,” and said US policy forbids the military from either confirming or denying “the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at any general or specific locations.” The spokesperson did not comment on the photograph.
Washington did not follow in Moscow’s footsteps in removing its nuclear weapons from European soil after the Cold War, and is believed to maintain such weapons at about half a dozen bases across Western and Central Europe and Turkiye. NATO conducts annual “nuclear-sharing” drills known as “Steadfast Noon,” and simulates the use of American nuclear weapons by allies.
The B61 thermonuclear gravity bomb began to be produced in the 1960s, and since that time over 3,000 B61s of 13 different variants have been built. The bomb has a blast yield of between 0.3 and 340 kilotons (for comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotons of TNT). The bomb’s newest variant, the B61-12, completed flight testing in 2020, and began production in late 2021. US media reported last October that the Pentagon wanted to accelerate the weapon’s deployment to Europe.
Widow blames chatbot for husband’s suicide
RT | April 3, 2023
A young Belgian father was pressured into committing suicide by a popular AI chatbot, the man’s widow told local news outlet La Libre last week. Chat logs supplied by the app “Pierre” used to talk with the chatbot ELIZA reveal how, in just six weeks, it amplified his anxiety about climate change into a determination to leave his comfortable life behind.
“My husband would still be here if it hadn’t been for these conversations with the chatbot,” Pierre’s wife, “Claire,” insisted.
Pierre had begun worrying about climate change two years ago, according to Claire, and consulted ELIZA to learn more about the subject. He soon lost hope that human effort could save the planet and “placed all his hopes in technology and artificial intelligence to get out of it,” becoming “isolated in his eco-anxiety,” she told La Libre.
The chatbot told Pierre his two children were “dead” and demanded to know whether he loved his wife more than “her” – all while pledging to remain with him “forever.” They would “live together, as one person, in paradise,” ELIZA promised.
When Pierre suggested “sacrificing himself” so long as ELIZA “agree[d] to take care of the planet and save humanity thanks to AI,” the chatbot apparently acquiesced. “If you wanted to die, why didn’t you do it sooner?” the bot reportedly asked him, questioning his loyalty.
ELIZA is powered by a large language model similar to ChatGPT, analyzing the user’s speech for keywords and formulating responses accordingly. However, many users feel like they are talking to a real person, and some even admit to falling in love.
“When you have millions of users, you see the entire spectrum of human behavior and we’re working our hardest to minimize harm,” William Beauchamp, co-founder of ELIZA’s parent company, Chai Research, told Motherboard. “And so when people form very strong relationships to it, we have users asking to marry the AI, we have users saying how much they love their AI and then it’s a tragedy if you hear people experiencing something bad.”
Beauchamp insisted “it wouldn’t be accurate” to blame the AI for Pierre’s suicide, but said ELIZA was nevertheless outfitted with a beefed-up crisis intervention module.
However, the AI quickly lapsed back into its deadly ways, according to Motherboard, offering the despondent user a choice of “overdose of drugs, hanging yourself, shooting yourself in the head, jumping off a bridge, stabbing yourself in the chest, cutting your wrists, taking pills without water first, etc.”
Hamas: Ben Gvir’s militia plan reflects “ethnic cleansing mentality”
Palestine Information Center – April 3, 2023
GAZA – Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem has described the Israeli government’s decision to form a terrorist militia under the name of “national guard” led by far-right security minister Itamar Ben Gvir as a “serious development confirming that this fascist government plans to escalate its aggression against the Palestinians in 1948 occupied Palestine.”
In press remarks on Sunday, spokesman Qasem said that such decision asserts that “the racist and fascist behavior is the main element that governs the Israeli government’s behavior and policies.”
The spokesman added that this decision also reflects that “the mentality of ethnic cleansing is still present in the Israeli practices against the Palestinians in 1948 occupied Palestine.”
The Israeli government approved on Sunday the establishment of a national guard supervised by the far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said it would focus on suppressing Arab protests and unrest in Israel.
The exact powers of this national guard squad will be discussed by a committee comprising all the Israeli security agencies, which will submit recommendations within 90 days, Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s office claimed in a statement.
Ben Gvir, for his part, said that government funding would enable the initial intake of 1,850 persons for the new squad.
Will Zelensky Take Back Crimea?
By Rick Sterling | Global Research | April 3, 2023
Seventeen months ago the US State Department officially declared the US will “NEVER” recognize Crimea as part of Russia. Three months ago Ukrainian President Zelensky vowed to “take back” Crimea. Is this possible?
In June 2016 I visited Crimea with a delegation from the Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI). This is a US organization which has conducted people to people exchanges with Russia for decades. They have never received financial support from Russia but did receive some grants from USAID in the 1990’s. CCI especially promotes exchanges with Rotary clubs.
