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Hamas warns against postponing Palestine elections

MEMO | April 23, 2021

Deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, Khalil Al-Hayya yesterday warned against postponing the Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for 22 May, saying it would push the Palestinian people into the unknown.

Al-Hayya, who heads the movement’s list in the elections, said the postponement “will generate great frustration among the masses and youth”, warning that “the postponement will complicate the situation and perpetuate division”.

In January, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced that the elections will be held in May followed by Presidential elections in July.

Earlier this week, the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre published the results of a poll which showed that 79 per cent of Palestinians consider holding these elections important.

On Tuesday, Abbas’ senior adviser, Nabil Shaath, said the upcoming Palestinian national elections are “very likely” to be postponed if Israel does not allow voting in occupied East Jerusalem.

He told An-Nahar newspaper that if Israel continues to ignore the PA’s request to hold the elections in East Jerusalem, “the electoral process will be postponed.”

Israel has carried out an arrest campaign against those taking part in elections activities in occupied Jerusalem. Analysts believe occupation forces will not allow balloting to take place in the area as Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital and does not allow PA activities in the city.

However, many believe the PA is using this as an excuse because recent polls show that Hamas would, once again, win the election leaving President Abbas, who heads the Fatah movement, in a difficult predicament.

Abbas refused to step down following Palestine’s last election in 2006 when Hamas was elected to power. The move caused disunity among Palestinians and led to Fatah heading the government in the occupied West Bank and Hamas governing the besieged Gaza Strip.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Europe can’t soft-pedal a sanitary techno-dictatorship while claiming to protect people from abuse by AI

By Rachel Marsden | RT | April 23, 2021

Europe can’t soft-pedal a sanitary techno-dictatorship while claiming to protect people from abuse by AI. Pick a lane, hypocrites.

The EU is proposing to regulate AI and facial recognition in the interest of privacy, while pushing ahead with an intrusive scheme that would strongarm citizens into disclosing private medical data through digital certificates.

This week, when logging into the French government’s TousAntiCovid smartphone application – a one-stop shop for everything Covid-19 related, including the latest statistics, news and self-certification forms to be out and about after the 7pm curfew – French citizens discovered a new feature had been quietly added: “My wallet: Your test certificates will be available here,” it reads.

The addition is detailed in the app as an “experiment in progress, only on some flights to Corsica” via Air France and Air Corsica – both of which are controlled in part by the French government through a 29% stake in Air France-KLM, making the state the company’s single largest shareholder.

“To digitize your test certificates and always have them at hand, it’s simple: once the result of your test is available, you will receive a text message with a link and instructions to follow,” according to the new feature. A button below the message can be clicked to activate the user’s camera and scan the QR code of a Covid-19 PCR test.

In an interview earlier this month with CBS News, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “we are building a European certificate to facilitate the travels after these restrictions between the different European countries with testing and vaccination. And the idea indeed is altogether to offer that to the American citizen when they decided to vaccinate or with a PCR test being negative.”

The royal ‘we’ is a reference to the European Union, which has also claimed to be working on a bloc-wide certificate. Hypocritical EU officials also introduced a proposal this week to regulate facial recognition and other artificial intelligence, lest any such technology risk violating personal privacy – kind of like the EU is working on doing with its scheme to have people disclose private medical information to anyone demanding it, under the guise of sanitary nanny statism.

The beta test that has just creeped up on the French government’s anti-Covid app for use on the airline it controls is a little toe dipped into the water of a potentially massive, privacy-breaching tsunami.

At what point do people start to rebel, to send the government the message that state intrusion into the most intimate aspects of their personal life – in this case their medical history – has gone too far? When the government asks for vaccination and antibody certificates to be uploaded? When it expands the program beyond use by Air France to other airlines? When it goes beyond air travel to everyday venues? When a hacker breaches the system and accesses sensitive information? When health insurers start demanding QR codes to Covid-19 related testing in order to reassess the cost of people’s premiums?

French people are known for taking to the streets at the slightest provocation. The now defunct Yellow Vest movement, a casualty of Covid-19 era mass gathering bans, initially ignited over a mere gas tax increase. The creeping sanitary authoritarianism evidenced by the recent Covid app update isn’t as alarming to people as a gas tax because it’s being soft-pedalled, introduced too incrementally to provoke a backlash. No one really cares right now if you need a negative PCR test scanned into your phone to board a plane to Corsica, except the relatively few people going there. And that’s not enough to raise a ruckus.

But the government is deliberately calling it an ‘experiment in progress’ for a reason. It obviously isn’t going to end there. Macron said as much to CBS News. He’s also creating a false dichotomy. Macron is suggesting that the certificates – which he has previously said would be optional (unless you want to leave the house, I guess) – would allow the virus to be controlled, while lifting domestic restrictions and allowing international tourism to resume. The alternative is to be forced to maintain restrictions.

But look, the restrictions will end when we, the people, say they will. And far too many citizens have yet to wake up to that fact.

The insecurity of governments regarding their capacity to contend with a virus, or terrorism, or any other perceived threat, isn’t our personal problem. And it certainly shouldn’t be a reason to invade people’s private lives without a court ordered warrant.

Demanding that everyone provide a Covid test as proof of sanitary ‘innocence’ is radically dystopian. If people want to be vaccinated, that’s their choice. If they don’t, then that’s their choice, too. They may choose to take their chances on catching Covid, and developing natural immunity.

