A court in Nigeria’s central state of Kaduna has acquitted Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, and his wife of all the charges levelled against the duo.
The trial at the Kaduna State High Court started on May 15, 2018 and dragged on for over three years. The high court issued its final verdict on Wednesday, Ishaq Adam Ishaq, their lawyer, said in a statement.
They were released from detention following the ruling, he added.
“At last, we defeated them. we won,” hailed the legal representative, adding, “They have gained their freedom. They are now freed and with us.”
Zakzaky and his wife, Mallimah Zeenat, were standing trial in the court on an eight-count charge of alleged culpable homicide, disruption of public peace and unlawful assembly among others levelled against them by the Kaduna state government.
They had pleaded not guitly.
In December 2015, Nigeria’s military launched a crackdown as part of a deadly state-ordered escalation targeting the movement that Abuja has branded as illegal.
The campaign saw the troops attacking Zakzaky’s residence in the town of Zaria in Kaduna, afflicting him and his wife with serious injuries that reportedly caused the cleric to lose his left eye.
During the crackdown, the military also attacked the movement’s members as they were holding religious processions, with the government alleging that the Muslims had blocked a convoy of the country’s defense minister.
The movement has categorically rejected the allegation, and said the convoy had intentionally crossed paths with the IMN’s members to whip up an excuse to attack them.
The violence led to the death of three of Zakzaky’s sons and more than 300 of his followers.
The couple were kept in custody despite a 2016 ruling by Nigeria’s federal high court that ordered their release from prison.
Amid the long-drawn-out jail term, the couple were allowed to leave for India for medical purposes. Their stay was, however, reportedly plagued by the state’s interference aimed at preventing them from receiving proper medical treatment.
The couple’s freedom came following tireless activism on the part of Nigeria’s Shia faithful and repeated damning reports about their situation by international human rights bodies.
July 28, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Human rights, Nigeria |
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People in France have shown their support for a restaurateur who declared his eatery a ‘free zone’ in response to the government’s vaccine passports mandate for restaurant and bar entry amid widespread protests.
With the government set to require all people to show their Covid-19 health passport when entering bars and restaurants from the beginning of August, some in France have started their own campaign to rebel against what they described as the state’s “health dictatorship.”
The Twitter account ‘Zone Libre’ or ‘Free Zone’ is encouraging restaurateurs to display a sign rejecting the health pass mandate by President Emmanuel Macron’s government.
The tweet reads: “Zone Libre becomes the slogan of opponents of the health dictatorship,” adding the hashtag “Zone Libre” and “No to the Shame Pass.”
The tweet is accompanied by an image of a sign that reads: “Here, we respect your freedom, your dignity and medical secrets.” The message on the outside of the sign says “All welcome, with or without a health pass.”
While the account itself hasn’t received much attention, a video of chef Michel Le Menn sticking the sign to the facade of his eatery has been widely shared across social media. The restaurant, ‘Le Coup de Fourchette’ is reportedly located in Brest, a port town in Brittany.
In the footage, people can be seen photographing the ‘Zone Libre’ sign while the crowd chants “Liberte” or “Freedom.”
Sharing the video, one person wrote: “resistance starts like this, respect Sir.”
“All restaurateurs must do the same, if he is the only one to do it the state will crush him with all its weight to make an example,” one person wrote.
The term itself is rather controversial, as the ‘Zone Libre’ was also the name for the area of France controlled by the Vichy government of Marshal Philippe Petain during World War II. The short-lived state was notoriously anti-Semitic.
On Monday, the French government passed into law a bill forcing vaccination for medical workers and greater use of the controversial health pass. The government had previously stated its intention to make compulsory the use of the health pass for access to bars and restaurants from August; the passes are already required for places like museums and swimming pools.
The health pass, which can be displayed on an app or printed out, shows whether the individual has either been vaccinated or provided a negative test.
Macron’s government has seen widespread opposition to the pass, with 160,000 people protesting across the country on Saturday. Demonstrators chanted “Freedom, Freedom” as they marched around French towns and cities.
July 28, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | COVID-19 Vaccine, France, Human rights |
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Mandating children to wear facemasks for long periods of time while at school and participating in other activities is an unprecedented move, one that was put into place despite no research showing the practice is safe. It’s not simply a case of “something is better than nothing,” because the act of mask wearing comes with a risk of adverse effects.
