None Of Nigeria’s Objective National Interests Are Served By Invading Niger
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 3, 2023
West African military chiefs met in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Wednesday to discuss ECOWAS’ potential NATO-backed invasion of Niger, but they stressed that this scenario is supposedly only a “last resort”. Their rhetoric aside, the reality is that “West Africa Is Gearing Up For A Regional War” between NATO-backed ECOWAS and the informally Russian-backed de facto Burkinabe-Malian federation, which recently said that an invasion of Niger would be regarded as an act of war against them both.
None of Nigeria’s objective national interests are served by invading Niger. Rather, only NATO’s subjective interests would be advanced in that scenario, and particularly France’s. This Western European Great Power is struggling to retain its neocolonial influence in the countries that it used to rule. Niger’s patriotic military coup risks leading to France’s expulsion from its last regional bastion after Mali and Burkina Faso kicked its troops out of their countries.
Moreover, France is largely dependent on Nigerien uranium for fueling its nuclear power plants that generate the majority of its electricity. Taken together, this major NATO member has self-interested military, economic, and strategic reasons for tasking Nigeria with leading an ECOWAS invasion of that country aimed at reinstalling its ousted leader on the pretext of defending democracy. In pursuit of that goal, the Mainstream Media (MSM) is spinning the narrative that Nigeria would gain from this as well.
Voice of America, The Economist, and the Associated Press all recently claimed that Niger is now a global epicenter of terrorism, which isn’t true but is intended to mislead the public into thinking that Nigeria’s potentially impending invasion of that country is supposedly in the world’s interests. This information warfare narrative asks those who fall for it to assume that everyone has hitherto ignored this allegedly imminent threat to them all, which isn’t rational to imagine.
Additionally, some of those MSM outlets are also implying that peaceful pro-democracy protesters will suddenly become so radicalized by only a week of military rule that they’ll transform en masse into violent extremists, but this also doesn’t make any sense. Even so, these false claims are being repeated ad nauseum in an attempt to convince average people that there’s some degree of credence to them by dint of so many “experts” and officials warning about these dangers, though it’s all just a psy-op.
The public isn’t being properly informed of the Nigerien junta’s justification for seizing power. They declared that the prior regime was removed due to its failure to improve their country’s economic and security conditions. Additionally, not enough attention is being given to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre words that “We have not seen indications of Russian or Wagner involvement” nor to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby’s confirmation of her assessment a few days later.
Instead, people are being made to think that some power-hungry military officials overthrew one of the Global South’s democratic icons with Russian support in order to spread terrorism across the world. This artificially manufactured impression misleads folks into thinking that Nigeria’s potentially impending invasion would be a service to the international community, but Al Jazeera and Politico suggested that newly inaugurated President Bola Tinubu has ulterior motives that have nothing to do with terrorism.
Reading between the lines of their skeptical pieces on this subject, it becomes apparent that he might do the West’s geopolitical bidding in his region in a desperate attempt to distract his compatriots from growing economic and political problems at home. As leading American officials have publicly confirmed, there’s no reason to suspect that Russia or Wagner were behind the Nigerien coup, plus its interim military government declared that it wants to ramp up its antiterrorist operations.
Although it’s everyone’s right to think whatever they want about the merits of this latest regime change, there are no plausible grounds for considering it a threat to Nigeria’s objective national interests. To the contrary, the aforesaid would arguably be advanced if the junta succeeds in improving the economic and security situation. That’s regrettably going to be very difficult, however, after Nigeria just cut off electricity to Niger in compliance with ECOWAS’ sanctions against its northern neighbor.
Only one in seven people there had access to this amenity before that happened, but now even fewer will enjoy its benefits since Nigeria used to provide a whopping 70% of Niger’s electricity. Making matters even worse for its people is Benin’s closure of the border. Niger used to depend on imports from the Atlantic port of Cotonou so now it’s basically cut off from most of the world. Reopening its borders with friendly neighbors won’t help much since those trade routes are threatened by terrorists.
Niger is already the world’s third poorest country but its people’s plight is expected to worsen even further due to that bloc’s sanctions, which could soon create a major socio-economic crisis with very serious humanitarian implications for the region. That cynically seems to be the point, however, since Nigeria might exploit large-scale refugee flows as the national security pretext for invading Niger even though ECOWAS’ crippling sanctions that Abuja itself is leading would be entirely responsible for this.
If Nigeria would have given the Nigerien junta a chance to make good on its promise to improve their country’s economic and security conditions, then it wouldn’t have anything to worry about, which reveals that Tinubu’s policies actually threaten his country’s objective national interests. He likely won’t relent on them though since his country’s Western-aligned military-political elite are intoxicated with the praise that the MSM is heaping on their country for doing that bloc’s bidding in Niger and won’t let him.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is therefore in the process of transpiring whereby Niger is indeed becoming a national security threat to Nigeria but solely due to the latter’s Western-dictated policies catalyzing a humanitarian crisis there that threatens to spill over its borders and prompt an invasion on that basis. Other pretexts will include the discredited anti-Russian and terrorist ones alongside the “rules-based order’s” mantra of defending democracy to complement the core humanitarian intervention claim.
The public should thus expect more fearmongering about all of the above ahead of ECOWAS’ ultimatum for installing the ousted Nigerien leader expiring this Sunday. Although the bloc’s military chiefs stressed that armed force will only be a “last resort”, the humanitarian crisis that their group’s policies are creating could soon lead to this being a fait accompli if a lot of people start flooding into Nigeria. The MSM will then likely spin this to claim that they’re “fleeing their Russian-backed and pro-terrorist junta”.
The narrative stage would therefore be set for justifying the NATO-backed Nigerian-led ECOWAS invasion of Niger on multiple pretexts connected with the “rules-based order’s” worldview, thus enabling the aggressors to reverse the roles of victim and villain to misrepresent themselves as “heroes”. This is nothing but a psy-op though since the only threats that could conceivably emanate from Niger are entirely due to foreign meddling in its internal affairs and would disappear if this interference stopped.
US Long Violating Letter, Spirit of New START – Russian Ambassador Antonov
Sputnik – 03.08.2023
WASHINGTON – Russia in February suspended participation in New START, the only bilateral nuclear arms control treaty in place at the time, and conditioned its resumption of participation on an understanding of how NATO’s combined strike capability would be accounted for.
The United States has long been violating the New START Treaty, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said.
“Washington has long been violating the letter and the spirit of the agreement. It has not only abandoned the principles embedded in the Preamble to New START, but also breached the central limits of the Treaty that restrict the number of strategic weapons. It illegitimately removed from accountability under the Treaty about a hundred strategic offensive arms: SLBM launchers and heavy bombers. Russia’s repeated demands to resolve the problem have been ignored,” Antonov told reporters.
He said there was another factor that has led to the current crisis.
“Even more important factor that has led to the current crisis over the agreement is the [US] Administration’s hybrid war against our country aimed at imposing on us a strategic defeat. Washington’s calls for addressing the New START issues separately from the overall geopolitical situation do not stand up to criticism,” Antonov said.
“The real goal of the United States is to gain access to Russia’s nuclear weapons bases in order to obtain information about the development of our strategic arsenal,” he said.
In February, Moscow announced the suspension of its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which was signed by Russia and the US in 2010 and envisaged mutual inspections of the strategic nuclear facilities of the two countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual address to the Russian parliament then that the US had demanded that Russia unconditionally fulfill its obligations under the treaty while itself being arbitrary about its own obligations.
French invasion of Niger could turn into all-out Franco-African war
By Drago Bosnic | August 3, 2023
Ever since the Nigerien military under the command of General Abdourahamane Tchiani took power on July 26, there has been an exponential increase in tensions between Niamey and its former colonial masters in Paris. This has gone to the point where France is now seriously considering invading the West African country. The exploitation of “former” French colonies has continued unabated for over half a century even after they were granted a semblance of independence and Paris has been the main beneficiary of this one-sided relationship. Combined with France’s inability to deal with various terrorist insurgencies in the region, this unadulterated neocolonial theft has been the primary reason behind a series of popular uprisings in the Sahel.
