JHU Prof: Half Of Americans Have Natural Immunity; Dismissing It Is ‘Biggest failure Of Medical Leadership’
“Please, ignore the CDC guidance”
By Steve Watson | Summit News | May 26, 2021
A professor with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has said that there is a general dismissal of the fact that more than half of all Americans have developed natural immunity to the coronavirus and that it constitutes “one of the biggest failures of our current medical leadership.”
Dr. Marty Makary made the comments during a recent interview, noting that “natural immunity works” and it is wrong to vilify those who don’t want the vaccine because they have already recovered from the virus.
Makary criticised “the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history” for not clearly communicating the scientific facts about natural immunity compared to the kind of immunity developed through vaccines.
“There is more data on natural immunity than there is on vaccinated immunity, because natural immunity has been around longer,” Makary emphasised.
“We are not seeing reinfections, and when they do happen, they’re rare. Their symptoms are mild or are asymptomatic,” the professor added.
“Please, ignore the CDC guidance,” he urged, adding “Live a normal life, unless you are unvaccinated and did not have the infection, in which case you need to be careful.”
“We’ve got to start respecting people who choose not to get the vaccine instead of demonizing them,” Makary further asserted.
The professor’s comments come amid a plethora of media generated propaganda suggesting that natural immunity isn’t enough, and that those who do not choose to take the vaccine should be socially ostracised.
The likes of the World Health Organisation have even shifted the definition of ‘herd immunity’, eliminating the pre-COVID scientific consensus that it could be achieved by allowing a virus to spread through a population, and insisting that herd immunity comes solely from vaccines.
Google blocks ads from Italian author who suggested coronavirus could have originated in a lab
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 26, 2021
Facebook, YouTube and other major social media platforms have been enforcing extremely strict rules around what their users can and cannot say about coronavirus and the pandemic for over a year now, to make sure only messages and narratives aligned with state authorities and the WHO made it through.
But at this point, it looks like those rules are even more stringent than what officials are saying, to the point that, if applied consistently, Facebook would have to ban Dr Fauci for not ruling out the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.
This has so far been considered the type of “misinformation” that is sure to get posts deleted and accounts suspended, as Facebook says it prohibits any discussion around coronavirus possibly being man-made.
Facebook is not alone, since YouTube has a similar censorship policy. Only last week, Google prevented Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti from advertising his book that explores much the same topic that Fauci did in his recent comments. Google said Gatti – whose book also criticizes China’s role – was guilty of creating content with “speculative intent.”
“Once the infection is overcome with vaccines, as I write in my book, we will have to defend our democracies from totalitarianism and the digital monopoly,” Gatti said, reacting to the blacklisting, and urged Google to reverse the decision.
Other contentious rules enforced by YouTube concern any questioning of the usefulness of masks, regardless of the fact official recommendations and guidelines on this topic have been changing throughout the pandemic.
Along the same line, saying that coronavirus vaccines might cause serious harm to people will get content and/or users banned on Facebook – even if medical authorities in Europe and in other places say that at least two of them – AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – can cause blood clots, though rare.
Even though tech giants behind the largest social media sites defend their policies as a way to prevent misinformation and promote official sources, those who have been on the receiving end – everyday users, medical professionals, journalists – see this as unwarranted censorship that stifles any debate.
And as former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson observed, this vigorous suppression of opposing views around Covid is a cause for concern, but is also emblematic of the general direction we’re headed in.
“This isn’t about Covid, it’s about whether or not as a society we’re going to allow people who have views that are sort of outside what the mainstream media want you to believe, to present those views. It’s becoming harder and harder to have honest conversations,” said Berenson, whose book skeptical of lockdowns and masks Amazon had temporarily banned.
Palestine: Hamas Defeats Israel
Just like in 2006, when both Ehud Olmert and George Bush declared that the “invincible IDF” had, yet again, achieved a “glorious victory” and the entire Middle-East almost died laughing hearing this ridiculous claim, today both the US and Israeli propaganda machine have declared another “glorious” victory for the “Jewish state of Israel” cum “sole democracy in the Middle-East”. And, just like in 2006, everybody in the region (and in Zone B) knows that the truth is that the Zionist entity suffered a huge, humiliated, defeat. Let’s try to unpack this.
First, a few numbers. The combat operations lasted two weeks. All other missile numbers are in dispute. Rather than trust this or that source, I will simply say that Hamas fired many thousands of missiles into Israel. Some, probably less than 50%, were truly intercepted by the Israeli air defenses, others hit in no man’s land, and some actually landed and caused plenty of destruction and at least 12 deaths. The Israelis executed hundreds of artillery and airstrikes causing massive destruction in the Gaza strip and killing about 250 Palestinians. Again, these numbers are guesstimates and they don’t really tell the full story. To understand the story, we need to forget about these numbers and look at what each side was hoping for and what each side achieved. Let’s begin with the Israelis:
The Israeli scorecard
To understand Israel’s goals in this war, we first need to place this latest war in its context, and that context is that Israel was comprehensively defeated in Syria. To substantiate this thesis, let’s remember the goals of the Zionists when they unleashed a major international war against Syria. These objectives, as listed in my July 2019 article “Debunking the Rumors About Russia Caving in to Israel” were:
The initial AngloZionist plan was to overthrow Assad and replace him with the Takfiri crazies (Daesh, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, ISIS – call them whatever you want). Doing this would achieve the following goals:
- Bring down a strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces, and security services.
- Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a “security zone” by Israel not only in the Golan but further north.
- Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah.
- Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each other to death, then create a “security zone,” but this time in Lebanon.
- Prevent the creation of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon.
- Break up Syria along ethnic and religious lines.
- Create a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
- Make it possible for Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East and force the KSA, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas or oil pipeline project.
- Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert, and eventually attack Iran with a broad regional coalition of forces.
- Eliminate all centers of Shia power in the Middle-East.
As we all know, this is what actually happened:
- The Syrian state has survived, and its armed and security forces are now far more capable than they were before the war started (remember how they almost lost the war initially? The Syrians bounced back while learning some very hard lessons. By all reports, they improved tremendously, while at critical moments Iran and Hezbollah were literally “plugging holes” in the Syrian frontlines and “extinguishing fires” on local flashpoints. Now the Syrians are doing a very good job of liberating large chunks of their country, including every single city in Syria).
- Not only is Syria stronger, but the Iranians and Hezbollah are all over the country now, which is driving the Israelis into a state of panic and rage.
- Lebanon is rock solid; even the latest Saudi attempt to kidnap Hariri is backfiring. (2021 update: in spite of the explosion in Beirut, Hezbollah is still in charge)
- Syria will remain unitary, and Kurdistan is not happening. Millions of displaced refugees are returning home.