The schizophrenic EU and its member states, like France, which constantly claim that personal privacy is a non-negotiable core value, need to pick a lane. Is Europe going to be a technology-enabled sanitary dictatorship? Or are you going to protect us from creeping fascism? Pick one. Because you can’t have both.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

We Have A COVID Lifeline. The Powers Won’t Allow It.

By Mary Beth Pfeiffer | Trial Site News | April 23, 2021

In a widely reported announcement, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned, “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.”

Taking the drug “can be very dangerous,” FDA said, though 33 years of human use, billions of doses and a Nobel Prize for annihilating parasitic illness suggest otherwise.

The FDA statement, which is the lynchpin of COVID policies worldwide, purported to protect the public from taking over-the-counter ivermectin meant for animals. But its real purpose was to instill fear.

Indeed, a war on ivermectin — by public health agencies, corporations that stand to cash in on the pandemic, and social and mass media – is being waged to dismiss a drug that could be a lifeline to normalcy.

Why?

Confused By The Facts

Ivermectin is a case study in official decrees that do not align with reality.

Take a close look the World Health Organization’s contortions before declaring on March 31 that ivermectin should be limited to experimental trials. WHO first ignored its own commissioned analysis that found the drug would cut COVID deaths by 75 percent. Then, WHO handed the job to a different team, which also found far fewer deaths with ivermectin – but ruled its cherry-picked evidence unconvincing. That is the analysis WHO chose.

Or read the lone study — one among 52 ivermectin trials — that did not find significant evidence of improvement in COVID patients. Despite contradictions and flaws, including some patients given the wrong drug, the results were accepted by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Scour the list of positive studies, many from countries where this inexpensive drug is reducing illness. Few medical journals will publish them. Though available online, the media ignores them. Major outlets that have not done a single serious story on ivermectin jumped on the told-you-so JAMA story.

Finally, consider that right now, social media is in the midst of a brutal little-reported campaign of censorship to the point that YouTube policy precludes users from saying ivermectin prevents or helps COVID.

Why so rigorously manage the message if the evidence is so weak?

Data Versus The FDA

A website tracker summarizes those 52 ivermectin trials, involving more than 17,500 patients. Collectively, ivermectin:

–Prevented 85 percent of infections (similar to vaccines);

–Resolved 81 percent of early illness;

–Improved 43 percent of late-treated patients;

–Reduced deaths by 76 percent.

As authorities dismiss study after study, it has become clear. The drug’s rejection is not based on science, data or the experience of many doctors. Instead, a disinformation campaign is raging to demonize the drug and belittle studies that support it.

Exhibit #1: The FDA announcement. The agency said in March it had received “multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and been hospitalized” after taking a form of ivermectin used to treat horse parasites.

Among many alarming articles, I could not find any that actually told how many people were “poisoning themselves,” as one report put it. I asked the FDA press office what it meant by “multiple.”

The answer: Four. Three people required hospitalization, though, beyond that, the FDA had no details.

“Some of these cases were lost to follow up, so we can’t be sure of the final outcome,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “Privacy laws” precluded further comment.

For all we know, the patients might have been sick from COVID, not horse paste, which is regrettably used when patients cannot get the real thing. Ivermectin, incidentally, is FDA-approved and permitted for off-label use, with just 19 associated deaths since 1992, compared to 503 for remdesivir since 2020.

The seeds were nonetheless planted: Ivermectin was an “evolving threat” and “fake COVID treatment,” encouraged by “conspiracy sites trying to push this drug in really high doses.” All based on four cases.

So far, there have been more than 2,500 U.S. deaths after vaccination for COVID-19. I see no hysterical reporting on that.

Unsupported Conclusions

Exhibit #2: The WHO recommendation. On March 31, the World Health Organization dealt a gut punch to ivermectin, decreeing it should be limited to clinical trials only. But the WHO’s review was limited, questionable and seemingly hastily done.

First, the WHO working group called the evidence that ivermectin reduced deaths of “very low certainty” based on five studies. Why so few?

An independent analysis, also done in March, analyzed 13 studies and found ivermectin decreased the risk of death by 68 percent, an effect that was “consistent across mild to moderate and severe disease subgroups.” The systematic review was led by Dr. Tess Lawrie, a physician and author on 41 Cochrane Reviews, which are routinely used to inform medical guidelines.

In the earlier report that WHO discounted, six mortality studies were examined by the University of Liverpool’s Dr. Andrew Hill — four of which were curiously left out of the second WHO analysis.

Notably, even the studies assessed by the WHO group showed strong reductions in deaths. But the group used unconventional methods to downgrade them, Lawrie said in a YouTube interview. It classified two less-impressive studies as having a low risk of bias, wrongly in Lawrie’s view. That effectively inflated their importance, and helped the review conclude the evidence was lacking.

“You have a risk of death across these studies — in their data — of 70 per thousand, and if you get ivermectin you have a risk of death of 14 per thousand,” Lawrie said in the interview with Dr. John Campbell, a PhD nursing teacher.

That comes to a 72 percent reduction in deaths in patients treated with ivermectin, Lawrie said. But indicative of what Lawrie called a “slapdash” approach, a table of conclusions in the WHO study refers to seven, not five, mortality studies, and to an 81 percent reduction in deaths. “Very strange,” Lawrie said.

Significantly, the review omitted trials analyzed by both Lawrie and Hill that demonstrated significantly fewer deaths: From Egypt (92 percent), Bangladesh (86 percent), Iraq (67 percent) and Turkey (33 percent).