Paris is now faced with a strategic dilemma. If it lets Niger continue its path toward actual independence, France will be unable to continue exploiting the country’s natural resources. Namely, several of its former colonies have served as a source of massive wealth extraction and given the recent troubles Paris is facing, these resources might be more important than ever. On the other hand, recent geopolitical changes in the area have left France largely impuissant. After the defeat of its nearly decade-long intervention in Chad last year, Paris has been left with bases in Ivory Coast, Senegal and Gabon. Neither of these can be used effectively as a staging ground for an invasion due to the limited number of troops stationed there.
However, even if France was to somehow find enough soldiers to launch the invasion, none of the three countries border Niger. Gabon is the least logical option, as Cameroon and Nigeria stand between it and Niger, leaving only bases in Senegal and Ivory Coast as viable possibilities. And yet, this is where the issues of basic geography for Paris stop and actual geopolitical ones start. Namely, in order to effectively use its forces from both countries to reach Niger, France needs to go through Mali and Burkina Faso, both of which have already stated that any military action against Niamey will be tantamount to aggression against them. In other words, if France wants to attack Niger, it will also need to attack two more African countries.
A possible alternative for Paris could be the use of its neocolonial influence in the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States, also known as CEDEAO in French and Portuguese). However, this leaves its members at risk of more anti-Western uprisings, as the belligerent power pole is deeply unpopular in the area. Some members of the ECOWAS, such as Nigeria, might be the best geographical option, but given the fact that Paris has little to no influence in Abuja, this is extremely unlikely. Not to mention the fact that Nigeria has more than enough problems of its own and the last thing it needs is to serve as the staging ground for a neocolonial invasion. Logically, this leaves Chad as the only option, but this too is a very long shot.
To make matters worse for France, Algeria has joined the chorus of Niger’s allies. The French archrival that spearheaded the independence of many of its “former” colonies in the 1960s is effectively an African superpower, heavily armed and highly motivated to never allow Paris or any other Western (neo)colonial power to establish a firm foothold in the region. This still leaves Chad as the only viable option for an invasion, as the country was an instrumental staging ground for virtually all French military operations in the area, including the illegal invasion of Libya. However, reaching Chad at this point is easier said than done and this still leaves most of the geopolitical issues unresolved. Also, all geographical considerations remain.
Namely, the Nigerien capital of Niamey is located in the southwestern corner of the country, close to the border with Burkina Faso. Thus, even in the unlikely case that none of its neighbors intervene, Niger is still left with a comfortable window of opportunity to resist the invasion. This could end in a disaster for France, as yet another military defeat in the area would inevitably lead to a complete collapse of the neocolonial system it left in place in the 1960s. On the other hand, if Paris doesn’t intervene, this will happen anyway, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Either way, the dilemma inevitably results in a geopolitical catch-22, as leaving things as they are could also encourage others to revolt against Western neocolonialism elsewhere in Africa and possibly beyond.
As for France’s NATO allies, they’ve been largely quiet and non-militant, including the United States (a rather uncommon feature in their usually belligerent foreign policy). Washington DC has a military base in the central part of the country, the Niger Air Base 201, run by US AFRICOM (African Command), but its operational capabilities are mostly limited to drone strikes, with the troops deployed there largely composed of a skeleton crew that provides basic security. Coupled with the recent cooling of US-French relations, this makes it highly unlikely that the Pentagon would give the go-ahead for any sort of American involvement in a possible French invasion, even though it’s in Washington DC’s interest to keep Western neocolonialism in Africa alive for as long as possible.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
British Arms Industry Giant Reaps Huge Windfall, Amid West’s Tensions with Russia and China
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | August 2, 2023
Amid the surge in NATO members’ military spending as a result of the war in Ukraine, BAE Systems announced that – during the first half of this year – its net profits soared with a 57 percent increase. The British arms industry giant reported its huge windfall on Wednesday.
BAE Systems stated its revenue swelled to 11 billion pounds, an increase of 13 percent, while profits after taxes increased to 965 million pounds ($1.2 billion) during the first six months of 2023. This is compared with 615 million pounds in the same period last year.
Chief Executive Charles Woodburn declared “Our global footprint… and leading technologies enable us to effectively support the national security requirements and multi-domain ambitions of our government customers in an increasingly uncertain world.”
In a separate video that accompanies the company’s earnings statement, he acknowledges the profits are directly related to global destabilization and Western foreign policies, particularly those of London and Washington, aimed at Russia and China. Woodburn says “I’m particularly proud of our support to Ukraine… We’ve delivered an excellent set of results.”
In November, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said that Ukrainian forces had already suffered over 100,000 casualties, killed or wounded, so far in the proxy war with Russia, along with thousands more civilians killed.
Woodburn’s euphoria regarding the “excellent results” notwithstanding, Ukraine has lost approximately 20 percent of its territory since the Russian invasion began last February. Moreover, Kiev’s long awaited counteroffensive has seen massive losses in military equipment and armor, as well as personnel no doubt, while no significant gains have been made.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew [Kiev] didn’t have all the training or weapons — from shells to warplanes — that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment.”
The video continues with Woodburn boasting of further profits which will be reaped as a result of BAE’s role in the major military buildup in the Asia-Pacific targeting Beijing. “We’ve secured significant orders for combat vehicles… and the selection of the UK’s design for AUKUS.”
AUKUS is a trilateral military pact formed in 2021 between Washington, London, and Canberra which will see Canberra acquiring nuclear-powered attack submarines which will be used to patrol waters near China’s shores. The three countries are currently carrying out the largest iteration of the US-Australia Talisman Sabre war games, again eyeing Beijing. AUKUS will seriously undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty as these submarines run on 90 percent or more enriched uranium, weapons-grade levels.
The most profitable policies for the arms industry are often the most destructive for civilians, such was the case in Saudia Arabia’s genocidal war against the Yemeni people, strongly supported by Washington and London. According to the UN, at least 377,000 people have been killed in this war, including mostly children and infants, as a result of the full blockade imposed by Riyadh on northern Yemen and its devastating bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure.
In 2020, The Guardian reported “Britain’s leading arms manufacturer BAE Systems sold £15bn worth of arms and services to the Saudi military during the last five years, the period covered by Riyadh’s involvement in the deadly bombing campaign in the war in Yemen.” By the following year, BAE’s sales to Riyadh, since the Gulf kingdom launched its invasion, had increased by 2.5 billion pounds.
According to The Defense Post, subsequent to the company’s announcement on Wednesday, shares in BAE rallied 4.5 percent in early London trading. Andy Chambers, a director at the research group Edison, affirmed “Leading [defense] contractor BAE Systems posted a very strong set of results… benefiting from a general rearmament among NATO countries as the war in Ukraine grinds on.”
In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists admonished that the risk of nuclear annihilation has never been higher.
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.
Do The COVID Vaccines Affect Your Ability to Think?
Examining some of the common neurological injuries caused by vaccination
A Midwestern Doctor | The Forgotten Side of Medicine | July 20, 2023
When the COVID-19 vaccines were brought to market, due to their design I expected them to have safety issues, and I expected over the long term, a variety of chronic issues would be linked to them. This was because there were a variety of reasons to suspect they would cause autoimmune disorders, fertility issues and cancers—but for some reason (as shown by the Pfizer EMA leaks), the vaccines had been exempted from being appropriately tested for any of these issues prior to being given to humans.
Since all new drugs are required to receive that testing, I interpreted it to be a tacit admission it was known major issues would emerge in these areas, and that a decision was made that it was better to just not officially test any of them so there would be no data to show Pfizer knew the problems would develop. Sadly, since the time the vaccines entered the market, those three issues (especially autoimmunity) have become some of the most common severe events associated with the vaccines.
