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COVID-19 Vaccines May Cause Harm Five Years after Injection

US Congressional Testimony from Drs. McCullough, Cole, and Milhoan on Long-Term Health Impact of Genetic Vaccination–Full Hearing

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 13, 2024

Friday January 12, 2024, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene held a historic US Congressional Panel in The Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill to learn why COVID-19 vaccination continues to cause record injuries, disabilities, and deaths, even years after the primary series in 2021.

The hearing was attended by Greene (R-GA), Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), US Representatives Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), and Any Biggs (R-AZ) and the witnesses were Dr. Peter McCullough adult internal medicine, cardiology, Dr. Ryan Cole, clinical pathology, and Dr. Kirk Milhoan, pediatrics, pediatric cardiology.

The two hour session was nonstop from opening statements and questions from our lawmakers to the experts. It was live-stream broadcasted through many channels and press took interviews from Greene and Johnson. The audience included stakeholders who have suffered injuries from COVID-19 vaccination, students, corporate executives, independent media, and the Children’s Health Defense.

Dozens of citations are given for the Congressional Record from the peer-reviewed literature, safety databases, and slides were shown demonstrating COVID-19 vaccine Spike protein doing widespread damage to the human body. Dr. McCullough pointed out for genetic products, the FDA regulatory window for safety concerns is five years. Americans are worried. A Rasmussen poll out on the day of the hearing reported 53% of Americans think severe side effects from the vaccines are leading to large numbers of unexplained deaths.

Please take the time to review this hearing and please share it widely with your family, friends, and colleagues. At the end Senator Johnson makes a plea to physicians and other healthcare workers to come forward, be honest in their missteps, and get on the right side of history. COVID-19 vaccination has been a biological safety catastrophe for the world. On January 12, 2024, all three witnesses called for market withdrawal of all COVID-19 vaccine products for safety concerns—its in the record.

Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

President, McCullough Foundation

www.mcculloughfnd.org

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Techno-Hell: ‘Natural’ Breastfeeding Condemned as ‘Ethically Problematic’

By Ben Bartee | Armageddon Prose | January 13, 2024

One would be hard-pressed to imagine a human activity more natural than a mother breastfeeding her infant, aside from, perhaps, eating, sleeping, and sex.

The pharmaceutical front group American Academy of Pediatrics, which touts the virtues of transing children just as soon as it can wrangle their doomed genitals into its vice grip, disagrees.

Via American Academy of Pediatrics

“Medical and public health organizations recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed for at least 6 months. This recommendation is based on evidence of health benefits for mothers and babies, as well as developmental benefits for babies.

A spate of recent work challenges the extent of these benefits, and ethical criticism of breastfeeding promotion as stigmatizing is also growing.

Building on this critical work, we are concerned about breastfeeding promotion that praises breastfeeding as the “natural” way to feed infants. This messaging plays into a powerful perspective that ‘natural’ approaches to health are better, a view examined in a recent report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Promoting breastfeeding as ‘natural’ may be ethically problematic, and, even more troublingly, it may bolster this belief that ‘natural’ approaches are presumptively healthier. This may ultimately challenge public health’s aims in other contexts, particularly childhood vaccination.”

Note the passive-aggressive placement of the term “natural” in quotation marks, so as to emphasize that breastfeeding being natural is a dubious or disputable claim — as if every female mammal on Earth for millions of years hasn’t breastfed its young, as if that’s not, in fact, one of the defining features of mammalism.

Once you’ve downloaded the technocratic paradigm blueprint from which this kind of tripe emerges, the aims of this propaganda come into clearer focus. (Spoiler alert: it’s not about “gender equity” or whatever nonsense.)

As far as I can tell, there are two main biomedical and social control advantages to phasing out breastfeeding as a barbaric, filthy relic of the past, in the tradition of Brave New World:

  • Mothers pass their adaptive immune systems to their babies through breastmilk. One might call this “nature’s pharmacy.” All of the antibodies that the mother has accumulated through her life on Earth are gifted to her baby, to the obvious benefit of the child’s needy and developing immune system.
  • Breastfeeding enhances the mother-child bond, the first and arguably most important social bond that serves as the foundation for all others.

Each of these effects of breastfeeding enhances the baby’s physical and psychological health and fosters a functional society. Conversely, neither enhances pharmaceutical profits or the social control of the state.

Which means — as in the case of mothers protesting school boards a year ago or so over transing kids who were subsequently targeted by the DOJ — promoting breastfeeding is a vocation fit only for domestic terrorists. Will breastfeeding mothers one day find themselves on a DHS watchlist for the sin of feeding their babies?

