Police will keep the Canada-inspired trucker demonstration out of the Belgian capital, its mayor says
Brussels Mayor Philippe Close announced on Thursday that a protest convoy of truckers will be barred from entering the city. Inspired by an ongoing demonstration against vaccine mandates in Canada, the truckers are set to reach the Belgian capital early next week.
“We have taken the decision to ban the ‘Freedom Convoy’ which has not been authorized to demonstrate because no request has been sent,” Close wrote on Twitter, noting that he made the decision along with Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden and Brussels region Minister President Rudi Vervoort.
Local and federal police “will divert motorized vehicles coming towards the capital despite the ban,” Close added.
Drawing participants from across the continent, the protest is inspired by a similar demonstration in the Canadian capital of Ottawa. Traffic in parts of Ottawa has been brought to a standstill for nearly two weeks by truckers demanding the immediate lifting of Covid restrictions, including a mandate that requires them to be vaccinated to re-enter the country from the US.
As host to key EU institutions, Brussels is a natural focal point for the European protest. While individual nations in the bloc have begun rolling back their vaccine pass systems at home, vaccination or proof of a negative Covid test is required to cross national borders within the union, and the EU recently proposed extending this system until 2023.
Truckers en route to Brussels have planned some stops along the way, with a major protest set to hit Paris this weekend. Authorities in the French capital issued a similar ban on Thursday, and threatened protesters with stiff fines should they block traffic in the city. Paris police said that a “specific device” would be used by the authorities to prevent the convoy from entering the city.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Brussels, COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union, France, Human rights |
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Comedian Heather McDonald, 51, has posted a video showing her collapsing mid-set during a stand-up routine in Tempe, Arizona earlier this week.
In the video McDonald collapses just moments after saying she is vaccinated, boosted, and still has her period, proclaiming that she still hasn’t contracted Covid and that “clearly, Jesus loves me the most. Seriously. So nice, so nice.” The next moment she stumbles, rolls her eyes and falls unconscious, hitting her head on the stage floor. The audience can be heard laughing as apparently everyone assumed it was all part of the act.
Her sister had her rushed to the hospital, where it was revealed she had fractured her skull. The reason for her collapse is still unknown, but her publicist has stated that it may have been “because of dehydration.” … Full article
The family of Bob Saget has revealed the comedian died of “head trauma” in his Florida hotel room
RT | February 10, 2022
Comedian Bob Saget’s death last month was caused by “head trauma” sustained in his Florida hotel room, according to a statement released by his family that shared the conclusion from the medical examiner’s office investigation into the passing of the ‘Full House’ star.
“Now that we have the final conclusions from the authorities’ investigation, we felt it only proper that the fans hear those conclusions directly from us,” the statement said. “The authorities have determined that Bob passed from head trauma. They have concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep.” … Full article
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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In the two weeks since the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters began rallying in Ottawa to demand an end to all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions nationwide, it has become clear that this movement isn’t like other protest movements. And that’s a scary proposition for those in charge who thought that they’d manage and exploit this crisis on their own sweet time and schedule regardless of the actual science and reality on the ground.
There has long been an agenda to corral as many humans as possible unwittingly into a global dragnet through technological adoption. That’s what the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden were about back in 2013. A technological panopticon provides those in charge with the ability to monitor and ultimately control or sanction dissidents or outliers as the state pursues the self-serving agenda of a select few. Algorithms that exploit this massive online presence enable the state to accurately craft propaganda to be deployed to vilify them in the eyes of the general population, while portraying the state as the great protector — all while selling citizens out to the interests of a select few elites. Essentially, people are manipulated into arguing against their own good.
For those citizens who aren’t seduced by the mere convenience of technology or the narcissistic allure of social media, the fear of terrorism or of Covid-19 more actively encouraged onboarding to these dragnets. And that was before it was flat-out mandated with government-issued QR code health and vaccine passes that linked directly to your identity.
But then a bunch of truckers noticed that the threat of authoritarianism in Canada and elsewhere was closer than it may appear in their mirrors. And these essential workers decided to park their essential tools until officials stopped treating essential freedoms like they were negotiable.
Because Canadian mainstream media is so severely lacking in truly contradictory debate and diversity of thought, the protests risked sparking an unprecedented new awareness for those who had been force-fed government talking points while they may have already been starting to wonder why their entourage was triple-jabbed and still catching the virus. They were probably beginning to question the real value of the sacrifices that they were forced by government into making over the past two years under the illusion of safety.
Into this mix comes a group of people who aren’t paid activists or troublemakers, but rather everyday people with real jobs — and ‘essential’ ones at that, as previously hailed by the governments themselves. This makes the truckers a different breed of dissenters from Black Lives Matters, Antifa, or French Yellow Vest protesters. And that explains why the rhetorical big guns are now being deployed against them. The truckers, by demanding that life go back to exactly the way it was before governments started instrumentalizing the pandemic, could undermine any agenda to exploit the crisis for globalist advancement. This would especially be the case if the Freedom Convoy movement spread around the world, as it’s beginning to do. Here in France, for example, convoys departing from various cities are reportedly scheduled to arrive in Paris beginning on February 11.
Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, a dual citizen of Ottawa and Globalistan, wrote in a recent Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece: “[B)y now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed and addressed.”
Unlike previous environmental protests that have raged in Canada to the detriment of the country’s future energy independence, and been backed by US-based think-tanks funded by American business interests close to Washington elites — all of which have apparently escaped Carney’s attention or interest — truckers don’t actually require ‘foreign funding’. They have actual jobs that pay quite well.
You’d think he’d know that, given his illustrious background as an expert in money. But good luck trying to exploit the ‘foreign bogeyman’ trope and attempting to find the scapegoat that you’re looking for. Carney is concerned about the ‘occupation’ by protesters, who are merely fighting against the government blockade of citizens’ lives for the past two years. And a bonus L-O-L for his effort to portray protests to regain basic freedoms as some kind of attempt to overthrow the government of Canada. Perhaps someone could provide him with a paper bag before he passes out?
Here’s your ground truth in Ottawa: “More than 100 Highway Traffic Act and other ‘Provincial Offence Notices’ were issued for offenses including excessive honking, driving the wrong way, defective muffler, no seat belt, alcohol readily available and having the improper class of driving license,” according to a Fox News report.
Well, you know what they say. Every hardcore coup d’état starts with a seat belt offense, right?
Meanwhile, US Homeland Security, already apparently attempting to ward off any potential future pushback against its own unpopular agenda, issued an advisory on February 7 conflating terrorism with “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Would that include dissent against any government-approved narrative around the pandemic and related liberticidal measures?
Restrictions, mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’ in two Canadian provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — are now ending, premiers of both jurisdictions announced on February 7.
The rest of the world now runs the risk of these trucker movements gaining momentum, before the restrictions and mandates can allow for the full implementation of a lasting solution of tracking and surveillance capable of monitoring populist blowback to government insanity.
The rally race between truckers and globalists is on! And with nothing less than democracy and freedom at stake.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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The New York Times reports on the growth of ‘climate therapy’ for leftists suffering from ‘eco-anxiety’, including people who are having panic attacks over perceived environmental catastrophes and their friends going on holiday.
In an article titled ‘Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room’, the newspaper reports, “Eco-anxiety, a concept introduced by young activists, has entered a mainstream vocabulary. And professional organizations are hurrying to catch up. Though there is little empirical data on effective treatments, the field is expanding swiftly.”
According to Portland psychologist Dr. Thomas J. Doherty, who has built an entire practice catering for the treatment of climate anxiety, people are being triggered into mental breakdowns by things as simple as their friends discussing future vacations.