At the start of the vaccine rollout, there were four red flags to me:
• The early advertising campaigns for the vaccines mentioned that you would feel awful when you got the vaccine, but that was fine and a sign the vaccine was working. Even with vaccines that had a very high rate of adverse events (e.g., the HPV vaccine), I had never seen this mentioned. This signified it was likely the adverse event rate with the spike protein vaccines would be much higher than normal.
• Many of my colleagues who got the vaccine (since they were healthcare workers they were able to get it first) posted on social media about just how awful they felt after getting the vaccine. This was also something I had never seen with a previous vaccine. After some digging, I noticed those with the worse vaccine reactions typically had already had COVID and their reaction was to the second shot rather than the first, signifying that some type of increased sensitization was occurring from repeated exposures to the spike protein. Likewise, the published clinical trial about Pfizer’s vaccine also showed adverse reactions were dramatically higher with the second rather than first shot.
• Once it became available to the general public, I immediately had patients start showing up with vaccine reactions, many of whom stated they received their flu shot each year and never had experienced something similar with a previous vaccination. One of the most concerning things were the pre-exacerbation of autoimmune diseases (e.g., spots in their body they previously would occasionally have arthritis and felt like they were on fire). After I started looking into this I realized people were seeing between a 15-25% rate of new autoimmune disorders or exacerbations of existing autoimmune disorders developing after the vaccine (later shown in an Israeli survey), a massive increase I had never seen any previous vaccine cause.
• About a month after the vaccines were available to the public, I started having friends and patients share that they’d known someone who had unexpectedly died suddenly after receiving the vaccine (typically from a heart attack, stroke, or a sudden aggressive case of COVID-19).
This was extremely concerning to me, because reactions to a toxin typically distribute on a bell curve, with the severe ones being much rarer than the moderate ones. This meant that if that many severe reactions were occurring, what I could already see was only the tip of the iceberg and far, far more less obvious reactions were going to be happening, to the point it was likely many people I knew would end up experiencing complications from the vaccine.
I tried to warn my colleagues about the dangers of this vaccine, but even when I pointed out Pfizer’s own trial admitted the vaccine was more likely to harm than help you, no one would listen to me. Not being sure what else to do, but not be willing to do nothing, I decided to start documenting all the severe reactions I came across so I could have some type of “proof” to show my colleagues.
This was something that was extremely important at the time since no one was willing to take on the personal risk of publishing something went against the narrative (that vaccines were killing people) in the peer reviewed literature. Shortly after Steve Kirsch kindly helped launch my Substack, I decided to post the log I’d put together, and since there was a critical need for that information, the post went viral and created much of the initial reader base that made my substack possible.
It was immensely time consuming to do the project (especially the verification of the story that was reported to me), so I ended the project after a year. During that time, I came across 45 cases of either a death (these comprised the majority of the 45 cases), something I expected to be fatal later on (e.g., a metastatic cancer) or a permanent and total disability. Additionally, in line with the previously described bell curve, I also came across many more serious but not quite as severe injuries.
I’ve had a long term interest in studying pharmaceutical injuries because many of my friends and relatives have had bad reactions to pharmaceuticals. In most of these cases, ample data existed to show that reaction could happen (often to the degree it strongly argued against the pharmaceutical remaining on the market) and yet almost no one in the medical field was aware of those dangers, hence leading to my injured friends never being warned before they took the pharmaceutical or even while the injury was occurring.
My bell curve theory originally came about from examining all of their cases. I thus was interested to know if the distribution of adverse events from the spike protein vaccines would match what I had observed with previous dangerous pharmaceuticals and if what I saw personally did or did not match what everyone was reporting online.
One of the things that immediately jumped out at me were the multiple cases of a friend’s parent in a nursing home receiving the vaccine, immediately undergoing a rapid cognitive decline which was “diagnosed” as Alzheimer’s disease and then dying not long after. At the time, I assumed these were most likely due to undiagnosed ischemic strokes as that was the most plausible mechanism to describe what I’d heard, but I was not certain as I could never examine any of these individuals for signs a stroke had indeed happened.
These cases were very concerning to me, as they signified (per the bell curve) that there was going to be a much larger portion of people who would develop less severe (but nonetheless impactful) cognitive decline following vaccination.
Note: one of the most common types of injuries from pharmaceuticals are neurological injuries which both impair cognitive function and create psychiatric symptoms. This places patients in a difficult situation of being gaslighted by the medical system. This is because their doctors assume the psychiatric symptoms the patients are experiencing are the cause of their illness rather than a symptom of it, leading to the patient being told the illness is all in their head and continually referred for psychiatric help. One of the best examples with this occurred as a result of the abnormal heart rhythms (e.g., rapid anxiety provoking palpitations) caused by the vaccine damaging the heart which were consistently diagnosed as being a result of anxiety, even when a subsequent workup I requested showed heart damage was present.
As I began seeing more and more signs of cognitive impairment following vaccination, I realized that what I observed mirrored what I had previously seen with chronic inflammatory conditions such as mold toxicity, HPV vaccine injuries, and lyme disease. Some of the examples included:
• Many people reported having a “COVID” brain where it was just harder for them to think and remember things. I sometimes saw this after more severe cases of COVID, more frequently after vaccination, and repeatedly in patients who per their timeline clearly developed it from the vaccine but believed it had come from COVID.
• These issues tended to be more likely to affect older adults, but younger ones were more likely to notice (and complain) about them. In the case of older adults, I typically learned about them from someone else who had observed the cognitive decline rather than directly from the individual.
• I saw cases of vaccine injured individuals who had trouble remembering or recalling the word they knew expressed what they were trying to communicate (this is also a common mold toxicity symptom).
• I had friends and patients who told me their brain just didn’t work the same since they’d received the vaccine. As an example, a few colleagues told me they started losing the ability to remember basic things they needed to practice medicine (e.g., medication dosages for prescriptions). They shared that they were very worried they would need to take an early retirement and that they thought it came from the vaccine but there was no one they could talk to about it (which understandably created a lot of doubt and anxiety).
• I saw cases of coworkers demonstrating noticeable (and permanent) cognitive impairment after I’d assumed they’d received the vaccine. Their impairment was never mentioned or addressed (rather the physician kept on working, did not perform as well, and in some cases retired).
• I met significantly injured vaccine injured patients who told me one of the primary symptoms was a loss of cognitive functioning they had taken for granted throughout their life. In many cases following treatment of their vaccine injury, their cognition also improved.
• Colleagues who treated vaccine injured patients told me cognitive impairment was one of the common symptoms they saw and was particularly noteworthy because they had never seen anything like that happen to young adults.
• One of my friends (a very smart immunologist) developed complications from the first two vaccines and based on their symptoms was able to describe exactly which parts of their immune systems were becoming dysregulated. Against my advice, they took a booster and reported they suffered a significant cognitive impairment never experienced before in their lifetime. I feel this case was important to share as it illustrates how an exacerbation of a vaccine injury can also cause an exacerbation of cognitive symptoms.
Note: I also saw significant cognitive impairment occur in individuals who were acutely ill with COVID-19. This was not as unusual since delirium is a well known complication in patients hospitalized with a systemic illness (e.g., sepsis), but it seemed to happen more frequently than ususual.
At the same time I was observing these effects, many rumors were also swirling around online that the vaccines would cause severe cognitive impairment and that we would witness a zombie apocalypse from the vaccine injuries.
This apocalypse of course never happened, but many observed a suspicion cognitive impairment was occurring. For example to quote Igor Chudov’s recent article:
I own a small business and deal with many people and other small businesses. Most provided reliable service, would remember appointments, followed up on issues, and so on. I noticed that lately, some people have become less capable cognitively. They forget essential appointments, cannot concentrate, make crazy-stupid mistakes, and so on.
In my own case, the most evident change I noticed was a worsening of drivers around me and had a few near misses from impaired driving.
The challenge with these situations is that it’s very hard to tell if something is actually happening or your perception is simply a product of confirmation bias. For this reason, while I was comfortable asserting my belief the COVID-19 vaccines were causing the severe injuries on either end of the bell curve, I avoided doing so for many of the less impactful injuries in the middle where it was much more ambiguous if what I was observing was “real” or simply my own biased perception of the events around me. Because of this, amongst other things, I never mentioned the changes in driving I observed.