Transhumanist ideology is hellbent on severing every physical and emotional tie that binds people — actual, biological, honest-to-God people — together and weaponizing human physiology for profit and social control.

The social engineers want us isolated, atomized, afraid, sick, and sad. Ultimately, they want us dead. Anti-humanism is at the heart of their ethics.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

55 U.S. Doctors Behind Psychiatric Diagnosis Manual Took $14M From Drug Companies

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 11, 2024

Fifty-five of the U.S. doctors who helped decide what diagnoses and treatments were included in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) main diagnostic manual received more than $14 million in undisclosed industry funding, a special report in The BMJ revealed.

According to The BMJ :

“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association standardizes symptom criteria and codifies psychiatric disorders. This manual plays a central role in the approval of new psychiatric drugs and the extension of patent exclusivity, and it can influence payers and mental health professionals who seek third party reimbursements.”

The manual, now in its fifth edition, DSM-5-TR, is often referred to as the “bible” of psychiatric disorders. It was released in 2002 and includes changes made since the APA first published the manual in 2013.

The authors of The BMJ report wrote that “industry influence over the development of this diagnostic guideline can have a profound effect on public health (eg, by broadening diagnostic categories and influencing what drugs will be prescribed and covered by insurance). It is thus critical that authors of this psychiatric taxonomy should be free of industry ties.”

Research consistently shows that conflicts of interest lead to “pro-industry thinking and conclusions,” the authors of the report said.

The BMJ found that the doctors who received the most money — often in the form of food, beverages, travel and consulting reimbursements — were those working in diagnostic areas “where drug interventions are often the standard treatment, such as depressive disorders, neurocognitive disorders, and drug induced movement disorders.”

The study’s lead investigator, Lisa Cosgrove, Ph.D., a professor and clinical psychologist in the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, told Medscape Medical News, the study’s intent was “not to point fingers at the APA or individual members of the APA but rather to provide hopefully a small piece of research data that would help the APA look at the larger systemic issue of conflicts of interest.”

Justine Tanguay, a lawyer with Children’s Health Defense and research director for the organization’s Reform Pharma initiative, praised the researchers for bringing public awareness to the issue.

Tanguay told The Defender :

“It’s an outrageous concept to think that if a doctor, scientist or public health official is paid or funded by Big Pharma that he or she can present or recommend an independent viewpoint.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that even the perception of a conflict of interest undermines the integrity of medicine.”

The Reform Pharma campaign is working “to systematically remove Big Pharma corruption and to restore the healthcare system” — which is needed now more than ever because “such conflicts of interest … have become the norm,” Tanguay said.

A problem for over a decade

Cosgrove — who previously served as a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University — has for over a decade studied conflicts of interest among contributors to the APA’s manual.

The high percentage of doctors with industry ties reported by the latest BMJ study, published Wednesday, mirrors the findings reported in her previous work.

“What we also see that’s consistent with our 2016 study and 2012 study is the panels for which the members had the most financial ties to industry were those for which pharmaceutical interventions are the first line of therapy,” Cosgrove said.

After duplicate names had been removed, The BMJ identified 168 individuals who served as either panel or task force members of the DSM-5-TR. Of those, 92 met the inclusion criteria of being a physician based in the U.S. and therefore could be included in Open Payments, a publicly accessible database.

Eighty-six of the doctors were panel members for the DSM-5-TR. The other six were task force members who also had decision-making powers.

Of these 92 individuals, 55 (60%) received payments from industry. The authors used OpenPayments to look at the funding the 92 doctors received from 2016 to 2019 — the years just before and during the development of the DSM-5-TR.

The amounts ranged from just under $14 per doctor to $2.7 million per doctor. Collectively, the doctors received more than $14.2 million.

Cosgrove and her co-authors found it particularly unethical that more than one-third of the doctors received money as “compensation for services other than consulting, including serving as faculty or as a speaker at a venue other than a continuing education program.”

In other words, these individuals were hired by drug companies as “key opinion leaders” to speak at pro-industry events. Cosgrove and her co-authors said:

“Being on a speakers bureau or being a key opinion leader is widely recognized as an egregious financial conflict of interest because the role of the key opinion leader is essentially a marketing one; the talks given are usually presented at educational events sponsored by industry.”

Dr. Bernard Lo, professor emeritus of medicine and director emeritus of the Program in Medical Ethics at the University of California, San Francisco, agreed. He told Medscape that key opinion leaders are hired by drug companies to give talks, meaning they are used by the industry as “basically salespeople trying to increase sales of a product.

