After US President Joe Biden revealed he plans to raise the issue of human rights when he meets his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin next month, Moscow has said it is happy to have the discussion, as long as it goes both ways.
Speaking as part of a press conference on Monday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that “we are ready to talk, we have no taboo topics. We will discuss whatever we think is necessary. We will be ready to answer the questions that the American side will raise. This also applies to human rights.”
However, he said, one issue likely to be on the table is far closer to home for Biden than others might be. “For example, we are following with interest the persecution of those persons who are accused of the riots on January 6 this year” in Washington. There, Lavrov added, “a lot of really interesting things are happening from the point of view of the rights of the opposition and protecting those rights.”
His comments come just a day after Biden declared he would take a tough stance on questions of civil liberties during a Memorial Day speech in Delaware. “I’m meeting with President Putin in a couple weeks in Geneva, making it clear we will not stand by and let him abuse those rights,” he said. “It’s time to remind everybody who we are.”
More than 400 people have been identified as part of investigations into the January 6 attack on the Capitol building, where crowds pushed their way into the legislature, sending politicians and staffers scrambling to safety. Five people died in the incident, including a police officer and a protester shot dead as she attempted to access a secure corridor.
In March, Biden signed into force sanctions against Russian officials that it claimed were behind the jailing of Western-backed opposition figure Alexey Navalny, as well as for alleged “human rights” abuses during the policing of subsequent protests. Moscow rejects these claims and says it considers the case an internal matter.
Biden and Putin will meet for their first in-person summit since the US president took office. The Kremlin has said it expects to raise a number of important issues, but that a “reset” in relations is unlikely.
John Earle Sullivan, 26, is the founder of the racial justice group Insurgence USA. He participated in the 6 January Capitol breach but claims he’s a journalist and was only there to record the protests. Now Sullivan faces a total of eight criminal counts, according to court documents released last week. How will the case pan out for him?
Sullivan was arrested by the DOJ on 14 January in Utah and released conditionally without bail by a federal court, despite prosecutors insisting that the protester remains a danger to the community. Earlier, on 13 July 2020, the Utah resident was charged with rioting and criminal mischief related to his activities around a 30 June 2020 protest during which a civilian was shot and injured.
At that time observers questioned this apparently kid-glove treatment of Sullivan, given that other Capitol protestors like Jacob Chansley, also known as the “QAnon Shaman,” and Richard Barnett, who was photographed with his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, were put behind bars. Barnett was refused bail even though he has no criminal record and faces no violent charges, as American Greatness’ Julie Kelly detailed on 25 May. To date, federal prosecutors have charged over 400 people in connection to the 6 January Capitol breach.
Was Sullivan Deliberately Instigating Riots?
After seizing Sullivan’s funds linked to alleged crimes, the DOJ has now brought additional charges against the racial justice activist, including weapons charges. According to court documents, Sullivan said “Hey guys, I have a knife. Let me up.” In addition to that, the Utah resident was allegedly heard bragging of bringing a megaphone to instigate the riot:
“I brought my megaphone to instigate s**t. I was like, guys we’re going inside, we’re f***ing s**t up…. I’m gonna make these Trump supporters f*** all this s**t up,” Sullivan allegedly told a witness after leaving the Capitol on 6 January.
Sullivan also brought a camera to the Capitol building to record the protests and portrayed himself as a journalist who was documenting the incident. However, investigators have not found any connection or arrangements made between Sullivan and any news organisation prior to the DC incident.
“Sullivan may be the luckiest ‘journalist’ in Washington DC,” says investigative journalist and founder of Crowdsource the Truth Jason Goodman. “He captured stunning, up close footage of Ashli Babbitts’ killing from start to finish. He promptly sold it to CNN and NBC for as much as $90,000. The money has now been seized by the Department of Justice.”
At the same time, the 26-year-old appeared to be actively participating in the breach, calling on others to “burn this s**t down.” “There are so many people. Let’s go. This s**t is ours!” He could also be heard saying, “I am ready bro. I’ve been to too many riots. I’ve been in so many riots.”
The racial justice activist’s support of Trump is questionable given he was seen at a Washington DC racial justice gathering in August, saying: “We gotta… rip Trump right out of that office right there,” and “It’s time for revolution.” At the same time, Black Lives Matter’s Utah chapter earlier disavowed Sullivan, calling him a reckless agitator and a “loose cannon.” Others suggested that he could be a “double agent.”
One of the men who was part of the siege of the Capitol building is John Earle Sullivan, an extreme BLM activist from Utah. He was arrested & charged in July 2020 over a BLM-antifa riot where drivers in Provo were threatened & one was shot. https://t.co/C0WQsEfcIGpic.twitter.com/Kxm5du2Ozs
It is unclear what John Sullivan was doing in the Capitol during the riot, says Goodman, who interviewed him in March 2021. According to the journalist, it’s just as likely that the Utah resident is an adventurist – who has implicated himself by sharing his footage of the breach – or a well-trained provocateur.
Sullivan Was Prepared for the Breach
Goodman draws attention to the fact that Sullivan was well prepared and equipped for the incident: the individual had a camera, megaphone, ballistics vest, tactical pants, and gas mask. Speaking to the journalist on 5 March 2021, Sullivan confirmed that he had known about the upcoming storming of the DC Capitol as it was on “social media prior to this.”
“Wait a minute,” Goodman said. “What do you mean ‘on social media prior to this’? Planning for what happened at the Capitol?”
“Ye-eah,” Sullivan responded. “Flyers have been passed around by various groups saying that they are going storm all Capitols on 6 January.”
Indeed, around 4 January, the racial justice activist posted a livestream on social media saying that he was in DC for forthcoming protests: “It’s going to be massively insane… If it’s a mixture of Trump people and Black Lives Matter people, damn, that’s even more intense for me, that’s something I want to see,” he allegedly said.
Still, most of the crowd that gathered at DC on 6 January apparently had no idea about the forthcoming storming of the Capitol, Goodman notes. The investigative journalist, who did not breach the restricted area with thousands of other Trump supporters on 6 January, points out that only a small minority of demonstrators broke into the Capitol building.
According to Goodman, who talked to the Insurgence USA founder for more than an hour on 5 March, Sullivan appears to be smart and choosing his words wisely while on record. Judging from this, it would be hard to imagine that the 26-year-old did not know about the potential risks associated with entering restricted grounds without permission, let alone recording himself entering the restricted area, according to the investigative journalist.
“Sullivan’s confidence belies his age particularly given the serious legal jeopardy he is in. He behaves like someone who believes he will be ‘protected’. Perhaps this is due to the multiple instances when Antifa groups and racial justice activists were caught and then released last year, or perhaps he knows something we don’t know,” Goodman says.
The Crowdsource The Truth founder does not rule out that not only Sullivan “instigated” rioters on 6 January: apparently, there could be other individuals who, like the 26-year-old, weren’t actually “Trump supporters.”
The Capitol breach has left a lot of unanswered questions, the journalist says. For example, it still remains unclear who planted two explosive devices near the Capitol in Washington, DC ahead of the protests. It’s mind-boggling that this person has not been found yet given the number of surveillance cameras in the US capital.
According to Goodman, the Sullivan case may potentially shed some light on this: “There is a long trial ahead,” he says. “It remains to be seen if Sullivan is simply young, dumb and overconfident or if he indeed has a powerful guardian angel making sure he stays out of trouble.
Throughout Jewish state history, its ruling regimes treated Occupied Palestinians and Arab citizens ruthlessly.
Terrorizing them is longstanding Israeli policy, including daily arrests throughout the Occupied Territories, torture, beatings and other forms of abuse, targeted killings, and justice nearly always denied.
Last week, Al Jazeera reported about “grief and anger (in the al-Amari refugee camp) as women wept, young men chanted with raised fists, and masked gunmen fired into the air during” Ahmed Fahd’s funeral.
According to his family, he was extrajudicially arrested by Israeli undercover agents — then assassinated by multiple shots in the back and legs.
Mortally wounded and bleeding to death in public pre-dawn, he was left to die in Ramallah’s Um al-Shayaret neighborhood last Tuesday.
What happened to Fahd repeats time and again throughout the Occupied Territories, accountability virtually never forthcoming.
Weeping at her son’s funeral, Fahd’s mother mother said he “was shot without mercy.”
According to a Palestinian health ministry spokesman, he was shot multiple times at close range, adding:
“Doctors reported that one of the bullets that entered his back made a 2.5cm entry hole, but when it exited his stomach the hole was 7cm, proving that he’d been shot at close range.”
Israeli soldiers, security forces, and undercover agents use dumdum “butterfly bullets,” Palestinian doctors explained.