Note: after I posted the original article many of the readers stated they too had observed a significant worsening in the behavior of drivers around them. I was then pointed to this dataset, which suggests this issue was happening, but is difficult to properly assess because COVID-19 can also cause cognitive impairment and less people were driving in 2020.
Typically, when we have situations like this, large bodies of data or scientific studies are needed to tease out if a correlation is in fact occurring. Unfortunately, since there are political repercussions for dissenting from the dominant narrative, data which threatens tends not to be published. This creates the challenging situation where those who are looking for answers on a topic which challenges a vested interest have to look quite carefully for clues on the subject (e.g., by dissecting papers to see exactly what the data is actually showing).
Igor periodically finds those, and after I saw the most recent one he unearthed, I requested to write the original guest post. To quote his discovery from the Netherlands:
Primary care data for January to March 2023 showed that adults visited their GP more frequently for a number of symptoms compared to the same period in 2019. Memory and concentration problems were significantly more common than last year and in the period before COVID-19. Where these symptoms are concerned, the difference compared to 2019 is growing steadily in each quarter.
In the first quarter of 2023, there was a 24% increase in GP [general practioner] visits related to memory and concentration problems among adults (age 25 years and older) compared to the same period in 2020. This is evidenced by the latest quarterly research update from the GOR Network. The increase in memory and concentration problems of adults seems to be a longer-term effect of the coronavirus measures as well as SARS-CoV-2 infections.
More specifically they found:
• No increase was observed in adults under 25 years old.
• A 31% increase was observed in those 24-44 years old.
• A 40% increase was observed in those 45-74 years old.
• A 18% increase was observed in those over 75 years old.
Note: previous rounds of this survey, in addition to the cognitive issues described above, worsening mental health (e.g, anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts), sleep problems, tiredness, and cardiovascular issues (e.g., shortness of breath, dizziness or heart palpitation) were also observed to have significantly increased since 2019.
Typically, patients, less than 75 years old are unlikely to visit their doctors for cognitive issues. Taken in context with this data, it means there is a stronger case that the (massive) increases in those under 75 were caused by something that happened after 2019. Additionally, since there were already a large number of visits for cognitive impairment in the elderly, the lower percentage increase is slightly misleading in quantifying the extent to which everyone was affected. For example to quote the previous report:
Primary care data showed that adults visited their GP somewhat more frequently for sleep problems in October–December 2022 than in the same period in 2019. This was particularly striking in the oldest age group (75 years and older).
All of this data put health officials in a bit of an awkward situation since publishing data demonstrating large scale cognitive impairment directly undermines the narrative they previously had committed themselves to. Nonetheless, the authors of the report were significantly more candid than many other before them:
The source of this increase in memory and concentration problems is unclear. A possible explanation could be that COVID-19 measures caused accelerated cognitive decline among people who were starting to have problems with memory and concentration (66 years on average).
COVID-19 was of course cited as a potential cause (which, as discussed above can sometimes cause long term cognitive impairment):
A supplementary explanation could be that some of these people have long-term symptoms after COVID-19. Various studies have shown that memory and concentration problems are common in post-COVID symptoms. Other infectious diseases, such as flu, can also cause these symptoms. However, recent studies have shown that long-term memory and concentration problems are much more common after COVID-19 than after flu. In addition, these symptoms are more common in older age groups. The figures provided by GPs are consistent with this expectation.
Fortunately, the authors acknowledged that long COVID could not be the primary explanation for what was occurring, and instead alluded to the elephant in the room—the vaccines.
Note: on VAERS, in the 23 years VAERS has operated, 2352 of the 3071 (76.6%) reports of memory impairment following vaccination came from the COVID-19 vaccines. Additionally, Ed Dowd has identified numerous government datasets demonstrating that widespread impairment and disability has occurred since the vaccine rollout.
My specific interest in studying spike protein vaccine toxicity arose because I suspected I would see many similarities to other pharmaceutical injuries I had observed previously and treatments that had developed for those injuries could be used to treat COVID-19 vaccine injuries. On Substack, I’ve tried to focus on explaining the areas that I believe are the most important to understanding this, zeta-potential, the cell danger response (CDR) and the treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Note: Each of these is interrelated with and often causes the others.
Zeta Potential: Zeta potential (explained in detail here) governs if fluid in the body clumps together (e.g., forming a clot) or remains dispersed and capable of freely flowing. Additionally, it also influences if proteins will stay in their correct formation or misfold and clump together. Many different issues (discussed here) emerge when fluid circulation (be it blood, lymph, interstitial fluid or cerebrospinal fluid) becomes impaired. Since the spike protein is uniquely suited for impairing zeta potential, we have found restoring zeta potential (discussed here) often is immensely helpful during COVID-19 infections and for treating COVID-19 vaccine injuries. Many of those approaches were initially developed from working with other vaccine injuries and cognitive decline in the elderly.
Cell Danger Response (CDR): When cells are exposed to a threat, their mitochondria shift from producing energy for the cell to a protective mode where the cell’s metabolism and internal growth shuts down, the mitochondria release reactive oxygen species to kill potential invaders, the cell warns other cells to enter the CDR and the cell seals off and disconnects itself from the body. The CDR (explained further here) is an essential process for cellular survival, but frequently in chronic illness, cells become stuck in it rather than allowing the healing response to complete.
Understanding the CDR is extremely important when working with complex illnesses because it explains why triggers from long ago can cause an inexplicable illness, and why many treatments that seem appropriate (specifically those that treat a symptom of the CDR rather than the cause of it) either don’t help or worsen the patient’s conditions. Many of the most challenging patients seen by integrative practitioners are those trapped within the CDR, but unfortunately, there is still very little knowledge of this phenomena.
My interest was drawn back to the CDR after I realized that one of the most effective treatments for long COVID and COVID-19 vaccine injuries was one that directly treated the CDR. Since many of the therapies that have been developed to revive nonfunctional tissue was developed by the regenerative medical field, I wrote an article describing how these approaches are applied to restore localized regions of dysfunctional tissue (which is sometimes needed to treat vaccine injuries) and another on the regenerative treatments that treat systemic CDRs (and are more frequently needed for vaccine injuries).
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD): AD is one of the most devastating and costly conditions in existence (e.g., for the year of 2020 it was estimated to have cost America 305 billion dollars) and as a result, billions of dollars are spent each year in researching a cure for it. This research (which began in 1906) has gone nowhere and presently the FDA is working with the drug industry to push forward ineffective, quite dangerous but highly profitable treatments for AD.
However, effective treatments do exist for AD and my colleagues have developed a few different methods that have successfully treated the condition. Additionally, one neurologist, Dale Bresden developed a method for reversing AD that he proved worked in mulitiple publications (included a recent 2022 clinical trial).
All of these successful approaches utilize the following principles:
• Restore both the blood flow to the brain and the lymphatic drainage from it (which removes amyloid plaques). This often requires restoring the physiologic zeta potential and having a healthy sleep cycle.
• Treating the CDR (which causes chronic inflammation) and reactivating brain cells that became trapped in an unresolved CDR (which amongst other things requires reclaiming a healthy sleep cycle).
Note: Bresden’s approach also emphasizes the importance of addressing chronically elevated blood sugar or insulin levels.
One of the most important things to recognize about AD is that it is a slowly worsening disease which often progresses over decades. In the early stages of AD, minor cognitive changes occur, which (when possible to autopsy) correlate with tissue changes within the brain. In rare instances, individuals can instead have a rapidly progressing form of Alzheimer’s which strikes with a younger age and is often linked to the toxin exposure.
In the case of spike proteins illnesses, I have seen both the early signs of AD cognitive decline occurring in much younger patients, and exist in cases of AD rapidly progressing following COVID vaccination. Additionally, I have also seen cases of rapid cognitive decline in the elderly following the administration of other vaccinations—however they were far less frequent than those seen with the COVID-19 vaccines.