Moreover, the WHO review failed to even look at the strongest evidence in favor of ivermectin: its potential to prevent infection.

Dr. Pierre Kory, president of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, believes that omission was designed to protect the Emergency Use Authorization, which allows administration of unapproved vaccines if no alternative exists. “If ivermectin were to be approved as a standard therapy,” he said in a broadcast to supporters, “…that would kneecap the entire global vaccine policy around the world.”

(Note: I reached out several times to Dr. Bram Rochwerg, co-chair of the WHO analysis. A spokesperson at McMaster University in Canada, where he is an associate professor, said he would have no comment.)

Selection Bias?

Exhibit #3: The JAMA study. Predictably, the WHO report included the only existing negative ivermectin trial in its review, giving the Cali, Colombia study an inexplicable thumbs-up label of  “low risk of bias.”

The flaws, outlined in a critique led by David Scheim and in a letter signed by 120 doctors, call that designation, and JAMA’s publication, into serious question.

–With an average age of 37 and lean body mass, the study population was inclined to do well from the get-go — “nebulous parameters,” Schein said, that made statistical relevance negligible. Testament to the robust nature of the group, just one person died in the untreated group, a rate six times lower than locally. Of note, no treated patient died.

–38 people in the control group were accidentally given ivermectin, a serious error, underscoring the letter’s assertion, “The study’s flaws span subject population, design, execution and controls.”

–Participants reported symptoms by telephone, and without objective examination, 16 days after treatment ended, a highly unusual lag time. “Not credible,” the letter said.

Of crucial importance, both patient groups – one got ivermectin and one did not – had almost identical, though minor, side effects, a “striking anomaly” that suggests something, Scheim said. Perhaps ivermectin, which is widely available in Colombia, did not appear to make a significant difference because both groups were taking it. Ivermectin has a bitter taste and 64 placebo patients were given sugar water, compromising a fundamental of controlled trials — that patients cannot discern what treatment they get.

Why would a premier medical journal accept an article with such glaring flaws?

An Organized Campaign

Exhibit #4: Information Management. Everyday, my inbox grows with messages of people who had items removed from Twitter, LinkIn, Facebook and YouTube. Several people were locked out of Twitter for tweets on the results of a registered trial that found ivermectin prevents COVID. I was also locked out of Twitter for eight days after writing the fateful words: “Ivermectin works.”

Aside from a couple of opinion articles in the Wall Street Journal, the media has barely taken notice. Yet this is a clear assault on free expression by outlets that, though privately owned, are essentially monopolies.

“We must never allow anonymous censors to determine what is medical misinformation,” Associate Professor Seymour M. Cohen of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in a letter to the WSJ, “and cancel scientific inquiry and discussion with which they disagree.”

Held Hostage

Although Kory, Lawrie and others are accused of medical “misinformation,” the real problem, Kory says, is disinformation, akin to historical efforts to cover-up the ills of tobacco and other pharmaceutical and government mistakes.

Among the slew of studies that support ivermectin, you will rarely if ever find listed under authors’ potential conflicts of interest the names of pharmaceutical powerhouses like Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and Gilead. Yet, each of those was listed on the JAMA article’s COI disclosures.

Merck itself pioneered ivermectin – its chief scientist sharing the Nobel in the process – and has repeatedly said it is a safe, essential medication. Yet Merck disavowed ivermectin for COVID in February in yet another example of how facts do not align with reality. Reuters and others eagerly reported Merck’s statement, but never mentioned the company’s $356-million deal to supply the U.S. government with an “investigational therapeutic.”

The rejection of ivermectin may not be a grand coordinated conspiracy, says Jay Sanchez, an attorney in New York City. Rather, it grows out of something more mundane and insidious that he studied 35 years ago in a course at Harvard Law School taught by later-Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Bryer: “Regulatory Capture.”

“Regulatory agencies may come to be dominated by the industries or interests they are charged with regulating,” says Investipedia. Hence, they act more on behalf of the companies they regulate than on the public they serve. Blame “regulator complacency, cozy relationships,” wrote economist Fred S. Grygiel, “and ultimately, conflicts of interest.”

Those relationships allow PR campaigns to shape messages, news outlets and social media companies to mercilessly reinforce them, and spineless government agencies go along with the shadows of doubt rather than the robust evidence.

That is ivermectin today.

Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative journalist and author of Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change. She was authored 10 articles for Trial Site News.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Kids As Young As 12 To Receive Covid Vaccines By September

By Richie Allen | April 23, 2021

The Sun newspaper is claiming this morning that it has seen “core planning documents,” which lay out plans to vaccinate children from September, in a bid to prevent a third wave of coronavirus.

A government source told The Sun that vaccinating children as young as five years-old is also being considered. The source told the newspaper that;

“Plans are in place to vaccinate children aged 12 upwards, and senior government officials have been briefed. Though controversial, it is deemed necessary to stop the UK regressing in its remarkable fight against Covid.”

The core planning documents also suggest that everyone over 50 should be offered a booster jab in the Autumn.

Children are virtually unaffected by coronavirus, but government scientists believe that they can pass it on to elderly relatives or vulnerable people. There is absolutely no evidence to support this claim.

Transmission rates did not increase when schools were reopened last Autumn, nor when they were reopened last month. There is zero evidence to back up the claim that asymptomatic people can spread the virus.