They explode on impact, cause severe internal injuries, and make large exit wounds.
Palestinian human rights group Al Haq’s general director Shawan Jabarin said Fahd’s state-sponsored murder was no accident, adding:
His “killing is part of a deliberate Israeli policy of assassinating Palestinians at close range by undercover units known as Musta’ribeen as well as regular troops.”
“The(se) (elements) come into Ramallah nearly every night after 2:00 AM to carry out arrests.”
“There have been a number of cases where Shin Bet intelligence officers phoned the families of Palestinians they killed after shooting them at close range and blocking ambulances from evacuating those critically wounded – young men whom they accused of armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers – saying that ‘the account had now been settled.’ ”
Al Haq documented numerous cases of Israeli state-sponsored assassinations of Palestinians for invented reasons.
Musta’ribeen are ruthless. Arabic speaking, they pose as Arabs to seek out, abduct, and assassinate targeted Palestinians.
According to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), undercover Israelis “pos(e) as protesters and incit(e) the situation.”
They “attack civilians very violently and make severe threats, especially against minors.”
“There have been cases when undercover officers pulled people, including minors, off the street without identifying themselves, which made the arrests look like kidnappings.”
In May alone, Palestinians threatening no one were killed almost daily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — with impunity.
B’Tselem explained that when Israeli security forces kill or otherwise harm Palestinians, “none of those responsible have faced charges.”
Most often, probes aren’t conducted. When initiated, whitewash nearly always follows.
The Israeli Yesh Din human rights group denounced targeted killings of Palestinians, saying:
“The combination of permissive rules of engagement, regarding firing at unarmed protesters and a law enforcement system that prevents genuine, effective investigation of protester deaths, is a lethal one,” adding:
“The result is the unfortunate, unnecessary loss of many lives, a lack of accountability for harming innocents, and the abandonment of (Palestinians) who remain defenseless against the specter of losing their lives.”
A Final Comment
Countless thousands Gazan children were terrorized, traumatized, and severely damaged emotionally from days of Israeli aggression in May.
During round-the-clock IDF terror-bombing and shelling, children endured nightmares.
When bombs detonated overnight, many woke up screaming.
The effects of what happened left permanent scars.
Parents tried to stay strong for their children, but devastation in much of the Strip took a toll on most all its residents.
According to Palestinian psychotherapist Ghada Redwan:
“There are a number of cases suffering from severe panic and intense fear.”
“There are also children whose psychological symptoms are showing up in strong emotions and vomiting.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) explained that Palestinian children who survived the trauma of war likely relive what they endured for some time after it ended.
For some, trauma never ends.
As a boy and adolescent in the 1940s, my next door neighbor was a WW II survivor around my own age.
I was too young at the time to understand why he was different from other neighborhood kids, largely keeping to himself, not playing with me and my other friends.
The trauma of war took its toll on countless numbers who survived the ordeal, developing young children likely affected most of all.
The following article will tackle the phenomenon of racism inside the Israeli society. It will critically analyze the ideology that sustains racism inside the social fabric of Israeli society.
Despite the fact that the manifestation of racism in Israel is distinct and apparent against Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, African refugees and foreign workers, nevertheless, this research article will concentrate on racism that is practiced against the indigenous Palestinian Arabs. Other types will be tackled in a future research article.
Consequently, the following research article will not review aspects and history of Zionist racism against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel, but will be a critical exploration of the reasons and motives that stand behind the phenomenon of Zionist racism.
Definitions of Racism
Racism is, historically, a concept that was developed by Europeans five centuries ago. It has been defined, in various ways, by a number of scholars. Their definitions were neither uniform nor comprehensive.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, racism is,
… the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races”; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioral features; and that some races are innately superior to others. The term is also applied to political, economic, or legal institutions and systems that engage in or perpetuate discrimination on the basis of race or otherwise reinforce racial inequalities in wealth and income, education, health care, civil rights, and other areas…[1]
Moreover, “… the false notion that “white” people were inherently smarter, more capable, and more human than nonwhite people became accepted worldwide. This categorization of people became a justification for European colonization and subsequent enslavement of people from Africa…”[2]
In reality, racism, is a human-manufactured concept that lacks any genuine scientific basis. Furthermore, this concept has been imbibed by the capitalist ruling class to become part of its ruling ideology. According to the leftist Haitian revolutionary, Jan Makandal, racism has a social class dimension. It is
… a system of behaviors regulating in a very oppressive manner the fundamentally antagonistic class relation … for the reproduction of the whole society, in the interest of the dominant classes. Racism is all about class relations and class antagonism. Some ideological behaviors [traditions, customs] do transcend different modes of production and have adapted to the existing mode of production.[3]
The Ruling Zionist Ideology
In their book, “The German Ideology – Theses on Feuerbach”, Karl Marx and Frederic Engels analyzed the ideology of the capitalist ruling classes. They asserted that,
[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.[4]
The bourgeois settler colonial consciousness has been the ruling idea since the establishment of the Zionist colonial project. Through the process of ruling, this settler colonial ideology inculcated inside the social fabric of Zionist society. It spread out to all socio-economic segments of the Zionist settler society. All segments have been affected by it. This settler colonial ideology affected all social classes, including the Jewish working class. As a result, Through the process of racist ideological indoctrination, Jewish workers, have developed false consciousness.
Israeli Jewish workers harbor racist hatred towards Palestinian Arab workers. They do not sympathize with Palestinian Arab workers who are discriminated against, receive lesser wages than the Jewish workers and are more exploited by the Zionist settler bourgeoisie. They also do not see any common interests with the Palestinian Arab workers.
The Zoomorphic Bigotry of Zionist Leaders
As Jewish supremacy becomes entrenched at the highest levels of power and in the collective consciousness of the Israeli masses, their racist leaders voiced it out by means of racial slurs.
In an attempt to dehumanize the indigenous Palestinians, their racial slurs utilized a combination of names of wild animals and insects. The following is only a segment of the racial slurs that were used by Zionist politicians.
After the failure of the Camp David talks with Yasser Arafat, Ehud Barak, the ex-Prime Minister of Israel, described the Palestinians as “… crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more.”[5]
While discussing the resumption of peace talks in a radio interview in 2013, Jewish Home MK and deputy defense minister Eli Ben Dahan described the Palestinians in the following terms. “To me, they are like animals, they aren’t human.”[6]
Likud Member of Knesset Oren Hazan, called the Palestinians “dogs”, “terrorists” and beasts.[7]
Other Zionist leaders have a long history of comparing Palestinians to animals. In a speech to the Zionist parliament, Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin described the Palestinians as “beasts walking on two legs”.[8]
In a speech to Jewish settlers, Zionist Prime Minister Yitshaq Shamir, remarked, that “The Palestinians would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.”[9]
Ex-Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, Raphael Eitan, depicted the Palestinians after colonial settlement as follows. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”[10]
In a speech to the Knesset, Likud minister and leader of the largest settler lobbying group, Yehiel Hazan, declared that “The Arabs are worms. You find them everywhere like worms, underground as well as above… “[11]
The ex-Minister of Justice and one of the leaders of the settler “Jewish Home” party, Ayelet Shaked, depicted, the Palestinians on her Facebook page as “little snakes”.[12] During the 2019 election campaign, ex-Minister Shaked “… released a controversial ad depicting herself as a model in a perfume commercial, spraying herself with scent labelled “Fascism.” At the end she says to the camera, “To me, it smells like democracy.”[13]
Minister of Culture and Sports Miri Regev “… is also known for fueling racism and violence against Palestinians and African refugees. In 2012, she helped incite a wave of anti-African violence, including assaults and arson attacks, targeting people from countries like Sudan and Eritrea, telling an angry mob that asylum seekers “are a cancer in our body.” The same year, she told an interviewer, “I’m happy to be a fascist.” …”[14]
It should be pointed out that an evaluation, very close to a prediction, was voiced out in 2016 by former prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak. During an Israeli TV interview in 2016, Barak declared that Israel has been “infected by the seeds of fascism … What has happened is a hostile takeover of the Israeli government by dangerous elements. And it’s just the beginning. Barak added “This government needs to be brought down before it brings all of us down,”. He concluded by saying that “Life-sustaining Zionism and the seeds of fascism cannot live together”.[15]
On Feb. 9th, 2016, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the construction site of the barrier on the eastern border. During that tour, Netanyahu stated that:
“At the end, in the State of Israel, as I see it, there will be a fence that spans it all … I’ll be told, ‘this is what you want, to protect the villa?’ The answer is yes. Will we surround all of the State of Israel with fences and barriers? The answer is yes. In the area that we live in, we must defend ourselves against the wild beasts.”[16]
In September 2011, Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of settlements in Hebron and Kiryat Arba and head of the West Bank setter rabbis’ council, told a conference that Arabs are “wolves”, “savages” and “evil camel riders.”[17]
It should be pointed out that Zionist settler colonialists `are motivated by a colonialist superiority complex towards the indigenous Palestinians as well as towards the surrounding indigenous Arab nations. Zionist settler colonialists have always depicted their Zionist settler entity as being the “only democracy in the Middle East”. When comparing the Zionist entity with the surrounding Arabs, some Zionist leaders went as far as depicting their entity as a “prosperous modern villa in the jungle”.