Anytime you attempt to perceive the world around you, you are always biased by the pre-existing filters you have which prevent you from seeing much of the world around you (discussed further here). To some extent, these filters are a necessary evil as without them, the world would be overwhelmingly complicated. However, if you cannot be open to the possibility a biased filter this is clouding your perception of reality, you become blind to a great deal of important things around you. Misleading filters for example, explain why many of those committed to the narrative cannot see the overwhelming evidence of COVID-19 vaccine injuries around them.
One of the most commonly used filters is “social proof,” which essentially says people will typically not act on something, believe it, or even see it unless their peers (the herd) already are. This creates a problem, because frequently when you need to know something, the herd does not yet believe it, forcing you to either make a decision no one else supports (which can be quite terrifying) or to wait until there is safety in doing it because the herd has now moved in that direction (which is often too late).
As I’ve gotten to know those who challenged the COVID-19 narrative, I’ve noticed they all had a tendency they’d learned through life experience to not follow the crowd and be willing to act on their initial impression of what preliminary data suggested before the rest of the crowd caught on. For example, Ed Dowd was a highly successful stock trader (e.g., he made Blackrock a lot of money) and his method boiled down to spotting early trends before anyone else and acting on them while they were still profitable to investors.
Like many, from the start of the vaccination campaign, based on the preliminary data points that were available, I suspected it was going to cause long-term cognitive issues. Now that the data which supports that trend is beginning to appear, and concerningly the issue appears to be gradually worsening, something commonly observed over time with factors that give rise to dementia. This is an important issue and I want to extend my thanks to Igor Chudov for drawing attention to this very important dataset.
Pfizer Ad Spreads Misinformation
BY DAVID ZWEIG | SILENT LUNCH | AUGUST 1, 2023
A Pfizer ad on Twitter claims that 3 out of 4 US adults are at “high risk” for severe Covid-19.
This ad is highly misleading or, arguably, outright false.
Problem 1: What is “high” risk?
We don’t know because Pfizer doesn’t define it.
The graphic in the ad cites a study as the source of its claim “3 out of 4 US adults are at high risk for severe Covid-19.” Except the study never uses the term “high risk.” Rather, the study is on people at “increased risk.”
“Increased risk,” of course is quite different from “high risk.” Obviously, high risk is worse than merely increased risk. I need not explain why Pfizer would choose language in its ad that exaggerates the risk of Covid.
Problem 2: The cited study itself doesn’t even define “increased risk.” Does that mean a 0.1% increase, a 1% increase, 20% increase, 1000% increase? On this point, the study includes the following caveat: “the effect size of each risk factor was not taken into account in our analysis, so this report does not address degree of risk. Effect estimates of severe COVID-19 risk factors are widely variable and ultimately unreliable.”
Digging a little deeper, the study links to a CDC webpage that gives a list of conditions for people who are “more likely to get very sick with COVID-19” and uses “higher risk,” “increased risk,” “greater risk” and “high risk” in its text, seemingly interchangeably. The page gives a long list of medical conditions—from cancer to diabetes to depression. Still, we don’t know what “more likely” or “increased risk” actually means. This webpage, in turn, links to another CDC webpage that describes “Underlying Medical Conditions Associated with Higher Risk for Severe COVID-19.”
We’ve gone from the scary “high” risk (not defined), to “increased” risk (also not defined), to “higher risk.” How is “higher risk” defined? Here is what the page says:
Higher risk is defined as an underlying medical condition or risk factor that has a published meta-analysis or systematic review or underwent the CDC systematic review process. The meta-analysis or systematic review demonstrates a conclusive increase in risk for at least one severe COVID-19 outcome.
So we are now three layers deep and we still don’t have a quantifiable definition for what, exactly, “high,” “increased,” or “higher” even means, nor a clear differentiation of what the first study acknowledges is a wide variability in estimates of risk factors. I’m sure there is a quantifiable threshold defined somewhere, but I stopped digging because this isn’t even the main problem.
Problem 3 (the main problem): The data from the cited study in the Pfizer ad saying 3 out of 4 US adults are at high (aka increased) risk of severe Covid are from 2015-2018. But this ad is being run in July 2023—after nearly the entire population has either already been infected, vaccinated, or both, each circumstance, we have been told, decreases one’s risk of severe Covid. In other words, Pfizer’s own ad suggests that prior infection and vaccination have not reduced the number of people at high risk of severe Covid. Does Pfizer want us to believe that its product—the vaccine—did not lower the rate of people at high risk of severe Covid?
The fact is, 3 out of 4 US adults are not at “high” risk of severe Covid. This statement is based on data from before accounting for the protective effect of infection and vaccination. Moreover, “high risk” is not defined and appears to simply be a made up description.
We’ve heard a lot about “misinformation” in the past few years. Generally, the government and media have pointed the finger at so-called “anti-vaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists.” A critical spotlight from the government has rarely seemed to shine on claims made by Pfizer. Advertisements like this misinform and unnecessarily scare people, perhaps pushing some of them into taking additional doses of the vaccine, or therapeutics like Paxlovid (also made by Pfizer), that have potential harms, and for many people, especially now, without clear benefit.
CIA moderating Wikipedia – former editor
RT | August 2, 2023
Wikipedia is one of many tools used by the US liberal establishment and its allies in the intelligence community to wage “information warfare,” the site’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, has told journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Speaking on Greenwald’s ‘System Update’ podcast, Sanger lamented how the site he helped found in 2001 has become an instrument of “control” in the hands of the left-liberal establishment, among which he counts the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies.
“We do have evidence that, as early as 2008, that CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia,” he said. “Do you think that they stopped doing that back then?”
Activity by the CIA and FBI on Wikipedia was first made public by a programming student named Virgil Griffith in 2007. Griffith developed a program called WikiScanner that could trace the location of computers used to edit Wikipedia articles, and found that the CIA, FBI, and a host of large corporations and government agencies were scrubbing the online encyclopedia of incriminating information.
CIA computers were used to remove casualty counts from the Iraq War, while an FBI machine was used to remove aerial and satellite images of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. CIA computers were used to edit hundreds of articles, including entries on then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, China’s nuclear program, and the Argentine navy.
Some edits were more petty, with former CIA chief William Colby apparently editing his own entry to expand his list of accomplishments.
“[The intelligence agencies] pay off the most influential people to push their agendas, which they’re already mostly in line with, or they just develop their own talent within the [intelligence] community, learn the Wikipedia game, and then push what they want to say with their own people,” Sanger told Greenwald.
“A great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online,” he continued, “on websites like Wikipedia.”
Earlier this year, Twitter owner Elon Musk released a trove of documents showing how the platform’s former executives colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also admitted that Facebook censored information damaging to President Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign at the direct request of the FBI.
Australia’s Intelligence Agencies Are Instructed To Tackle Online “Misinformation”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 2, 2023
In a robust appeal for accountability, Australian intelligence agencies have been encouraged to counter online “misinformation” that potentially endangers national security. The recommendation comes from a parliamentary committee overseeing Australia’s six intelligence bodies, including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Signals Directorate, and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
The committee’s chair, Peter Khalil, announced the recommendation during a parliamentary session. “The committee sees an opportunity for Australia’s intelligence agencies to take an increasing role in sharing information with the Australian public – where appropriate – on matters relating to misinformation, disinformation, and harmful propaganda,” Khalil stated, as reported by Perth Now.
This push follows a significant increase in misinformation during the turbulent years of 2020 and 2021, a period accompanied by COVID-19 lockdowns and a rapidly fluctuating security environment. Surprising to some, the parliamentary committee found that this wave of misinformation significantly amplified security concerns, necessitating its robust redressal.
The suggestion to publicly tackle misinformation, while controversial to many free-speech advocates who caution about overreach, is among four recommendations proffered in the committee’s recent annual review. These include enhancing inter-agency information sharing and finding effective solutions to workforce issues within the intelligence community.