“An 18-year-old student who sometimes experiences panic attacks so severe that she can’t get out of bed; a 69-year-old glacial geologist who is sometimes overwhelmed with sadness when he looks at his grandchildren; a man in his 50s who erupts in frustration over his friends’ consumption choices, unable to tolerate their chatter about vacations in Tuscany,” states the report.
Instead of accurately describing this for what it is, hysterical nonsense based on the maniacal delusion that the earth is dying, the NYT describes such therapy as “rational.”
Surveys show that people who hold left-wing beliefs are more likely to suffer from a mental health condition.
A major contributing factor to this is undoubtedly their gullibility in believing all the contrived global crises and neurotic moral panics relentlessly spoon fed to them by the legacy media.
“Rather than help these people by shattering their delusions, the Times is encouraging their mental illness for political gain,” notes Chris Menahan.
No doubt the mass hysteria generated by COVID-19 will also be weaponized in future to amplify calls for climate lockdowns in the name of saving the planet.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | New York Times |
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From the 1950s through the 1980s the CIA overthrew democratically elected governments and assassinated leaders in the U.S. and around the world in the name of fighting communism.
After the fall of communism, the CIA pivoted to fighting terrorism. After 9/11 their mission expanded considerably to include a global network of black sites where they conducted torture. They also engage in covert military operations on the ground inside a wide range of countries.
More recently, the CIA has expanded their mission yet again. We have evidence of coordination between the U.S. Department of Defense, Fauci, the EcoHealth Alliance, bioweapons labs in the U.S., and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (a Chinese bioweapons lab) to conduct gain-of-function research. This has all of the hallmarks of a CIA operation.
One could make the case that the CIA is now fighting viruses/pandemics in the name of national defense. But this effort CREATED the chimera virus that has killed more Americans than all foreign wars combined. Since the chimera virus was released, governments across the developed world, Pharma, and Big Tech have all worked together to control the message, surveil and censor the population, and smash any dissent. Again this reeks of CIA involvement.
So my question is, who/what exactly is the CIA fighting these days? My hunch is that the answer is us. Not just the medical freedom movement (although we are certainly targeted) but the general public. This seems like a class war and the CIA’s new mission is not to defend the U.S. per se but rather to defend the global ruling class from the peasants who might overthrow them.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | CIA, Covid-19, United States |
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South Koreans go to the polls on March 9 to elect a new president, who will assume office two months later. At a time when U.S.-North Korean relations are at an impasse, and the Biden administration is building an aggressive anti-China alliance, much may rest on the outcome.
The two candidates, who are currently running neck-and-neck in opinion polls, present a stark contrast. Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party advocates South Korea taking the lead on inter-Korean relations, in contrast to President Moon Jae-in’s unwillingness to adopt any measure that would elicit Washington’s disapproval. “In succeeding the Moon Jae-in administration, the Lee Jae-myung government should act as a more independent and active mediator and problem solver,” Lee announced late last year. [1] That will come as a welcome change in direction if it comes to fruition.
Lee is also disinclined to accede to U.S. demands to join the anti-China campaign, questioning why South Korea should be forced to choose between China, its leading trading partner, and the U.S., with whom it has a military alliance. “I think the situation is coming where we can make decisions independently, putting our national interests first. Any thinking that we have to choose between the two is a very disgraceful approach,” Lee argues. [2]
If Lee is serious about changing course, he will be steering into strong headwinds. South Korea is such a politically polarized society that Lee cannot count on broad-based domestic support. Furthermore, his party will need to win a substantial majority in the National Assembly for Lee to adopt a more independent policy. In addition, the nation’s security and military establishments are hardly likely to countenance a change in the relationship with Washington. The United States, for its part, has an arsenal of economic and diplomatic weapons at its disposal to keep a wayward nation in line. Only time will tell if Lee has the inclination and determination to try and overcome such obstacles.
Lee’s conservative opponent, Yoon Seok-youl of the inaptly-named People Power Party, takes a hardline position on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the official name for North Korea), including talking about the option of launching a preemptive strike. [3] Yoon also prioritizes the military alliance with the United States and favors joining Washington’s “global coalition” confronting China. [4] “The U.S. is our ally,” Yoon asserts, “while China is a partner. And a partnership is based on mutual respect. China is North Korea’s key ally. Isn’t North Korea our main enemy? We cannot make an alliance with a country that is allied with our main enemy.” [5]
It is no mystery which candidate the Biden administration would prefer to deal with. Yoon’s stated policies align perfectly with those of Washington.
President Moon Jae-in missed opportunities to improve inter-Korean relations by continually deferring to the United States. In regard to reducing U.S.-DPRK tensions, Moon advocates an end-of-war declaration. Combat in the Korean War came to a halt in 1953 with an armistice agreement, so technically speaking, a state of war still exists. Moon regards that unfinished business as a destabilizing situation that can be resolved by all parties signing an end-of-war declaration to “mark a pivotal point of departure,” which would lead to “irreversible progress in denuclearization and usher in an era of complete peace.” [6]
South Korean officials have been engaged in talks with their counterparts in the United States, China, and North Korea on the subject of a peace declaration for some time now. Moon believes “in principle” that “everybody agrees to the declaration,” although he noted that the DPRK needs to see the U.S. withdraw its hostile policy. [7] In other words, no party has explicitly rejected the proposal outright, although South Korea has yet to come to an agreement with the United States on its wording.
According to Moon, “If North Korea takes certain measures, the end-of-war declaration would be a political statement that would announce that the longstanding hostile relations between Pyongyang and Washington had ended.” [8] Note that action is required from only one side, while no change in behavior is asked of the United States.
Moon has also stated that an end-of-war declaration would be “the starting point to discuss the peace treaty.” [9]However, a peace treaty is a nonstarter in the current U.S. political environment, as it would require approval by a two-thirds majority in the Senate and ratification by President Biden.
The protracted wrangling over the declaration’s wording suggests that American officials have taken note of Yoon’s strong showing in the South Korean opinion polls and concluded that they need only drag their feet until getting a partner more to their liking. At the very least, it indicates that the Biden administration is intensely focused on wordsmithing to ensure that nothing in the final draft of a peace declaration could be misconstrued to suggest that anything should change.
Too much can be made of the claim that a technical state of war is automatically destabilizing. Failure to sign a peace treaty is not a unique historical phenomenon. In a more recent example, the Soviet Union and Japan never signed a peace treaty after World War II. However, a peace declaration was agreed to in 1956 as an interim measure. Technically, then, Russia and Japan remain in a state of war yet are hardly likely to engage in combat. Talks are currently underway regarding a peace treaty. [10]
Conversely, there is nothing inherently transformative in being officially at peace with a hostile party. Cuba and Venezuela, for example, are formally at peace with the United States yet are subjected to unrelenting sanctions, economic blockade, and destabilization campaigns aimed at regime change.
The risk in placing so much emphasis on an end-of-war declaration alone is that Moon may inadvertently be reinforcing the already entrenched U.S. view that it need not offer North Korea anything substantive in exchange for denuclearization.
It is difficult to imagine what mechanism could metamorphose a piece of paper acknowledging that combat ended in 1953 into Moon’s envisioned “era of complete peace.” Moreover, U.S. hostility toward the DPRK is driven by regional geopolitical objectives, which a peace declaration cannot alter.