In 1996, Ehud Barak, the Zionist Labor Party leader, gave a speech, as foreign minister, to Jewish communal leaders in St. Louis, the United States. His speech included the following “innovative” comparison between Israel and the surrounding Arab world.
“The dreams and aspirations of many in the Arab world have not changed. We still live in a modern and prosperous villa in the middle of the jungle, a place where different laws prevail. No hope for those who cannot defend themselves and no mercy for the weak.”[18]
Barak’s depiction of the surrounding Arab world as a jungle “… has inescapable colonialist undertones… the jungle — a loaded concept, not a scientific designation — represents the limits of European ability to impose order, and thus to make sense of their surroundings…”[19]
Of course, this “jungle” is populated by Arabs whom he regards as predators, beasts and ferocious animals that pose a threat to the Jewish “villa”. Barak did not elaborate why such a “modern and prosperous villa” has developed an apartheid-like colony with an illegal separation wall. He neither explained why this assumed “civilized villa” still commits a number of war crimes such as: torture of Palestinian detainees, assassination of Palestinian leaders, administrative incarceration without trial for Palestinian activists, expropriation of Palestinian-owned land, ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism, national oppression of the indigenous Palestinians, plunder of Palestinian natural resources, massacres of Egyptians, Palestinians and Lebanese, and ongoing aggressive wars against the Arab residents of this “jungle”. So, could we truly and logically consider this aggressive war mongering entity “a villa in the jungle”? or is it in reality nothing but a despicable settler colonial entity that could not but develop its compatible Zionistans.
Moreover, another pretender is Zionist ex-president of Israel and Likud leader Moshe Katsav, who compared the Palestinians with Jews, then pointed out the differences as including the following:
“There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies? Not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbours here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.”[20]
Katsav’s moral convictions were put on test when he was convicted, on December 30, 2010, by an Israeli court of law, of two counts of rape, sexual harassment and obstruction of justice. Katsav was sentenced to seven years in prison. On 7 December 2011, Katsav arrived at Maasiyahu Prison in Ramleh to begin serving his seven-year sentence. He was released from prison, under restrictive conditions, on 21 December 2016, having served five years of his sentence.[21]
In their attempt to appear tough on “security” affairs, Zionist politicians indulged in a “zoomorphic bigotry”[22], in which they depicted the Palestinians with animal and insect names. This animalization of Zionist narrative is very typical of colonial settlers who aim at the dehumanization of the indigenous Palestinian population, a step Zionist settlers deemed necessary for covering up their plunder and for justifying the war crimes they have committed against the indigenous Palestinians.
Consequently, an ingrained racist frame of mind and a clear racist consciousness could be found among segments of Israeli Jews. Such racist way of thinking is typical of white settler societies like colonized French Algeria, Apartheid South Africa, the United States, Australia, and Canada. The following is a brief review of racism among Israeli Jews that was openly expressed in national polls.
Israeli Polls and Racism
In the period 2001-2016, numerous public polls on ethnic cleansing were held in Israel. In a total of thirteen polls, Israeli Jewish citizens openly expressed their support for the removal of Palestinian Arab citizens outside Israel. The percentage of Jewish support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians ranged between 40 percent of the respondents in 2006 to 75 percent in 2015. In the year 2006, a total of “… 40 percent believed that the State should encourage Arabs to emigrate from the country.”[23], while in the year 2015, a total of “… [t]hree-quarters want[ed] the government to prepare a practical plan to encourage Muslim Arab-Israelis to emigrate…”[24]
The distribution of Jewish citizens support for ethnic cleansing ranged between 40-48 percent of the Jewish respondents in five polls and between 50-66 percent of the Jewish respondents in six other polls. In 2006 a total of “…40 percent believe[d] that the State should encourage Arabs to emigrate from the country.”[25], while in 2016 “… 48 per cent of Jewish respondents said Arabs should be removed from Israel…”[26]
Racist Israeli Laws
In 2017, 156 racist laws were presented to the Knesset, out of them 25 were enacted as laws while the rest are still in the process of being prepared for legislation.[27]
According to another source, “[t]here are more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. directly or indirectly, based solely on their ethnicity, rendering them second- or third-class citizens in their own homeland.”[28]
In an attempt to uphold a “… permanent Jewish control of the majority of the land… the Israeli cabinet, in a vote of 17-2, recommended the adoption of a new bill to restrict access to ‘state land’ to Jews only…”[29]
This bill “… was formulated as a response to a High Court decision on 8 March 2000, which upheld the right of Adel and Iman Qaadan, a Palestinian couple from Baqa al-Gharbiyya in the Galilee, to lease a plot of land and build a home in the nearby Jewish “lookout” settlement of Katzir.”
Zionist law-makers assume that once racism and racist practices get regulated by a law, it automatically becomes legitimate, justifiable and acceptable. However, these racist laws allow the state of Israel to slowly drift into an “Apartheid political system” that exists on the ground but still fiercely denied by Zionist apologetics.
This bill actually “… resembles, in principle, South Africa’s 1950 Group Areas Act, under which the vast bulk of the country was reserved for White ownership and occupation…”[30] However, the Israeli government’s endorsement of the bill was in reality the provision of a “… legal backing to a situation that has existed in practice since the establishment of the state.”
Ex-Israeli minister and member of Knesset Shulamit Aloni depicted this law as racist. She added that “[b]y the right of our might, we are acting as a racist nation. South Africa, as well, was white and democratic…”[31]
In 2013, far-right member of Knesset Bezalel Smotrich[32] presented a new law to the Ministerial Committee on Legislation which allowed small Jewish villages of 600 families to set up acceptance boards. This law empowers acceptance boards to bar Palestinian Arab citizens from moving in under the “claim that his or her lifestyle is incompatible with life in the village.”[33]
In January 2021, the Israeli parliament, passed “… a controversial bill declaring that only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country. [T]he bill is unashamedly majoritarian and illiberal…”[34] Moreover, the Hebrew language was declared to be the sole official language and Arabic was relegated to an inferior status.
In accordance with article II of the 1973 “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, apartheid is defined as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”[36]
All settler colonialist projects pursue exclusive and segregationist policies towards the indigenous peoples. One manifestation of these policies is the setting up of apartheid-like structures that exclude the indigenous peoples and keep them outside the settler colonialist demographic perimeters. A number of examples can be cited here. The American settler colonialists set up the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)[37], and the Canadian settler colonialists set up the “Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada”[38], while the South African settler colonialists set up the “Native Affairs Department”[39] or Bureau of Bantu Affairs.
Being a settler colonialist project, the Zionist regime has its own departments of “Arab affairs”. In 1948, Ben-Gurion appointed Bichur Shitreet, a Mizrahi Jew, as ‘Minister for Minorities Affairs’. But in 1949, he dismissed him and imposed a colonial military government on the Palestinian residential areas, then appointed himself as Defence Minister in charge of “Arab affairs”.