Khalil remains steadfast in his conviction that this human-centric approach could be transformative. “The people who work in Australia’s intelligence agencies are our greatest asset,” he said. “By developing a whole of national intelligence community recruitment and retention strategy, Australia will be better positioned to deliver on its intelligence priorities.”
Hiroshima, Nagasaki Bombings Were Needless, Said World War II’s Top US Military Leaders
Mythology about these mass civilian slaughters warps thinking about US militarism
Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | July 31, 2023
The anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki present an opportunity to demolish a cornerstone myth of American history — that those twin acts of mass civilian slaughter were necessary to bring about Japan’s surrender, and spare a half-million US soldiers who’d have otherwise died in a military conquest of the empire’s home islands.
Those who attack this mythology are often reflexively dismissed as unpatriotic, ill-informed or both. However, the most compelling witnesses against the conventional wisdom were patriots with a unique grasp on the state of affairs in August 1945 — America’s senior military leaders of World War II.
Let’s first hear what they had to say, and then examine key facts that led them to their little-publicized convictions:
- General Dwight Eisenhower on learning of the planned bombings: “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and voiced to [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’.”
- Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff: “The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
- Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb… The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
- General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Forces: “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
- Ralph Bird, Under Secretary of the Navy: “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss… In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.”
- Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer who prepared summaries of intercepted cables for Truman: “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it…we used [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.”
- Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander: “The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
Putting out feelers through third-party diplomatic channels, the Japanese were seeking to end the war weeks before the atomic bombings on August 6 and 9, 1945. Japan’s navy and air forces were decimated, and its homeland subjected to a sea blockade and allied bombing carried out against little resistance.
Full of midget submarines, a drydock in the port city of Kure, Japan lies in ruins
The Americans knew of Japan’s intent to surrender, having intercepted a July 12 cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, informing Japanese ambassador to Russia Naotake Sato that “we are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad.”
Togo told Sato to “sound [Russian diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov] out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war.” Togo initially told Sato to obscure Japan’s interest in using Russia to end the war, but just hours later, he withdrew that instruction, saying it would be “suitable to make clear to the Russians our general attitude on ending the war”— to include Japan’s having “absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war.”
Japan’s central concern was the retention of its emperor, Hirohito, who was considered a demigod. Even knowing this — and with many US officials feeling the retention of the emperor could help Japanese society through its postwar transition —the Truman administration continued issuing demands for unconditional surrender, offering no assurance that the emperor would be spared humiliation or worse.
In a July 2 memorandum, Secretary of War Henry Stimson drafted a terms-of-surrender proclamation to be issued at the conclusion of that month’s Potsdam Conference. He advised Truman that, “if… we should add that we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty, it would substantially add to the chances of acceptance.”
Truman and Secretary of State James Byrne, however, continued rejecting recommendations to give assurances about the emperor. The final Potsdam Declaration, issued July 26, omitted Stimson’s recommended language, sternly declaring, “Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them.”
One of those terms could reasonably be interpreted as jeopardizing the emperor: “There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.”
At the same time the United States was preparing to deploy its formidable new weapons, the Soviet Union was moving armies from the European front to northeast Asia.
In May, Stalin told the US ambassador that Soviet forces should be positioned to attack the Japanese in Manchuria by August 8. In July, Truman predicted the impact of the Soviets opening a new front. In a diary entry made during the Potsdam Conference, he wrote that Stalin assured him “he’ll be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini Japs when that comes about.”
Right on Stalin’s original schedule, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan two days after the August 6 bombing of Hiroshima. That same day — August 8 — Emperor Hirohito told the country’s civilian leaders that he still wanted to pursue a negotiated surrender that would preserve his reign.
On August 9, Soviet attacks commenced on three fronts. News of Stalin’s invasion of Manchuria prompted Hirohito to call a new meeting to discuss surrender — at 10 am, one hour before the strike on Nagasaki. The final surrender decision came on August 10.
Three-year old Shinichi Tetsutani, burned as he was riding this tricycle when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, died a painful death that night (Hiroki Kobayashi/National Geographic)
The Soviet timeline makes the atomic bombings all the more troubling: One would think a US government that’s appropriately hesitant to incinerate and irradiate hundreds of thousands of civilians would want to first see how a Soviet declaration of war affected Japan’s calculus.
As it turns out, the Japanese surrender indeed appears to have been prompted by the Soviet entry into the war on Japan — not by the atomic bombs. “The Japanese leadership never had photo or video evidence of the atomic blast and considered the destruction of Hiroshima to be similar to the dozens of conventional strikes Japan had already suffered,” wrote Josiah Lippincott at The American Conservative.
Sadly, the evidence points to a US government determined to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities as an end in itself, to such an extent that it not only ignored Japan’s interest in surrender, but worked to ensure that surrender was delayed until after upwards of 210,000 people — disproportionately women, children and elderly — were killed in the two cities.
Make no mistake: This was a deliberate targeting of civilian populations. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because they were pristine, and could thus fully showcase the bombs’ power. Hiroshima was home to a small military headquarters, but the fact that both cities had gone untouched by a strategic bombing campaign that began 14 months earlier certifies their military and industrial insignificance.
“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” Eisenhower would later say. “I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”
According to his pilot, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of US Army Forces Pacific, was “appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster.”
“When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb,” wrote journalist Norman Cousins, “I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted…He saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”
What then, was the purpose of devastating Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs?
A key insight comes from Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard. In 1945, Szilard organized a petition, signed by 70 Manhattan Project scientists, urging Truman not to use atomic bombs against Japan without first giving the country a chance to surrender, on terms that were made public.
In May 1945, Szilard met with Secretary of State Byrnes to urge atomic restraint. Byrnes wasn’t receptive to the plea. Szilard — the scientist who’d drafted the pivotal 1939 letter from Albert Einstein urging FDR to develop an atomic bomb — recounted:
“[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia’s postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.“
Burned to impress Stalin: A victim of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima (AP /The Association of the Photographers of the Atomic Bomb Destruction of Hiroshima, Yotsugi Kawahara)
Whether the atomic bomb’s audience was in Tokyo or Moscow, some in the military establishment championed alternative ways to demonstrate its power.
Lewis Strauss, Special Assistant to the Navy Secretary, said he proposed “that the weapon should be demonstrated over… a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… [It] would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will.”
Strauss said Navy Secretary Forrestal “agreed wholeheartedly,” but Truman ultimately decided an optimal demonstration required burning hundreds of thousands of noncombatants and laying waste to their cities. The buck stops there.
The particular means of inflicting these mass murders — a solitary object dropped from a plane at 31,000 feet — helps warp Americans’ evaluation of its morality. Using an analogy, historian Robert Raico cultivates ethical clarity:
“Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children?”
The claim that dropping the atomic bombs saved a half-million American lives is more than just empty: Truman’s stubborn refusal to provide advance assurances about the retention of Japan’s emperor arguably cost American lives.
That’s true not only of a war against Japan that lasted longer than it needed to, but also of a Korean War precipitated by the US-invited Soviet invasion of Japanese-held territory in northeast Asia. More than 36,000 US service members died in the Korean War — among a staggering 2.5 million total military and civilian dead on both sides of the 38th Parallel.
We like to think of our system as one in which the supremacy of civilian leaders acts as a rational, moderating force on military decisions. The needless atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — against the wishes of World War II’s most revered military leaders — tells us otherwise.
Sadly, the destructive effects of the Hiroshima myth aren’t confined to Americans’ understanding of events in August 1945. “There are hints and notes of the Hiroshima myth that persist all through modern times,” State Department whistleblower and author Peter Van Buren said on The Scott Horton Show.
The Hiroshima myth fosters a depraved indifference to civilian casualties associated with US actions abroad, whether it’s women and children slaughtered in a drone strike in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands dead in an unwarranted invasion of Iraq, or a baby who dies for lack of imported medicine in US-sanctioned Iran.