Full public disclosure needed

Before the development of the DSM-5, the APA claimed the organization’s goal was to develop a “transparent process of development for the DSM, and … an unbiased, evidence-based DSM, free from any conflicts of interest.”

An APA spokesperson told Medscape that DSM-5-TR decision-makers were not allowed to participate if the organization was made aware they had received more than $5,000 in industry payments and that all who worked on the text revision were required to disclose all sources of income prior to their participation.

“The APA implemented and enforced a rigorous process for DSM-5-TR that required transparency by all contributors of their personal and professional interests, followed by an independent review to ensure that personal and professional interests did not bias any results,” the spokesperson said.

The study’s findings, however, contradicted that claim by the APA. And the APA did not publicly disclose industry ties for the latest edition of the manual, according to the study authors.

The APA also did not publicly disclose minutes of the DSM meetings, summaries of changes proposed by the panel and task force members or reasons for those changes.

Public disclosure of all industry funding is critical, according to Lo.

“Part of the report should be, ‘Here are the conflicts of interest reported by the members of the panel’ … Failure to do that in the DSM-5-TR is unacceptable from an ethical and transparency point of view,” Lo said.

The APA’s failure to adequately address conflicts of interest doesn’t promote transparency or public trust in the diagnostic criteria published in the DSM-5-TR, he said.

Tanguay agreed. “In order to have trust in medicine, we need to have transparency, whether it covers medical research, scientific publications or public health policy.”

Those with industry ties should be barred

Cosgrove recommended the APA follow the 2011 report, “Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust,” produced by the Institute of Medicine (IOM, now called the National Academy of Medicine). The report is an updated and streamlined version of a 2009 conflicts of interest guideline co-authored by Lo.

“The IOM recommends that the whole guideline development group be free of industry ties,” Cosgrove said. “At a minimum, the chair … and the majority of folks should not have ties to industry.”

Tanguay went further by saying scientists with industry ties should be barred from publication because such ties distort the scientific literature.

Dr. Giovanni A. Fava — a highly regarded researcher and clinician — in 2009 warned, “The increasing influence of the pharmaceutical industry on psychiatric research and practice is leading to an intellectual and clinical crisis.”

While some might argue that banning all those with industry ties would shrink the expert pool that develops the DSM and other guidelines, Cosgrove said that’s not the case.

“There are hundreds of experts in all medical disciplines that do not have industry ties,” she said. “The ‘most experts have industry ties’ is a spurious and unsupported argument.”

The APA should especially ban those who received industry money for serving as key opinion leaders, Lo said.

The APA did not immediately respond to The Defender’s request for comment.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.

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.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

“Preparing for Disease X”

WEF panel session on Jan. 17, 2024 will discuss preparations for “unknown disease.”

BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | JANUARY 14, 2024

Last night at dinner with Dr. McCullough, he asked me to do some research on the dread “Disease X” about which we’ve been hearing a lot of chatter since it was announced that the Davos crowd will be talking about it at their annual WEF meeting this January.

I agree that it’s always a terribly ominous sign when the WEF talks about saving humanity from a hypothetical threat. When those guys start chatting about saving us from an “unknown” pathogen, it’s a safe bet that bio-labs are already tinkering around with a “candidate pathogen.” The stated objective of their work is to develop vaccines against the candidate pathogen should it (God forbid) evolve to infect humanity.

To get a sense of how this industry works, check out this Sky News report from August 7, 2023 headlined: ‘Disease X’: UK scientists begin developing vaccines against new pandemic.

Further investigation of the literature on Disease X led me to a book, published about a year ago, titled Disease X: The 100 Days Mission to End Pandemics, by Kate Kelland with a Forward by Tony Blair.

Ms. Kelland is a former Global Health Correspondent for Reuters and is now Chief Scientific Writer for CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations). As many readers of this Substack are aware, CEPI was founded in 2016 by the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation, and other key players in the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.

Its Preliminary Business Plan, published in 2017, is a blueprint of what I call the Pandemic Predicting and Planning Industry, which positions itself to rake in billions of public money when the next infectious disease pathogen strikes humanity.

An attractive Englishwoman who studied French and German at Durham University, Ms. Kelland’s career as a news correspondent seems to have really taken off around the time of the 9/11 attacks. As she put it on her LinkedIn profile: “Two years in the lobby tracking the Blair government during the crisis surrounding the 9/11 attacks on the United States.” In 2009—probably with the arrival of the grossly overblown Swine Flu Pandemic—she became a Health and Science correspondent for Reuters.