Now that the pandemic is more than a year behind us, evidence is starting to accumulate showing that the use of face masks in children may cause more harm than good. One of the latest studies noted that the evidence base for making face masks compulsory in schoolchildren is “weak,” and looked into their effects on carbon dioxide in inhaled air.1
Masks Increase Carbon Dioxide Inhalation
Your body produces carbon dioxide (CO2) as a byproduct of cellular function.2 This odorless, colorless gas is then transported via your blood to your lungs, where it is exhaled from your body. Normally, the CO2 then dissipates into the air around you before you take another breath. In the open air, carbon dioxide typically exists at about 400 parts per million (ppm), or 0.04% by volume.
The German Federal Environmental Office set a limit of CO2 for closed rooms of 2,000 ppm, or 0.2 percent by volume. If you’re wearing a facemask, the CO2 cannot escape as it usually does and instead becomes trapped in the mask. In a study published in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers analyzed the CO2 content of inhaled air among children wearing two types of masks, as well as wearing no mask.3
Children in the study ranged in age from 6 to 17 years, with a mean age of 10.7. While no significant difference in CO2 was found between the two types of masks, there was a significant elevation when wearing masks compared to not wearing them.
CO2 in inhaled air under surgical and filtering facepiece masks came in between 13,120 ppm and 13,910 ppm, “which is higher than what is already deemed unacceptable by the German Federal Environmental Office by a factor of 6,” the researchers noted.4 Also important, this level was reached after only three minutes, while children wear masks at school for a mean of 270 minutes at a time.
Even the child who had the lowest measured CO2 level had a measurement threefold greater than the closed room CO2 limit of 0.2 percent. However, younger children appeared to have the highest CO2 values; a level of 25,000 ppm was measured from a 7-year-old wearing a facemask.5
The study attracted criticism and calls for retraction by those questioning mask risks to children, but in a thoughtful synopsis by Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, it’s noted that there are both benefits and risks to forcing children to wear masks.6
While large, empirical studies could answer the question of whether masks help or harm children, “we did literally zero of them,” Prasad said, and the CO2 study is attempting to add some clarity. He added:7
“Here is the real answer to the question of whether it’s worth it to mask kids: No one has any clue. During the last year and half, the scientific community has failed to answer these questions. Failed entirely.
We have no idea if masks work for 2-year-olds and above, 5 and above, 12 and above. No idea if they only work for some period of time. No idea if this is linked to community rates. No idea if the concerns over language loss offset the gains in reduced viral transmission, and if so, for what ages.”
Children’s Mask Complaints Could Be Caused by Elevated CO2
A German study using data from 25,930 children showed that 68% reported adverse effects from wearing facemasks.8 Among them, 29.7% reported feeling short of breath, 26.4% being dizzy and 17.9% were unwilling to move or play.9
Hundreds more experienced “accelerated respiration, tightness in chest, weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness.” Additional symptoms were also reported among the children, who wore facemasks for an average of 270 minutes a day:10
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Irritability (60 percent)
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Headaches (53 percent)
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Difficulty concentrating (50 percent)
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Less happiness (49 percent)
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Reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44 percent)
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Malaise (42 percent)
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Impaired learning (38 percent)
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Drowsiness or fatigue (37 percent)
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Signs of mild to moderate hypercapnia, which is a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream, include shortness of breath, daytime sluggishness, headache, daytime sleepiness and anxiety.11
Hypercapnia is often associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which makes it harder for you to breathe, but it can also be caused by activities that limit you from breathing fresh air, such as scuba diving or being on a ventilator.12,13 The researchers of the featured study believe, however, that the use of facemasks could lead to “impairments attributable to hypercapnia,” adding:14
“Most of the complaints reported by children can be understood as consequences of elevated carbon dioxide levels in inhaled air. This is because of the dead-space volume of the masks, which collects exhaled carbon dioxide quickly after a short time.
This carbon dioxide mixes with fresh air and elevates the carbon dioxide content of inhaled air under the mask, and this was more pronounced in this study for younger children … We suggest that decision-makers weigh the hard evidence produced by these experimental measurements accordingly, which suggest that children should not be forced to wear face masks.”