Ultimately, to embrace the Hiroshima myth is to embrace a truly sinister principle: That, in the correct circumstances, it’s right for governments to intentionally harm innocent civilians. Whether the harm is inflicted by bombs or sanctions, it’s a philosophy that mirrors the morality of al Qaeda.
That’s not the only thread connecting 1945 to 2023, as Truman’s insistence on unconditional surrender is echoed by the Biden administration’s utter disinterest in pursuing a negotiated peace in Ukraine.
Today, confronting an adversary with 6,000 nuclear warheads — each a thousand times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan — Biden’s own stubborn perpetuation of war puts us all at risk of sharing the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s innocents.
China’s Rare Earths Export Curbs May Sink US’ Microchip Manufacturing Ambitions
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 01.08.2023
Chinese export controls on germanium and gallium have stepped into effect amid fears that this will mean more expensive microchips, solar panels, cars, and even weapons. More significantly, the restrictions threaten to sink the Biden administration’s ambitious domestic microchip manufacturing goals, says China-US trade expert Thomas Pauken II.
China’s rare earths restrictions officially stepped into force on Tuesday, with the measures, announced last month after Beijing said it needed to protect its “national security and interests,” expected to cause a sharp jump in the cost of an array of advanced manufactured goods, particularly electronics.
The export controls, which will require companies seeking to export the pair of rare earth metals to apply for licenses, come in retaliation to a long list of US hostile measures, including restrictions on the import of Chinese high-tech goods.
“This is just the beginning,” former Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Wei Jianguo said last month, warning that “China’s tool box has many more types of measures available” should Washington try to retaliate to the rare earths semi-ban.
China produces upwards of 80 percent of the world’s gallium, and 60 percent of its germanium, with experts predicting that it could take “generations” for the US to replace lost Chinese capacity.
The rare earths restrictions show that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to Beijing last month to try to smooth over tensions clearly failed to get China to alter its position, with the Asian nation taking a harder line in retaliation to Washington’s tech and trade war, and attempts to box in Beijing in East Asia, earlier this year, starting by sanctioning US semiconductor giant Micron Technology in May.
Gallium and germanium are used in the manufacture of complex semiconductors, including chips with military applications, but also ordinary transistors, diodes, and other electronic components, for use in everything from smartphones and laptops to solar panels, vehicles, and medical equipment.
Move Could Sink Biden’s Semiconductor Scheme
“Obviously, these consequences are going to be devastating to US efforts to promote their manufacturing industry, to create these factories where they’re reshoring back home,” Thomas Pauken II, a veteran consultant and commentator on Asia-Pacific affairs, told Sputnik, referring to the $50+ billion push announced by the Biden administration last year to restore the US’ domestic electronics component manufacturing capabilities. “The thing is, you need these ingredients that are necessary for the chips and the semiconductors,” he said.
“So now I’m hearing that TSMC,” the Taiwan-based semiconductor giant, “is now having a rethink about doing their fab or semiconductor foundry that they were thinking about opening in Arizona. Also, there’s another story about Intel. They were going to open up this major chip manufacturing plant in Ohio, and now suddenly they’re saying, ‘Well, maybe we won’t open up this factory in Ohio because we lost all our Chinese customers. And because of these export controls we don’t have the ability to create all these chips,’” Pauken said.
US Caught Unprepared
Pauken believes the US and its allies may not have expected Beijing to go through with its rare earths export restriction threats, judging by the limited reporting on the matter, apart from specialized Washington-based think tanks warning about the “devastating impact” such export controls could have on the US, Europe, Japan, “and much of the world.”
“I think the real story is that the West maybe thought China was bluffing. Maybe they thought that China wasn’t being serious about these export controls. And now that they are starting to go into effect, they are realizing how destructive they can be. The fact of the matter is that the US has not done proper preparations to deal with the counter-sanctions or the counter-attacks led by China…They just thought that if they made all these announcements that they were going after China and all these other countries were following them, then somehow, China was going to wimp out, look scared, and then change their mind under the pressure. But in reality, what China has learned is that you cannot back down under peer pressure coming from Washington,” the observer said.
Pauken expects the export restrictions to put a “big hurt” on the global economy, but not so much on Beijing, which could even receive a boost to its domestic manufacturing industry as rare earths that once went to other countries will stay in China.
The expert stressed that if Washington were clever, it would “rethink” its China policy, and recognize that the get-tough approach to Beijing hasn’t been working, and won’t work, and has instead “been a disaster for the US economy.” Unfortunately, he added, “it doesn’t seem like the US has learned any lessons… so it seems as if they will just continue on with their anti-China legislation.”
“So basically it’s a case of if you’re tough to China, China will fight back just as tough. If you’re nice to China, then China will be nice. Right now, Europe decided they want to support the US and want to push back against China. So, of course, China is not only going after the US, but they’re also hitting Europe,” the observer said.
Options Limited
The escalating China-US tensions over rare earths has prompted US officials to begin a global search for alternatives, including Mongolia, a landlocked northeast Asian nation estimated to contain nearly 17 percent of global rare earths deposits.
“Mongolia is facing a generational opportunity. And that generational opportunity is a need for us to find critical minerals and rare earths in order to achieve our clean energy goals,” Under Secretary of State Jose Fernandez, who traveled to Mongolia in late June, recently told US media.
But it’s not as simple as investing in Mongolian rare earths production and extracting resources, Pauken said, pointing to the country’s landlocked status, and US efforts to irritate both of Mongolia’s neighbors, Russia and China.
“Obviously, you can’t go through Russia,” he said, citing anti-Russian sanctions. “So then they would have to go through China. And obviously, if Europe and the US decide to continue putting pressure on China, then they’re going to make it more difficult for the Mongolian miners to transport their products to the shipping ports,” the observer summed up.
Israeli Power Manifest in the US Visa Waiver Program
Biden bows to Israeli pressure and discrimination against Palestinian-Americans will continue
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 1, 2023
When I began this article early in the morning last Tuesday it must have been “let’s talk about antisemitism and holocaust denial day” on the internet. On my Yahoo home page headlines display there were glaring back at me featured pieces condemning Greg Gutfeld of Fox News and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for comments made by the two men that were interpreted to be antisemitic. Kennedy, who made the mistake of suggesting that the COVID virus appeared to be made in a lab to be genetic specific, sparing inter alia Jews and Chinese ethnics who might be resistant to it, seems to be on a never ending apology tour as he has done everything but crawl on his belly as he asserts his great love for the Jewish state, and I would not doubt that the belly crawl might be coming up.
Poor Gutfeld was hammered twice, once for the “dangerous holocaust” comment that he reportedly made suggesting that some Jews survived the experience by developing useful skills in the camps, and once for the distinction of being personally rebuked by the White House. Andrew Bates, deputy White House press secretary issued a statement saying “What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday — and has so far failed to condemn — is an obscenity. In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust.”
As I settled in for my cup of coffee, I wondered what we might be hearing later in the day about Gutfeld from the hideous Jonathan Greenblatt of the reliably rabid Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who has already weighed in on Kennedy’s sins. And even as I was wondering, the ADL response popped up: “It is not clear from Gutfeld’s comments if he is arguing that Jews learned skills in the Holocaust, or that Jews who had skills had a better chance of staying alive. The latter is something that is well-documented, while the former is nonsense. That said, many millions of Jews, who, in Gutfeld’s words, had ‘utility,’ were still murdered.”
The piling on then began, with an unverifiable report that even Fox News staffers, speaking anonymously, described Gutfeld’s remarks as “disgusting,” saying “at any other place, his career would be over.” The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum also got into the fray with “We must not overlook the larger picture of the Holocaust. Nazi Germany’s ultimate goal was to exterminate all the people it considered Jews.”
And to ice the cake, an article that I had not seen about the Democrats who chose to boycott the recent Joint Session of Congress speech by Israeli President Isaac Herzog also appeared, stating that “Such behavior is virulently anti-Israel and absolutely reprehensible. Each of these folks is a shame to the United States of America. And to the Democratic Party.”