Why is the government hell-bent on vaccinating children for an illness that doesn’t affect them? Where are the paediatricians? The silence is deafening. The media, typically, is absent.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Medical Tyranny on US College Campuses

By Stephen Lendman | April 23, 2021

It’s the wrong time for US youths with higher education aspirations in mind.

On increasing numbers of US campuses, it’s hazardous to their health and well-being to enroll at colleges and universities whose policies may irreversibly harm them near-or-longer-term.

After Rutgers in March required students to be jabbed with experimental, high-risk, unapproved, rushed to market, DNA altering Pfizer or Moderna mRNA technology that risks irreversible harm to health, a dozen or more US schools of higher education went the same way.

By mandating the above, they’re putting their student body in harm’s way — irresponsibly and recklessly endangering them.

Affected students should transfer to a school that respects their health, and legal right to decide all things related to their well-being.

Schools mandating covid jabs are in breach of federal law and the Nuremberg Code.

The former requires that individuals may “accept or refuse administration of” experimental, unapproved drugs.

According to the Nuremberg Code, voluntary consent is required on all things related to health.

By ignoring the above, US schools that require students to be involuntarily jabbed for covid are in flagrant breach of these standards and contemptuous of the health and rights of their student body.

They include Rutgers, Northeastern, Fort Lewis College, St, Edward’s, Roger Williams, Nova Southeastern, Brown, Cornell, Yale, Columbia, and Columbia College, Chicago.

My esteemed alma mater Harvard University strongly urges students to be jabbed for covid, short of mandating it so far, saying:

“We continue to strongly recommend that you seek vaccination opportunities from all sources available to you to prevent further delay,” falsely adding the following:

“The safety of (covid jabs) is a top government priority (sic).”

Fact: Polar opposite is true, what Harvard suppressed.

Fact: Government mandates and recommendations since last year are intended to inflict harm on individuals following them, not the other way around.

Fact: They’re all about instituting draconian control.

Fact: Experimental covid mRNA technology and vaccines are bioweapons to depopulate the US and other nations of individuals dark forces want eliminated.

Covid jabs “will help protect you from getting” the viral infection (sic).

Fact: Jabs increase the likelihood of being infected. Harvard falsely claimed otherwise.

“(Y)ou may experience some side effects after receiving the injection (sic).

“This is a normal sign that your body is building protection (sic).”

Fact: Toxic jabs risk serious harm to health and no protection.

Fact: The more jabs, the greater the risk.

Fact: Jabs risk contraction of any number of serious diseases short-term or later on.

Fact: For the elderly with weak immune systems, allergic individuals and others, they can kill.

“The cost of the vaccine is covered by the government.”

Fact: To encourage mass-jabbing, US dark forces are incentivizing uninformed Americans to self-inflict harm.

Covid jabs “are one of many important tools to help us stop this pandemic (sic).”

“Once you’ve received your jab, continue to wear your mask and socially distance in public places (sic).

Fact: No pandemic exists, just normal annual outbreaks of seasonal flu-renamed covid to scare us into self-inflicting harm by following draconian mandates and recommendations.

Fact: Masks don’t protect and risk serious harm to health when worn longterm.

Fact: Social distancing provides no protection. It undermines normal interactions — essential to every day life.

Fact: It’s unnecessary and destructive of interpersonal relations, while providing nothing beneficial.

Voice of America, part of the US worldwide propaganda system, falsely said the following:

“The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved use of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines (sic).”

False on two counts! These drugs are NOT vaccines.

They’re hazardous, experimental, unapproved DNA altering mRNA technology — given emergency use authorization when no emergency exists.

According to American College Health Association’s Covid Task Force co-chair Gerri Taylor:

“We would love for all our students to be vaccinated before they go home to either places in the US or places in other countries, because if they go there unvaccinated, they could actually carry the virus to their families and communities (sic).”

All of the above claims are part of the most widespread ever state-sponsored mass deception campaign to convince maximum numbers of unwitting people to follow a high-risk with no reward protocol.

Protecting and preserving health requires rejecting it.

Above all, it’s vital to health and well-being to refuse being jabbed with what’s unneeded and may cause irreversible harm if used as directed.

When I was on campus long ago — circa 1950s — nothing remotely like the above existed.

In college and graduate school, I recall no health-related mandates of any kind.

None should exist today beyond encouraging students not to self-inflict harm by following good health practices — not the other way around like what’s going on today.

A Final Comment

According to draconian Yale and Columbia diktats, students unwilling to be jabbed for covid will be barred from classrooms and prohibited from coming on campus — except for those with medical, religious or other exemptions.

Unacceptable policies instituted by the above colleges and universities may likely be mandated at many others in the coming weeks and months.

Instead of protecting students, they’ll be harmed near-or-longer-term, proving what’s unthinkable.

In the US, higher education is becoming hazardous to students instead of protecting and preparing them for endeavors they seek to pursue.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

US Honey Still Contains Radioactive Fallout From 1950s Nuclear Weapons Tests, Study Finds

By Morgan Artyukhina – Sputnik – 23.04.2021

While the damage done to honeybee hives by pesticides is well documented, the effects of radioactive fallout is less well understood. However, bees near Ukraine’s Chernobyl exclusion zone were observed to have lower reproduction after the 1986 reactor disaster scattered fallout across the region.

Early atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons scattered radioactive fallout far and wide, tainting land, waterways, and the foods they produced for decades. However, nearly three quarters of a century later, scientists are still finding new places where the evidence of those fiery explosions persists, with the latest being in honey.