As a purely symbolic measure, a peace declaration is not worthless, but it would need to be accompanied by a change in U.S. attitude to hold any value. Otherwise, a symbol at variance with action is drained of any meaning. Indeed, what significance would such a symbol have as the United States continues to wage siege warfare against North Korea in the form of sanctions designed to impose economic ruin, hardship, and hunger?
Asia specialist Tim Beal believes the number one problem with an end-of-war declaration is “that the U.S. is still waging war – sanctions, military exercises, practicing invasion, and so forth. And it gives no indication of actually wanting to stop any of these.” [11]
The sustained effort that Moon has invested in promoting a peace declaration may have been better spent on advocating real change as a path to peace. However, it must be noted how so much of the Washington elite recoils at the prospect of granting North Korea even a symbolic diplomatic crumb. There is a deeply ingrained belief that the only acceptable formula for negotiations is for the DPRK to surrender everything while getting nothing in return. Perhaps Moon’s devotion to a peace declaration is based partly on the realization that the United States is unwilling to offer North Korea anything meaningful in exchange for denuclearization, so more cannot be expected.
While South Korean officials have discussed the subject of a peace declaration with their counterparts in the north, the impetus and enthusiasm for the proposal essentially come from the former side. Indeed, Moon’s narrow focus on a peace declaration resolutely ignores what North Koreans say they need.
The DPRK is under siege, and consequently, its officials are looking for something more concrete from the United States. They certainly have not minced words on the subject. Kim Myong Gil, North Korea’s chief negotiator during talks with Trump administration officials, was quite direct: “If the U.S. believes that it can lure us to the table with secondary issues, such as an end-of-war declaration – which can instantly end up as garbage depending on the political situation – and the establishment of a liaison office, instead of presenting fundamental solutions to withdraw its hostile policy against North Korea, which interferes with our right to survival and development, there will never be any hope for a solution.” [12]
Last September, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song reiterated that position when he termed an end-of-war declaration premature. “Nothing will change as long as the political circumstances around the DPRK remain unchanged and the U.S. hostile policy is not shifted, although the termination of the war is declared hundreds of times.” Ri added, “We have already clarified our official stand that the declaration of the termination of the war is not a ‘present’ and it can become a mere scrap of paper in a moment upon changes in situations.” [13]
Biden administration officials repeatedly announce that the U.S. has no hostile intent toward the DPRK while showering that nation with invective and strangling it economically. U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price says that “specific proposals” have been made to North Korea. [14] Although nothing is publicly known about the nature of the proposals, the lack of response from the North Koreans would seem to reveal that the U.S. is sticking to its customary approach of offering diplomatic trinkets in exchange for demanding unilateral disarmament.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying advocates a more viable approach to resuming talks. “We believe under the current circumstances, the key to breaking the stalemate and restarting dialogue is taking seriously the DPRK’s legitimate concerns. The U.S. should avoid repeating empty slogans, but rather show its sincerity by presenting an appealing plan for dialogue. It is imperative to invoke the rollback terms of the Security Council’s DPRK-related resolutions as soon as possible and make necessary adjustments to relevant sanctions, especially those relating to provisions on the humanitarian and livelihood aspects.” [15]
In October, China and Russia submitted a draft resolution at the United Nations to drop economic sanctions that target North Korea’s population, in recognition of the nation’s continued adherence to its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests. [16] Chinese U.N. envoy Wang Qun explained, “Obviously, the crux of the deadlock in the DPRK-U.S. dialogue is that the denuclearization measures taken by the DPRK have not received due attention and the legitimate and reasonable concerns of the DPRK have not been properly addressed.” [17] Predictably, the U.S. side reacted with outrage, and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield instead called upon U.N. member states to “ramp up the implementation of the sanctions.” [18]
Rather than signal a softer attitude, on December 10, the Biden administration piled on more sanctions, targeting several individuals and North Korea’s animation firm SEK Studio. Also sanctioned was a Chinese animation company for doing business with SEK Studio. [19] According to Go Myong-hyun, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, the Biden administration “is sending a very strong message to North Korea and the rest of the world that the U.S. government is going to really not leave any stone unturned and make sure that the North Koreans don’t get even a single cent of profit by trading with the outside world.” [20]
The Biden administration followed that action by naming Philip Goldberg as ambassador to South Korea. His selection appears to indicate that Washington remains wedded to the punishment approach. During the Obama administration, Goldberg served as coordinator for implementing sanctions on North Korea. That position led him to travel abroad and meet with foreign political and banking officials to eliminate trade and financial operations with North Korea. Philosophically, he aligns well with an aggressive foreign policy. As ambassador to Bolivia, he was expelled from the country for meeting with the right-wing opposition. [21] In his nomination hearing for ambassador to Colombia at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2019, Goldberg promised to support the U.S. campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela: “If confirmed, I will work with Colombia on efforts to restore democracy to Venezuela.” He added that “the United States government has made clear that all options remain on the table while it continues to engage on all diplomatic and economic fronts to support Interim Venezuelan President Juan Guaido and the Venezuelan people’s pursuit of freedom.” [22] The new ambassador is not a man who can be expected to challenge conventional thinking regarding the DPRK.
The DPRK has evidently concluded that the United States is unwilling to abandon its hostile policy and has recently stepped up weapons testing. Its demolition of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site and a self-imposed moratorium on long-range ballistic missile testing yielded no corresponding measure from the United States, aside from a temporary reduction in the size of military exercises that rehearse the bombing and invasion of the DPRK and infiltration of commando teams to assassinate North Korean officials.
Meanwhile, the South Korean military is accelerating technological upgrades and has seen its budget increase by an average of 7.4 percent each year of the Moon administration. [23] The United States, for its part, is expanding its military presence in the Asia-Pacific, and regularly launches intercontinental ballistic missiles, most recently on two occasions last year. [24]
The North Koreans feel compelled to modernize their military capability in response to U.S. and South Korean arms advancements. As a result, an arms race is underway, in which the targeted side’s efforts are deemed illegitimate. DPRK leader Kim Jong Un emphasizes that “recourse to arms against the fellow countrymen must not be repeated on this land.” He adds, “We are not talking about a war with someone,” but “are building up war deterrent… to prevent the war itself and to safeguard the sovereignty of our state.” [25] And that is the crux of U.S. concern. A small targeted nation able to defend itself sets a bad precedent and limits options.
Western media and officials habitually characterize each North Korean missile test as a “threat” or “provocation,” uniquely so, in that other nations performing similar tests prompt no condemnation. India, like North Korea, is a non-member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and its launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile on October 27 last year was greeted by silence. [26] No doubt, the Times of India’s description of the launch as “a stern signal to China” came as a welcome development in Washington. [27] The two other nuclear powers that are non-NPT members are Israel and Pakistan, both of which have ballistic missile programs that are deemed of no concern by U.S. officials and media. [28]
There is a double standard at play. Only North Korea is forbidden by the United Nations from testing and is punished by economic sanctions so crushing as to amount to a war on the entire population. Even military tests that are not prohibited, such as the recent cruise missile and hypersonic missile launches, are denounced. Using inflammatory language, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield recently described North Korea’s tests as “attacks” and promised to “continue to ramp up the pressure on the North Koreans.” [29] U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres rebuked the DPRK for its recent launch of a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile, charging that it not only violated U.N. sanctions but also “the DPRK’s announced moratorium.” [30] That was an outright falsehood, as North Korea’s self-imposed moratorium on testing applies only to long-range ballistic missiles.