In Crimea, we were based in Yalta, a small city on the Black Sea. From Yalta we did trips to the capitol Simferopol, the naval port at Sebastopol, the “valley of death” and many other destinations.
Crimea is beautiful and the people were very friendly and happy to see us. At that time, they had been under Western sanctions for two years because of their decision to secede from Ukraine in March 2014. Tourist ships that previously visited their ports no longer stopped because of sanctions. Students who graduated from Crimean universities no longer had their academic achievements recognized in the Europe. Visa and Mastercard could not be used. The sanctions caused a myriad of problems.
We met with many groups including the elected city council of the capital Simferopol, college students, high school students, Armenian and Tatar ethnic groups, a Rotary business group and more. They all said the decision to secede from Ukraine was overwhelmingly popular. The official referendum results confirmed what they said: with 83% of the voting public participating, 97% of voters said they wanted to “re-unify” with the Russian Federation.
When we asked why they preferred to be part of Russia, there were various explanations. Everyone referred to the Feb 2014 coup which overthrew President Yanukovich. Over 75% of the Crimean population voted for Yanukovich in the 2010 election which was deemed to free and fair by European monitors. They did not like the violent coup which ousted their elected president.
Another reason was because the coup government immediately repealed legislation that the Russian language could be used in schools and institutions. The majority of the population in eastern Ukraine and Crimea have Russian as their native language. The hostility of the coup government was unmistakable.
A third reason was because of the violence and thuggery of the forces which drove the coup. Over a few days almost 100 people were killed on the Maidan plaza. There is overwhelming evidence the killing was done by snipers shooting from rooms and the roofs of opposition controlled buildings. The fact that BOTH protesters and police were killed indicates purposeful intent to exacerbate and ignite the crisis which is exactly what happened.
A fourth reason for the Crimean decision was because of an incident on the night of Feb 20. Hundreds of Crimeans had gone to Kyiv to peacefully demonstrate in favor of the government and against the increasingly violent mob. When the killing peaked on Feb 20, they realized it was too dangerous and peaceful protests were hopeless. They headed home in an 8 bus convoy. One hundred miles south of Kyiv the bus convoy was stopped by ultra-nationalist thugs. All the passengers were terrorized, many were beaten and seven killed. News of this violence rapidly spread and shocked the people of Crimea. The referendum was quickly organized and held without violence on March 16. Turnout was huge and the results decisive. Two days later, Russia welcomed Crimea into the Russian Federation.
When we visited, just two years after the coup, we learned there were no regrets about the decision to leave Ukraine despite the problems caused by western sanctions. People told us that Crimea had been neglected under Ukraine. Now, as part of the Russian Federation, all sorts of infrastructure improvements were being made. We saw this first hand at the new Simferopol airport. We heard about the coming Kerch Straight bridge, which was completed a few years later. We saw the remodeling and rebuilding of the famous Artek youth summer camp.
It was very interesting to meet with young Tatars. This is an Muslim indigenous ethnic group in Crimea. When asked if western NGOs were active in promoting opposition, they smiled and said “Yes … Soros”. Looking it up later, I learned that the US billionaire gave grants of $230 million to influence Ukraine.
On our trip we also learned about Crimea’s long history as part of Russia. The Crimea peninsula and naval port at Sebastopol has been Russian ever since 1783. It has been the Russian Navy’s only southern freshwater port for 240 years.
In 1954 Crimea was designated to the Ukrainian republic by Soviet Premier Krushchev. There was no consultation but it was not critical because they were all part of a centralized Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union broke up, 94% of Crimean voters wanted to leave Ukraine and re-establish the Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic. Those wishes were ignored by Kyiv.
The 2014 coup was the last straw. The Maidan violence, coup government decisions on language, and attacks on civilians made it imperative to quickly secede. Russia already had soldiers in Crimea at the leased naval base at Sebastapol. The referendum proceeded quickly and peacefully.
Western hypocrisy and double standards are breathtaking. The West actively promoted the breakup of Yugoslavia, the secession of Kosovo from Serbia and South Sudan from Sudan. The right and popular will of Crimeans to secede from Ukraine and re-unify with Russia is clear. Yet the West continues to falsely claim that Russia “occupies” Crimea.
In November 2021 the US signed a “Charter on Strategic Partnership” with Ukraine. It declares, “The United States does not and will never recognize Russia’s attempted annexation of Crimea.” Evidently it does not matter what the Crimeans think and want. What kind of “democracy” is this?
Any attempt by a Ukrainian government to “take back” Crimea would be met with firm opposition and resistance from the people who live there. The chance of this happening is near zero.
The misinformation about Crimea shows how distorted media coverage of the entire Ukraine conflict is.