- Israel and the US look like total idiots and, even worse, as losers with no credibility left.
Seeing their defeat in Syria, the Zionists did what they always do: they used their propaganda machine to list an apparently never-ending victorious strikes on supposed “Iranian targets” in Syria. While a few civilian simpletons with zero military experience did buy into this nonsense, the truth about Israeli operations in Syria is simple: the Syrian air defenses have successfully prevented the Israelis from striking at important, sensitive, targets, and the Israelis have been forced to declare as major victories the destruction of empty barns as “destruction of important IRGC headquarters” thereby “proving” to a few naive folks in Zone A and to themselves (!) that the IDF is still as “invincible” as it “always was”. As for the Neocons, they doubled-up on that and declared that 1) Russian air defenses are useless 2) that Russia and Israel work hand in hand and 3) that the Israelis are still invincible. Yet if any of that was true, why has Israel failed to achieve a single one of its goals? And why are both the Russians and the Iranians still in Syria where the Russians just finished a 2nd runway at Khmeimim and they have just deployed a group of Tu-22M3 at that air base from where they can now threaten any ship sailing in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. In their otherwise “free time” they can drop tons of bombs and missiles on the remaining Takfiri forces in Syria.
As I have been saying for many years now, the truth is that the IDF is a poor fighting force. Why? First, they have the exact same problem as the USA (and the KSA, for that matter): they rely on expensive technology, but don’t have good combat-capable “boots on the ground”. That is now how modern wars are won (see here for a list of popular misconceptions about modern wars).
In its recent history, the entire gamut of Israeli “elite” forces (including the air force, the navy, the artillery and even the Golani Brigade) got its collective butt handed to them by about 1000 and only lightly armed regular Hezbollah fighters in 2006: keep in mind that the elite Hezbollah forces were deployed only north of the Litani river to protect Beirut against a possible land invasion by Israel. Instead of taking Beirut or “disarming Hezbollah” (that was an official goal!), the Israelis could not even control the small town of Bint Jbeil located right across the official Israeli border! So much for being “invincible”!
What the IDF is very experienced at is terrorising Palestinian civilians and executing what could be called a slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people. The problem with Gaza now is the same that the failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006 has revealed: just like the Lebanese in 2006, the Palestinians of 2021 are not afraid of the Zionists anymore. Furthermore, with a great deal of help from Iran and others, Hamas in Gaza is now much, much better armed than in the past. True, some of its missiles are decidedly low tech and not very effective (low accuracy, small warheads, simple trajectory, limited range), but Hamas also has shown some pretty decent UAVs too. Most importantly, from now on for Hamas it is only one way: up the “quality ladder” (just like the Houthis did in Yemen, starting with modest drones but eventually getting very capable ones).
The other major goal of the Israelis in this war was to prove to the world (and, even more importantly for the always narcissistic self-worshipping Israeli cowards, to themselves!) that their “Iron Dome” air defense network was the “super-dooper most bestest” in the world (no doubt, due to the famed “Jewish genius”!). It now appears that at best, the Israelis intercepted somewhere around 30-40% of the Hamas missiles. The way the Israeli hid this is by claiming that their fancy shmancy Iron Drone did not even try to engage missiles which were not deemed dangerous. But in the age of the ubiquitous smartphone, that kind of silly nonsense can easily be debunked (including by showing the total chaos in the Israeli skies or, for that matter, the missile strikes on Israeli military objectives). While the full Iron Dome air defense system probably works marginally better than the quasi-useless US Patriot, the Israeli air defenses are clearly at least a generation behind the Russian ones, including the S-300s the Russians sold to Syria (again, in the age of of the ubiquitous smartphone, this is not hard to prove).
It is crucial to remember that Hamas’ missiles are much inferior to those of the Houthis and the Syrians, and even more inferior when compared to Hezbollah or Iranian drones and missiles! In other words, the “invincible” IDF can’t deal with even its weakest, least sophisticated enemies (Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and the grotesquely expensive Iron Done cannot protect the Zionists from any determined missile attacks by the Resistance coalition (Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia).
In their utter despair, the Zionist entity did what the AngloZionists always do when they fail to defeat a military force: they will turn their wrath on the civilian infrastructure and murder as many as they can. They will also strike highly symbolic targets such as the International Press Center in Gaza or a Red Crescent hospital (under the pretext that Hamas, which is the democratically elected local government) has offices there (this is clearly a F-you to those who condemn Israel for violating international law). To a normal human being, this sounds both obscene and ridiculous. But remember, the Israelis are first and foremost narcissists and they have no means of imagining how normal human beings think or feel. All these guys can feel is self-worship and hatred for all “others”.
We could say that in this war, the Palestinians defeated both military high tech and truly medieval type of genocidal hatred.
In other words, far from showing how “invincible” the Zionist entity is, this latest war against the Palestinians has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the IDF cannot deal with any of its enemies.
Besides missiles and bombs, the Israelis love to use terror, as their ideology has convinced them of two things: the Arabs only understand force and we, the Israelis, are invincible. But this begs the question of why the Israelis did not dare to move into Gaza, not even symbolically. Yeah, I know, the official doxa of Zone A is that “Biden called Netanyahu and told him to stop”. As if “Biden” could give orders to the Israelis!
The truth is that even with a casualty rate of 10:1 in the IDF’s advantage and no armor or artillery, the Palestinians are much more willing to engage in street battles than the IDF. Would the IDF eventually win a ground battle against Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Maybe, probably, the objective advantages in everything (except courage!) for the Israelis is so huge that no amount of skills and courage can forever negate the immense superiority in means of the Israelis.
However, as most people in the West tend to forget, wars are but means towards a political goal. If the IDF decided to basically flatten Gaza and kill many thousands of Palestinians at the cost of casualties probably in the hundereds, then this would be politically suicidal for the Zionist regime. This is why I offer this very basic conclusion:
During the latest Gaza war, deterrence did work. But only in the sense that the Palestinians successfully deterred the Israelis from launching a ground attack against Gaza.
There is another crucial political development which should also be noted: while both Iran and Hezbollah did give their full political support to Hamas+Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the latter did not request any assistance. In other words, not only did the Palestinians defeat the Israelis, but they did so absolutely alone, with no help from the other Resistance members.
Again, those Zone A civilians who believe that Israel is scoring huge victories in Syria on a quasi daily basis won’t get it, which is par for the course. But you can be darn sure that at least most of the IDF top commanders know the true score and for them it is yet another huge disaster.