“While most of the radiation produced by a nuclear weapon detonation decays within the first few days, one of the longest-lived and more abundant fission products is [cesium-137] , which has a radioactive half-life of 30.2 years,” a study recently published in Nature Communications notes.

To demonstrate this to his undergraduate students, James Kaste, a geologist at Virginia’s College of William & Mary, assigned them the task of gathering local produce from wherever they went on spring break and bringing it back to the lab to be tested for cesium, according to Science Magazine. Most of the results were as expected – very low – but one sample, some raw honey made in Raleigh, North Carolina, was found to have cesium levels 100 times higher than the other samples.

Kaste decided to chase the lead, joining with two others to collect 122 honey samples from up and down the US East Coast to test for the radioactive cesium isotope. In 68 of those samples, they found above 0.03 becquerels per kilogram of the material, with the highest being 19.1 becquerels from a Florida sample. None of those are remotely close to the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) safety cutoff of 1,200 becquerels per kilogram.

“I’m not worried at all,” Kaste told the outlet. “I eat more honey now than I did before I started the project. And I have kids, I feed them honey.”

The study notes that several decades ago, the quantity of cesium in the honey was likely much higher, but due to its radioactive instability, much of it has decayed, turning into different elements.

Between 1951 and 1963, the US performed 100 above-ground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site, and another 928 underground tests before 1973, after which the US signed the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, sharply limiting the size of underground nuclear tests. The dust from these tests carried radioactive materials far and wide, sprinkling them across the United States, where they made their way into the ecosystem and often into people’s food.

Cesium-137 is just one of several radioactive isotopes uniquely created by nuclear bombs. According to the study, cesium mimics potassium, a common element used in biological processes, which is how it becomes a part of the plants from which the bees collect honey. However, others, such as strontium-90, mimic calcium, making products such as milk an easy pathway for human consumption, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Another, iodine-131, is also passed through milk and readily causes thyroid cancer.

A 2017 study by the University of Arizona found that radioactive fallout from those tests was responsible for an extra 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths. A New York Times article from 1986, amid the Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union, recalled that although the US Atomic Energy Commission tracked radiation fallout in food for decades and claimed the exposure was no worse than a person received standing in sunshine, “farm animals died from radiation exposure and human cancer rates [in Utah] near the test site increased tenfold. Plutonium was found in the soil in Salt Lake City, Denver and Houston. Stillbirth rates in New York showed increases in 1954, 1956 and 1959 – the years following intensive testing.”

“Federal officials have taken the stance that absolutely no increased cancer rates, no medical damage of any kind has occurred as a result of nuclear testing,” the Times continues.

However, those Native American communities directly downwind of the nuclear explosions experienced the most intense fallout, with the very first nuclear test, the July 1945 “Trinity” explosion, pouring a colossal amount of radioactive dust onto the “Tularosa downwinders” in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto. While some downwinders have received financial compensation from the US government, they have been left out of such legislation as of yet.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Disposing of Fukushima’s nuclear water is ‘not Japanese housework,’ countries have every right to claim compensation, China says

RT | April 23, 2021

The Chinese Foreign Ministry says neighboring countries will bear the brunt of the problems created by Japan’s decision to dump radioactive wastewater into the ocean, adding that Tokyo should be ready to compensate.

Speaking on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that Tokyo can no longer pretend to be deaf and dumb over the issue of releasing its supposedly treated nuclear wastewater from the now-defunct Fukushima power plant into the ocean.

Citing an expert who claimed that Japan’s neighbors would be most impacted by their decision, Zhao stated, “as the neighboring countries that bear the brunt of the sewage from Japan’s nuclear accident, China, South Korea and other countries have every right to claim compensation from Japan.”

The spokesman continued, saying Japan must not put its own private interests above international and public interests. “The disposal of nuclear contaminated water in Fukushima, it is definitely not Japan’s housework. If the nuclear sewage is not polluted, why doesn’t Japan keep it for itself?”

Zhao added that Japan is making a dangerous first step, claiming its government will pay the price for its irresponsible behavior, leaving a stain on history.

Last week, Japan announced it would be releasing the wastewater from the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean “in around two years.” The plan, which had been widely rumored to be Tokyo’s preferred option, was met with condemnation by Japan’s neighbors.

Concerns have been raised about how safe the water is despite years of treatment. Last year, Greenpeace reported that the wastewater from the plant was more dangerous than the Japanese government had suggested. Their publication titled, ‘Stemming the tide 2020: The reality of the Fukushima radioactive water crisis’ claimed the supposedly treated water still contains “dangerous levels of carbon-14,” a radioactive substance that has the “potential to damage human DNA.” The water is also known to contain radioactive tritium.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Amid increased tensions in Donbass, Putin invites Ukrainian President Zelensky to Moscow for discussions on ‘bilateral relations’

By Jonny Tickle | RT | April 23, 2021

Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed that he is ready to welcome his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky “at any convenient time in Moscow.” The suggestion comes after Kiev offered to meet in war-torn Donbass.

Speaking before talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday, Putin said Zelensky should first discuss the problems of Donbass with the heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics before speaking with representatives of third countries. He included Russia in this category.

“And if we are talking about the development of bilateral relations, then, please, we will receive the president of Ukraine in Moscow at any time convenient for him,” Putin said. “If President Zelensky wants to start restoring relations, Russia will only welcome it.”

The Russian leader’s statement comes after Zelensky suggested a summit “anywhere in the Ukrainian Donbass where the war is going on,” earlier this week.