Nanoparticles, Pollutants Detected In Facemasks
Disposable plastic facemasks pose another risk in terms of the pollution they contain. A study by Swansea University researchers noted that 200 million disposable plastic facemasks are produced in China daily, and “improper and unregulated disposals” have led to a significant plastic pollution problem.15
The researchers submerged seven disposable facemask brands in water to simulate what happens with littering, when masks end up in waterways. Micro- and nanoscale fibers and particles and heavy metals, including lead, antimony and copper, were detected, raising significant environmental and public health concerns. According to a university news release:16
“The findings reveal significant levels of pollutants in all the masks tested — with micro/nano particles and heavy metals released into the water during all tests.
Researchers conclude this will have a substantial environmental impact and, in addition, raise the question of the potential damage to public health — warning that repeated exposure could be hazardous as the substances found have known links to cell death, genotoxicity and cancer formation.”
Not only are masks not being recycled, but their materials make them likely to persist and accumulate in the environment. Most disposable face masks contain three layers — a polyester outer layer, a polypropylene or polystyrene middle layer and an inner layer made of absorbent material such as cotton.
Polypropylene is already one of the most problematic plastics, as it’s widely produced and responsible for large waste accumulation in the environment. Leading researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Princeton University also warned that masks could quickly become “the next plastic problem.”17
A performance study published in the June 2021 issue of Journal of Hazardous Materials18 also highlighted the little talked about fact that wearing masks poses a risk of microplastic inhalation, and reusing masks increases the risk.
The Link Between Masks And Advanced Stage Lung Cancer
A National Institutes of Health study19 published in February 2021 confirmed that when you wear a mask, most of the water vapor you would normally exhale remains in the mask, becomes condensed and is re-inhaled.20 They went so far as to suggest that wearing a moist mask and inhaling the humid air of your own breath was a good thing, because it would hydrate your respiratory tract.
But researchers from New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine revealed that when oral commensals — microbes that live in your mouth — are “enriched” in the lungs, it’s associated with cancer.21
Specifically, in a study of 83 adults with lung cancer, those with advanced-stage cancer had more oral commensals in their lungs than those with early-stage cancer. Those with an enrichment of oral commensals in their lungs also had decreased survival and worsened tumor progression.
While the study didn’t look into how mask usage could affect oral commensals in your lungs, they did note, “The lower airway microbiota, whether in health or disease state, are mostly affected by aspiration of oral secretions, and the lower airway microbial products are in constant interaction with the host immune system.“22
It seems highly likely that wearing a mask would accelerate the accumulation of oral microbes in your lungs, thereby raising the question of whether mask usage could be linked to advanced stage lung cancer.
Masks Developed That Test For COVID-19
Adding further support that masking leads to an accumulation of breath droplets, which you can then re-inhale, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University developed a face mask that tests such droplets for the presence of COVID-19.23
The facemasks contain tiny, freeze-dried sensors surrounded by water. When the wearer pushes a button, the water is released, hydrating the sensor, which then begins the test.
Reportedly, the mask can diagnose COVID-19 within 90 minutes and is “as sensitive as the gold standard, highly sensitive PCR tests,“24 which have been fraught with trouble since the beginning of the pandemic.
CDC Study Finds Masks In Schools Had Little Effect On COVID
If children are risking inhalation of excessive levels of CO2 to wear masks at school, what benefit are they receiving in exchange? Very little, if any, according to a CDC study that compared the incidence of COVID-19 in Georgia kindergarten through grade 5 schools that were open for in-person learning in fall 2020 with various recommended prevention strategies, such as mandatory masks and improvements to ventilation.25
The study revealed that COVID-19 incidence was 37 percent lower in schools that required teachers and staff members to use masks and 39 percent lower in schools that improved ventilation, compared to schools that did not use these strategies.26
Because the COVID-19 incidence at the schools was extremely low to begin with, even with a 37 percent reduction in incidence from staff members wearing masks, that only reduced COVID-19 incidence by about one case in the entire school. When students were masked, it also made virtually no difference. Further, ventilation led to better outcomes, reducing incidence by 39 percent.
Dilution methods, which work by diluting the number of airborne particles, include opening windows and doors or using fans. This led to a 35 percent lower incidence of COVID-19, while methods to filter airborne particles, such as using HEPA filtration systems with or without ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, led to a 48 percent lower incidence.