There is also a political factor to consider. While there have been coordination resistance actions by the Palestinians in Israel (proper, as defined by the UN), this is the first time when the Palestinians from Gaza, those from the Occupied Territories and those in “Israel” truly fought, if not side by side (yet!), then at least at the same time and in a common cause. This is a major political victory for Hamas+Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a major problem for Fatah and the Zionists. Now let’s look at the rest of the Palestinian scorecard:
The Palestinian scorecard:
Let’s start by the obvious one: the Palestinians were not defeated. This victory can be further subdivided in the following:
- The Palestinian leadership has mostly physically survived, it still exists as a local authority. Plenty of Palestinians were murdered, but that did not affect the operational capabilities of the Palestinian forces (any more than the IDF succeeded in affecting Iranian operational capabilities in Syria).
- The Palestinian leadership has also survived politically. It was not blamed by the “Palestinian street” for starting the war, nor was it blamed for how it executed it. As for Fatah, it is now, by all accounts, lost somewhere in a political no man’s land which, admittedly, it richly deserves for its incompetence, corruption and subservience to Israel and the USA.
- Militarily speaking, the Palestinian missile strikes were not nearly as effective as, say, Hezbollah (nevermind Iranian!) strikes would have been, but, hey, they made huge progress and we can all rest assured that the Palestinians of Gaza will, sooner or later, catch up with the Houthis and, further down the road, maybe even Hezbollah.
- By many accounts, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have made major political inroads into the Palestinian political scene outside Gaza. Even in spite of a truly immense hasbara effort by the Israelis, the international public opinion was blaming Israel for the orgy of violence.
It is interesting to note here that the famous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has written an article for Ha’aretz entitled “Israeli Propaganda Isn’t Fooling Anyone – Except Israelis” which was further subtitled “’Hasbara’ is the Israeli euphemism for propaganda, and there are some things, said the late ambassador Yohanan Meroz, that are not ‘hasbarable.’ One of them is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.” This is how Levy’s article began:
And propaganda shall cover for everything. We’ll say terrorism, we’ll shout anti-Semitism, we’ll scream delegitimation, we’ll cite the Holocaust; we’ll say Jewish state, gay-friendly, drip irrigation, cherry tomatoes, aid to Nepal, Nobel Prizes for Jews, look what’s happening in Syria, the only democracy, the greatest army. We’ll say the Palestinians are making unilateral moves, we’ll propose negotiations on the “settlement bloc borders,” we’ll demand recognition of a Jewish state and we’ll complain that “there’s no one to talk to.” We’ll wail that the whole world is against us and wants to destroy us, no less.
Now comes the best part: Levy wrote this on Jun. 4, 2015 and updated it on Apr. 10, 2018 – years before the current disaster! Since then, things have only gone south for the IDF and the Israelis in general. Just the blowback from the war in Syria is, for the IDF, a true disaster.
Of course, “Israel” is still worshipped and faithfully served by many ruling classes worldwide (that is one of the functions of the Empire, to enforce this), but that officially lauded Israel is viewed with disgust and revulsion on most of the planet. Hence the inevitable failure of the truly galactic PR effort to brainwash the regular people into believing that Israeli is a polyyanish country, a “place without people for a people without country”, etc. etc. etc. This “Ziolatry”, if you wish, was effective when the PLO was blowing up Jewish grade schools in Western Europe, but today it has lost almost all of its traction, especially amongst thinking people.
The sad and disgusting reality about the Zionist entity is truly coming out, seeping under the propaganda walls of the Empire, and slowly but inevitably resulting in a common reaction of outrage and utter disgust for what is nothing else but the last officially racist country on the planet, the only country with an open air concentration camp it surrounds on all sides, the only country which truly, openly and sincerely does not give a damn about international law or about the lives of non-Jews (while calling their own lives sacred, of course!). This is a state which constantly repeats the mantra about the supposedly “sacred” blood of Jews while, at the same time, committing a slow motion (but very real) genocide of the Palestinian people while using non-stop terrorist attacks against any country daring to defy the order of the latest, and hopefully last, wannabe “superior race” in human history. This is also why the “crime of crimes” for politically correct and successfully brainwashed people is to declare that Israel has no right to exist. This is such a major crimethink that I want to conclude by committing it right now and asking others to join me in this “crimethink”!
Israel has no right to exist whatsoever first and foremost because it is an artificial creation of West European imperialist powers. Second, it is a country which has always engaged in atrocities and massive violations of international laws and norms. Instead, Israel is based on a racist ideology which is, for all practical purpose, indistinguishable from Hitler’s Nazi ideology (both National Socialism and Zionism have the same roots in both time, space and culture, both being products of European secularism and nationalism). For these reasons, Israel, and the Zionist ideology which supports it, are both a clear and present danger for international peace and stability (for details on Zionism as an ideology and its toxicity, please see here). Furthermore, the only possible way for the Palestinian people to ever recover their land and their rights under international law is that the Zionist “regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (to quote the often mistranslated sentence by Ayatollah Komenei). By the way, this awareness also presupposes a clear understanding that the so-called “Two State Solution” (2SS) is an impossibility. Yes, I know, the 2SS is currently the only one under international law, but that is hardly surprising since the state of Israel was created with not only many of the trappings of “being an internationally recognized state” but also with the shameful complicity of the country which won WWII. There is one thing which Israel has in common with the so-called “Republic of Kosovo”: they will be the very first to be liberated as soon as the AngloZionist Empire finally crashes visibly (of course, it has already crashed, hence the many disastrous outcomes for the USA and Israel on the international scene, but that is still denied officially in Zone A and, of course, by the AngloZionist propaganda and those who pay attention to it.
In truth, there is only one true “solution” to this war: the so-called “One State Solution”, meaning that those who live in this land will get to choose their leaders and lifestyles according to the old “one person, one vote” principle. All other “solutions” simply perpetuate the current genocide!
As for those Jews who still want an ethnically pure state of Israel, they can either grow up and get real, or they can choose to colonize some other planet. As long as they don’t persecute local lifeforms, that might work. But if they do this will all happen again, over and over.
Conclusion: “Gaza” and the future of the Zionist entity
I want to end here with what I believe is a glance at the future (or lack thereof!) of Israel. The website Islamic World News Analysis Group (which I highly recommend!) recently posted what it claims to be a video of a new Iranian combat drone named “Gaza” described as so: “The Gaza drone, capable of carrying 13 bombs and 500 kilograms of equipment, as well as 35 hours of flight up to a radius of 2,000 kilometers, is capable of carrying out a variety of combat and intelligence operations. According to the published images, it seems that the Gaza drone uses the Rotary Bomb Launcher mechanism under its fuselage, which can carry up to 5 bombs. This is the first Iranian drone to use this mechanism. 8 bombs are also installed under the wings and in total this drone is capable of carrying 13 bombs”. Here is the footage of this new drone. Take a look for yourself and imagine what the next round of this campaign to liberate Palestine might look like.