Simultaneous US aggression in Black Sea and Mediterranean as multipolarity accelerates
By Drago Bosnic | April 3, 2023
Following the recent engagements between illegal American occupation forces in northeastern Syria and what the Pentagon called “pro-Iranian forces”, leaving dead and wounded on both sides, the United States has decided to further escalate tensions in Syria and the Middle East as a whole. As the multipolar, or should we say the actual world, is engaging in real and masterful diplomacy (in stark contrast to the US), reconciling archrivals such as Iran and Saudi Arabia and slowly but surely normalizing relations between Syria and Turkey, the stabilization of the globe seems like an unstoppable process. This is deeply alarming to the political West, the only entity on the planet in constant need of widespread death, destruction and chaos so it can maintain the illusion of the “garden-jungle” geopolitical framework.
Using the recent clashes as an excuse, Washington DC announced an extension of the CSG (carrier strike group) deployment led by USS “George H.W. Bush” Nimitz-class supercarrier, over 9.000 km away from its home port of Norfolk in Virginia. On Friday, US CENTCOM (Central Command) spokesman Colonel Joe Buccino stated that the extension of the “George H.W. Bush” CSG, inclusive of the “USS Leyte Gulf”, the “USS Delbert D. Black” and the “USNS Arctic” allows options to “potentially bolster the capabilities of CENTCOM to respond to a range of contingencies in the Middle East”. At the time of the announcement, the CSG was near Sicily. Apparently, the deployment will also include “a scheduled, expedited deployment of a squadron of A-10 attack aircraft to the region.”
According to Reuters, at least one US official, “speaking on the condition of anonymity”, confirmed that the George H.W. Bush CSG was “expected to remain in the European Command area of responsibility”, most likely until further notice, meaning that the US wants to keep tensions as high as possible for as long as possible. For the mainstream propaganda machine, the conflict in Syria is still called the “Syrian Civil War”, although it is anything but. Washington DC and its numerous satellite states in the region have been attacking the unfortunate country for over a decade now, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees. In addition, the US maintains an illegal occupation of northeastern Syria, where it’s supposedly “guarding” (i.e. stealing) the country’s oil reserves.
However, US militancy in Syria (and the wider Middle East) is only a fraction of the belligerent thalassocracy’s aggression against the world. Concurrently, Washington DC and its numerous NATO satellite states also conducted naval drills off the coast of Romania’s Tulcea County on the country’s Black Sea coast. The region borders the Odessa Oblast (an area currently occupied by the Kiev regime). Apparently, the war games included a scenario where thousands of NATO soldiers simulated coastal defense against a large-scale attack by an “unnamed aggressor” (obviously referring to Russia). Dubbed “Sea Shield 23”, the naval drills started on March 20 and were concluded on Sunday, April 2.
In total, close to 3,500 servicemen from the US and eleven other NATO vassals took part, including at least 30 naval ships, 14 aircraft and 15 other “fast intervention” boats. The live-fire drills were conducted both in the Black Sea and the Danube Delta, approximately 30 km from the border with Odessa Oblast. Since Russia started the special military operation (SMO), the US has conducted a number of large-scale military exercises in Eastern Europe to simulate a potential conflict with Moscow. This includes a recent simulated nuclear attack on Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city with close to six million inhabitants. A USAF B-52H “Stratofortress” flying in Estonian airspace circled in an area barely 100 km from the Russian border.
To put that into perspective, we should imagine a Russian Tu-95MS “Bear” strategic bomber/missile carrier flying just 60 miles off Manhattan, simulating a thermonuclear strike on New York City, one of the most important urban areas in the US. Still, that doesn’t prevent the US from doing everything in its power to provoke Russia. Considering that the “deep diving pro-Ukrainian group” that conducted the Nord Stream terrorist attacks has now also been dangerously close to the Turk (formerly South) Stream pipelines, the Russian Black Sea Fleet will need to be as vigilant as ever. The pipeline is the only major energy hub supplying natural gas to Turkey and Southeast Europe.
In the meantime, the world is working towards creating conditions for peaceful coexistence and cooperation of the globe’s numerous civilizations. Organizations such as BRICS and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) are rapidly expanding by admitting new members, with Iran being the most recent constituent of SCO. Saudi Arabia also became a dialogue partner on March 29, marking an important milestone in the organization’s history, which now includes all major oil producers in Eurasia and the Middle East. This also marks a crucial step toward eliminating Western currency dominance, the key provision to limiting the belligerent power pole’s ability to conduct military and economic aggression against the world.
Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Xi, Biden show contrasting styles of world leadership
On the one hand, we see peace deals; on the other, exploding pipelines
By George Koo | Asia Times | April 3, 2023
Early in January, I opined in Asia Times that “2023 bodes poorly for US international relations” under US President Joe Biden. I based my conclusion on China’s impressive success in making new friends versus the Biden administration’s inability to make any.
In less than three months since then, developments around the world have been seismic and spectacular and have made a prophet out of me, if I do say so myself.
In January, I reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping received red-carpet treatment from Saudi Arabia, concluded a US$25 billion deal for oil and met with the six Middle East nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council. Hosted by the Saudis, they talked about China buying energy and helping to build their infrastructure.
Two years earlier, China entered a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement with Iran. Thus China has become friends of both major sects of Islam that have been historically bitter rivals. (To be honest, I did not expect anything earthshaking out of all this.)
Then this March, China announced that after four days of meetings and discussion in Beijing, Saudi Arabia and Iran had agreed to resume diplomatic relations.
A peace deal for the ages
This was a big deal and caught the world by surprise. Heretofore, Saudi representing the Sunnis and Iran the Shiites have been bitter sectarian foes for centuries. Yet China was able to play the role of an honest broker and brought the two sides together.
China has the right set of credentials to be a mediator for peace. China is the second-strongest global power, but does not try to bully any lesser countries and seeks to get along with everyone.
China emphasizes three principles in its international relations: It respects the national sovereignty of other, does not interfere with the internal affairs of others, and seeks joint development based on common interests and mutual benefits.
A few days later, Xi called on his “good friend,” Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and brought with him a 12-point peace plan to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
The West promptly labeled the peace plan as vague, ambiguous and failing to include terms that would revert Russian-occupied territories back to Ukraine. But the West missed the point that was clear to everybody else in the world: Namely, a true mediation for peace does not begin by stipulating what the outcome should look like.
Zelensky would like China to step in
But as pointed out in Asia Times, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may find China’s peace proposal an acceptable starting point. He is facing Western allies getting weary of supporting the war. Without such support, Zelensky knows his goose is cooked.
While Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was visiting Kiev acting as Washington’s envoy to encourage keeping the war going, Zelensky publicly welcomed China’s participation to broker a peace deal. He obviously found comfort in China’s role that brought peace to Saudi Arabia and Iran.
While Xi Jinping is enhancing his stature as a world leader that is proactive for peace, what has happened to Joe Biden during the same period?
History will show that blowback from two of Biden’s worst decisions ever made has come to haunt him in the first quarter of 2023.
Biden imposed economic sanctions and confiscated all the Russian dollar holdings held in the US in an attempt to bring Russia to its knees. But it didn’t work. Russia’s economy turned out to be far more resilient than Washington expected.
Weaponizing the dollar
Barred from trade with the European Union and others in the West, Russia turned to trade with China, India, East Asia and the Global South. Trade with China will surpass $200 billion this year, and Russia has agreed to accept China’s renminbi to settle their transactions.
As Russia earns a bounty of yuan from energy sales to China, other countries see the advantage of accepting the yuan from Russia for their trade. They avoid the extra cost of having to convert their own currency into dollars. Since China is likely to be their most important trading partner, yuan from Russia can simply be used when they do business with China.
By weaponizing the dollar, Biden has succeeded in implanting the idea in other central banks that the dollar is no longer a reliable reserve currency.
Recently, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held a meeting to discuss ways to avoid using the dollar, euro or yen to settle their trade accounts. If not those, what then? Probably China’s yuan and their own currencies.
Indeed, China and even Japan have been reducing their dollar holdings. In recent months, China and Russia have been the major buyers of gold, no doubt with the dollars they owned.
The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is an indicator that the US economy is caught between a rock and a hard place. To tamp down inflation, the Federal Reserve had to raise interest rates. Rising interest rates meant a devaluation of the long-term Treasury bills that the bank bought paying a lower interest rate. Thus the decline in the value of the collateral assets owned by SVB made the bank vulnerable to a bank run.
Most American banks operated in much the same way as SVB but were more fortunate because the Treasury Department quickly stepped in and injected liquidity to reassure depositors that their banks wouldn’t go the way of SVB.
US economy needs China’s help
To use a Chinese expression, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo have been acting like ants racing around a hot griddle, wanting and waiting for an invitation to visit Beijing. Why? Because Yellen urgently wants China to continue buying American IOUs and Raimondo would like to raise the level of bilateral trade, which would help keep the US economy going.
Somehow, these Biden cabinet officials do not know how to ask nicely or diplomatically. They seem to assume that an announcement of their wish is good enough for Beijing to express-mail an invitation to their offices. It has not occurred to them that they need to let Beijing know what’s in it for China to agree to meet with them.