“Ukraine and Russia, despite their shared past, look to the future in different ways. We are us. You are you,” Zelensky said. “But this is not necessarily a problem; it is an opportunity. At the very least, an opportunity, before it is too late, to stop the murderous mathematics of future war losses.”

The conflict in Donbass started in April 2014, when two pro-Moscow breakaway republics unilaterally declared independence from Kiev. These regions – the self-declared Donetsk (DNR) and Lugansk People’s Republics (LNR) – are unrecognized by both Russia and Ukraine. However, according to Kiev, they are under the control of the Kremlin, a charge Moscow denies.

Following Zelensky’s invite to Putin, the heads of both the DNR and LNR invited the Ukrainian leader to meet and hold talks in Donbass, suggesting he deals directly with them instead.

“I urge you, Mr. Zelensky, not to invite the leaders of third countries to the line of contact, but rather to go there yourself for an honest and open conversation with us,” said Denis Pushilin, the leader in Donetsk.

The situation in Donbass has escalated in recent weeks, although it now seems to be calming down. Media reports from the region revealed a build-up of both Russian manpower and equipment near the border, following news that the Ukrainian Army was increasing its number of forces in the area. However, on Thursday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that troops deployed near the frontier would soon begin returning to base, as military exercises had concluded.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Norwegian City ‘Ill-Prepared’ to Welcome NATO Nuclear Submarines

By Igor Kuznetsov – Sputnik – 23.04.2021

Despite treating a nuclear accident as an unlikely scenario, the Norwegian Armed Forces warned that it may lead to death, damage overall health over time and do great radioactive harm to nature and the environment.

While the first NATO nuclear submarines are set to dock soon outside the Norwegian city of Tromsø due to a contested recent agreement, the municipality has no plans for the mass evacuation of people in the event of a radioactive leak or other emergency, national broadcaster NRK reported.

Among other things, there is a conspicuous lack of material and competence for rescue and health personnel who may have to assist in the event of an accident.

“As is said in the contingency plan, which will be ready 1 May, we lack the necessary training on everything in the plan, and we also lack the necessary equipment,” the director of Tromsø municipality, Stig Tore Johnsen, told NRK, admitting that the authorities don’t have what is needed if something goes wrong when the nuclear submarines arrive.

“We don’t plan for the entire city of Tromsø to be evacuated in the event of an incident. It is a not very relevant scenario, and not very likely to happen, so we cannot plan for it,” Johnsen said.

According to Johnsen, the municipality currently lacks information about when the first submarine will arrive. However, in two weeks, a digital public meeting under the auspices of the Armed Forces will be held about the planned calls.

While the contingency plan is almost finished, this doesn’t mean that everything is in place.

“The plan doesn’t necessarily mean that we have done all the exercises, acquired expertise in incidents that may occur or other material. There are things that will remain after 1 May,” Johnsen admitted.

Earlier this year, the Norwegian Armed Forces completed a classified 80-page risk and vulnerability analysis for the arrival of nuclear submarines. According to NRK, though, the Armed Forces treat a nuclear accident as an unlikely scenario. But it can happen, and in the event of an accident, the consequences can be death, damage to health over time and great radioactive harm to nature and the environment. The Armed Forces’ own analysis shows that may ultimately be relevant to evacuate large parts of Tromsø. In the words of the national broadcaster NRK, “If a nuclear accident occurs, it can have fatal consequences for Tromsø.”

Municipal council representative Jens Ingvald Olsen of the Reds party, previously a staunch opponent of port calls by nuclear-powered vessels in Norway, is highly critical of how the authorities handle this issue.

“It is quite obvious that the municipality, the University Hospital of Northern Norway, and the police are ill-prepared to handle submarine reception as of today. What is happening now confirms what we have been criticising over the past five years,” Olsen told national broadcaster NRK.

Deputy mayor of Tromsø, Mads Hegge Jakobsen of the Centre Party, said that the position in the municipal council has been taken and that is unlikely for it to turn around on this issue.

Previously, the upgrade of the port facilities in Tromsø triggered popular and political opposition, as well as criticism from environmentalists, including Greenpeace.

Tromsø, 76,000, is the largest urban area in Northern Norway and the third largest north of the Arctic Circle in the entire world, trailing only Russia’s Murmansk and Norilsk.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

As British Warships Deploy to Black Sea, Putin Warns of Red Lines

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 22, 2021

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a stern warning to countries trying to provoke military tensions, saying that his nation is drawing up red lines for defense.

Putin delivered the sharp remarks during his annual state-of-the-nation address to lawmakers from both chambers of the Russian parliament. The stark warning comes amid spiraling tensions over Ukraine between Western supporters of the Kiev regime and Russia.

Specifically, days before Putin’s set-piece speech, British media reported that Britain’s Royal Navy is planning to deploy two warships to the Black Sea: a Type-45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles; and a frigate for hunting submarines. A British ministry of defense spokesman is quoted as saying the move was a sign of “unwavering support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity” in the face of alleged Russian aggression.

The British deployment is planned to take place in the coming weeks. The two warships will transit Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait to enter the Black Sea. International shipping is permitted under the Montreux Convention. However, the British plan seems far from an innocent passage, and a rather more calculated provocation.

The two ships will be part of a bigger battle group, the newly launched HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier which will station in the East Mediterranean. The battle group will be able to supply F-35B Lightning fighter jets and Merlin helicopters with submarine-hunting missiles. All in all, it is a pretty audacious attempt by the British to raise tensions with Russia.