That all of the responses fit in comfortably with the Israeli and Zionist group standard holocaust narrative of perpetual Jewish suffering, together with the inflated victim count which does not stand serious scrutiny, should surprise no one and after I finished perusing the articles the first thought that came to mind was “Wow, if you needed any proof of the power of Jews in this country and their persistence in punishing critics, this is it!” But that was before I read an article that went well beyond the usual propaganda stream, one describing how Israel is apparently about to be approved for probationary access to the US Visa Waiver program, which will allow Israelis to travel freely to the United States. According to the article, Washington and Jerusalem have signed a “memorandum of understanding” as a first step to full waiver status which presumably will be granted after a trial period ending on September 30th.
There are currently 40 nations admitted to the program, mostly from Europe, enabling their passport holders to enter the US freely without a visa and allowing them to stay for up to 90 days. Israel and its friends in the US have been agitating for years to have Israel accepted into the program, which would likely lead to more free spending American tourists and more corporate investment in the Jewish state, but there has been a major hurdle that Israel has been unwilling to address seriously and that is the issue of “reciprocity.” That means in practice that if anyone carrying an Israeli passport is free to enter the United States anyone carrying an American passport must be free to travel to Israel and enter the country. And lest there be any misunderstanding, US law requires full reciprocity to US citizens seeking entry – without regard to race, religion, or national origin. This means that if an American Jew and a Palestinian-American both holding US passports arrive at an Israeli port of entry they must be treated exactly the same when processing through customs and immigration.
Israel, however, has historically not quite seen it quite that way and reserves the right to block entry by Americans, an option particularly exercised against Americans of Palestinian origin, and other Americans like myself who come up on their data bases as being critical of the Jewish state. Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has even been denied entry in a recent attempt to travel to visit her grandmother. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has been a critic of Israeli’s oppression of the Palestinians, has also been barred from entering the country.
There are other issues, including the fact that Israelis are way overrepresented in current visa fraud when they travel to the United States, often overstaying the time limit on their entry permission and working while in the country. Israelis in the country illegally and working were among the art students, Dead Sea cosmetics peddlers and the “Dancing Shlomos” movers who figured in the 9/11 saga, some of whom were known to be intelligence officers spying on American Muslims. Intelligence and law enforcement sources suggest that an open door to Israeli passport holders will lead to the entry of a new wave of Mossad officers who will be working against US Palestinian and Arab groups as well as against critics of Israel.
Israel is seeking approval to enter the program and is claiming that it has now initiated a trial period that will merge into a two-year pilot program that will ease the entry process and eliminate the many complaints about the harassment of Palestinian Americans and others. US citizens of Palestinian descent have frequently reported being harassed, detained, and denied entry by Israeli officials. Arab-Americans have told of being “strip-searched, questioned for hours about family and property histories, and even forced to give access to their social media accounts.” The US Embassy for its part only very rarely submits toothless complaints to the Israeli authorities about the treatment.
Because of that history, there is, inevitably, considerable skepticism about Israeli intentions. To cite only one example, Palestinian-Americans still cannot travel to the West Bank through Ben-Gurion Airport located near Tel Aviv, and are instead forced to fly into Amman, Jordan, before traveling overland to the West Bank. Furthermore, throughout the MOU, the US grants to Israel the freedom to deny any and all visitors entry for undefined security concerns – a variation on the “Israel has a right to defend itself” slogan and in itself a violation of the statuary requirements that established the Visa Waiver program. And even personal relationships are subject to scrutiny after one succeeds in entering the occupied territories. Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) requires any foreign national to “report the start of a romantic relationship with any Palestinian ID holder within 30 days.”
There is particular concern that Israel will behave during the trial period and once it obtains waiver status it will return to its old ways of denying Palestinian Americans entry. One Palestinian critic observes how the problem is institutional: “What we are seeing is representative of how Israel applies its apartheid laws to Palestinians everywhere, both in the occupied territory and abroad. Israel targets Palestinians simply for being Palestinians.” Even under the proposed pilot program, for example, Palestinian Americans will be able to apply for a 90-day travel pass to enter Israel but the restrictions on visiting the West Bank remain in place only for them and not for Jews visiting the illegal settlements. They are also blocked from visiting Gaza even if they have family there. The Palestinians will still need to apply to the Israeli government official for additional internal travel permits, which can easily be denied.
There is widespread belief that the so-called pilot program is a back door way for the Joe Biden Administration to bring Israel into the Visa Waiver Program without requiring it to end its systematic discrimination and abuse directed against Palestinian-Americans. It demonstrates yet again that the rule of US-Israel relations is what it always has been – zero accountability for Israel. And, together with the recent decision to permit a visit to the White House and Congress by major human rights violator Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu it is just one more indication of who holds the reins of power in Washington.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen regards the new arrangement as a done deal, boasting how “After we finish all the necessary legislative procedures, I estimate that Israeli citizens will be able to visit the US without the need for a visa by the end of the year.” That freedom is, however, the fruit of a shameful move by the Biden Administration as it is conceding to the Israelis the right to continue to apply a race card to some American passport holders. It seems that whenever there is a conflict over issues vexing Washington and Tel Aviv it is the Jewish state that always emerges as the winner.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Featured Video
Dr. Tony Martin – The Jewish Role in the African Slave Trade
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
In Memoriam
James Petras, In Memoriam
02.13.2026
Professor James Petras, 89, world-renowned sociologist, public intellectual, and scholar of Latin American politics and global economics, died peacefully on January 17, 2026, in Seattle, WA, surrounded by family.
A prolific scholar and activist, he devoted his life to challenging power, imperialism, and inequality. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Travelers Take a Pass on Visiting America
- EU members divided on 20th Russia sanctions package – media
- Lawyers ask police to investigate Elbit Systems UK for alleged war crimes complicity
- Israel ready to strike Iran-backed armed groups – media
- Behind US war drums against Iran: No goals, no plan, no off-ramp
- With Ukraine blamed for cutting oil flows to Hungary, Croatia also refuses to transfer Russian oil in violation of EU law
- Friedrich Merz’s Push to End Online Anonymity Has a Troubling Subtext
- Macron: French citizens fighting for Israel cannot be labeled ‘genociders’
- US eyes Gaza security force drawn from armed gangs
- The Only Motive Behind The ‘Imminent’ U.S. War With Iran Is The Zionist Lobby
- If Americans Knew
- ‘Christians Out’: Jerusalem Church Tagged With Hate Graffiti, Police Investigating
- Israeli Settlers Kill American Teen
- ‘We returned from hell’: Palestinian journalists recount torture in Israeli prisons
- No mercy for Gaza in Ramadan – Not a ceasefire Day 133
- The Israeli Government Installed and Maintained Security System at Epstein Apartment
- Tucker Carlson interrogated in Israel, has passport seized after interviewing US ambassador
- 6,000 Amputees in Gaza Face Impossible Recovery amid Israeli War Ultimatum
- The Lancet: Gaza death toll far higher than reported – Not a ceasefire Day 132
- Compliant aid: Who are the Israel-approved NGOs scaling up in Gaza?
- Why won’t Trump’s “Board of Peace” bring peace? – Not a ceasefire Day 131
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Canada’s New Brunswick Was 1°C Warmer Than Today During The Medieval Warm Period
- Coal Power Back In Trend As Globe Tries To Keep Pace With Growing Demand For Power
- New Study: A 4°C Warmer Beaufort Sea Had ‘No Sea Ice’ 11,700 – 8200 Years Ago
- Unfudging The Data: Dutch Meteorological Institute Reinstates Early 20th Centruy Heat Waves It Had Erased Earlier
- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
- Pollen Reconstructions Show The Last Glacial’s Warming Events Were Global, 10x Greater Than Modern
- Germany’s Natural Gas Storage Level Dwindles To Just 28%… Increasingly Critical
- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
- Polar Bear Numbers Rising And Health Improving In Areas With The Most Rapid Sea Ice Decline
Aletho News 