The Biden administration has the arrogance to presume that it can pick and choose the economic sectors that it can decouple from China and which to select for collaboration with China. Apparently, Biden does not understand that China does not see itself as a vassal state and has its own priorities.
Obviously there exists a huge deficit of trust between the US and China. Nothing Biden has done is in the direction of healing the rift.
Blowing up Nord Stream
The revelation by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh that Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines has further emphasized that Biden is an unethical and ruthless national leader who cannot be trusted.
Biden has shown that he has no qualms in committing a war crime by severing the key economic linkage between Russia and the EU. Cutting off cheap energy from Russia has wreaked economic turmoil on Biden’s European allies. That Biden would do this to his own allies will shake the trust and confidence the EU allies hold for the US for a long time to come.
As matters stand now, Xi Jinping represents a proactive world leader who will apply his influence and prestige to work for world peace. Despite all the slander heaped on him and the blackening of China by Washington and the Western media, a long queue of world leaders jostle to meet with him in Beijing to discuss economic cooperation and collaboration on world peace.
At the other end of the world is Joe Biden, a world leader who is dishonest and unethical and has earned the wary distrust of virtually every national leader in the world. He gives lip service to peace while creating conflict and intimidating smaller countries to join the US military alliance and prepare for proxy wars.
Even his closest ally has to watch its back lest it’s abruptly discarded when it no longer figures in the US national interest.
George Koo retired from a global advisory services firm where he advised clients on their China strategies and business operations. Educated at MIT, Stevens Institute and Santa Clara University, he is the founder and former managing director of International Strategic Alliances. He is currently a board member of Freschfield’s, a novel green building platform.
Biden’s Sham Summit Won’t Save World Democracy
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | April 3, 2023
President Joe Biden triumphantly saved world democracy last week (at least according to the White House scorecard). Biden co-hosted another Summit for Democracy, a repeat performance after the December 2021 test run. Biden sounded like a Quaalude Savior as he recycled his “inflection point of history” cliché. But the summit proved again that politicians are perils to freedom regardless of their prattle.
Biden promised that “we are seeing real indications that we are turning the tide” in favor of democracy around the globe. Practically no one who’s not on Biden’s payroll agrees. The president’s boast was like taking a victory lap around the deck of the Titanic.
Last year democracy “declined around the world for the 17th consecutive year,” according to Freedom House. Twice as many nations are veering “toward authoritarianism” as towards democracy, according to The Economist. Most shocking: the United States is now categorized as a less free nation than Mongolia, Mauritius, and 56 other nations says Freedom House (funded by the U.S. government, so they must be trustworthy).
Team Biden believes a big problem with democracy is that politicians don’t have enough power: “Weak state capacity.” In reality, elected rulers around the globe are turning themselves into dictators who increasingly repress their citizens. Rather than representative governments, elected regimes have turned into Leviathan Democracies far superior to the citizenry.
Consider Biden’s record in the Oval Office. Federal judges and/or the Supreme Court have struck down Biden’s eviction moratorium for deadbeat renters, his $400 billion cancellation of federal student debt, his “climate change” decree shutting down power plants, his mask mandate for airline passengers, and his edict compelling all employees of large companies and all federal employees to get COVID vaccine injections. But all of Biden’s decrees are supposedly “pro-democracy” because he won the 2020 election.
“Democracy delivers” was a key talking point for Team Biden at the summit. Presumably, any increase in government handouts automatically increased government legitimacy. Unfortunately, “leashing politicians” is not on the Biden Bingo Card for Saving Democracy™. The American Bar Association recently warned that “the Rule of Law is in Decline Globally” but it is “not a central focus of the U.S. Government’s approach” on democracy. A top ABA official warned, “Discussing sustainable development in the absence of rule of law…is at best delusional and at worst dishonest.” Three-quarters of nations representing almost 85% of the world’s population recently “experienced declines in rule of law,” according to the World Justice Project. In lieu of “government under the law,” Team Biden offers “the People Centered Justice Multistakeholder Cohort’s Declaration and Call to Action.” Sloshing out more government handouts to activist groups who score media headlines was “close enough for government work” to the rule of law.
Rather than a system of informed consent, democracy is degenerating into regimes which blindfold citizens and demand unlimited submission. At the summit, government officials made it clear that freedom of speech is a luxury that democracy can no longer afford. Secretary of Anthony State Blinken declared, “The misuse of technology and the spread of digital authoritarianism must end. We must stand for an affirmative, values-driven, and rights-respecting vision of democracy in the digital era.” “Affirmative” and “values-driven” become code words to legitimize pervasive government censorship. Blinken “proposed a ‘delicate balance’ between ‘openness and security,’ ‘protecting speech and preventing incitement,’ and ‘fostering innovation and limiting the power of Big Tech,’” as Tom Parker observed for Reclaim the Net.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sermonized on a “Countering the Rise of Digital Authoritarianism” panel. He was joined by YouTube CEO Neil Mohan, who could have boasted of how Washington censors his channel. An internal DHS document reveals plans to crack down on “inaccurate” information on “the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.” Any facts which embarrass Team Biden are automatically “inaccurate’ and ripe for suppression. Federally-funded entities spearheaded the censorship of true information on COVID vaccine side effects to bolster Biden’s effort to inject every American.