Why is North Korea singled out for punishment? According to Thomas-Greenfield, it is because that nation is “a serious threat to our peace and security and to the globe.” [31] That language is echoed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who called the DPRK “a source of danger and obviously a threat to us and our partners.” [32] That American officials can make such pronouncements without being met by derision is a tribute to the efficacy of U.S. propaganda. Since the Korean War came to a halt nearly seven decades ago, the DPRK has been at peace. Yet, in the decades that followed the Second World War, the United States has bombed and invaded numerous countries, undermined and toppled foreign governments, spread its military bases across the globe to threaten other nations, and performed drone strike murders of thousands of civilians. And the U.S. is currently trying to stoke war fever against Russia. Yet, the common perception in the West turns reality on its head.
Regardless of whether or not a peaceful end to the Korean War is declared, the United States has broader plans for South Korea. The Biden administration’s central foreign policy objective is to build alliances with Asian nations to ensure U.S. domination over China.
South Korea’s geographical location places it on the frontline of the Biden administration’s fanatical anti-China project, and the Koreans are assigned the role of “force multiplier” in that effort. The South Koreans are not regarded as having a choice in the matter. Koreans are expected to support the U.S. confrontation with China and any military adventure in the Asia-Pacific that the U.S. may choose to undertake. According to an American military official, the Republic of Korea (ROK) will act as “a net provider of security not just on the peninsula but across the region.” [33]
Last May, Biden and Moon issued a joint statement, which pledged that “the U.S.-ROK alliance will play an increasingly global role” and claimed that the two nations’ relationship “extends far beyond the Korean Peninsula.” Moon also promised to align his country’s policy with “the United States’ vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific.” [34]
In December, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met in Seoul with his South Korean counterpart, Suh Wook. Austin announced that “we discussed ways to broaden our alliance’s focus to address issues of regional concern.” Using the familiar code words for anti-China hostility, Austin stated that “we emphasize our shared commitment to the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific.” In addition, Austin reported that he and Suh “agreed to explore ways to expand and enhance regional security cooperation and capacity building.” [35]
If an end-of-war declaration is made the vehicle for bringing peace to the peninsula, the main roadblock, as Korea specialist Simone Chun sees it, is U.S. containment policy and the practice of “pressuring allies for U.S. strategic interests.” Under the Moon administration, “South Korea’s security policy has been subordinated to the United States” and “South Korea does not have strategic insight to properly respond to the U.S. policy of containment with respect to China.” Chun proposes supplementing an end-of-war declaration with a revival of the Sunshine Policy as offering a potentially more promising path to reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. [36] The Sunshine Policy, launched during the presidential term of Kim Dae-jung and continued by his successor Roh Moo-hyun, redirected inter-Korean relations from confrontation to cooperation. However, since Roh’s term ended in 2008, no subsequent South Korean president has followed suit. In Chun’s proposal, South Korea does not need to play a passive role and defer to U.S. intransigence. Instead, it can initiate its own program.
It cannot be overlooked that South Korean progressives and U.S. imperialism have divergent goals. Their class and national interests are at opposite poles. If positive change comes, it will be driven by Koreans. As Tim Beal points out, “Peace undercuts the rationale for U.S. forward position in East Asia. It undercuts the rationale for all those bases, the bases in South Korea, the bases in Japan, and so forth. And it undercuts the rationale for their utilization of [South Korean] military power.” The problem is “that peace in Korea would hamper the containment of China. That’s how they look at it.” [37]
A lot may ride on the next presidential election in South Korea. A conservative victory would automatically give the Biden administration everything it wants. Yoon has explicitly stated his intention to ally closely with U.S. militarism. A win by Lee Jae-myung offers more hope.
Lee promises to chart a more independent path than Moon. It remains to be seen if he can follow through, given the certainty of fierce opposition by Washington. Progressives in South Korea face a twofold struggle in the months ahead: pressing their government to improve inter-Korean relations and blocking being dragooned into the U.S. anti-China military machine. At the heart of both issues is resistance to U.S. encroachment upon South Korean sovereignty. It will not be an easy struggle, but it is a necessary one.
Notes
[1] Thomas Maresca, “South Korea Presidential Hopeful Seeks Closer Ties with Pyongyang,” UPI, November 25, 2021.
[2] Kang Seung-woo, “’Choosing Between US, China is Disgraceful,’ Ruling Party’s Presidential Candidate Says,” Korea Times, December 30, 2021.
[3] Jung Da-min, “Controversy Rises Over Yoon’s Preemptive Strike Remarks,” Korea Times, January 13, 2022.
[4] Lee Haye-ah, “Yoon Says Firm S. Korea-U.S. Alliance Ever More Important,” Yonhap, November 12, 2021.
[5] Lee Ji-yoon, “Yoon Seok-youl Hints at Possibility of Ditching Inter-Korean Military Agreement,” Korea Herald, November 18, 2021.
[6] https://english1.president.go.kr/BriefingSpeeches/Speeches/1068
[7] https://www.pm.gov.au/media/press-conference-canberra-act-32
[8] “South Korea’s Moon Optimistic About End to Korean War,” BBC News, October 12, 2018.
[9] Lee Ji-yoon, “Moon Holds Rare Inflight News Briefing,” Korea Herald, September 24, 2021.
[10] “Future Russia-Japan Peace Treaty Must Reflect Outlook for Cooperation – Lavrov,” TASS, January 14, 2022.
[11] “A Geopolitical Perspective of Biden’s North Korea Policy,” JNC TV, January 2, 2022.
[12] Jeong Je-hyug, “NK Kim Myong-gil, “Beigun Conveyed Wish to Meet for Talks in December. Willing to Sit with the U.S.,” Kyunghyang Shinmun, November 15, 2019.
[13] “Press Statement of Vice Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song,” KCNA, September 24, 2021.
[14] Chaewon Chung, “US Made ‘Specific Proposals’ to the DPRK in Latest Attempt to Engage Regime,” NK News, October 14, 23021.
[15] “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying’s Regular Press Conference on September 30, 2021,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, September 30, 2021.
[16] Chad O’Carroll, “China and Russia Submit Proposal to Ease UN Sanctions on North Korea: Sources,” NK News, October 30, 2021.
Michelle Nichols, “China, Russia Revive Push to Lift U.N. Sanctions on North Korea,” Reuters, November 1, 2021.
[17] “Invoking Rollback Terms of DPRK-related Resolutions at Early Date Effective to Break Deadlock: Chinese Envoy,” Xinhua, September 25, 2021.
[18] https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-by-ambassador-linda-thomas-greenfield%e2%80%afat-the-un-security-council-stakeout-on-the-dprk/
[19] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0526
[20] Chad O’Carroll, “US to Impose New Sanctions Against North Korea for First Time Under Biden,” NK News, December 10, 2021.
[21] “Bolivian Leader Doesn’t Regret Expelling U.S. Ambassador,” CNN, April 22, 2009.
[22] https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/nominations-062019
[23] Lami Kim, “A Hawkish Dove? President Moon Jae-in and South Korea’s Military Buildup,” War on the Rocks, September 15, 2021.
Sang-Min Kim, “South Korea Boosts Military,” Arms Control Association, September 21.
Hiroshi Minegishi, “South Korea Beefs Up Military Muscle to Counter Threat from North,” Nikkei Asia, September 14, 2021.
[24] “Minuteman III Test Launch Demonstrates Safe, Reliable Deterrent,” United States Air Force (Air Force Global Strike Command Public Affairs), February 24, 2021.
“Minuteman III Test Launch Showcases Readiness of U.S. Nuclear Force’s Safe, Effective Deterrent,” United States Air Force (Air Force Global Strike Command Public Affairs), August 11, 2021.
[25] “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Commemorative Speech at Defence Development Exhibition,” KCNA, October 12, 2021.