The unseen evil of Covid restrictions … a dehumanising denial of physical contact
By Frank Palmer | The Conservative Woman | May 26, 2021
THERE should have been more outrage at the inhuman restrictions placed on us since March 2020.
The cat is now out of the bag about the psychological tricks used by the Government’s behavioural psychologists, with the collusion of the MSM – the terror tactics, the mixed messages creating uncertainty and insecurity, the successful attempts to polarise people, the gaslighting.
However, the full significance of the physical restrictions – the ‘social’ distancing, the prevention of meetings, the covered faces, the outlawing of affectionate hugs or handshakes – has not, I believe, been deeply enough understood.
The latter goes far beyond mind games, and has taken place in a modern culture that had already become increasingly depersonalised.
Long before Covid, face-to-face contact, or even telephone contact, with banks and other institutions (including GPs) was made progressively difficult. Staff at railway stations, banks and supermarkets were being replaced by machines. Enforced online accounts have been reducing us to disembodied digits. ‘Faceless bureaucrats’ abound.
In the streets, there was less and less eye contact or courtesy, with zombie faces headphoned, or glued to smartphone screens.
Aversion to physical contact was implied in the everyday language of ‘personal space’, ‘safe spaces’, and – in the cowardly euphemism for ending a relationship – ‘I need some space’.
‘I understand/sympathise’ was being replaced with ‘I know where you are coming from’ (a locution which already presupposes spatial remoteness).
Meanwhile, with online ‘socialising’ you don’t see or meet a person, you see a screen with an image, an increasing replacement for the real McCoy, a fantasy engagement devoid of the moral and emotional risks involved in engaging with a person ‘in the flesh’.
And of course, you have absolute control, where this simulacrum of a human presence can be ‘ghosted’ at the click of a mouse.
The upshot is that people are increasingly reduced to abstractions, which can obliterate the need for integrity in the way they are treated. A power-mad government can therefore easily reduce us to what Johnson called ‘pure mathematics’, or pieces on a chessboard.
In proper human interaction, the reality of the other person consists in their physical presence. We are embodied persons, with all the moral implications that generates.
Our moral imperatives are not mere mental abstractions. They are infused with references to our embodied nature, one sign of which is that our moral perceptions are not unrelated to our aesthetic sensibilities, which involve our sensory capacities.
Our reaction to wrongdoing or evil is not simply cerebral disagreement, it involves visceral repulsion. There are overtones of our sensitivity to beauty and ugliness in being appalled at the repulsiveness of greed, the slime of dishonesty, the filth of obscenity, and the stench of corruption.
We are not mere ‘rational beings’ (even Mr Spock has some feelings ). Our moral perceptions seem connected to a series of aesthetic contrasts between pure and impure, clean and dirty, savoury and unsavoury, harmonious and discordant, sweet-smelling and foul-smelling, and natural and unnatural (which are not for us mere ‘value-free’ biological categories).
That is not to say that our morality can be reduced to aesthetics. I merely emphasise a point about our embodied condition.
Professor Anthony O’Hear has reminded me of the significance of the following remarks of Simone Weil in her essay The Iliad, or the Poem of Force …
‘The human beings around us exert just by their presence a power which belongs uniquely to themselves to stop, to diminish, or modify, each movement which our bodies design. A person who crosses our path does not turn aside our steps in the same manner as a street sign, no one stands up, or moves about, or sits down again in quite the same fashion when he is alone in a room as when he has a visitor.’
The reference to (physical) presence is what is vital here. We meet people ‘in person’, and this presents a challenge to our self-centred tendencies in accepting the ‘reality’ of other people.
There are some things which are basic and primary to any further sophisticated views we reach about human beings. In one of his philosophy lectures, Professor David Hamlyn once asked: ‘How does an infant acquire the concept of a person?’
Pat came the answers from students about the ratiocination (the process of exact thinking or reasoning) involved in conceptual development.
‘No’, said Hamlyn, ‘the infant acquires it through being treated as a person. By being cuddled and burped, by being smiled at … and so on.’
In his essay Eine Einstellung zur Seele (An attitude towards a soul), Peter Winch argues that our primary reactions to people are ‘unreflective and primitive’, that these reactions are ‘part of the primitive material out of which our concept of a human person is formed’.
It seems to me that these instinctive reactions are present when we walk with someone and automatically match our steps to theirs, we harmonise with their facial expressions, and these reactions are not derived from ratiocination, nor from intellectually inferred beliefs about what it is to be human.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, challenges the idea that we infer mental states from bodily behaviour by saying: ‘We see emotion … we do not see facial contortions and make the inference that he is feeling joy, grief, boredom.
‘We describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features – grief, one would like to say, is personified in the face.’
He also makes the telling observation that ‘we don’t see the human eye as a receiver, it seems not to let something in, but to send out …’
Again, our embodied nature is revealed in such expressions as ‘lending someone a sympathetic ear’, ‘being touched or moved by generosity’ or ‘my heart goes out to you’.
In the 19th century, after the prison reforms of 1835, ‘silent treatment’ was used in some US prisons as an alternative to physical punishment.
It consisted of forbidding prisoners from speaking to one another, calling them by numbers rather than by their name, and making them cover their faces – all to dehumanise them and break their will.
The physical restrictions, the prevention of interaction, and the face coverings imposed upon us by this government are equally unethical, if not downright evil.
But, for the reasons given earlier, so many people cannot see this. They have been forcibly alienated from their own nature and will no doubt uncritically accept their reduction to trackable digits on the biometric identity passes being planned – the price of their future so-called freedom.
Israel carries out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, robs them of their homes, yet pretends it’s the victim
By Richard Medhurst | RT | May 25, 2021
The Israelis are seeking to reframe their occupation of Palestine as something else, in order to hide their inhumane oppression. What’s happening in Gaza is not a ‘war’ nor a ‘conflict’, but a brutal military colonization.
Israel launched its latest offensive against the Gaza strip on May 10, bombing the Palestinian enclave by land and air. For several weeks prior, tensions had swelled in occupied Palestine, as Israeli forces cracked down on Palestinian protesters. At the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, protests began against restrictions that Israel imposed on gatherings during the Holy Month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Palestinians also marched against Israel’s plans to evict families living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and the protests became intertwined.