A conference on Disease X at the WEF’s annual meeting is scheduled to take place in Davos on January 17, 2024. As it is described on the WEF website:

With fresh warnings from the World Health Organization that an unknown “Disease X” could result in 20 times more fatalities than the coronavirus pandemic, what novel efforts are needed to prepare healthcare systems for the multiple challenges ahead?

This session is linked to the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience and the Collaborative Surveillance Initiative of the World Economic Forum.

This first sentence raises the question: Why is the WHO issuing “fresh warnings… that an unknown “Disease X” could result in 20 times more fatalities than the coronavirus pandemic”? On what intelligence is the WHO basing its fresh warning? A Google search for “WHO issues fresh warning about Disease X” resulted in this report of 26 May 2023 headlined After WHO chief’s warning, ‘Disease X’ raises concern

It seems to me that all reasonable adults are justified in asking the question: What are these gangsters cooking up now?

The above timeline of announcements does indeed resemble the autumn of 2019, when the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex engaged in a huge amount of of chit-chat and pandemic planning simulations about a hypothetical “coronavirus” pandemic.

To make matters even more ominous, the chatter about Disease X is happening at the beginning of another election year, with Donald Trump once again leading in the polls and the representation of a man named “Joe Biden” challenging him.

Heaven help us.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

China Rebukes US State Dept for Sending ‘Gravely Wrong Signal’ to Taiwan

Sputnik – 14.01.2024

China resolutely opposes any official interaction between the US and Taiwan and any American interference in Taiwan’s internal affairs, regardless of the reasons, and calls on Washington to strictly adhere to the one-China principle and the joint communiques.

China has condemned the US State Department’s recent remarks on Taiwan’s election, saying they blatantly disregard the one-China policy and the agreed China-US joint communiques, the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

“The US State Department’s statement […] also sends a gravely wrong signal to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces. We strongly deplore and resolutely oppose it, and have made serious representations to the US side,” the statement read.

Emphasizing the importance of the Taiwan issue to China’s core interests, the ministry reiterated that upholding the one-China principle is crucial to maintaining stable China-US relations and is a globally recognized norm in international affairs.

The ministry also warned US leaders against supporting Taiwan independence, the notion of “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan,” and against using the Taiwan issue to contain China.

“China firmly opposes the US having any form of official interaction with Taiwan and interfering in Taiwan affairs in any way or under any pretext. We urge the US to earnestly abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués and act seriously in accordance with the commitments that have been reaffirmed multiple times,” the statement explained.

“We urge the US to stop interactions of an official nature with Taiwan and stop sending any wrong signal to the separatist forces for ‘Taiwan independence’,” it added.

Elections for Taiwan’s regional leader and members of parliament were held on Saturday with a 69.8% voter turnout, according to the local election committee. Lai Ching-te of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was declared the winner leader’s election with 40.05% of the vote, with ballots from 17,759 of 17,795 polling stations counted. However, the DPP itself lost 11 parliamentary seats in the election. Lai will be inaugurated on May 20, 2024.

Congratulating Lai on his victory, the US State Department released a statement saying: “We also congratulate the Taiwan people for once again demonstrating the strength of their robust democratic system and electoral process.”

“The partnership between the American people and the people on Taiwan, rooted in democratic values, continues to broaden and deepen across economic, cultural, and people-to-people ties. We look forward to working with Dr. Lai and Taiwan’s leaders of all parties to advance our shared interests and values, and to further our longstanding unofficial relationship,” it added.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Pointing out the horrors of Gaza at politicians’ doorsteps

By Yves Engler | January 14, 2024

Bravo to those who braved the cold to rally in front of the foreign minister’s house. Shame on the NDP MPs who echoed the genocide lobby’s faux outrage.

On Saturday 100 or so rallied in front of foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly’s home in the Plateau Mont Royal neighborhood of Montréal. Their promotional material declared “Mourn the Dead, and Fight Like Hell for the Living. End Canadian Support for Genocide”. They reportedly read poems, played music and shared food in what spokesperson Eli Tareq El-Bechelany Lynch called “an affirmation and honouring of Palestinian life, creativity, and resistance against the Canadian-backed Israeli death machine.”