[26] Kelsey Davenport, “India Tests Missile Capable of Reaching China,” Arms Control Association, December 2021.
[27] Rajat Pandit, “In Stern Signal to China, India Tests 5,000-km Range Agni-V”, Times of India, October 28, 2021.
[28] https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2021/08/israel-ballistic-missile-programme
https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/pakistan/
[29] “Transcript: ‘Capehart’ with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,” Washington Post Live, January 18, 2022.
[30] “DPR Korea, UN Chief Condemns Missile Launch as ‘Clear Violation,’ UN News, February 1, 2022.
[31] “Remarks by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a Press Conference on the March Program of Work and the U.S. Presidency of the UN Security Council,” United States Mission to the United Nations, March 1, 2021.
[32] Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung, “Blinken Urges China to Convince North Korea to Denuclearize,” Associated Press, March 18, 2021.
[33] Jeff Seldin, “US, South Korea Updating War Plans for North Korea,” Voice of America, December 1, 2021.
[34] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/05/21/u-s-rok-leaders-joint-statement/
[35] https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2859519/secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-and-south-korean-defense-minister-suh-w/
[36] “A Geopolitical Perspective of Biden’s North Korea Policy,” JNC TV, January 2, 2022.
[37] “A Geopolitical Perspective of Biden’s North Korea Policy,” JNC TV, January 2, 2022.
Gregory Elich is a Korea Policy Institute associate and on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute. He is a member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. He is also a member of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific. His website is https://gregoryelich.org
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Korea, United States |
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did it again.
The FDA last week granted its seal of approval for a ghost vaccine that is unavailable in the United States — and it did so using a preordained process that made a mockery of “science” and of “regulation.”
Days later, the CDC backed the FDA’s decision, using similarly flawed data and reasoning.
The approval of Moderna’s Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine was an even greater travesty than the FDA’s approval last August of Pfizer’s Comirnaty shot.
That’s because Moderna has been even more secretive than Pfizer about its trial data, and because Moderna’s shot is linked to an even higher rate of heart disease than Pfizer’s.
The FDA’s approval of the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine led people to believe they would get a fully licensed, FDA-approved vaccine — when in fact they were still getting the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine distributed under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
People can ask for the Comirnaty vaccine as often as they like — but it is not being distributed in the U.S. The Comirnaty vaccine is supposed to be the same formulation as the old Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but the vials labeled “Comirnaty” are in a legal class of their own.
Why this Kabuki theater?
Because any adult who is harmed or killed as a side effect of an “FDA-approved” vaccine can sue the manufacturer. But if you are harmed in exactly the same way by an EUA vaccine, you are out of luck — the manufacturer and everyone in the chain of delivery has full immunity from lawsuits. The law depends on the label.
Now Moderna has the same legal advantage as Pfizer. Its “Spikevax” is the same formula as the old Moderna vaccine, but only if you are dosed with a vial bearing the “Spikevax” label can you sue for bodily harm. So, of course, the Moderna vaccine continues to be distributed, but Spikevax is not available in the U.S.
The approval of Spikevax is not just a legal sham. It’s also a scientific sham. FDA approval is supposed to include long-term safety testing, but there is no long-term data available for a product that has been in existence less than a year.
The FDA hearings on the licensing of Spikevax were one-sided and dominated by self-congratulatory rhetoric. They also raised more questions than answers.
Questions for the FDA
- Besides offering publicity to the manufacturer and sowing confusion in the public mind, why would the manufacturers want FDA approval for a vaccine that is not available in the U.S.?
- Neither Pfizer nor Moderna explicitly specified the content of their placebos, but a published review claims they were simple saline. If this is the case, why is the rate of medical problems following injection with a “placebo” so much higher with Moderna’s placebo compared to Pfizer’s placebo?
For example, 18 people out of 15,000 in the Moderna placebo group died before the start of the trial (2 weeks from the second vaccination), while only 4 people out of 22,000 who received Pfizer’s placebo dose died in a comparable period. There were 31 “severe adverse events” in the placebo group of the Moderna trial, and zero in the (larger) Pfizer placebo group. What was in that “placebo” that killed 18 people and sent 31 to the hospital?
- The FDA relies on the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) to help assess the safety of vaccines before approval. There was an animated debate at the VRBPAC meeting for the Pfizer vaccine. Why was VRBPAC not invited to convene for the Moderna vaccine? The answer is given in this letter of approval from the FDA to Moderna (January 31, 2022):
“We did not refer your application to the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee because our review of information submitted in your BLA [Biologics License Application], including the clinical study design and trial results, did not raise concerns or controversial issues that would have benefited from an advisory committee discussion.”
- The FDA plainly states that it limited the scope of its analysis to the trial data alone. Why isn’t the FDA interested in the enormous amount of data that has become available in the last year?
Safety: Did FDA cook the books?
Deaths and disabilities associated with the mRNA “vaccines” have occurred with shocking frequency, 90 times as many as the worst vaccine in the past. There have been more than 1 million COVID vaccine reactions reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), compared to 11,000 for the worst vaccine in 2020 (Shingrix).
There were more than twice as many deaths related to the COVID vaccines this year as the sum total of all vaccine deaths in the 30-year history of VAERS.
To rig the approval process in favor of such a product, the FDA needed to rewrite the rule book. The agency did this with a new statistical criterion, masking murder with mathematics. I am grateful to Matthew Crawford for having decoded the algebra and sounded the alarm.
The safety criterion chosen by the FDA is an obscure computation called PRR, which stands for Proportional Reporting Ratio. As the name implies, it is based on RATIOS of different event types and is utterly blind to the ABSOLUTE RATE of such events.
PRR measures the distribution of different kinds of adverse events, e.g. blood clots, heart attacks and deaths. If those ratios are severely out of line with the great variety of vaccine reactions in the past, PRR would detect that.
For example, if the new vaccines caused an extraordinary risk of myocarditis, but everything else was low, then PRR would flag that. But if myocarditis was just one risk among many that have been reported from past vaccines, then PRR would not pick that up.
The real scandal is that PRR is blind to the absolute risk numbers. PRR is defined in such a way as to look for unusual PATTERNS of adverse events, but it is completely insensitive to unusual RATES of adverse events.
Of course, it is the rates and not the patterns that are of primary concern, and the PRR is designed NOT to reflect that.
For example, suppose we have two vaccines:
- Vaccine A has 1 reported death per million vaccinations, 3 reported heart attacks per million, and 20 reported headaches per million.
- Vaccine B has 1 reported death per hundred vaccinations, 3 reported heart attacks per hundred, and 20 reported headaches per hundred.
Vaccine A is quite safe, and vaccine B is extremely dangerous. And yet the formula for PRR will produce the same result for vaccine A and B!
Clearly, PRR is not an appropriate criterion for evaluating the safety of any particular vaccine. Did the FDA use PRR in order to cook the books?
In Moderna’s own trials, 1.3% of vaccine recipients had a reaction to the vaccine that was severe enough to require medical attention. The following possible side effects were listed in information given to doctors:
“Anaphylaxis and other severe allergic reactions, myocarditis, pericarditis, and syncope have been reported following administration of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine during mass vaccination outside of clinical trials.”
Off with his head! — the CDC’s ACIP hearings
In Alice’s Wonderland, the Red Queen’s justice began with the execution, then there was a verdict — and finally a trial.
The FDA hearing was followed by a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which reports to the CDC.