Moreover, each Israeli ministry has its own Department of Arab Affairs. Even the Zionist army has its “Druze Battalion” which is exclusively for Palestinian Druze and is called the “Battalion for Minorities” or the Herev Battalion.[40]
The Israeli trade union, the Histadrut, began to accept Palestinian Arab citizens as members only in 1958. Palestinian Arab workers were kept segregated inside the “Arab Department”. Later on, and in an attempt to integrate the Palestinian workers, the Histadrut set up the ‘Department of Assimilation’ so as to assimilate the Arab workers inside the Histadrut.[41]
In April 5, 2016, Voice of Israel Radio, reported that “… when possible maternity wards [in Israeli hospitals] separate between Jews and Arabs.” This fact was reiterated by Member of Knesset Betzalel Smotrich, who added that “it is only natural that my wife will not want to be next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who in 20 years’ time may try to kill her baby.”[42]
Zionist apartheid could, also, be found inside the colonized West Bank. One example that could be cited is that of Brian Walt, an ex-South African Jewish Rabbi. In 2012 Rabbi Brian Walt, the founding executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, led a delegation of American civil rights leaders to the colonized West Bank. While visiting the West Bank city of Hebron, “… Michael Manikin, a leader with the Israeli human rights group “Breaking the Silence”, gestured to Shuhada Street, the street our group was about to walk down, and told us it was a “sterile street” — a street forbidden to Palestinians. Only Jews and other tourists were permitted to walk down the street.”[43]
Upon hearing this, Rabbi Brian Walt reported: “I was horrified. My heart beat fast as tears rolled down my face. As a child growing up in Apartheid South Africa, I was intimately familiar with separate beaches, buses, cabs, entrances to post offices and public benches with “Whites Only” signs. But even in Apartheid South Africa, there were no “sterile streets” that only white people could walk on.”[44]
It is worthwhile to bring out a remark by the editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times of South Africa, Mondli Makhanya, a member of another delegation who concluded his visit to the colonized West Bank in 2009 by remarking, “When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid.”[45]
The Development of the Zionistan Solution
Through segregation, racist laws and military orders, Zionist settlers were provided, by the Zionist colonial administration, with a number of tools, to help them to dominate the indigenous Palestinians. Indigenous land and water resources were expropriated for the exclusive benefit of Jewish settler colons. Indigenous Palestinians were severely exploited, enormously oppressed and collectively punished for struggling to regain their national rights.
Consequently, these Zionist-ruled Palestinian areas inside the West Bank were described by various terms such as: ‘self-rule areas’, ‘autonomous areas’, ‘Palestinian Cantons’, and Palestinian ‘Bantustans’. However, these terms cannot be regarded but as misnomers. They are inadequate and, at the same time, they reveal a lack of a concise term to precisely describe these political entities. Therefore, I decided to call them “Zionistans”, a name that was coined by me to describe the Apartheid-like entity that was developed by Israeli settler colonialists. This new concept is more suitable for their colonial nature and can adequately describe their settler Apartheid-like features.
Consequently, a Zionistan could be defined as: a territory set aside by Israel as a racially segregated entity that was developed specifically for the indigenous Palestinians. These Zionistans were actually designated as: Area-A, Area-B, and Area-C. Then Hebron was subdivided into Area H-1 and Area-H-2. All Zionistans were given partial municipal independence and zero sovereignty. They were made to have full politico-economic subordination to Israel.
Concluding Remarks
Within the sea of fragmentation, disintegration and manufactured political chaos that was developed by Western imperialism, the leaders of the Zionist settler colonialist state developed the concept of the “Jewish State”, that was later ‘upgraded’ to the slogan of the “Jewish Democratic State”. Zionist and imperialist strategists planned the Middle East region to become conducive for the growth of sectarian, weak and waring entities. Inside this conglomeration of waring entities, the vicious Zionist sectarian entity was supposed to dominate them politically, economically and militarily. Moreover, this narrow Jewish sectarian state would look to outside observers, as a normal sectarian entity situated among a sea of sectarian entities. Therefore, it was extremely important to destroy the national state of Syria and Iraq, a step that preceded sectarianism and was necessary for its founding.
In conjunction with that colonial target, Western imperialism launched in 2011 its counter-revolution in Iraq and Syria. They brought into occupied Iraq a collection of bands of Muslim thugs, killers, rapists, robbers and pyromaniacs that were picked from various Muslim and Arab societies. Members of these criminal bands were trained by the CIA, the Mossad, the secret services of Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. A well-developed plan of destruction was provided to them and they began their diabolical destruction of the state structures and institutions of Iraq and Syria. They hoped that once the unifying state structures were dismantled, sovereignty would disappear and disintegration would appear. Only in this conducive environment can the Zionist sectarian entity thrive and prosper.
But, due to Israel’s ongoing colonial Zionistan project, the slogan of the Jewish State began to erode then it transformed itself into the Jewish Democratic State, a kind of Jewish fallacy. This metamorphosis was eloquently expressed by the American writer Richard Silverstein.
“The “Jewish” gave “democracy” a knockout, smashing it to the canvas. Israelis want more and more Jewish and less and less democracy. From now on don’t say Jewish democracy. There’s no such thing, of course. There cannot be. From now on say Jewish state, only Jewish, for Jews alone. Democracy – sure, why not. But for Jews only.” [46]
Finally, the Zionist capitalist regime of settler colonialism is the cardinal source of racism in Israel. Capitalist colonialist racism incorporates all layers, segments, and classes of Israeli society: secularist, religious, Ashkenazi’s and Afro-Asians, Zionist left and Zionist right, kibbutz members, workers, bourgeoisie, settlers, military, civilians, and politicians.
Dr. Zuhair Sabbagh is a retired professor of sociology who use to work at Birzeit University in the colonized West Bank. He is a resident of Nazareth, Israel. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Manchester and is author of a number of books and research articles.
[7] Deger, Allison, “Israeli lawmaker calls Palestinians visiting relatives in Israeli prison ‘beasts’ and ‘human scum’ ”, http://mondoweiss.net, 26-12-2017
[8] Quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”, New Statesman, 25 June 1982. As reproduced by Yahoo/Answers, “what do you think of these quotes from Israelis about Palestinians?”, https://answers.yahoo.com. Retrieved on: 17-2-2021
[9] As quoted by the New York Times, April 1, 1988. Reproduced by Yahoo/Answers, “what do you think of these quotes from Israelis about Palestinians?”, https://answers.yahoo.com. Retrieved on: 17-2-2021
[10] Yahoo/Answers, “what do you think of these quotes from Israelis about Palestinians?”, https://answers.yahoo.com. Retrieved on: 17-2-2021
[15] Channel 10, as quoted by Haaretz, “Israel Has Been Infected by the Seeds of Fascism, Says ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak”, http://www.haaretz.com, 20-5-2016
[20] Katsav, Moshe, as reported by The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001. Quoted by Israel Forum, “Israeli quotations about Palestinians”, www.israelforum.com, Copyright 2010
[32] Bezalel Smotrich is ideologically affiliated with the late Meir Kahana who called for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinian Arabs. Smotrich, along with Atamar Gvier another Kahanist, are currently members of the Netanyahu coalition camp. They both support the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arabs (ZS).
The first major battle between the United States Army and the People’s Army of Vietnam occurred in 1965 in the Ia Drang Valley. The US Army’s 7th Cavalry helicoptered into Central Vietnam to search for enemy forces. This led to a major battle that was hailed as a great victory because far more Vietnamese were killed. This was the first in a series of Pyrrhic victories for the United States. A Pyrrhic Victory is term from Roman times that refers to battles that inflict such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat.
The US National Intelligence Agency received support from Denmark in spying on European politicians, according to a new joint media report, something President Joe Biden is well-informed to answer for, says Edward Snowden.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank Walter-Steinmeier are among those who were spied on by the NSA with the cooperation and help of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE), according to the European media investigation.
The US spying on not only its own citizens, but also leaders in foreign countries is an accusation that came to light in 2013, mostly thanks to documents leaked by former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower – though he remains a fugitive in the US – Edward Snowden. Snowden’s leaks specifically revealed Merkel’s private cell phone had been monitored by US authorities.
The new revelations come as a result of multiple European news outlets – including Danish state broadcaster DR, German NDR, Swedish SVT, Norwegian NRK and French Le Monde among others – obtaining access to internal reports and information from Danish Secret Service sources.
According to the investigation, politicians in Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France and even Danish finance industries were also targeted by the NSA with the help of Danish spies. The Danish government has reportedly known about the cooperation for years and forced FE leadership to step down in 2020 after discovering the full extent of the relationship following an internal investigation. They did not, however, report the findings to any European Union allies.
The spying was primarily done through hijacking Danish electronic communications systems as the country has landing stations for subsea internet cables between numerous countries, such as Germany and Sweden. By using politicians’ and officials’ phone numbers, authorities were able to pull texts and phone calls, while those being spied on were none the wiser.
Snowden, who made his revelations about the NSA while Biden was vice president, says the current president is “well-prepared” to answer the accusations and that there should be a requirement of “full disclosure” from both Denmark and the US.
“Biden is well-prepared to answer for this when he soon visits Europe since, of course, he was deeply involved in this scandal the first time around,” he tweeted. “There should be an explicit requirement for full public disclosure not only from Denmark, but their senior partner as well.”
In response to explosive reports, Norway’s Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said they were “taking the allegations seriously,” while Sweden’s Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist said he “demanded full information on these things.” Neither the NSA nor the Danish Defence Intelligence Service have issued a comment yet.