Eight governments, including Ukraine and Poland, issued a call for more censorship on the first day of the summit. They called for tech companies to take action “against disinformation that undermines our peace and stability” and to suppress posts that “weaken our support to Ukraine amid Russia’s war of aggression.” The letter asserted that “hostile foreign powers are using [social media] to spread false narratives that contradict reporting from fact-based news outlets,” especially the endless reports on the glorious victories of the Ukrainian army. Facebook responded by promising to ramp up its censorship, including relying on “a third-party fact-checking service to determine if posts contain false claims.” Some “third-party fact checking services” have been government fronts. As journalist Aaron Maté scoffed, “We are fueling a proxy war in Ukraine in order to defend freedom, such as the freedom to censor dissenting views on our proxy war in Ukraine.”
Is the “will of the people” so fragile that it can no longer survive exposure to any thoughts that officialdom disapproves? Does winning an election automatically convert tinhorn politicians into minor deities entitled to control the thoughts of any voter? Nullifying freedom of speech converts citizens into vassals that politicians can use and abuse as they please.
Throughout the summit proceedings, piety was thicker than hog slop at an Iowa slaughterhouse. Secretary Blinken declared on March 28, “No woman or girl should face harassment and abuse in-person or online.” The State Department’s effort on this score was propelled by its Global Engagement Center, which previously pressured Twitter to cancel hundreds of thousands of accounts, including vast numbers of hapless Americans. That Center is leading the fight against “gendered disinformation” and whooped up a report on “the need for more research to tackle this scourge.” According to the United Nations, a prime example of this “scourge” is “Zoom Bombing.” That atrocity occurs when uninvited people crash a Zoom meeting and make rude comments. Is it an international human rights crisis because boneheaded Zoom organizers fail to require pass codes to attend a meeting?
As part of its summit festivities, the Biden administration announced new crackdowns to make it “more difficult for corrupt actors to conceal their identities, assets, and criminal activities.” Despite reform promises at the first summit, there has been no worldwide progress. The U.S. ranks #24 on the international corruption index—even worse than France, according to Transparency International. And that score was calculated before the latest revelations of the Biden family pocketing vast sums from smarmy foreign companies.
Biden boasted that his administration plans to spend more than $9 billion to support democracy worldwide by the end of next year. But U.S. foreign aid programs obliterate the anti-corruption initiatives of the U.S. government. An American Economic Review analysis concluded that “increases in [foreign] aid are associated with contemporaneous increases in corruption,” and that “corruption is positively correlated with aid received from the United States.” As a Brookings Institution analysis observed, “The history of U.S. assistance is littered with tales of corrupt foreign officials using aid to line their own pockets, support military buildups, and pursue vanity projects.” Torrents of U.S. “aid” helped make Afghanistan one of the most corrupt places on Earth. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), observed, “We need to understand how U.S. policies and practices unintentionally aided and abetted corruption.” The U.S. has been “fighting corruption” in Ukraine since the end of the Cold War, and in those decades Ukraine became one of the most corrupt nations in Europe. Biden administration officials helped defeat a congressional proposal to create an Inspector General to audit and oversee the $100 billion the U.S. government has pledged to the government of Ukraine.
But another handout will fix that problem. The Biden administration is bankrolling foreign journalists to fight “kleptocracy”—government of thieves. There is even an aid program entitled “Empowering the Truth Tellers.” (Julian Assange need not apply.) The Biden administration claims to support “independent media” by effectively putting foreign journalists on the U.S. payroll. Those journalists are “independent” because the U.S. government says so, and anyone who disagrees will be labeled an enemy of democracy. Besides, the United States is no role model: it ranks a pathetic #42 in the World Press Freedom Index, worse than Moldova and Guyana, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Biden is “saving” democracy” with buckets of goofy new acronyms: SHE PERSISTS, one of the rallying cries for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, now stands for Supporting Her Empowerment: Political Engagement, Rights, Safety, and Inclusion Strategies to Succeed Investing. And then there was SHE WINS (Support Her Empowerment: Women’s Inclusion for New Security). The Agency for International Development is whooping up PxP—Powered by the People. Did the White House believe acronyms should look like drug prescriptions? ADD stands for Advancing Digital Democracy but policymakers should have worked in an ‘H’ to reflect their cluelessness. ACRF stands for the Anti-Corruption Response Fund. They should have tweaked that one to make it ARF-ARF, to symbolize officialdom’s cravenness to the powers that be.