The committee on Feb. 4 voted to recommend the Moderna Spikevax. Only after that action step had been secured did the committee hear testimony from the Public Health Agency of Canada that Moderna’s vaccine was associated with a myocarditis risk five times higher than Pfizer’s.
Questions for the CDC
- All-cause mortality was equal in both placebo and vaccine groups (16 deaths in each). In the midst of a pandemic, Moderna’s vaccine demonstrated no survival benefit. This should have been enough to end any further consideration of approval.
- We have detailed data on myocarditis from decades of past history. One-fourth of myocarditis patients are dead within 5 years, but the same study reports that if the myocarditis is caused by human immunodeficiency virus, then three-fourths die in the same 5 years.
We have no long-term data on vaccine-induced myocarditis, but we do have some 6-month data, which show 39% of cases still had their activity restricted by their doctors, 20% were still on heart medication, 32% still reported chest pain, 22% still had shortness of breath, 22% had palpitations and 25% still reported fatigue. Thirteen vaccine recipients died. (All these numbers were presented at the ACIP hearing on Feb. 4.)
Why should we have confidence that the course of vaccine-induced myocarditis will be much less severe than other forms of the disease?
- The Moderna trial, like the Pfizer trial, was limited to healthy people, mostly young, with no pre-existing problems. Pregnant women were explicitly excluded. Why is the vaccine being approved as safe for everyone, including diabetics and immune-compromised, elderly and pregnant women?
- When mRNA vaccines were approved on an emergency basis, the FDA promised to track all safety concerns with a new cell phone app called V-Safe. Why are the results of V-Safe being withheld from the public?
- The FDA was considering approval of Moderna’s vaccine in January 2022. There was a full year’s experience with side effects reported from nearly 200 million doses of the Moderna vaccine in the U.S. alone. But the FDA limited its consideration to the 15,000 subjects who were in the Moderna trial, ending March 26, 2021. Why was this huge trove of data on vaccine safety not reviewed by the FDA?
- Yes, we understand that the vaccine doesn’t become fully effective until 2 weeks after the second shot. But is that a reason to exclude from consideration the damage that is inflicted by enhanced vulnerability to disease during those two weeks, or, for that matter, the four weeks between shots? These have been counted as diseases of the “unvaccinated,” but in fact, people in this stage of treatment are much more vulnerable than the truly unvaccinated.
- France and Germany do not recommend Moderna’s vaccination for young people, presumably because the Moderna vaccine is associated with a higher rate of myocarditis than the Pfizer vaccine. How did our FDA come to a different conclusion?
- Anaphylaxis following vaccination is an immediate, life-threatening and an undeniable consequence of the vaccine. The CDC claimed the rate of anaphylaxis is 6 per 1 million.
However, in March of 2021, an examination of anaphylaxis following mRNA vaccines revealed a much higher incidence of this adverse event. In fact, 9 of 38,971 Moderna vaccine recipients suffered documented anaphylaxis. This equates to 230 per million, or 38 times higher than the CDC estimate.
Efficacy — but at what cost?
The proper measure of the efficacy of any medication is how it affects all aspects of a patient’s health. But in evaluating the Moderna vaccine, the FDA looked only at its effect on COVID.
There are early but disturbing indications that vaccination worldwide has had dramatic effects on other aspects of health, unrelated to COVID. Insurance company trade journals report that they are paying life insurance claims for adults 18-64 years of age at a rate 40% higher than during any normal year.
This number from OneAmerica (Indianapolis) has been echoed by other studies in Europe. A leaked spreadsheet from the Defense Medical Epidemiological Database showed that incidences of many medical problems in the U.S. military surged in this year of vaccination. For example, heart attacks were up 343%, cancers up 218%, among many other disorders.
Could it be that the vaccines have had a small benefit for COVID severity and disastrous impact on other aspects of human health?
We now have some real-world experience with the efficacy of vaccines. For example, we know the virus mutated to a more contagious, less lethal form. Omicron is now the dominant form of the virus in the U.S. and most other parts of the world today.
The Omicron mutations are concentrated in the spike protein — the only part of the virus to which the vaccinated population has immunity. This suggests the virus is mutating in response to the vaccine, and mutations are an important factor affecting efficacy in the long run.
Nevertheless, the FDA considered efficacy data predominantly from the first five months of data (through March 26, 2021) in making its decision to fully license Spikevax, with an absolute cutoff in November, before Omicron became dominant.
More questions
- Almost all subjects in the original Moderna trial who received placebo initially were subsequently given the vaccine. How will we ever know the long-term effects of the vaccine if we have no controls with which to compare?
- Why do CDC studies of death rates based on vaccination status differ so markedly from the same question asked by independent groups in other countries?
Here, for example, is a report from Public Health Scotland stating that vaccination increases vulnerability to Omicron. Here is a similar report from England. This study shows countries with higher vaccination rates tend to have higher rates of COVID, and this one confirms the same result for U.S. states.
- We are now in an era dominated by the Omicron variant, against which all the vaccines seem much less effective. But even “follow-up data” was analyzed only through March 26, 2021, nine months before Omicron took over. Why did the FDA base its decision on data only from older variants?
- The secondary efficacy endpoint was the prevention of severe COVID-19. Now that it is accepted that there is little, if any, protective effect of mRNA vaccines from infection, the prevention of severe disease should be the primary focus of approval determination.
Moderna claims its vaccine efficacy is an astonishing 98.2% in preventing severe COVID-19 (Table 8). Pfizer’s was 96.7% (Table S6).
The reason for the calculated difference in efficacy between these two products was not from a lower incidence of severe disease in the vaccine arm of Moderna’s trial (it was lower in Pfizer’s trial). It was because the incidence of severe disease in Moderna’s placebo group was much higher than in Pfizer’s.
Severe COVID-19 in Pfizer’s placebo group occurred in 30 participants out of 23,0379. In Moderna’s, severe disease occurred in 106 participants out of 14,164 that received a placebo. Why was the incidence of severe COVID-19 nearly six times higher in Moderna’s placebo group than Pfizer’s?
Postscript: Failure was never an option
In America, why are clinical trials for new drugs run by the same companies that own the drugs, and will profit from them if the trial is successful?
It’s a glaring conflict of interest, but necessary within a capitalist system. Since the trials cost, typically, hundreds of millions of dollars, only the company that will profit from the drug is motivated to invest such huge sums in testing.
In the case of the COVID vaccines, however, the development and the trials were both publicly funded. There was no excuse for contracting the same organization both to develop and test their own product.
Moderna’s development cost was funded through Operation Warp Speed in the U.S. and Pfizer through the German government. Now, the companies are reaping windfall profits, though they risked no money of their own.
This leaves us wondering, did our government ever want a fair and unbiased evaluation of the COVID vaccines? Or — after a full year of telling the public that vaccines were the only path out of the COVID crisis — did NIH feel they could not risk the possibility that the trials might fail?
There were no animal tests. There was no time to experimentally optimize dosage and delivery. They had to guess right the first time.
Maybe they thought this is what the exigency of a pandemic required — but please don’t call it “science.”
Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D., has a background in theoretical physics. Since the 1990s, he is best known for his contributions to the biology of aging, including many articles and two books.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | CDC, COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, United States |
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IN the 1984 Unicef State of the World’s Children report, its director general James Grant talked of how the developing world was lagging 50 years behind the industrialised world in terms of child mortality rates. Explaining how the industrialised world had succeeded in reducing its own child mortality rates, he acknowledged that ‘the mainspring of this great leap forward was rising living standards – better food, water, housing, sanitation, education and income’.