While Israeli mobs marched through the streets unimpeded, damaging Palestinian-owned stores and chanting “Death to Arabs,” Palestinians were met with a brutal backlash from Israeli police, culminating in Israeli forces storming the Al-Aqsa mosque, firing tear gas and rubber coated bullets at people as they prayed, injuring more than 90.
Israel’s desecration of the third holiest site in Islam drew international condemnation and Hamas, which runs Gaza, demanded that Israel immediately withdraw from the mosque. This was ignored, so Hamas responded with rockets. Israel then began its offensive, which continued for eleven days. Thousands of reservists were also called up, prompting fears of a ground invasion.
Israel’s Dahiya doctrine: ‘punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population’
Like previous wars against Gaza in 2009 and 2014, Israel purposely targeted public and health infrastructure – a hallmark of its military strategy, and a war crime under the Geneva Convention.
Israel put a desalination plant out of action which provided water to hundreds of thousands. Electricity lines were cut leaving barely five hours of power a day. Water mains were damaged so that sewage overflowed onto streets. The main road leading to al-Shifa hospital, the enclave’s biggest, was bombed, and other clinics were damaged. The only laboratory able to do Covid-19 tests was rendered inoperable.
Health workers and residents described horrific scenes of loved ones and neighbors buried alive under rubble, and of having to dig out dead bodies. By the end of the assault, 12 Israelis had died; while 242 Palestinians were killed, among them 23 girls and 43 boys. Around half were women and children.
Several Palestinian families were entirely wiped out. Dr Ayman Abu al-Ouf, one of Gaza’s most renowned medical specialists, was killed in an airstrike on his home, alongside 12 members of his family.
The IDF’s twitter account proudly tweeted a graphic saying, “200+ terrorists neutralized.”
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, almost 2,000 Palestinians were wounded. It was reported that at least 2,000 housing units were destroyed and an additional 15,000 homes damaged.
Several residential buildings were completely leveled by airstrikes. On May 15, Israel bombed the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera in Gaza. This was met by silence and feigned concern by Western liberal democracies, whose appreciation of a free press did not extend to Palestine that day.
Disproportionate force has always been a core pillar of Israel’s military, known as the Dahiya doctrine, which dates back to the 2006 war against Lebanon, and which was ruthlessly implemented against Gaza in 2009 and onwards.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, with two million Palestinians living on a tiny strip of land under blockade from Egypt and Israel since 2007. Its residents live at the mercy of a military occupation that bombs them with impunity, shielded by Western nations who whitewash its crimes.
On several occasions at the United Nations Security Council, the Biden administration blocked the release of a statement calling for a ceasefire because the language condemned Israel – which Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz thanked the US for in a tweet.
The animosity between Benjamin Netanyahu, whose 12-year tenure as Israel’s prime minister had been at risk, and his political rivals vanished once the strikes began. The attack on Gaza and Hamas bought him a little more time in office.
Protests in support of Palestine erupted worldwide. In London, 100,000 people took to the streets in solidarity. Palestinians themselves held a general strike on May 18. Shops closed as people marched in record numbers against Israel’s crimes. Two people were killed and over 100 were wounded by Israeli occupation forces who fired water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets at them.
After 11 days of incessant air strikes from Israel and rocket fire from Hamas, a ceasefire was finally brokered by Egypt, entering into effect on May 21, 2am local time. Israel continued its bombings until the last minute. In the days after, Israeli police again entered the compound of Al-Aqsa mosque, firing tear gas and providing armed escorts to Jewish settlers who showed up in an act of provocation.
While the shelling may have stopped for now, the blockade and occupation have not. Gaza remains the world’s largest open-air prison, its residents unable to leave or rebuild, as generations continue to live in the ruins of one conflict after the other.
‘Israel’s right to defend itself’
A point often raised in Western political discourse is “Israel’s right to defend itself.” What of the Palestinian people? Do they not have a right to defend themselves? Are they expected to just tolerate apartheid, occupation and violence? How can a colonizer speak of defending themselves, when their very presence and occupation is an act of oppression? When one speaks of defense, then it is surely the unequivocal right of Palestinians to defend themselves, as millions of them remain stateless on their own land, dispossessed of their homes and human rights.
Israel claims to only target “terrorists” and “militants,” yet half the casualties, if not more, are always civilians. Decimating infrastructure and residential buildings is not defense. Leveling schools, hospitals, UN buildings and the offices of the international press is not defense. One of the most advanced militaries in the world unleashing its wrath on a civilian population without an army, let alone an air force or navy, is not defense. This is offense; it is cruel, barbaric aggression in its most violent form.
In a recent conversation I had with Palestinian Ambassador to Austria Salah Abdel-Shafi, he eloquently summarized how the Palestinian issue poses a fundamental problem for so-called Western liberal democracies who claim to champion human rights and equality, while giving Israel carte blanche as it denies Palestinians their human rights and levels their homes with no repercussion.
Israel is never held to account and sits above international and humanitarian law, annexing, colonizing and killing with impunity.
Its entire existence depends on ethnically cleansing Palestine and robbing Palestinians of their homes to make way for settlers from around the world. Israel wants to control the narrative around its actions, pretending that it is a victim and that this is all about Hamas.
This is naught but an attempt to reframe the occupation of Palestine and Israeli apartheid as something else in order to hide the oppression and inhumane behavior. What’s happening in Palestine is not a ‘war’ nor a ‘conflict’, it is a brutal military occupation which seeks to ethnically cleanse Palestine in order to make way for Jewish settlers. It’s colonization. The Palestinian cause is fundamentally rooted in human rights; in anti-imperialism and anti-racism. It is and always has been the story of resistance against colonizers.
Richard Medhurst is a British journalist born in Damascus. Owing to his coverage of international relations, US politics, the Middle East and Julian Assange extradition he has built a successful YouTube channel and hosts a program on Press TV.
Facebook is suppressing ‘facts’ that are flagged as promoting ‘vaccine hesitancy’: whistleblowers
RT | May 25, 2021
Facebook is taking aggressive steps to sideline any content, including factual material, critical of Covid-19 vaccines, two insiders have revealed to Project Veritas. The tech giant claims the policy was publicly announced.
The conservative media watchdog organization published a purported internal Facebook memo concerning “Vaccine Hesitancy Comment Demotion.” The policy aims to “drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy,” the document states.
Another document leaked to Project Veritas discusses how to flag and categorize “non-violating content” that raises questions about vaccination, “thereby contributing to vaccine hesitancy or refusal.”
Comments can be “demoted” if they are flagged as directly or indirectly discouraging people from getting vaccinated. It doesn’t matter if the content is factually accurate, Project Veritas reported, citing the leaked documents.