Former German opposition leader and Merkel rival, Peer Steinbrück, who also reportedly had his communications monitored, told German broadcaster ARD that he considers the situation to be a “scandal.”
“It is grotesque that friendly intelligence services are indeed intercepting and spying on top representatives of other countries,” he said.
Israeli forces killed a 16-year-old boy, Islam Burnat, from the West Bank village of Bil’in earlier in May and have since “terrorized” local families by raiding their homes and arresting children.
“Two of my sons are now imprisoned and [the Israeli authorities] haven’t even explained why,” Iyad Burnat, a Palestinian non-violent resistance activist, told me in an interview about current events taking place in his village, Bil’in, 12km west of Ramallah.
Burnat, the head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall, is a well-known activist who I met during my stays in the occupied Palestinian territories. I lived in his family home for two months in 2017 and have since visited him upon returning to the West Bank.
Iyad’s family, as I have personally witnessed on the ground, are routinely targeted by the Israeli forces, most likely due to his active participation in leading international delegations and touring them around Bil’in.
As Israeli-Palestinian tensions escalated earlier this month, large-scale protests took place throughout the West Bank, which triggered a mass campaign of arrests by the Israeli military. During the recent 11-day conflict, at least three Palestinian children were killed in the West Bank, as well as 66 in Gaza.
I asked Iyad how the protests in his village had taken shape and whether he was surprised by the Israeli response.
“In Bil’in, we have had ongoing demonstrations since 2005 – at first, it was everyday and after a while once per week – to protest against the wall and settlements. You know, everyone from Bil’in would join this non-violent demonstration, men, women, children and many internationals even attended,” he explained.
I have covered many of the demonstrations in Bil’in and although violence was regularly used by the Israelis to put down protests, this time it was different. “They were going crazy,” as Hamde Abu Rahma, a local photojournalist covering the protests, put it.
Following these protests, the early morning arrest campaigns began, of which Iyad’s family was one of the primary targets. Israeli forces stormed his home three times recently.
“The first time the Israelis came was on May 17, to arrest Abdul-Khaliq (Iyad’s 21-year-old son), but he wasn’t at home at the time. They came at 3am and destroyed everything in our house, they told me that if I didn’t give him to them they would shoot and kill him, then return to my home every single night,” said Iyad.
“They destroyed the chairs, they destroyed the televisions, they destroyed anything they put their hands on and were searching the entire house, they destroyed the kitchen, tables and threw our clothes everywhere. Later my son Abdul-Khaliq was forced to surrender himself to the Israeli military.
“On the same night my son Mohammed was home, the soldiers took him to a separate room and beat him everywhere on his body, the blood was streaming down his face after the beating,” Iyad added.
I asked him whether the Israeli military had told him what they were searching for, and he said that they gave no reply when he asked them.
“We’ve had many of these invasions of our home, all are similar and we are used to it,” Iyad said.
The very next day, at a demonstration in the village, young Islam Burnat was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. Islam was a close relative of Iyad’s. I asked him about what he had witnessed that day.
“The demonstration was to stand with the people of Gaza and demand an end to the killing, to support Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah. Islam was one of the children who were peacefully protesting. Then, suddenly, one angry soldier came and started shooting live ammunition, the soldier took aim and shot him in his head,” Iyad said.
“We all knew Islam and my children grew up with him, I remember him as a baby and I remember him from very young going to the non-violent demonstrations,” he said, holding back tears.
The soldiers later returned twice to Iyad’s family home, again raiding it, arresting his 17-year-old son Mohammed during the early hours of May 18.
“Abdul-Khaliq and Mohammed are now in al-Moskobiya prison in Jerusalem, we didn’t hear anything from him until now, the lawyer can’t even visit him and neither can our family,” he said.
Al-Moskobiya detention facility in West Jerusalem is infamous for its alleged underground holding cells and has a reputation for being the worst Israeli prison in terms of the level of torture allegedly used there during interrogations.
“After they took Abdul-Khaliq and Mohammed, my wife and my daughter don’t sleep, the tears haven’t left my wife’s eyes,” says Iyad. “My youngest son Mohyaldeen is growing up seeing nothing but violence. He knows his eldest brother Majd was shot and almost died, his second-eldest brother Abdul-Khaliq was also shot many times and imprisoned when he was only 17-years-old for 13 months. He has seen nothing but violence and even though it’s normal for these things to happen now, he still gets scared, he’s just a little child.”
For both of his sons and three others who have been arrested in the village of Bil’in, Iyad said that the Israeli authorities are asking for a $1,500 fine each. However, even if this is paid in full, there is no way of telling how long they will be kept in administrative detention where they are being held without charge.
Israel’s military court system is well known to be comprised of kangaroo courts, as they have a near 100% conviction rate, meaning that whatever they charge a Palestinian with, they may be sent to jail regardless of whether they are truly guilty or not.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News and Press TV.
U.S. President Joe Biden has given every indication so far that U.S. policies on Cuba will not veer away from those of the Trump Administration. In March this year, U.S. officials told Reuters that Cuba is not a top foreign policy item for Biden. The statement was left open to interpretation until now, when the current U.S. administration decided to retain Cuba on the unilateral and defaming U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The conditions for removal are very much based on how much U.S. influence the listed country will allow – in other words, becoming a U.S. accomplice in foreign policy is a must.
This week, a note signed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was published, which stated, “I hereby determine and certify to the Congress that the following countries are not cooperating fully with United States anti-terrorism efforts.” Cuba was listed, along with Iran, Syria, Venezuela and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs unequivocally rejected Blinken’s stance: “This is a totally unfounded and political accusation that tries to justify aggression against Cuba, including the inhumane economic, commercial and financial blockades which our people have suffered.”
Cuba has been a victim of U.S. terrorism and invasions since the triumph of the Cuban revolution. Recently on social media, the Central Intelligence Agency drew attention to a commemorative coin which was created to mark an anticipated victory at the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, which ended in failure 72 hours later. The CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba spouted the same rhetoric that is being used by the current administration to justify its oppression of Cuba. Only the U.S. can determine what freedom means for Cuba, in imperialist rhetoric, and the Biden administration is not letting go of the narrative that has suited the U.S. so well.
In case the U.S. needs a reminder, Cuba raised its responsibilities against all forms of terrorism in the new national constitution adopted in 2019. Article 16 (1) of Chapter II of the constitution states that Cuba “rejects and condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, in particular state terrorism.”
At an international level, Cuba signed the Code of Conduct Towards Achieving a World Free of Terrorism in 2018. It has also declared itself committed to implementing the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
The issue is not Cuba’s commitment to fighting terrorism, but the U.S. inability to accept an independent, socialist sovereign state that has resisted against interference, despite all odds against it. When in 1998, Cuba’s State Security had notified the U.S. of terror activities against the island being planned by dissidents in Miami, the FBI made no move against the planned terror and proceeded to arrest the Cuban Five instead. Likewise, the U.S. never targeted the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) – a powerful lobby group involved in many attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro. Neither did the U.S. take action against well-known terrorists Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both trained by the CIA.
It is more pertinent to ask why a powerful country that has sponsored so much global terror remains unchallenged in its designations of countries allegedly funding terrorism. The Biden Administration is prioritising Cuba in its foreign policy, but going about it in a backhanded manner. By maintaining Trump’s designation, Biden is taking an active part in attempting to diplomatically isolate Cuba, apart from upholding the ramifications of the illegal U.S. blockade on the island.
Rather than assume that the diplomatic rhetoric about “reviewing” Trump’s designation indicates a possible change in U.S. relations with Cuba, it might be better to hold the Biden Administration accountable to its actions. After all, Biden was voted in as an alternative to Trump. How well is that working in terms of U.S. foreign policy?
A sea change is underway. Ten years ago, it was heresy to propose that a ketogenic (a.k.a low carb high fat) diet was in any way healthier than the low fat high carb diet supported by public health authorities. It was branded a “gimmick” diet. In some places, doctors who prescribed it to their patients risked having their medical licenses revoked.
The German physicist Max Planck is often misquoted as having said that “science advances one funeral at a time”. Well, the man who gave birth to the low fat high carb dogma, Ancel Keys, died in 2004. His first generation of acolytes have now joined him in oblivion. The men (they were with very few exceptions all men) who created the current dietary guidelines back in the late 70’s and early 80’s are also gone, after having presided over a massive explosion in the number of people suffering from obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The newer generations of nutrition researchers do not appear to be as wedded to the old dogma. This is visible in the increasing number of studies being published on a ketogenic diet. Some of these are even appearing in the most prestigious and conservative nutrition journals.