Although the spread of maternal and child health care undoubtedly played an important role, health technology and medical services played only a secondary part, and the report stated that effective vaccines for measles became available only ‘after child deaths from measles had been reduced to almost zero by better nutrition’.
Yet despite malnutrition being the spectre that loomed large in the Unicef reports, Grant was quick to explain vaccines could help with that as well: ‘All infections are nutritional setbacks. Often the climb back to normal weight and growth takes several weeks. Immunisation against the six main infectious diseases of childhood would therefore be a partial “immunisation” against malnutrition itself.’
It was not long after the retirement of Dr Halfdan Mahler, WHO’s director general from 1973-1988, that Unicef, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and other ‘partners’ launched the Children’s Vaccine Initiative (CVI) to encourage developing countries to self-finance their Child Survival Revolution vaccination programmes. This was a significant change of direction. No longer would vaccines be interim aid schemes: they were to be elevated to a strategic priority and meagre health budgets would be redirected to pay for them. The justification made was ‘that the development, introduction, and widespread use of vaccines in industrialised and developing countries have resulted in considerable progress against some of the most devastating infections of humankind.’
Today, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), contrary to the admission in the 1984 Unicef report that vaccines had only a secondary impact on child mortality, claims that the improved socio-economic conditions in industrialised countries only had an indirect impact on disease.
It is more than 20 years since the RF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) joined forces, using the World Bank to create the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), now known as GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance. In the mid-1990s, with new leaders at the helm of both Unicef and the WHO, Dr Seth Berkley, the RF’s associate director of health sciences, proposed to James Wolfensohn, the Rockefeller Foundation trustee appointed to the Presidency of the World Bank (WB) in 1995, that the WB and the RF stage ‘a coup’.
Berkley wanted to replace the CVI, which was failing to live up to the expectations of the vaccine manufacturers: ‘We will have an outside body that can bring in industry [which the World Health Organisation cannot legally do], do advocacy and build a truly international alliance’.
GAVI was officially created ‘to save children’s lives and protect people’s health through the widespread use of safe vaccines, with a particular focus on the needs of developing countries’. Structured as a public-private partnership, largely funded by BMGF and vaccine manufacturers, GAVI’s purpose was reverse the stagnation of the vaccine market, shaping it so more new and underused vaccines could be sold to the developing world.
Until 2017, the WHO modelled vaccine impact estimates for GAVI. However as Gavi’s questions became more strategy and policy-oriented, with a need ‘to better account for uncertainty’ and to be able ‘to estimate the vaccine impact more accurately striving for the highest level of scientific rigour’, GAVI and the Gates Foundation outsourced this modelling work to a consortium led by Professor Neil Ferguson.
The unique selling point of vaccines is that, as products targeted at healthy people, virtually every person on the planet becomes a potential customer and, even better, a repeat customer. Vaccines represent opportunities for continuous growth and profit, unrivalled in the pharmaceutical sector even before Covid-19.
In 2011 when Seth Berkley left the RF to become GAVI’s CEO to oversee the implementation of its ‘Decade of the Vaccine’, vaccines accounted for only 3 per cent of all pharmaceutical sales. But they stood apart from all other pharmaceuticals in one significant way: their sales were growing at twice the rate of any other pharmaceutical product, at 10-15 per cent per annum compared with 5-7 per cent for other products.
A 2013 survey of industry trends prepared by WHO health economist Miloud Kaddar predicted that the global market for vaccines would become an engine of growth for the industry, increasing in market value to $100billion by 2025. In a single year the Covid-19 vaccines alone have eclipsed those projections, generating $150billion revenue for the financial year 2021-2022 according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The revenue growth that Kaddar’s survey found didn’t, however, come from developing countries. It came from persuading all countries, whether industrialised or developing, to target 90 per cent coverage rates for all vaccines on their national immunisation schedules. When he conducted his survey Kaddar found 82 per cent of all sales were in fact to the 15 per cent of the global population living in industrialised countries where living standards are highest and where well-nourished populations have the lowest disease burden. The portion of the world GAVI was meant to be targeting remained a largely untapped market.
GAVI’s first task was to increase surveillance of vaccination coverage, which is the number of people in a population who have been inoculated with specific vaccines as recommended in the immunisation schedules. In 2004, for example, in an effort to hit coverage targets, the UK introduced financial incentives to encourage GP practices to increase vaccination rates for three childhood vaccines and seasonal influenza for four at-risk groups.
Additional financial incentives were offered to NHS Hospital Trusts in 2016 to increase influenza vaccine uptake by frontline staff. Unlike the threatened Covid vaccine mandate, flu vaccination is not compulsory but strongly encouraged as evidenced by NHS England’s suggested incentives: ‘Staff appreciate recognition for their contributions to the health of others and including an incentive or reward aspect to a staff flu vaccination programme can be effective. A small threat can have a big impact. Even something as simple as a sticker to show they have had their jab can be worn as a sign of pride and signal to others that they should have the flu vaccination.’
It heralded the bribery and coercion to come with the Government’s determination to achieve population level Covid vaccine take up.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | CDC, Gates Foundation, GAVI, Rockefeller Foundation |
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On the morning of January 25, 1993, a man named Mir Amal Kansi appeared outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he began assassinating people who were driving their cars into the facility. He ended up killing two CIA employees and wounding three others.
Four years later, FBI agents arrested Kansi in Pakistan and brought him back to the United States.
Kansi was prosecuted in a Virginia state court for murder, where he was convicted and sentenced to die. On November 14, 2002, the state of Virginia executed him.
What I find fascinating in this episode is that under U.S national-security law, when the CIA assassinates people, it isn’t considered murder. But as Kansi’s case shows, when people assassinate CIA officials, it is considered murder.
Kansi gave the reason for his assassinations. No, he didn’t say that he hated America for its “freedom and values.” He said that the reason he was assassinating CIA officials was to retaliate for the fact that the U.S. government was killing people in Iraq and for its role in helping Israel kill Palestinians.
Under U.S. national-security law, U.S. officials can assassinate anyone they want — “communists,” “terrorists,” “bad guys,” “adversaries,” “opponents,” “rivals,” or “enemies.” When they do that, it’s to be called an “assassination” or a “targeted killing.”
Moreover, under the law, U.S. officials can kill whoever they want with economic sanctions, as they were doing with the Iraqi people at the time that Kansi was retaliating. I am reminded of U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.” Those killings weren’t called “murder” of course. They were called unfortunate deaths arising from the sanctions.
U.S. officials also wield the authority to kill whoever they want with invasions of Third-World countries. The people of Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to that. Again, those killings are not considered to be murder. They are considered to be casualties of war.
If, however, anyone retaliates against the national-security establishment by assassinating officials within the national-security establishment, it’s called “murder,” in which case the assassin will be put to death after being accorded a trial.
Of course, this was the law prior to the 9/11 attacks. After those attacks, the law was implicitly amended to provide that the national-security establishment had the option of taking “bad guys” like Kansi to Gitmo, where they could be tortured, held indefinitely without trial, or executed after a kangaroo trial before a military tribunal.
All this hypocrisy goes to show what the conversion from a limited-government republic to a national-security state has done to the consciences of the American people. Most everyone has come to accept the state-sponsored assassinations and deaths arising from sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, and wars of aggression to just be part of the U.S. government’s “foreign policy tools.”
As I pointed out in a recent blog post, however, the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s assassinations constitute murder, just as Kansi’s assassinations do. Why, even Lyndon Johnson referred to the CIA’s assassination program as “Murder, Inc.,” which is precisely what it is. The same goes for deaths arising from sanctions, embargoes, wars of aggression, invasions, and occupations. It’s just plain murder.