Predictably, pro-genocide voices flew into a moralizing rage. They denounced it as “intimidation” and “harassment”. Uber Zionist Toronto MP Kevin Vuong proclaimed, “If you’re going to protest in front of the legislature or city hall, go ahead. If you’re going to protest our offices, have at it. But your right to peaceful assembly does not include protesting at Minister Melanie Joly’s home. Leave her family—and our families—out of it.”

A week ago, the apartheid lobby claimed a rally in front of Vuong’s constituency office was intimidation. The same voices criticizing the protest at Joly’s home have spent weeks condemning rallies on an overpass over Highway 401 in Toronto. Before that they denounced anti-genocide rallies at the Eaton Centre and at municipal politician’s fundraiser. When university was in session, they were deploring protests on various campuses. They essentially believe all manifestations of opposition to Canada’s complicity in genocide is illegitimate.

Amidst the faux outrage, ‘pro-Palestinian’ NDP MPs joined the attacks. On the left of the party Leah Gazan posted “this is appalling full stop!”. For her part, NDP foreign critic Heather McPherson posted, “This is appalling. People do not have to agree with politicians and elected representatives, but to harass them at their private homes is completely and utterly unacceptable.” (I don’t think McPherson has yet referred to Israel’s mass slaughter and famine campaign in Gaza as “appalling”.) Then the party foreign critic retweeted her NDP colleague Alistair MacGregor claiming: “I love listening to my constituents. At my office. On the phone. Over Zoom. On Twitter. On Facebook. On Instagram. Not at my home.” (Gazan also re-posted MacGregor.)

But protests at politicians homes are not particularly uncommon. In recent weeks there have been anti-genocide protests at a number of politicians’ homes in the US. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Democratic Party Senate leader Chuck Schumer are among those whose homes have been targeted by Gaza protesters. Over the years there have been protests at many Canadian politicians’ homes, including a famed one by Joly’s cabinet colleague.

Three years ago, activists supporting the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs’ campaign against a pipeline rallied in front of BC Premier John Horgan’s home. During the 2012 Quebec student strike protesters marched on Premier Jean Charest’s Westmount mansion on multiple occasions. In 2007 Greenpeace organized an action at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s house while in 2002 current environment minister Steven Guilbeault was among a handful of Greenpeace activists who put solar panels on the roof of Alberta premier Ralph Klein’s home.

Whether you support the tactic or not, protesting at politicians’ homes is not particularly uncommon. The NDP MPs immediate and harsh condemnation reflects two dynamics. MPs obviously have a collective self-interest in deterring this type of protest since they could be on the receiving end of what most would consider annoying. So, in that sense the MPs criticism is likely genuine.

The second dynamic is that the genocide lobby’s constant attacks and smears prime politicians to want to throw a bone to the apartheid lobby by condemning Palestine solidarity activists or echoing them in some way. It’s not a coincidence that the NDP MPs who immediately condemned the Joly protest have recently been the targets of pro-genocide forces for (considering the state of Canadian politics) relatively good statements on Palestine/Middle East affairs.

It’s two steps forward one step back dynamic. But the NDP MPs were under no compulsion to comment on the Joly protests. They shouldn’t have bolstered the genocide lobby’s outrage against those who braved the cold to protest Canada’s role in enabling unimaginable horrors in Gaza.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

FBI Director Says Public-Private Sector Partnerships Are Important for Guarding Against “Misinformation”

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | January 14, 2024

During an interview with CNBC, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray lauded his agency’s partnerships with the private sector to target “misinformation” and “disinformation,” despite growing scrutiny over the way these types of partnerships have been used to censor the speech of Americans.

Wray complained that social media has escalated misinformation and disinformation and that AI is “taking it to the next level.” He then lauded private sector partnerships as a way to defend against the proliferation of AI misinformation and disinformation.

“I come back to the importance of partnerships to guard against it,” Wray said. “Not just our partnerships, but there’s an important role for the private sector. For example, AI companies, which many of which are very actively engaged in this fight to help detect deepfakes. You know, in some ways, AI is quite good at detecting AI, and so seeing the private sector invest its own time and money into trying to help detect some of the things that you’re describing I think is an important piece of it. Obviously, government partners, research community, etc., is another piece of it.”

After praising these private sector partnerships that target misinformation and disinformation, Wray attempted to downplay censorship concerns and insisted that these efforts only target foreign actors.

“To be clear, our role at the FBI is focused on the role of the foreign actors, as in the source of the information, not the content,” Wray said. “We’re not the truth police. We don’t aspire to be.”