One such study was recently published in Advances in Nutrition, a journal owned by the American Society for Nutrition. It was a systematic review looking at randomized trials of a ketogenic diet as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, which is the most common cause of dementia. We’re going to get to that study in a minute, but first, a little detour.
There is some evidence to support the notion that dementia can in part be caused by a high carbohydrate diet. An observational study was published back in 2012 in The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease in which 937 elderly people were followed for four years. The median age at the start of the study was 80 years, and at the beginning, all the participants were asked to fill in a diet questionnaire and were also evaluated for cognitive function. Four years later, 200 of the 937 participants had developed some level of cognitive impairment.
When the researchers correlated this with dietary carbohydrate intake, they found that the quartile with the highest intake had an 89% increased relative risk of developing cognitive impairment during the four years of follow-up, as compared to the group with the lowest intake. And that’s after adjusting for known confounders like gender, BMI, co-morbidities, and APOE4 status (APOE4 is a gene variant that is strongly associated with increased risk of Alzheimer disease). The difference was statistically significant (p-value 0.004).
The quartile with the highest fat intake, on the other hand, had a 56% decreased relative risk of cognitive impairment as compared to the quartile with the lowest fat intake (p-value 0.03).
Interestingly, the differences between the quartiles in terms of carbohydrate and fat consumption weren’t actually that big. The highest quartile in terms of carbohydrate consumption was getting more than 58% of calories from carbohydrates, while the lowest quartile was getting less than 47%. Not a huge difference. The same was true for fat intake. The quartile with the highest fat intake was getting more than 35% of calories from fat, while the quartile with the lowest fat intake was getting les than 27%. This would seem to suggest that even relatively modest differences in consumption of carbohydrates and fats can have big effects on cognitive function over time, and that an even bigger reduction in relative carbohydrate intake might have achieved an even bigger reduction in risk of cognitive impairment.
Of course, this was an observational study, and although the results are suggestive, it can’t prove the existence of a cause and effect relationship between carbohydrate/fat intake and dementia. The results could have been caused by residual confounders that the researchers were not able to adjust for. For proof of a cause-effect relationship you need randomized controlled trials. Which is where the recent systematic review published in Advances in Nutrition comes in. As mentioned earlier, it was looking at the randomized trials that exist of a ketogenic diet as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment.
Ten trials were identified, with a total of only 456 participants, which really shows how under-researched this area is. And things get worse. Only three of the trials, with a total of only 47 participants, were actually testing a ketogenic diet (i.e. a diet in which carbohydrates are restricted to the point where the body significantly increases production of ketone bodies). The rest were testing supplements containing medium chain triglycerides (MCT’s), which the body preferentially converts to ketones. From my perspective, these are two very different interventions. A ketogenic diet has many different effects on our metabolism, and I am inclined to believe that the beneficial effects come primarily from the reduction in carbohydrates and insulin, not from the increase in ketones.
Taking an MCT containing supplement is obviously not the same thing as following a ketogenic diet. The seven studies of ketogenic supplements were, with only one exception, either funded by companies that sell supplements, or they failed to disclose their funding (which means they were probably funded by companies that sell supplements). Most of these studies were never registered at clinicaltrials.gov, and of the ones that were, this was done after the trials were already underway, which is highly suspect behaviour, because it means the researchers could know wether the trials were going well or not before they let the world know about them. In other words, it’s possible they were simultaneously running other trials that weren’t going so well, and that were therefore never posted on clinicaltrials.gov, which could lead to massive publication bias.
The three small studies of a ketogenic diet compared it with the traditionally recommended low fat high carb diet. One of the three ran for twelve weeks, while the other two ran for six weeks, so these were short term interventions. In terms of outcomes, there were improvements in some of the cognitive functions tested, but not in others. Overall, the results really don’t tell us anything useful, as you would expect from tiny trials run for short periods of time.
The seven studies of MCT supplements appeared to show some benefit in terms of cognitive function in Alzheimer patients, although the fact that these were mostly industry funded studies, that weren’t pre-registered at clinicaltrials.gov, makes the results hard to trust. Strangely, the systematic review only reports whether there was a “benefit” or not, but not what the size of the benefit was, or whether it was statistically or clinically significant. This feels like a rather weird omission in a systematic review. So I decided to look up the two biggest trials, with 152 and 131 participants respectively. According to the systematic review, the first showed an “improvement” in ADAS-Cog (a test of cognitive function used in Alzheimer’s disease) and MMSE (a test for dementia), while the second showed an “improvement” in ADAS-Cog .
When we look at the first of these trials, we find that the difference between the group getting MCT and the placebo group at 104 days (the longest follow-up) was less than one point on the 70 point ADAS-Cog scale. One point on a 70 point scale is not a noticeable difference. Additionally, the difference wasn’t statistically significant. In other words, there was no clinically meaningful or statistically significant difference between the groups on ADAS-Cog. If we move on to MMSE, we find no difference whatsoever between the groups. Yet this study is reported as being “positive” in the systematic review. Odd.
When I moved on and looked at the second of these trials, I immediately realized that it was just a duplicate report of the same study, with a few new analyzes of the same data set. Researchers often do this, to maximize the number of publications they can get out of one data set (since career success in research is largely determined by number of publications). How the authors of the systematic review didn’t realize this is beyond me.
So basically, one negative study was reported as two positive studies in the systematic review. And these were the two “big” studies, supposedly representing 62% of the participants in the systematic review. All the other studies were much smaller.
This weirdness really makes me wonder about the motives of the authors of the systematic review. No conflicts of interest were reported, and they reported receiving no specific funding to carry out the review. But seriously, they went through all this data in detail and didn’t realize that they were looking at the same data set twice! And then, to top it off, Advances in Nutrition, the fourth highest ranked nutrition journal, went ahead and published it, no questions asked!
This really speaks to the poor state of nutrition research more than anything else, and to the low added value provided by the process of peer review. If peer review was the rigorous process that the general public thinks it is, this nonsense would have been noticed and called out, and the article wouldn’t have been published.
What can we conclude?
Athough I am a strong proponent of a ketogenic diet as an effective therapy for metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes, and therefore think it’s likely that it also has beneficial effects in terms of preventing or delaying dementia (which is far more common in people suffering from these diseases), the evidence that exists today cannot prove that that is the case. Nor does the current evidence support the use of MCT supplements as a way to treat or prevent dementia.
Joining me today is Dr. Hodkinson, here to discuss the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines, the possibility of infertility, and the very real concerns about the vaccine-induced spike proteins and what new scientific research is clearly suggesting about their risks to your health.
Vaccines could cause “mass male infertility”, Anthony Fauci is a “dead man walking” and the inquest into the pandemic will leave “blood in the gutter” with reputations torn to shreds for their sheer “idiocy”.
“When the history of this madness is written, reputations will be slaughtered and there will be blood in the gutter“
Dr Roger Hodkinson says there is “sufficient evidence in the literature” to show the spike protein expresses in the placenta and the testes – and could kill unborn babies in current pregnancies and permanently stop men having children.
He also said no one should listen to the likes of Prince Harry advocating the jab because he has “nothing between his ears”.
Dr Hodkinson is a pathologist by training, with a wealth of knowledge in infectious disease, virology and evidence-based medicine, who was educated at Cambridge University and University College Hospital Medical School in London, before moving to Canada in 1970 and training at the University of British Columbia.
He came to notoriety for his speech to the Edmonton City Council on November 13 last year regarding their vote on extending mandatory mask orders, saying the response to Covid was “the biggest hoax perpetrated on an unsuspecting public”.
And now, despite describing the vaccines as “incredibly smart theories”, Dr Hodkinson has issued another impassioned plea, calling for a halt to the rollout in order to carry out further investigations.
He said:
“I’m a serious evidence-based career pathologist who has done everything in pathology at national and provincial levels and I take evidence-based science very, very seriously. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I’m not an anti-vaxxer, I’m none of the above. But when I see certain things in the literature that could – underlined – have serious potential long-term sequelae, I think it’s my duty to stand up and blow the whistle and say ‘hey, stop the train, have you seen this? It needs to be looked at. I hope it’s wrong but show me the data’.
The data I’m talking about is well-described in the literature, that of the significant expression of the ACE 2 receptor in both the placenta and the testes. And more importantly, in the testes it’s the cells that actually produce the spermatozoa, the precursors, called spermatogonia. Clearly there is an excess of spike protein circulating as a result of an unexpected surge in some people who get the vaccine.
And that circulation takes the spike protein everywhere, including the placenta of women who happen to be pregnant at the time, which is a one-time hit for that particular pregnancy, probably not for subsequent ones. But there is also potential for a hit on the testes, which of course is not a one-time hit, it could be a permanent hit.