It is notable that the United States last week abruptly cancelled sending two of its guided-missile destroyers to the Black Sea after Russia mobilized its own fleet in the region and warned the Americans to “stay away”. Days later, the British seem to have stepped into the breach with their proposed Black Sea operation. Did the Biden administration ask London to step up to the plate and to show “solidarity”, or is the British maneuver a gambit to curry favor with Washington by flexing AngloSaxon muscles for Uncle Sam?

In any case, London’s move comes on the back of an already brazen buildup of British military forces in the Black Sea. Britain has previously sent naval personnel and equipment to train Ukrainian warships. The Royal Air Force has also dispatched a squadron of Typhoon fighter jets to patrol the Black Sea in support of the Kiev regime and its claim to take back control of the Crimean Peninsula. The Peninsula voted in a referendum in March 2014 to join the Russian Federation after a NATO-backed coup d’état in Kiev the previous month which ushered in an anti-Russian regime.

The Kiev regime has also been stepping up its violations of the ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine where ethnic Russian populations have declared breakaway republics in defiance of the 2014 NATO-backed coup. Civilian centers in Donetsk and Luhansk are being shelled on a daily basis. This is clearly a cynical attempt by the Kiev regime to escalate the civil war in such a way as to drag NATO further into the conflict. Russia has mobilized sizable army divisions on the border with Ukraine in what Moscow says is a matter of national self-defense. Yet, ironically, the United States, Britain, and other NATO powers are demanding Russia to “de-escalate” tensions.

NATO’s very public backing for the Kiev regime and the supply of American lethal weaponry is no doubt emboldening the regime to step up its offensive fire on Eastern Ukraine and making menacing moves towards Crimea.

The British are in particular giving the Kiev regime a dangerous sense of military license for its bravado towards Moscow.

The situation is an extremely dangerous powder-keg. One wrong move, even unintended, could spark off a wider war involving the NATO powers and Russia.

In this highly combustible context, Russia is right to close off areas in the Black Sea that encompass its territorial waters. Those areas include the coastal waters off the Crimean Peninsula.

NATO powers sending warships into the region is the height of criminal folly. If Britain and other members of the U.S.-led alliance contend that they are “defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity” then the logic of that position dictates that they will attempt to make an incursion into Crimean coastal water since they don’t recognize Russia’s sovereignty. In that event, a military confrontation is bound to happen.

President Putin’s declaration of red lines is not so much a rhetorical putting it up to the West. It is a responsible position to prevent a war from breaking out.

The British are being told that they cannot just sail their warships into the Black Sea and rattle their sabers in Russia’s face. Putin is telling the Brits and anyone else not to even think about getting that close.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

NYU Professor Fights Back Against the Academic Crybullies

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Mark Crispin Miller teaches a course on Mass Persuasian and Propaganda at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development for 20 years. He is now suing 20 department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the dean of his school demanding a review of Miller’s conduct. Today we talk to Miller about his course, his views, his libel suit, and the state of free speech in the era of increasing COVID tyranny.

Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds / Odysee / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES:

MarkCrispinMiller.com

“Masks Don’t Work” by Denis Rancourt

Change.org petition: Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom

MCM’s libel lawsuit, complete (thus far)

Help Mark Crispin Miller sue for libel (GoFundMe)

Nope, Aristotle Did Not Say, “It Is the Mark of an Educated Mind to Entertain a Thought Without….”

Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance Dehaven-Smith

Masking ourselves to death: Part 1 of 3

The Gray Lady Winked

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Johnson’s proposed spy-law reveals an unsustainable double standard in how dissent is treated at home and abroad

By Kevin Karp | RT | April 21, 2021

The PM’s proposals for a US-style Foreign Agents Registration Act and strengthening of powers under the Official Secrets Act claim to be about protecting against ‘foreign interference’, but really only stifle freedoms in Britain.

Boris Johnson is set to announce a raft of legislative proposals aimed at curtailing activities of foreign agents in Britain at the forthcoming Queen’s Speech on May 11.

Within the draft bill is a requirement for any individual working on behalf of a foreign government to register with British authorities or face criminal prosecution. This appears to be modelled after the foreign agent registry the United States brought in using the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).  The proposals also include an expansion of the Official Secrets Act to allow foreign cyberattackers targeting the UK to be prosecuted and a significant widening of what type of intelligence theft is punishable under law.

Though Johnson claims the reason for expanding these powers is the ever present spectre of Russia – the “most acute threat” to British security in Europe, apparently – the real threat to British citizens’ security comes from how the UK government and the governments of its allies are using, and could use, this type of legislation.

According to the current version of the Official Secrets Act, which traces its origins back to 1911, stealing “any sketch, plan, model or note which is calculated to be or might be or is intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy” is forbidden. The proposed new designation changes that to any “document, information or other thing” and replaces “enemy” with  “foreign powers.” What the Johnson government is really doing here is diverting scrutiny away from its own stifling of individual freedoms under the pretext of battling foreign interference. Here’s how.

The House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee’s (ISC) report of 2020, which has formed the basis for much of Johnson’s recent proposals, probed claims of Russian state-supported interference in the British electoral process. This is exactly the type of alleged interference the new bill would presumably address. That report stated, “The UK is clearly a target for Russia’s disinformation campaigns and political influence operations and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts.”