While Wray asserted that these efforts target foreign actors, lawmakers have previously challenged this assertion and pointed to a federal court ruling that stated the FBI had flagged domestic speech as potential misinformation. This federal court ruling is part of a legal case that’s headed to the Supreme Court and alleges several federal agencies, including the FBI, violated the First Amendment by pressuring Big Tech companies to censor the speech of Americans.

Numerous reports have also detailed how the FBI has flagged the speech of Americans to Big Tech companies for censorship.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 2 Comments

Asymmetric Warfare: Why the Houthis Can Beat the Collective West

By Russell Bentley – Sputnik – 14.01.2024

Dr. Michael Parenti once said, “Economic violence is physical violence in slow motion.” The economic sanctions against Iraq in the 1990’s led directly to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. Economic sanctions can be a weapon as deadly as any artillery shell or cruise missile.

The Houthis might at first appear to be vastly outmatched by the US/UK armada that has struck Yemen, but militarily and economically, the US and Europe are actually much more vulnerable than the Houthis. To put it simply, in both economic and military terms, the US, UK and Europe, and Israel, have a lot more to lose.

The Houthis are not alone – Hezbollah, considered to be one of the most effective fighting forces in the world today, has an estimated 100,000 highly trained and motivated and very well armed soldiers in Lebanon, and is already at (undeclared, but de facto) war with Israel, and will probably escalate in the next few days. In October, 1983, Hezbollah was able to kill 305 US and French occupation soldiers at a cost of only 2 KIA on the Hezbollah side.

Of the US and French soldiers, 220 were US Marines, the greatest single loss in one day of US Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. In the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, in which Israel invaded southern Lebanon, Hezbollah was able to inflict “unacceptable casualties” on Israeli forces, which resulted in the withdrawal of IDF forces and the signing of UNSC1701. While the Lebanese casualties were significantly higher than Israeli, the conflict is generally seen as a tactical and strategic defeat for Israel. Israel and their US/EU allies would do well to remember both of these battles before continuing to escalate an already extremely volatile situation beyond the point of no return.

Escalation between Hezbollah and the IDF on Lebanon’s southern border will not only expand the current area of conflict into the eastern Mediterranean, it can quickly become a serious threat to the Israeli city of Haifa, only 20 miles from the Lebanese border. Haifa is Israel’s 3rd largest city, with a population of around 300,000. The Port of Haifa is Israel’s second largest by cargo tonnage, and the Haifa oil refinery (the largest, and one of only two in Israel) processes more than 66 million barrels of crude oil per year, more than a million barrels per week. The port, and especially the refinery would be prime targets, and significant damage to either, especially the refinery, would have serious repercussions for the Israeli economy.

The “massive attack” by US/UK naval forces against the Houthis involved airstrikes, as well as approximately 100 cruise missiles, at a cost of more than $1 million each. According to reports published by the Houthi military command and Western media, the attack killed five Houthis. Now, do the math. The US and UK just spent a collective $100 million to kill 5 Houthis and escalate and exacerbate an already volatile situation. Based on assurances from the Houthi government that only Israeli-connected shipping was under threat, the majority of Red Sea shipping traffic had actually continued the Red Sea unhindered.

This is no longer the case. As of January 13th, after the US/UK attacks and their possible continuation, the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (Intertanko), which represents almost 70 per cent of all internationally traded oil, gas and chemical tankers, said in an advisory to members to “stay well away” from the Bab al Mendab strait, and for vessels travelling south via the Suez Canal to pause north of Yemen. This major disruption of tanker traffic may well have an upward influence on oil prices, coming as it does right on the heels of Saudi Aramco’s announcement of a $2 per barrel discount beginning in February.

The Huthis don’t even have to shoot at any more ships – just the threat of the possibility of Houthi or coalition missiles being fired has been enough to disrupt Red Sea shipping traffic, which carries 12% of all global trade goods, and a staggering 30% of all container goods. It is actually the US/UK “coalition” that has escalated the situation to dangerous levels that now interfere with much more shipping, including tanker traffic.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Witch hunts in Israel’: Teacher placed in solitary confinement for criticizing Gaza killings

Press TV – January 14, 2024

The Israeli regime has held a history teacher in solitary confinement and fired him for raising concerns on social media about the Zionist forces killing of Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip and criticizing the military.

Meir Baruchin was kept in solitary confinement in a high-security jail in early November, over a series of Facebook posts he’d made, mourning the civilians killed in Gaza, criticizing the Israeli military, and warning against wars of revenge.