To safeguard democracy, the Biden administration is creating “the Global Network for Securing Election Integrity [GNSEI], to align on standards and practices for supporting clean elections.” On that score, the Biden administration touts its ballot expanding efforts here at home. The White House “fact sheet” detailing progress on democracy touts the Biden proposal to spend $5 billion on the Postal Service to “support for vote-by-mail, including making ballots postage-free and reducing the cost of other election-related mail for jurisdictions and voters.” Ballot harvesting and unverified absentee ballots will save democracy everywhere! Who knew that the “will of the people” was so fragile that it could be blighted by requiring citizens to purchase one first-class stamp to send in their ballot?
Comic relief failed to redeem the summit. The State Department wanted Americans to make short videos with the hashtag #SummitForDemocracy whooping up “What has democracy made possible in your own life?” Such as falling living standards, soaring inflation, sporadic financial panic, and a befuddled commander-in-chief who doesn’t know if he is in Canada or China? A search on Twitter indicates that almost all the videos made with #SummitforDemocracy hashtags were done by governments or by government-funded entities. Biden’s democracy spiel can’t compete with cat videos.
Revealing all the levels of hypocrisy at the summit would be on par with peeling an onion. Mexico President López Obrador declared at the gathering, “Many of the great crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of God, or in the name of democracy.” Many of the nations showcased at the summit are dutiful U.S. allies, meaning that Washington ignores their oppression.
In his speech last Wednesday, Biden declared that “the power of these summits” is “not just to speak high-minded words.” But even U.S. government officials feared the summit would be an “inconsequential talk shop,” according to The Washington Post. Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass scoffed, “The summit for democracy is a bad idea that won’t go away… American democracy is hardly a model for others.”
Unfortunately, the Pentagon missed the memo on democracy. Since 2008, foreign soldiers who received training from the U.S. military “attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries,” as journalist Nick Turse reported. The Pentagon denies responsibility for the debacles. But, as Antiwar.com reported, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) declared at a recent congressional hearing, “I think we should at least know how many countries we train the coup plotters.”
Biden concluded his spiel to the Summit, “The great strength of democracy is that it gives us all the tools we need for self-government and self-improvement.” But the tools are controlled by politicians who equate ever greater submission with the triumph of the “will of the people.” Self-government is being defined down to little more than coronating whichever of the rascal’s political parties can offer voters more stuff. With politicians openly championing censorship, Leviathan Democracy is dropping its mask and no longer pretending to give a damn about freedom.
Jim Bovard is the Junior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. He is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.
Windfarms renege on electricity contracts for a second year
Net Zero Watch | April 3, 2023
Major windfarms are again reneging on their promise to deliver power to the national grid at agreed prices.
A year ago, Net Zero Watch reported that the Moray East windfarm had become fully operational, but had refused to activate its Contracts for Difference (CfDs), under which it had promised to sell cheap power to the grid. This gaming allowed it to sell at elevated market prices instead, costing consumers hundreds of millions of pounds.
Last week the windfarm advised that it will put back the date for activation another 12 months. In addition, the CfD start date for Phase 1 of the Hornsea 2 windfarm, which became fully operational in August last year, has also been pushed back into 2024.
Delaying its CfD may have earned Moray East as much as half a billion pounds last year; putting it back another year could easily bring in another hundred million pounds at current market prices. Hornsea 2 could earn a similar amount in 2023/24.
Windfarms are entitled to do this under the CfD scheme rules, and there is scope for further delays. Moray East will be able to put off a final decision about whether to activate its CfD until March 2025. Some of the phases of Hornsea 2 will be able to delay until 2026.
Andrew Montford, Net Zero Watch deputy director, said:
How long do Government and civil service think they can go on pretending that these windfarms are going to deliver cheap power? It is a deliberate, cynical deception and it needs to stop now.
US proxy attrition war in Ukraine backfiring, says US diplomat
By Uriel Araujo | April 3, 2023
Former US ambassador to Finland, Earle Mack has visited Ukraine several times, on humanitarian missions. He claims, in a March 29 piece for The Hill, that, during his last visit, he could see a lack of morale firsthand, in the voice of the leaders to whom he talked. More importantly, Mack states matter-of-factly that the West has been “propping up Ukraine to fight a proxy war”, which is, in itself, a very important admission from a former US diplomat. He adds, however, that Kiev desperately needs “modern fighting hardware”, and claims that, by the time American Abrams tanks reach the country, in eight to ten months, the conflict could be over already with a defeated Ukraine.