In a world where we know that sperm counts have dropped 40 per cent over the last 10 or 20 years – a massive unexplained drop in sperm counts – we don’t need some additional hits on male fertility.
There have been disturbing reports, to be verified, of increased miscarriages following vaccination. I’m concerned about that for sure but I’m more concerned of the potential of male infertility which could be permanent. A lot of this is could, maybe etc, etc, it’s merely appropriate caution given the scientific literature.
You cannot test for fertility in a trial that lasts six months. Last time I checked, pregnancy lasts nine months. And in order to test for sequential pregnancies and the need for longer-term fertility studies, it cannot be done outside of a two-to-four years window, which is the normal time frame for a new vaccine trial.”
Over the past few days, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has described as “great news” the fact that all aged 32 and over can now book their Covid vaccine, repeating the mantra that it is both safe and effective. And the call to vaccinate children is growing louder, with Hancock saying last week: “I’ve been closely following the results from the clinical studies from Pfizer that show that the vaccine is safe and effective among children between the ages of 12 and 18.”
Dr Hodkinson said:
“It is absolutely outrageous. Look, children are not dying of this condition, at least in my own province, there have been no deaths under 19 recorded at all. It is the same internationally.
Children are not dying of this condition first of all, they are not even suffering from this condition. The vast majority just brush it off without even knowing they’ve got it. So it’s not a problem for children. And if it’s therefore not any more of a problem than a trivial cold for children, then why in God’s name are we subjecting them to an untested vaccine? It is not an emergency, it is not needed and it has potential complications on fertility and therefore it’s utterly reckless.
It could be described as the single event in medical malpractice in medical history, because there is no informed consent. For them to say a single word with four letters without any qualifiers at all, to say that this is safe is a massive distortion of not just the English language but makes you extremely culpable in court, if they weren’t protected by statute for being sued as bureaucrats and politicians. Any individual physician who did that would be hauled before his college before he could spit for failure of informed consent.
Vaccinating children is absolutely obscene – obscene. They are not at threat and you are putting them at risk.”
The level of coercion, however, is also on the increase. The NHS app has now morphed into a Vaccine Passport and there are discussions taking place this week – including with football’s Premier League – to introduce them at domestic level. Royal Ascot could be used as a pilot for the scheme.
Nevertheless, Prince Harry, who moved to America for more privacy but who has bathed in the limelight ever since, appeared at a Vax Live event calling for people to get the jab.
Dr Hodkinson said:
“If he had anything between the ears he might be worth listening to. Who cares what film stars and royalty say about this? They are all congenital idiots in my opinion.”
“Let me just paint the big picture here for the contrast between vaccinations and other forms of therapies. If in fact this is an emergency as they claim, which I contest, but let’s take their word for it, they are using it to vaccinate people without an appropriately tested vaccine. If you accept that a potentially dangerous vaccine, for which there is growing evidence of danger, contrast that with the prohibition of physicians to prescribe ivermectin, or vitamin D for that matter.
Here we have individual physicians relating to their individual patients who are traditionally expected to give a judgment for the patient to decide in full consent. But ivermectin has, on paper, enormous evidence of effectiveness, while at the same time, in contrast to the vaccine, shown to be incredibly safe, billions of doses over many years of use.
So here we have an agent that, OK it may not be effective, we accept that, it’s still an uncertainty to a certain degree, but it may work and it is safe. So you can’t have it both ways. If you’re saying you’re vaccinating people because it’s an emergency, you should take the dogs off physicians to allow them to decide individually if an agent is potentially effective and should be used because it is safe. You can’t have it both ways.”
Dr Hodkinson does not believe many of the theories out there and says what is happening is nothing more than politicians refusing to admit that they are wrong. He said:
“They are constantly trapped in a mistake of their own making in which they cannot admit they were wrong and therefore they double down on it. It’s nothing more than that and they can’t fess up. And so they want to wrestle this to the ground – zero Covid and all that idiocy that from a scientific perspective is ludicrous. It cannot conceivably happen.
This virus is everywhere. It’s in an aerosol in every aisle in every foodstore whether you are walking past someone or not. It’s the roulette game of life, you may get it, you may not. And if you get it and you’re under 65 and you’re otherwise well, it’s going to be nothing more than the regular flu, except for a small number of people who sadly are going to get a severe infection and some of them will die. It is really tragic and I’m not being callous saying this but it happens every single year with the flu. In fact children die of the flu every year.
There is a greater risk of a teacher driving to school and dying of a head-on collision than there is of a teacher dying of Covid that she thinks she might have caught in the school. So do we take cars off the road? No we don’t do we. We live with the risk of a head-on collision every time we pass a car on the road. It’s part of the risk of everyday life. These Governments want to control every single risk of life. And this is merely one example.
I do not think this is some big internationally coordinated conspiracy by the great resetters, not at all. Are they taking huge advantage of it? Unquestionably. And despicably so. But as to why it is being maintained, I think you have to look at a number of factors. The first way it is being maintained is because of asymptomatic testing showing a huge number of false positives, certainly when you start getting up to cycle thresholds above 35, the vast majority, 90 per cent, are false positives.
That drives a graph in the morning paper that supports the hysteria in the population because they haven’t got any information to counter what’s going on. And the politicians use those graphs to double down on the idiocy that’s already underway.
It’s now morphed from lockdowns into vaccines and then it will morph again into vaccine passports, all in lockstep. But the second reason the hysteria in continuing is the ruthlessly efficient international censorship of the three usual sources of information for the general public outside of Government and that is individual politicians, who have been kicked out of their party, at least in Canada, for daring to speak up, the journalists, mainstream media is corrupt internationally, at least in Canada, they have been bribed into silence by money being chucked at them by the bucketload – you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. But more importantly physicians, who are the most respected and best source for the general public for anything that is relevant to this issue.
Listen, I’m in the game here and you cannot imagine how petrified – I’m using that word advisedly – how petrified physicians are in this country of their regulatory bodies, so-called colleges of physicians and surgeons. They have the ability to take away your livelihood by a click of the finger.
It’s like the star chamber of the middle ages, you’re guilty until proven innocent, you have to fund your own defence and they have a history of winning or bankrupting you along the way. So the typical physician shuts up.
It’s not just the colleges who may censor you, it’s the institutions in which you work who can deny you privileges. At least with the college there is the chance to contest the decision. With institutions that award you privileges to operate for example, they have a hotline directly to the ministries and it wouldn’t be recorded, it would just be “get this guy” click. And you’re done. You’re done. You don’t operate any more.
But this is the classic situation of politicians honouring that most important principle in politics – never apologise, you simply morph it into something else and you move on. They got themselves into this hole immediately because of that idiot at Imperial College London, Neil Ferguson, who’s not a physician or an epidemiologist, he is a theoretical physicist, he was notoriously wrong by an order of magnitude in his predictions from previous epidemics and no one internationally did due diligence on his latest idiocy based upon largely the things that were going on with the elderly in Milan.
They all assumed it was Armageddon coming. With the speed of modern communication the media picked that up, the media gorges on crises and that basically landed on every premier and prime ministers desk the next morning with the demand of their No2 that something must be done that is visible that I’m doing something because Armageddon is coming.
So they did all this stupid stuff for which there is no evidence in the medical literature whatsoever for effectiveness and when it was shown not to be working they simply doubled down on it, again and again. It’s the classic situation as I said of politics playing medicine, which is an extraordinarily dangerous game.
But I don’t think it [the virus] was an intentional leak by the lab in Wuhan, it’s certainly a consequence of Gain of Function research that Anthony Fauci directly funded. It’s a made-in-USA virus. So they dug themselves into this hole and rather than admitting it and apologising and getting back to normal like they are in Florida quite effectively, most jurisdictions are simply doubling down on the idiocy and hoping it will go away because it always does in the summer when the sun comes up and we all start making vitamin D again.
But they will claim they rattled it to the ground because the cases were dropping. The classic fallacy trap is of course that just because B follows A doesn’t mean that A caused B and they will claim credit for the disappearance over the summer.
That is why we are in this ongoing mess is because they didn’t put their big pants on and say ‘I was wrong’ and just doubled down on it.
Look at Fauci, if one mask doesn’t work, well maybe two or three or perhaps 10. If you wear 10 I guarantee you will not get Covid because you will actually be dead of hypoxia. Let me tell you explicitly: masks don’t work. Period. Period. Nothing works. Nothing could work. Nothing did work. And nothing will work. It should be life as normal with personal responsibility used to control it in the usual way.“
The Government has admitted for the first time that Sellafield ‘is a source of plutonium contamination’ across the country. Public Health Minister Melanie Johnson has revealed that a study funded by the Department of Health discovered that the closer a child lived to Sellafield, the higher the levels of plutonium found in their teeth.