“Horrific images are pouring in from Gaza. Entire families were wiped out. I don’t usually upload pictures like this, but look what we do in revenge,” said his message on 8 October, a day after the Israeli regime started a genocidal war in Gaza in response to Hamas’ October 7 Operation Al-Aqsa Strom.

“Anyone who thinks this is justified because of what happened yesterday should unfriend themselves. I ask everyone else to do everything possible to stop this madness. Stop it now. Not later, Now!!!” he wrote below a picture of the family of Abu Daqqa, killed in one of the first airstrikes on Gaza.

Ten days after that Facebook message, he was fired from his teaching job in Petach Tikvah municipality. Less than a month later he was in the solitary confinement wing of al-Qud’s notorious “Russian Compound” prison, detained to give police more time to investigate critical views he had never tried to hide.

Baruchin was initially told to come to a police station for questioning over charges of sedition. When he pointed out to police that they needed a warrant from the attorney general to charge an Israeli citizen with that offense, treason charges were duly drawn up.

When he arrived at the police station, his arms and ankles were cuffed, and he was shown a warrant to search his home. Five detectives escorted him there, turned his apartment upside down, and eventually confiscated two laptops and six hard drives. The police then asked for more time to investigate, and a judge ordered that he be detained.

“I wasn’t allowed to take anything with me to the cell,” he told the Observer. “I walked in with my clothes on and stayed with the same clothes for four days. There were cold-water showers, a tiny piece of soap, two blankets stinking from cigarette smoke, and a tiny towel,” he said.

He was interrogated again before a second judge ordered his release.

But he is living on savings while he waits for the verdict and even if he wins the treason charges have not been dropped: he could live in their shadow for five years, the limit for the police to prosecute.

He is not the only teacher to be targeted. Authorities also summoned Yael Ayalon, head of a Tel Aviv high school, after she shared a Haaretz article warning that Israeli media was hiding the suffering of Gaza’s civilians. “Israeli citizens need to be aware of this reality,” the piece said.

“This story is much bigger than my personal story, or Yael’s personal story. It is a time of witch hunts in Israel, of political persecution,” he said. “I became a ‘Hamas supporter’ because I expressed my opposition to targeting innocent civilians.”

He said he’d received hundreds of private messages of support from fellow teachers and students who were too frightened to go public, and showed several to the Observer.

“The message is crystal clear: keep silent, watch out,” he says, adding that they strengthened his conviction about speaking out. “I thought to myself, when I retire, I might conclude this is the most significant lesson I ever gave in civics.”

He still follows what is happening in Gaza closely, and flicks on his phone through images of the recent dead, a journalist, a violinist, a baby.

His latest post before the interview with the Observer was an image of an improvised grave marker, that looks like part of a broken piece of furniture. “Unknown martyr, green jacket and trainers,” the inscription reads.

“The whole story in one picture,” he says. “The Israeli mainstream media don’t broadcast this picture. They don’t get this picture, and don’t want to get this picture.”

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

How Israeli legal squad fumbled, failed, got exposed at ICJ genocide hearing

By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | January 14, 2024

South Africa on Thursday presented compelling evidence of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which was followed by incoherent rhetoric by a team of lawyers representing Tel Aviv, who tried to defend the indefensible.

The team of lawyers representing the South African government presented an exhaustive, well-researched 84-page document at the top UN court in the Hague, explaining that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, by using a variety of methods.

They include causing serious bodily and mental hurt, forced evacuation of people, widespread hunger, and bringing about “physical destruction” of people in the small besieged territory.

In their opening remarks, the South African team said they “place Israel’s genocidal acts and omissions within the broader context of Israel’s 56-year occupation, 25-year apartheid, and 16-year siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.”

“The point is not simply that Israel is acting disproportionately. The point is that the prohibition on genocide is an absolute,” said Vaughan Lowe, one of the South African lawyers.

More than 23,500 people have already been killed in Gaza in the past 100 days, a vast majority of them children and women. Thousands more are lost under rubble and presumed dead.

Physicians, aid workers and journalists have also been killed deliberately by the Israeli regime’s forces, and the damage to the civil infrastructure is enormous and disproportionate to anything seen before.

On Thursday, the legal team representing South Africa requested that the court issue emergency measures to stop the relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

With this action, South Africa showed that its people still remember and respect Nelson Mandela’s words: “We know very well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

In its Friday counter-submission, lawyers representing the Israeli regime laid out its “defense”.

Led by veteran British lawyer Malcolm Shaw, the team of lawyers argued that South Africa’s application “distorted” and “decontextualized” Israeli military actions in Gaza.