According to the reported policy, “shocking stories” about side effects linked to the vaccines can be suppressed, even if they are “potentially or actually true events or facts that raise safety concerns.” The company explains that such content should be discouraged because it could “present a barrier to vaccination in certain contexts.”
Facebook is also said to target comments that claim vaccination is not necessary due to low Covid-19 death rates, or argue for natural herd immunity against the virus, as such views are considered “indirect discouragement” that could hurt immunization efforts.
One of the Facebook whistleblowers who reached out to Project Veritas said that anyone who questions the “narrative” of “get the vaccine, the vaccine is good for you” will be “singled out.”
A second company insider, identified as a data center technician, said that Facebook is working to censor all content that can be deemed critical of vaccines.
“They’re trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page before you even see it,” the whistleblower told Project Veritas.
In response to the leaked documents, a Facebook spokesperson told the media watchdog that the company “proactively announced this policy on our company blog and also updated our help center with this information.”
In February, the platform said it was expanding its efforts to combat “false claims” about Covid-19 vaccines. Under the initiative, Facebook said it would remove content that claims “vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against” or that argues the jabs are “dangerous.”
The content crackdown comes amid growing concern about side effects that have been linked to the vaccines. Numerous countries temporarily suspended their rollout of the AstraZeneca jab amid reports of blood clotting in people who received it. The pharmaceutical company has insisted the vaccine is safe, a position that has been echoed by the EU’s drug regulator. However, some have argued that there is insufficient data to show that the vaccines represented on the market are safe and effective long-term, as their rollout was fast-tracked amid the pandemic.
The FDA cover-up that led to the approval of the Pfizer vaccine
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | May 25, 2021
As I’ve been documenting for the past year, the COVID experts have been contradicting themselves six ways from Sunday. As charlatans, they’re abject failures. They can’t keep their own story straight.
Thanks to an alert reader, I’ve come across a new blockbuster.
BY THEIR OWN STANDARDS, the FDA should never have allowed the Pfizer COVID vaccine to be shot into a single arm. The Agency’s Emergency Use Authorization was a crime—according to their own data.
Here we go.
The document, posted on the FDA website, is titled, “Vaccines and Related Biological Products; Advisory Committee Meeting; FDA Briefing Document Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.” [1]
It is dated December 10, 2020. The date tells us that all the information in the document is taken from the Pfizer clinical trial, based on which the FDA authorized the vaccine for public use.
A key quote is buried on page 42: “Among 3410 total cases of suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group [who received a saltwater shot].”
Those shocking numbers have never seen the light of day in news media.
The comparative numbers reveal that the vaccine was not effective at preventing COVID-19. It was certainly not 50% more effective than no vaccine at all—the standard for FDA Emergency Use Authorization.
To make all this clear, I need to back up and explain the theory of the vaccine clinical trial.
The researchers assumed the SARS-CoV-2 virus was spreading everywhere in the world, and during the clinical trial, it would descend on some volunteers.
The billion-dollar question was: how many people receiving the vaccine would become infected, vs. how many people in the placebo group?
If it turned out that FAR FEWER people getting the vaccine became infected with SARS-CoV-2, the vaccine would be hailed as a success. It protected people against the virus.
But as you can see from the numbers above, that wasn’t the case at all.
So now we come to the vital weasel-phrase in the FDA document I just quoted: “suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 [cases].”
“Well, you see, we can’t say these were ACTUAL COVID-19 cases. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. They’re in limbo. We want to keep them in limbo. Otherwise, our clinical trial is dead in the water, and we’ll never get approval for the vaccine.”
What does “suspected cases” mean? It can only mean these people all displayed symptoms consistent with the definition of COVID-19, but they’re unconfirmed cases because…their PCR tests were negative, not positive.
However, if their tests were negative, why would they be called “suspected cases” instead of “NOT CASES”?
Something is wrong here. The FDA is hedging its bets, muddying the waters, obscuring facts.
By FDA/CDC rules, a case of COVID-19 means: a person has tested positive, period.
That’s the way cases are counted.
These several thousand volunteers in the Pfizer clinical trial were either COVID-19 cases or they weren’t. Which is it?
The official response to that question is obvious: the FDA decided to throw the data from all those suspected cases in the garbage and ignore them. Poof. Gone.
Why do I say that?
Because if the FDA had paid serious attention to the several thousand “suspected cases,” they never would have authorized the vaccine for public use. They would have stopped the clinical trial and undertaken a very deep and extensive investigation.
Which they didn’t.
This is called a crime.
“But…but it’s not that simple. This is a complex situation. It’s a gray area.”
“No. It isn’t. If you were running a clinical trial of a new drug, and a few thousand people in the trial, who were given the drug, nevertheless came down with the disease symptoms the drug was supposed to cure, wouldn’t you cancel the trial and go back to the drawing board?”
“You mean if we were being honest? That’s a joke, right? We’re not honest. Don’t you get it?”
Yes. I get it. You’re criminals. Killers.
But wait. There’s more. The FDA document also states: “Suspected COVID-19 cases that occurred within 7 days after any vaccination were 409 in the vaccine group vs. 287 in the placebo group.”
That’s explosive. Right after vaccination, 409 people who received the shots became “suspected COVID cases.” This alone should have been enough to stop the clinical trial altogether. But it wasn’t.
In fact, the FDA document tries to excuse those 409 cases with a slippery comment: “It is possible that the imbalance in suspected COVID-19 cases occurring in the 7 days post vaccination represents vaccine reactogenicity with symptoms that overlap with those of COVID-19.”
Translation: You see, a number of clinical symptoms of COVID-19 and adverse effects from the vaccine are the same. Therefore, we have no idea whether the vaccinated people developed COVID or were just reacting to the vaccine. So we’re going to ignore this whole mess and pretend it’s of no importance.
Back in April of 2020, I predicted the vaccine manufacturers would use this strategy to explain away COVID cases occurring in the vaccine groups of their clinical trials.
It’s called cooking the data. It’s a way of writing off and ignoring COVID symptoms in the vaccine group—and instead saying, “The vaccine is safe and effective.”
And the FDA document, as I stated above, just puts an impenetrable cloud over all the volunteers in the Pfizer clinical trial by inventing a category called “suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 cases,” and throwing those crucial data away, never to be spoken of again.
I’m speaking about them now. Any sensible person, looking at them, would conclude that the vaccine should never have been authorized.
Unless fraud, deception, profits, and destruction of human life via the vaccine were and are the true goals.
Finally: When you have “suspected cases,” and their ultimate status depends on doing a test, you do the test. You do it as many times as you need to, until it registers positive or negative. Then each “suspected case” becomes an actual case or no case at all.