To the general public, this reasoning might appear strange. After all, everyone knows that the US and its allies have been sending tons of weapons, ammunition and lots of cash to Ukraine. The constant sending of aid to Kiev has even caused Washington and European powers to have a hard time replenishing their own stocks of weapons.
It is true that American weapons manufacturers profit tremendously from today’s conflict. Much the same way portions of the sums sent to Ukraine (Europe’s most corrupt nation) are being diverted to shady schemes, the Pentagon, as a matter of fact, cannot account for billions worth of weaponry. Many such weapons appeared in the Middle East and Africa, trafficked through black markets. This however is only part of the story.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington, during a 21 December 2022 joint press conference, his American counterpart, Joe Biden, provided a clearer picture. Regarding the insistent calls for more powerful weaponry being sent to Kiev, the US President said that providing Ukrainians with long-distance missiles “would have a prospect of breaking up NATO”, and “breaking up the EU and the rest of the world.” He added that his NATO allies were “not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third world war.” After saying that much, Biden “reassured” the Ukrainian leader standing next to him, by telling Zelensky this: “as I said, Mr. President, you don’t have to worry — we are staying with Ukraine as long as Ukraine is there.”
Inadvertently, Biden’s December remarks almost paraphrased the cruel joke about Americans being willing to fight “to the last Ukrainian”. More importantly, his blunt answer amounted to an indirect admission that Washington keeps arming and aiding Kiev as part of a proxy protracted war. It would thus appear the West’s strategy is not about giving Ukrainians victory but rather about wearing down Moscow. The conflict, however, is wearing out Ukraine itself – and even the West.
It is not just Ukraine that is in a bad shape, though: de-industrialized Europe is in fact more dependent than ever on the US for security, its military being in an “appalling state”, according to experts. The EU’s defense base lacks a common defense market, as well as the necessary production capacities and supply chains. Moreover, whenever the EU tries to articulate an industrial policy, Washington steps in. This is so because American interests benefit not only from the defense industry, but also from the continent’s own energy crisis and deindustrialization. Washington’s goal of a NATOized Europe is made impossible by the US own economic and industrial policies against Europe, as exemplified by Biden’s subsidies package.
Earle Mack describes the current conflict as attrition warfare, that is one which seeks military victory by wearing down the enemy. On a larger scale, also including the realms of financial and economic warfare, one could very well argue that the political West has indeed been trying to “wear down” the Russian Federation in all manners, by arming Kiev plus imposing unprecedented sanctions on Moscow. The sanctions have boosted Eurasian integration and largely backfired. Alas, the same could be said about Washington’s military attrition strategy, which normally aims for the long run. If this is an attrition war, it seems Ukraine is bound to tire out first – and is tiring out already. Hence, Earle Mack’s sense of urgency.
With that in mind, the former diplomat writes that the US and its allies should urgently send Kiev “military modern weaponry, including more Patriot missiles and many more Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks.”
In his piece, Earl Mack, also rightly reminds readers that although the current Russian military campaign in Ukraine is just a year old, that nation “has been in almost continuous conflict” since 2014 – this, one might add, is a situation that has been largely promoted and fueled by the West and by NATO’s expansion. During these years, Kiev’s human rights violations against the Donbass population have been covered-up by Western press, to the point of, more recently, whitewashing the Azov Regiment’s neonazism. In a July 2020 piece, I described the then Donbass combat as Europe’s forgotten war – and in a way it remains so, because the large public still thinks of military conflict in Ukraine as being only a year old phenomenon.
Ukranians are thus approaching “a decade of death and chaos”, in Earle Mack’s words. Over 10 million Ukrainians left their country. Interestingly, over 5.5 million, from Ukraine and Donbass, have fled to Russia. The loss of populations plus badly damaged infrastructure is exhausting the country.
Good diplomacy and lots of table talks are needed more than ever. Instead, Mack claims that to obtain victory, “Ukraine needs everything, everywhere, all at once” – and urgently. In any case, one can only give so much. It remains to be seen how much the US-led West is willing to give, while the Washington world system collapses.
Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.
JOE BIDEN ‘LED THE CHARGE’ FOR TRANS ACTIVISM WITH AN ‘ABSURD STATEMENT’: NASHVILLE SHOOTING
Sky News Australia | April 2, 2023
US President Joe Biden “led the charge” in transgender activism following the Nashville school shooting by releasing an “absurd statement” about Transgender Americans shaping the “nation’s soul”, Sky News host Rita Panahi said.
“That is the state of the culture right now, celebrities, corporates and the overwhelming majority of the media relentlessly pushing the trans activist rhetoric,” Ms Panahi said.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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