The team of lawyers representing the regime also made some outlandish claims, repeating lies peddled by the Israeli and Western media, such as the beheading of babies and hospitals not being bombarded.

The lie about Israeli children “beheaded” by the Hamas was debunked long ago. Even the Israeli media recently admitted that the Oct. 7 killings were linked to the regime’s military in line with the so-called Hannibal Directive.

The claim that no hospitals have been bombed by the Israeli regime in Gaza also holds no water. Images of dozens of hospitals being attacked and inmates being killed have been doing rounds on social media.

Such was the confusion that Shaw misplaced a page of his presentation, cutting a sorry figure.

Tal Becker, a legal adviser for the regime’s foreign ministry, presented opening statements, arguing that South Africa had “ignored” the events of October 7 and that Israel had “the right to defend itself.”

He also told the court that the Genocide Convention was drawn up in the aftermath of the Holocaust and that the phrase “never again” is one of “the highest moral obligations” for Israel.

Becker rejected requests for an interim order, arguing South Africa is trying to deny Israel “the opportunity to meet its obligations” to the captives.

Legal experts were quick to criticize Becker’s presentation, primarily because it moralizes based on anachronistic events from World War II, irrelevant to contemporary politics.

This represents the continuation of decades of the Zionist victimhood narrative, by which the Israeli regime’s crimes and dirty policies are sought to be justified by victims from the past.

Becker manipulatively accused South Africa of ignoring October 7, specifically Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, the catastrophic Israeli military defeat that the regime likes to manipulate to be an alleged “war crime.”

In reality, South Africa resolutely placed the genocide in the context of the long-term Israeli occupation, apartheid and siege of Gaza, which the Israeli regime ignored in its presentation and invoked its own interpretation on October 7.

Legal experts point out that Israel’s arguments were abysmally weak and incoherent because no events of that date give the right to a war crime of a disproportionate nature.

They further argue that as an occupying entity that has grabbed the land of Palestine by force, the Israeli regime does not have “the right to self-defense” so this argument also does not hold water.

In 2003, the ICJ ruled that an occupying power cannot claim the right to self-defense, in a case involving Israel’s construction of a separation wall in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli regime’s legal team claimed that South Africa’s accusation about Zionist officials harboring an inherent intent to destroy the Palestinian people was based on “random assertions.”

That is also a shoddy argument since top regime officials, including parliamentarians, the war minister, the president and the premier have called for genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

After Israel’s final “defense,” South Africa’s Minister of Justice Ronald Lamolathe said the Israeli regime has suffered a shameful defeat.

He also rejected flawed Israeli denials, stressing that genocide “is never declared in advance” and evidence for 13 weeks is at the disposal of the ICJ that shows the Israeli regime has committed genocide.

Ivan Kesic is an independent journalist and researcher.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Namibia president rebukes Germany’s support for Israel in genocide case

Press TV – January 14, 2024

Namibia’s President Hage Geingob has categorically censured Germany’s support for the 100-day Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip.

Geingob’s condemnation came in a statement late on Saturday after Germany became the first country to legally intervene on Israel’s behalf at the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) and defend the occupying regime’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Geingob said Berlin committed the first genocide of the 20th century on Namibian soil and “is yet to fully atone for the genocide.”

He was referring to the German colonial forces’ massacre of indigenous Namibians between 1904 and 1908, during which tens of thousands of people lost their lives, with Germany refusing to accept responsibility for reparations.

The Namibian president expressed “deep concern with the shocking decision communicated by the Germany government, on 12 January, 2024, in which it rejected the morally upright indictment brought forward by South Africa before the ICJ that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

Voicing concern, the statement said, “Ignoring the violent deaths of over 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza and various United Nations reports disturbingly highlighting the internal displacement of 85% of civilians in Gaza amid acute shortages of food and essential services.”

Underscoring the Israeli regime’s gruesome acts against innocent civilians in Gaza, Geingob said, “Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.”

The Namibian president called on the German government “to reconsider its untimely decision to intervene as a third-party in defense and support of the genocidal acts of Israel before the ICJ.”

During the ICJ’s two days of hearings earlier in the week, South Africa instituted proceedings that accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians and said the regime’s aggression aimed to bring about “the destruction of the population” of Gaza.

German officials had previously rejected the accusation of genocide brought against Israel by the international community and claimed that the brutal aggression was part of “self-defense” against the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.

The Israeli regime waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas-led Palestinian resistance groups carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.

Since the start of the aggression, Israel has killed more than 23,843 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Nearly 60,317 Palestinians have also been wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

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