Perhaps these “suspected cases” in the clinical trial were tested, and many of them came up positive, revealing they were actual COVID cases—but the researchers lied and covered up the fact that they were tested.
Or if you really don’t want to know whether “suspected cases” are actual cases, you don’t test them. You leave them in a convenient limbo and park them, never to be seen again.
Either way, the situation is patently absurd. By official standards, the PCR test decides whether a person is a case or not a case. Just do the test. Saying “we don’t know” is nothing more than a con and a hustle.
I’d love to hear the researchers try to talk their way out of this one. Here is how the conversation might go:
“So you’re saying these several thousand suspected COVID cases couldn’t be adjudicated one way or another?”
“That’s right. Their PCR tests were ‘indeterminate’.”
“That says something devastating about the test itself.”
“Well, sometimes you just can’t tell whether it’s positive or negative.”
“I see. And this ‘indeterminate’ result occurred in SEVERAL THOUSAND suspected cases.”
“I guess so, yes.”
“You know, you could have done something else with these suspected cases. A different test. You could have taken tissue samples and looked for the virus itself in a more direct way.”
“No. That wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because…the actual virus…”
“Because no one has been able to come up with a specimen of the actual SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
“Right.”
“So tell me—what does that indicate? I’ll tell you what it indicates. You can’t prove the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists.
“I have to go. I’m late for a meeting.”
“You’re late for more than just a meeting. Is it true a person becomes a virologist by cutting out a coupon from the back of a comic book and mailing it to a PO Box in Maryland?’
“Absolutely not. That’s outrageous.”
“What then?”
“The PO Box is in Virginia.”
SOURCES:
[1] https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download
Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX.
Israel’s Friends overwhelm Capitol Hill
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 25, 2021
Yes folks, there is an international conspiracy and it is all about “protecting” Israel. It operates through front and lobbying groups that uniquely promote the interests of a foreign country, Israel, even when those interests do serious damage to the host country where the lobbyists actually live. In Britain, for example, there are a Conservative Friends of Israel and a Labour Friends of Israel, comprising together 216 members of parliament and party officials. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been silent about Gaza apart from expressing “deep concern” and blaming both sides while Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has also been under pressure to say something, has focused on how four car loads of alleged Palestinian supporters in London may or may not have driven around shouting out “anti-Semitic” comments. Starmer, one recalls, ran on a leadership campaign pledging to root out “anti-Semitism” in the party as a response to previous leader Jeremy Corbyn’s apparently ill-advised public recognition that Palestinians are human beings. Also in Britain, contesting details of the standard narrative of the so-called holocaust can result in a large fine and even some jailtime.
In 2017, Al-Jazeera ran an undercover operation directed against various Israeli front groups in Britain and in the US which determined that officers from the respective Israeli Embassies, presumably intelligence linked, were meeting regularly with members of the alleged non-government organizations that had been set up to provide support for the Jewish state. In Britain, the interaction included explicit discussions on how to destroy the careers of politicians who were deemed to be insufficiently pro-Israeli. In the US the objective has been to disrupt the activities of pro-Palestinian groups, most particularly the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The pro-Israeli and anti-Arab initiatives were coordinated with and sometimes initiated by the Israeli Embassy officers, suggesting that they were actually intelligence operations.
That many American Jewish groups are collaborating directly with the Israeli Embassy raises two concerns. First, it is ipso facto a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which should require registration and complete transparency regarding one’s sources of income and interactions with the foreign embassy. And second, as many of the groups are in tax exempt status with the IRS as either charitable or educational foundations, that status should be rescinded given their foreign affiliation. Of course, the reality is that the Treasury Department has known all that and more for many years and has never taken any action relating to deceptive behavior by pro-Israel groups.
Elsewhere in Europe, “Holocaust denial” even if it only consists of challenging clearly fabricated “factual” details of the event can also land you in jail in Germany and France while criticizing the state of Israel is construed as anti-Semitism, a hate crime. Jewish groups have, in fact, promoted an official “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance” (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which includes any criticism of Israel as a defining characteristic. The United States Department of State has accepted that definition and language.
Yes, the United States has an office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and it is always headed by a Jew, as has been also the office in the Justice Department that continues to be dedicated to rooting out 90 year old Nazis. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, most particularly in its Trump version, is so close to Israel that it might reasonably be regarded as part of the Israel Lobby. And the Democrats are not much better, though there has been some dissent from progressives, which has led to the creation of a Zionist pressure group within the party called the Democratic Majority for Israel. It exists to defend Israel against any and all criticism while also protecting the billions of dollars and other benefits that the Jewish state receives from the US Treasury and government annually.
One might speculate that there is a whole federal government infrastructure devoted to Jewish and Israeli issues. How did that develop? Well, of course, money is what has made it happen. American politicians have notoriously always been easily corruptible, all it takes is a little cash. But no one is allowed to point out that obvious truth as linking Jews to money is regarded, by Jews and their captive media of course, as some kind of “anti-Semitic trope.”
Now it appears that a ceasefire is more-or-less in place but Israel’s ethnic cleansing that preceded its high-tech slaughter of Palestinian civilians who were being deliberately targeted has been perceived by the world, including many Americans, as particularly brutal. Which means the Zionist propaganda plus coercion machine has been working full time. Capitol Hill offices and the White House have no doubt been inundated with calls, emails and visits from constituents, are now all singing the same song that was also being repeated by the President and Congress. It goes like this: “Israel is being attacked by Hamas terrorists and has a right to defend itself!” Sometimes there is a second verse which includes “The only democracy in the Middle East and America’s best friend and ally.”
Too bad that none of it is true, but the media also did its best to support the narrative by reporting how Hamas was launching “swarms” of rockets against Israel, making it appear as if a beleaguered Israel was valiantly defending itself against terrorist hordes. But the actual numbers told a different tale with only 12 Israelis killed after the violence erupted versus 232 Palestinians, including 65 children. Considerable infrastructure was also deliberately targeted and destroyed in Gaza versus limited damage in Israel while the calculated destruction of the building housing Associated Press (AP) and al-Jazeera should be seen as an attempt to eliminate any independent media observers on the ground in Gaza, even though AP predictably has hardly been critical of the Jewish state.
The Israel Lobby is, to be sure, expert at promoting and marketing its product. It is currently engaged in attacking celebrities and others who expressed any sympathy with the Palestinians while they were being slaughtered by the Israelis as anti-Semites. The larger and more openly combative Lobby groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) have supporters in virtually every congressional district in the United States who can be called upon to get on the phone and start pouring out emails as needed. So every congress critter hears the call and knows what it means. And no one wants to have a hostile Israel Lobby on one’s back if there is any thought of being re-elected. In some cases, approaches include suggestions that significant donations to support one’s political campaign will either increase or be denied depending on what the legislator chooses to do or say.