The problem is, British authorities have already shown themselves to be woefully biased and inept in assessing what is foreign-backed interference. For example, the ISC report alleges that “Russia’s promotion of disinformation and its attempts at broader political influence overseas” and included Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik in that bracket. But the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, referred to as a source in the report, merely cites examples of these outlets broadcasting content critical of the European Union. This coverage, which the Commons report documents as having occurred during the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum, was grouped under the heading “anti-EU bias” simply for presenting opinions that differed from those of then-Prime Minister David Cameron.  This was the same David Cameron whose government so vociferously supported the Remain side of the referendum: he spent £9 million of public money sending out pro-EU propaganda pamphlets to every home.

By this spurious definition of ‘disinformation’ the views of a majority of Britain at the time – i.e., those who supported Brexit – could be considered to have been potentially “fomented by Russian subversion” for contradicting the then-government’s official stance. Johnson’s (who incidentally, supported Leave) proposals, if they used that definition, could open the door to classing any oppositional view as a piece of “information or other thing” useful to “foreign powers,” merely for dissenting with an official stance from Whitehall or Westminster.

But of course Johnson himself is no stranger to spreading the odd bit of ‘disinformation’. At the end of the last decade mainstream British papers and US government-funded troll artists smeared Jeremy Corbyn using tactics the prime minister hopes to enshrine in law. As public support grew for the supposedly socialist economic program of the then-Labour leader, media and government attempts to discredit him as a Russian agent intensified as the December 2019 UK General Election approached.

When in November of that year the Corbyn campaign revealed a lengthy dossier pointing toward the Johnson government’s alleged plans to privatize the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) as part of a Brexit deal – despite Johnson’s public promise to the contrary – both the Telegraph and the Guardian released stories that claimed Russian involvement in the dossier’s leak.

Their source for the allegation was Ben Nimmo, a former fellow at the NATO funded Atlantic Council, which has a long standing animosity toward Russia, and director of data-consulting firm Graphika, none of which qualifies him to espouse on where the NHS dossier may have come from.

Even Alba Party leader Alex Salmond – as Boris Johnson has already adamantly refused another referendum on Scottish independence even if nationalist parties win a majority in the Holyrood elections in May – could be classed an abettor of a foreign power under these new laws for working for RT. The 2020 ISC report also details a section on supposed Russian interference in the 2014 Scottish-independence referendum, citing a study by none other than the Russia-baiting Ben Nimmo as a dubious primary source.

Oppositional journalism itself would be under threat if these laws ever came into effect. For example, the British and US thumbscrews already being applied to WikiLeaks and its imprisoned founder Julian Assange could be twisted even tighter.  Washington’s ongoing attempt to extradite him from London, on the basis of his leaking classified documents on American war crimes, comprises 18 charges under the US Espionage Act, which is a broadly similar law to the UK’s Official Secrets Act.

An expanded Official Secrets Act would make it even harder for whistleblowing organizations like WikiLeaks and individuals like Assange to conduct their work in the UK or even just while in contact with UK-based individuals. The judge who refused Assange’s extradition to the US on grounds it would exacerbate his mental distress has already indicated that, if Assange had been operating within the jurisdiction of the UK, he would have violated the Official Secrets Act as it currently stands.

Broadening the definition of an “official secret” could accordingly strengthen a British case against Assange and the operations of WikiLeaks, further undercutting what scant protections the British legal system currently offers him. Under the increased powers Johnson wants to go after foreign hackers, Assange and those like him could be grouped as cyberattackers operating from abroad against the UK, whether or not their operations took place on British soil.

Abroad, meanwhile, Johnson’s legal juggernaut is an attempt to smother Moscow and Beijing’s exposure of illegal British operations overseas by whipping up indignation over “foreign interference” in Britain. Johnson remarked in Parliament recently that “the Russian state used a chemical weapon in Salisbury” to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in 2018, despite lacking substantiated evidence to prove the claim.

Johnson is launching verbal salvoes like these because Moscow and Beijing’s exposure of dirty Western tactics has been getting uncomfortable for leaders like him.  The Western-backed opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, whose alleged poisoning by the Russian state led the UK, EU, and US to impose a fresh round of sanctions on Russia, was labeled by Vladimir Putin in December 2020 as having “the support of the special services, those of the United States in this particular case.”

In a joint statement delivered in March, Wang Yi and Sergey Lavrov, the foreign ministers of China and Russia, expressed solidarity against Western interference in the sovereign affairs of their respective countries. Wang made the statement even more explicit, noting that “[Western powers] should know that the days of inadvertently interfering with Chinese internal affairs by inventing lies have already passed.”

Russia and China released this statement right after the US, the EU, the UK, and Canada approved sanctions against Chinese state officials over alleged human-rights abuses of Uighurs in Xinjiang.  Yet a slew of pro-Xinjiang organizations are actually funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is itself funded by the US government, making these movements, which call for Xinjiang to form a separatist state, effectively agents of Washington.

All of which points to the dangerous dichotomy being furthered in Johnson’s forthcoming bill: while presuming that all manifestations of “pro-Western” illegal activity against rivals like Moscow and Beijing are legitimate and lawful, the UK and US are recklessly smearing legitimate and lawful domestic dissent as criminal fifth-columnist subversion.

Kevin Karp is a commentator, screenwriter, and former political adviser in the House of Commons and the European Parliament. As an EU adviser based in Brussels and Strasbourg, he specialized in international trade, European populism, and Brexit. Find his website at moon-vine-media.com.

April 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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