Johnson said: ‘Analysis indicated that concentrations of plutonium… decreased with increasing distance from the west Cumbrian coast and its Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant – suggesting this plant is a source of plutonium contamination in the wider population.’ Johnson claimed the levels of plutonium are so minute that there is no health risk to the public. But this is disputed by scientists, MPs and environmental campaigners who have called for an immediate inquiry into how one of the world’s most dangerous materials has been allowed to continue to contaminate children’s teeth. There have long been claims of clusters of childhood leukaemia around Sellafield.
In the late 1990s researchers collected more than 3,000 molars extracted from young teenagers across the country during dental treatment and analysed them. To their surprise they found traces of plutonium in all the teeth including those from children in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Alarmingly, they discovered that those living closer to Sellafield had more than twice the amount of those living 140 miles away.
Plutonium is a man-made radioactive material and the only source of it in Britain is from Sellafield. The plant, which reprocesses nuclear fuel from reactors, still discharges plutonium into the Irish Sea.
The original research was carried out in 1997 by Professor Nick Priest who was working for the UK Atomic Energy Authority. At the time the conclusions of the research received little attention because the study concluded that the contamination levels were so minuscule they were thought to pose an ‘insignificant’ health risk.
But earlier this year the Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters, looking at health risks posed by radioactive materials, examined Priest’s study. Some of the committee’s members have now cast doubt on the conclusions that plutonium in children’s teeth posed no health risk. Professor Eric Wright, of Dundee University Medical School, is one of the country’s leading experts on blood disorders and a member of the committee. He believes that the tiny specks of plutonium in children’s teeth caused by Sellafield radioactive pollution might lead to some people falling ill with cancer.
He said: ‘There are genuine concerns that the risks from internal emitters of radiation are more hazardous [than previously thought]. The real question is by how much. Is it two or three times more risky… or more than a hundred?’
Wright believes that, while the plutonium contamination is unlikely to pose a health risk to much of the British population, it might be a problem for some individuals.
He said: ‘If somebody has a bad collection of genes which means their body cannot deal with small levels of internal radioactive material, then there could be an issue.’
Wright’s comments, coming on top of the admission from the Health Minister, have led to calls for an independent inquiry. Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Norman Baker said: ‘[This] stinks of a cover-up. They have known for six years that Sellafield has contaminated the population with plutonium but done nothing. Yet the plant continues to discharge plutonium into the Irish Sea. It shows the wanton disregard the nuclear industry has for public health and there needs to be an independent inquiry.’
Janine Allis-Smith of the campaign group Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment said: ‘There is no safe amount of plutonium. The plant must be closed down immediately.’
More than 60 years ago, American military chiefs were closer than previously known to dropping atomic bombs on China over a relatively minor crisis with the renegade territory of Taiwan. The new revelations came from veteran whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who worked as a nuclear weapons strategist at the Rand Corporation and at the Pentagon during the 1950s and 60s.
Ellsberg was the source of the famous Pentagon Papers which he leaked 50 years ago exposing the official U.S. lies about its criminal involvement in the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 70s.
Now at the age of 90, Daniel Ellsberg has dropped another media bombshell – that the Pentagon was ready to attack China and its major cities with nuclear weapons in 1958. The details were published by the New York Times. But it is perturbing that the shocking revelations barely caused a ripple in the U.S. media. There were no editorials condemning the plan which indicates a complacency among the U.S. media bordering on acquiescence towards such criminal action. This complacency is deeply alarming given the present dangers of war stemming from Washington’s provocations towards China and Russia.
It seems incredible that such a monstrous crime in 1958 was being considered fresh from the memory of the horror perpetrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities razed by two U.S. atomic bombs in August 1945 causing the deaths of at least 200,000 mainly civilians. If the Americans had gone ahead with the plan some 13 years later to attack China the death toll would have been in the millions.
Ellsberg, who could face prosecution under the U.S. Espionage Act similar to contemporary whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, said he was motivated to make his latest revelations because of the imminent risk of war from escalating tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan and other issues. Six decades on, it is notable how the same tensions exist. This is because Washington continues to meddle in China’s internal sovereign affairs, making Taiwan a pawn in its imperialist game. It is the U.S. that is stoking the hostility by reneging on its One China policy which has up to now nominally recognized Beijing’s territorial claim to Taiwan.
In 1958, before the One China policy was adopted in 1979, the U.S. sided with Taiwan in China’s civil war between the Communists and Nationalists led by Chiang kai-shek whose forces fled to the island after their defeat on the mainland in 1949. Rather than accepting the outcome of the civil war, the U.S. continued to support Chiang and his Kuomintang regime. Taiwan became a renegade island territory which has existed in large part due to American military support. This is part of the “strategic ambiguity” adopted by Washington even though since 1979 the United States officially recognizes Beijing’s authority over Taiwan. “Strategic duplicity” would be a more accurate term.
Successive American administrations under Obama, Trump and now Biden have moved significantly to undermine the One China policy and to show increasing support for Taiwan’s would-be declaration of independence. If such a move were to take place, China has vowed to use military force to assert control over the territory. That would no doubt lead to war with the United States. Pentagon chiefs have already said in recent months that a war could happen within five years. And from the way relations are rapidly deteriorating between Washington and Beijing – the latest provocation due to Biden’s insinuation this week that the Covid-19 pandemic may have originated from a Chinese virology laboratory in Wuhan – it is not hard to envisage how tensions could erupt into a full-blown war.
Ellsberg’s concern is that the willingness by Washington to use nuclear weapons in 1958 against China is still extant today. That should be a concern for the whole world. Unlike in 1958, China is now a formidable nuclear power and there is no doubt it would retaliate leading to a nuclear conflagration. Nevertheless, there is a delusion among some American planners that they can win from a pre-emptive strike. The United States is alone among major nuclear powers in not explicitly renounced a first-strike policy.
What is also perplexing is the United States is the only county to have used nuclear weapons of mass destruction in war yet it continues to officially justify that blatant crime as a necessary means to end the Pacific War against Japan. The sense of entitlement and impunity is appalling.
Furthermore, the willingness in 1958 to use nuclear weapons against China was not the only time such an abominable plan was drawn up. There have been several occasions, including:
In 1949, Washington formulated Operation Dropshot which planned to drop 300 atomic weapons on 100 cities and towns across the Soviet Union. This was rationalized as a response in the event that the Soviet Union expanded its allegiance among Western European and Asian nations.
In 1950 and 1953, the administrations of Harry Truman and Ike Eisenhower warned of using nuclear weapons against China over the latter’s support for North Korea in the civil war against American-backed South Korea.
In 1961, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff advocated a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union, but they were stood down by President John F Kennedy who abhorred the idea. Kennedy went on to implement a landmark arms control treaty with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev which many researchers believe led to his assassination by the CIA in 1963.
The propensity by the United States for the use of nuclear weapons can be seen as a form of blackmail and state terrorism against the rest of the world. It has used such weapons without apology, it has explicitly threatened to use such weapons on several occasions, and it continues to tacitly threaten to use these weapons at any time of its choosing. That, in short, is state terrorism.
It no doubt gives the American rulers some pause for thought that China or Russia could retaliate with devastating force. But what is reprehensible and uniquely criminal is the reckless way in which American rulers continue to push the dynamics for war despite their sanctimonious lecturing about upholding “the rules-based international order”.
This week, the Biden administration announced it was not rejoining the Open Skies Treaty which the previous Trump administration walked away from. That is at least the third arms-control treaty that the U.S. has unilaterally ditched – the ABM, the INF and now the OST. Again, the United States is gravely undermining global security based on provocative and baseless claims against Russia and China.
When Biden meets President Putin next month in Geneva, the former is said by U.S. media to be going to raise several concerns with the Russian leader. Such conceited reporting implies a grossly misplaced sense of moral authority. The reality is, however, that Putin will have a lot more genuine and urgent concerns to raise about the American side and its assault on global security.
The fact is the United States is a serial nuclear aggressor whose veneer of supposed virtue is a thin and increasingly transparent disguise for moral bankruptcy. It is the preeminent threat to world peace.
By David Miller | Tracking Power | November 12, 2026
In August 1949, three months after Israel joined the United Nations, Lebanon’s envoy in Washington sent his government a long report. Charles Malik, no firebrand, had signed the UN Charter and helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His Report on the Present Situation lay largely unread until Dar An-Nahar printed it in 2002. … continue
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