And then there are the personal visits on Capitol Hill from the Israel lobbyists. The door is always open for the man or woman from AIPAC. Sometimes the Congressman is actually urged to sign a statement on his or her view of the conflict, a document carefully prepared in advance by The Lobby, of course. And the work by the Israel Firsters is almost always effective. Witness for example what took place concerning the assault on Gaza, where Congress and the White House tried to outdo each other in declaring how much they love Israel even though they don’t necessarily have to say or do anything as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did what he wanted anyway. Biden reportedly spoke with Netanyahu six times urging teethlessly “de-escalation” of the fighting but the Israeli each time insisted that he would continue the operation “mowing the grass” in Gaza until “its aim is met.”
The Israeli grip on the US government is and should be astonishing and one has to ask why the American people put up with it. They likely endure because they are unaware of the extent of it. If anyone still doubts the degree to which Jewish power is a major force in the United States it is only necessary as a test case to look at the Congressional and White House comments on Gaza, which served absolutely no American interest and which will only make the world even more anti-US due to the Administration’s enablement of the slaughter of the Palestinians. Washington’s UN Ambassador vetoed three Security Council resolutions calling for a cease fire, as is often the case, the only country to vote “no.”
Several aspects of the US role in the fighting particularly demonstrate the ability of Israel and its domestic lobby to get what they want from Washington even when it seems counterintuitive for the Administration and Congress to be falling in line. To be sure, 138 Congressmen and 29 Senators eventually signed onto letters urging a cease fire, but the texts tended to be generic, lacking any context, which means the recommendations were basically useless and not intended to go anywhere.
A highly partisan approach, in line with many of the comments by other government spokesmen, was reflected in a letter from Kevin McCarthy, the “leading Republican” (sic) in Congress, who released a statement confirming his allegiance to Israel. Part of it read:
“The ongoing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians show why America must act immediately to support Israel, condemn Hamas, and sanction those who fund terrorism. Instead of pressuring Israel to compromise with this terrorist group, Democrats should join Republicans in voting to cut off international funding for terrorists.
“That is why today, Rep. Brian Mast, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served alongside the Israel Defense Force (IDF), will push for a vote on the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2021.
“This bipartisan bill, which passed the House last Congress, would sanction foreign governments and individuals who fund Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, such as Iran.”
For starters, how exactly is it that a US Army combat veteran served alongside the Israeli Army? And now this great admirer of Israel is in Congress? Once upon a time one would lose US citizenship for serving in a foreign army. Mast must have missed something about swearing an oath to uphold the US Constitution, not Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of thugs and war criminals. And why are McCarthy and Mast including Iran in their indictment? Possibly because Tehran support of the Palestinian cause would be a pretext for another war? And what are McCarthy and Mast doing pledging anything at all to a foreign country which at the time was engaged in genocide?
Bad enough, but what is really appalling is the role of Joe Biden “the peacemaker” in hurriedly pushing through approval to provide the Israelis with $735 million dollars-worth of precision guided missiles, exactly the kind of weapon being used by Israel currently to kill Gazans. One might reasonably ask “What was Joe thinking?” but that raises the second question of “Was he thinking at all, apart from exercising knee jerk loyalty to Israel and its psychotic leader?” He did not have to provide more weapons to the Jewish state, which apparently was not running out of weapons of its own, but he did it anyway.
The United States already pays one fifth of Israel’s so-called “defense” budget and this extra contribution, as well as the funds provided annually to pay for Iron Dome defense, is on top of that. If there was any question whether the US was enabling the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians the question was surely answered by the decision made by the president, who knowingly provided US made weapons to be used by Israel to commit war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the US Arms Control Export Act and the existing Arms Supply Agreement between the US and Israel. He also was providing advanced tactical weapons to a country which is in violation of the Leahy Law due to its uninspected nuclear arsenal and is therefore ineligible for US government military assistance of any kind.
To be sure, some in Congress introduced a resolution to stop the weapons “sale” (a euphemism as Israel never pays for anything). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have proposed blocking the presidential authorization based on its one-sidedness and unsuitability when fighting is actually going on, but it was a futile gesture as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will surely let the bill die in committee. It will never reach the House floor for a vote. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a similar resolution in the Senate which will likely suffer the same fate.
Tlaib has argued that “The US cannot continue to give the right-wing Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with US-supplied weapons. To read the statements [from the Biden Administration] you’d hardly know Palestinians existed at all. No child, Palestinian or Israeli, whoever they are, should ever have to worry that death will fall from the sky. How many of my colleagues are willing to say the same, to stand for Palestinian human rights as they do for Israel? How many Palestinians have to die for their lives to matter?”
So it is all same old, same old. Biden, who boasts that American ties to Israel are “unbreakable,” has welcomed the cease fire in Gaza but it is at best a pause in what has become generational intercommunal warfare based on Israeli intentions to eliminate the Palestinians. And Biden will even be seen as having provided the weapons to further that process. Americans, who have no compelling interest in being involved at all apart from their domination by a ruthless Israel Lobby on foreign policy issues relating to the Middle East, will pay the piper as they rearm the Israelis and enable the next round of killing. Some believe that the tide of public opinion is turning against Israel due to its brutality, but I have my doubts as the Lobby has been in control for so long and knows exactly which buttons to push to get what it wants. That, the subversion and corruption of American democracy, is the real tragedy.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Stanford review finds 45% of 117 pediatric “Covid hospitalizations” were not hospitalized for Covid
By Meryl Nass, M.D. | May 24, 2021
Four things we know of probably helped drive up the number of hospitalizations coded as due to Covid-19.
One was the payment of considerably more funds by Medicare for a hospitalization coded with a Covid DRG than for a comparable illness.
Two was an extra federal payment to hospitals that met a certain threshold of Covid cases during a specified time period, as discussed by Scott Jensen, MD and recent member of the Minnesota legislature, who is now running for governor.
Three was a required Covid test for every admitted patient, which has some false positives and presumably also identifies asymptomatic cases.
Four was extra emergency payments to states that could show they had a preponderance of Covid patients.
Physicians at Stanford’s quaternary (super specialized and able to care for the very sickest patients) pediatric center examined 117 Covid-coded pediatric hospitalizations that occurred during a 9 month period from May 10, 2020 to February 10, 2021. They determined that 45% of these children were not admitted because of Covid. Their paper is short and straightforward. Worth a quick look.
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Only a Beginning… Charles Malik’s vision of an emergent Pax Judaica
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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