Referring to Kansi, Virginia prosecutor Robert F. Horne stated, “I’ve tried an awful lot of killers in my life, and I think he’s the only one I’ve run into that is absolutely proud of what he did. You get a lot of killers who don’t feel all that bad about what they did, but he’s proud of it.”
Apparently Horne has never met any CIA assassins. Like Kansi, they feel really good about their killings and are absolutely proud of what they do. What Horne fails to realize is that even though Kansi is a “bad guy” for assassinating people, that doesn’t convert the CIA assassins into “good guys.”
It’s probably worth mentioning that after Kansi was executed, four American citizens were assassinated in Pakistan in retaliation.
What we need in America is a great awakening, one that involves a revival of individual conscience. When that day comes, Americans will put a stop to the evil within our midst by converting America back to a limited-government republic and putting an end to state-sponsored murder. It will also make Americans traveling overseas a lot safer.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | CIA, Human rights, Iraq, Palestine, United States |
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Slovakia’s parliament has approved a polarizing defense treaty under which the US will use the country’s Malacky-Kuchyna and Sliac air bases for 10 years and pay Bratislava $100 million to modernize them. After a round of loud debates on Wednesday, 79 members of the 150-seat Slovakian legislature backed the agreement, while 60 voted against it.
The deal, signed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Slovakian Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad on February 3, still has to be ratified by the Central European country’s president, Zuzana Caputova, who apparently supports it.
Several political parties have fiercely opposed the agreement, while thousands protested the deal with Washington outside the parliament building in Slovakia’s capital on Tuesday.
Thanking his colleagues for their vote, Minister Nad said: “I’m extremely proud that, despite the pressure from trolls, the fabricated pressure on social media, and organized protests, the members of the [ruling] coalition have realized what is important for the Slovak Republic and the next generations.”
The US and Slovakia are military allies through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The agreement with the US was signed amid the ongoing standoff between the Western military bloc and Russia over Ukraine and the bloc’s expansion in Eastern Europe.
Former Slovak prime minister Robert Fico, whose left-wing SMER-SD party opposes the agreement, promised to collect signatures in order to put the “treasonous” deal up for a referendum. “I believe the citizens of the Slovak Republic will say no to the agreement,” Fico said. “We have handed over our airspace and airports [to be] under the control of the US.”
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | NATO, Slovakia, United States |
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Defense contractors and program advocates have unusual control over what the public sees, leading to bad oversight, or worse.
Withholding information under the guise of classification “undermine[s] our national security, as well as critical democratic objectives, by impeding our ability to share information in a timely manner,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said just last month. The Wall Street Journal, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the Washington Post all agree. But the Defense Department is going in the opposite direction. It is attempting to mask deficiencies in weapons programs — revealed by their own testing — from the public.
This effectively squashes debate and oversight of their programs. The costs come in the form of more expense, additional delays, and underperforming weapons in the hands of our military, which has and will cost lives.
Nickolas H. Guertin, the Defense Department’s newly installed Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), wasted no time undermining his own office by going along with a scheme egged on by the military services to bury information about how the weapons they buy with taxpayer money are actually performing. Mr. Guertin endorsed his office’s new FY 2021 Annual Report, required by law, with wholesale deletions of presumably relevant material deemed not classified, but “Controlled Unclassified Information” (CUI), a category created during the Obama administration but not so dramatically exploited in these reports until now.
Last December, Guertin’s immediate predecessor explained that unclassified information was being removed from the new public report because it “shouldn’t wind up in our adversaries’ hands.” Of course any material that will help enemies should be withheld and reported only in the classified version of the Director’s Annual Report to Congress. However, there is an important class of information that is essential to understand the depth and scope of plusses and minuses in how a weapon has performed in testing and how rigorously it was tested. This is essential to public understanding, and it is that comprehension that drives oversight by Congress, and even the Pentagon, to fix the problems. This is how our system attempts to make sure no seriously flawed systems get into the hands of our forces, which would truly aid the enemy, in addition to endangering our own people.
The unclassified-but-not-for-public-eyes information (a preposterous category in itself) is not an effort to keep the enemy in the dark, but to keep the public in the dark. It stems from advocates of programs in the Pentagon bureaucracy and defense contractors seeking to mask deficiencies. They want to make sure no controversies emerge that might endanger the money flow, even when the problems cost more, cause delays, limit the combat effectiveness of these weapons, and endanger the lives of the troops. That is precisely what the DOT&E law was designed to stop when it was created in 1983 by a group of Republicans and Democrats in Congress over the bitter opposition of the Pentagon leadership and fellow travelers in Congress and industry.
Under the new CUI regime, the omissions are serious. Director Guertin’s report discloses that 22 accounts of weapons and their testing saw information removed by the military services. An article from Breaking Defense discusses what has been deleted, such as whether the defense systems on the Navy’s new $13 billion aircraft carrier can or cannot “detect, track, engage, and defeat the types of threats for which the system was designed.” It is one thing to foolishly disclose a technical flaw an enemy can exploit; it is quite another to disclose that system X, Y or Z cannot do its job — and with enough detail to permit an understanding whether the problem is serious and what fixes must be applied. Keeping that information away from the public simply means that Congress and the Pentagon will be under less pressure to act responsibly — and that the pressure that is applied will be less informed and easier to overcome.
Not among the programs that Breaking Defense found to have been watered down by the withholding of unclassified information was the notorious F-35, suggesting there is a second level of information deletion at work here. Reviewing the F-35 report submitted by Director Guertin, compared to predecessors, reveals a fundamental — even profound — problem.
The Annual Report submitted by DOT&E J. Michael Gilmore in his last report in FY 2016 contained 62 pages of analysis of the F-35. Reports by his immediate successor, Robert F. Behler, varied from 30 to 16 pages. The section of the Guertin report on the F-35 is a whole nine pages. The texts of the previous reports were radically different. They contained multiple tables, details, and explanations for how and why the F-35 was failing to meet its performance and reliability thresholds, let alone combat expectations. Under meaningful explanatory discussion were issues such as the inability of the aircraft to be available for a mission, unpredictable performance in a stressful combat environment, and details like un-commanded maneuvers due to aerodynamic flaws and the gun not shooting where the pilot aimed.
Also reported were the efforts of some in the military services and the F-35 Joint Program Office to incompletely test the aircraft or manipulate test results. None of this shows up in the public Guertin report. Multiple issues, such as the gun, have disappeared, and previous manipulations of the hundreds of deficiencies discovered in the F-35 would appear to be less of a concern today.
There are two problems here, not one: there is the information behind the CUI labeling cover, and information never included in the report because the DOT&E office knew what the military services wanted addressed, and what they didn’t. It is the latter —self-censorship — that appears far more serious than the false classification issue. Why? Because it results in not just the deletion of phrases and sentences, but presumably pages and pages of detail and analysis. On the other hand, those with access to the CUI version of the report can make a comparison, should they choose to do so.
Program advocacy in the Pentagon, much of which is done by defense corporations, is exercising control over the previously more independent and objective reports to Congress and the public on weapons testing. Inadequate public reporting means feeble oversight, plain and simple.
The current Director of the Operational Test Office is new to the job, but he is off to a very poor start. His office was created to contend with the forces arrayed against tough testing and complete, honest reporting, not comply with them. If there is any meaningful oversight in Congress, the redactions in DOT&E Guertin’s recent Annual Report should be fully assessed. More importantly, the prior restraint/self-censorship apparent in producing this and any other DOT&E reports needs to be fully investigated and eviscerated.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Obama, United States |
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