More States Ban Mask Mandates In Schools
While the CDC continues to recommend “universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing” in kindergarten through grade 12 schools,27 a number of states, including Texas, Iowa, South Carolina and Arkansas, are defying the CDC’s nonsensical advice and proceeding to ban mask mandates in public schools or at least make mask usage optional.28
In addition to the physical risks, experts have warned that masks are likely to be causing psychological harm to children and interfering with their development.29 All of these risks come at little benefit to children, as, one expert report noted, “Figures illustrate that the risk of death from this disease for this age group is negligible … To introduce these [compulsory face covering measures] without detailed, thorough and meticulous risk assessment, is potentially reckless.“30
Mass, peaceful protests are often effective at compelling change, so if you’re unhappy with the facemask policies at your child’s school, contact your local district and let them know.
References:
1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 14 JAMA Pediatrics June 30, 2021
2 Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Carbon Dioxide
6, 7 MedPage Today July 7, 2021
9 Montana Daily Gazette, January 25, 2021
10 Research Square April 28, 2021
11 StatPearls May 7, 2021
12 Physiopedia Hypercapnia
13 Open Anesthesia Hypercapnia Causes
15 Water Res. 2021 May 15;196:117033. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2021.117033. Epub 2021 Mar 10
16 Swansea University May 5, 2021
17 Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. 2021, 15(6): 125
18 Journal of Hazardous Materials June 5, 2021; 411: 124955
19 Biophysical Journal February 11, 2021 DOI: 10.1016/j/bpj.2021.02.002
20 Healthing.ca February 16, 2021
21, 22 Cancer Discov. 2021 Feb;11(2):293-307. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-20-0263. Epub 2020 Nov 11
23 Nature Biotechnology June 28, 2021
24 The Jerusalem Post July 3, 2021
25, 26 U.S. CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report May 21, 2021
27 U.S. CDC, Operational Strategy for K-12 Schools May 15, 2021
28 NPR May 21, 2021
29 Express April 11, 2021
30 Health, Safety and Wellbeing Report in respect of Civil Proceedings April 9, 2021, Page 7
July 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights |
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Jews in America are demanding the United States intervene in Chile’s internal politics in the run up to their presidential election next November.
Daniel Jadue, a descendant of Palestinian refugees and member of the Chilean Communist Party, is currently the frontrunner in polls. Jadue is an unapologetic anti-Zionist who has in the past directly confronted the Jewish power structure of his country.
Gerardo Gorodischer, president of Chilean Jewish lobby, has successfully recruited Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress to call on Secretary of State Antony Blinken — a Jew himself — to meddle in Chile’s internal affairs and prevent Jadue from becoming president.
Jadue has in the past called attention to Jewish control of the media in his country. Last year, he was listed as one of the top 10 anti-Semites in the world by the Simon Wiesenthal Center after he passed a strict Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) law as mayor of the city of Recoleta. He is currently supporting a law in the parliament that would make Chile the first nation in the world to officially institute a total boycott of Israel.
With 400,000 descendants, Chile is home to the world’s largest Palestinian diaspora outside of the Middle East. Chilean-Palestinians are overwhelmingly Christians who were forced to flee their homeland after being ethnically cleansed by Israel. Chile’s Jewish population is much smaller, currently estimated at 150,000 people. Jews in the country have started immigrating to Israel in larger than usual numbers out of fear of Jadue potentially becoming the nation’s next leader.
So far, Jewish attempts at “Corbyning” Jadue have failed. Complaints from Zionist organizations in Latin America and the US to stop Jadue have largely been ignored by the local population. Their trump card appears to be using the United States to intimidate the Chilean government with threats of economic retaliation or more.
In her letter to Blinken, Democratic congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz made a collective racial attack on the entire Chilean Palestinian community for protesting against Israel’s attacks on Arabs last May:
“Militant leaders of the 400,000-strong Chilean Palestinian community, and their partners, from a variety of political parties, were quite aggressive during and after the Gaza crisis, burning Israeli and U.S. flags, brandishing Nazi symbols and accusing Israel of apartheid and Chilean Jews of controlling the media. This dangerous climate has been intensifying for many years and has already affected Chile’s social fabric despite alarms sounded by the local Jewish community and U.S. Jewish organizations like the American Jewish Committee.”
The billionaire neo-conservative president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, also received the letter. His allies in the parliament have started grilling Jadue over his 1983 high school yearbook entry, where he declared himself an “anti-Semite” and vowed revenge against Jews for what they did to his family. Jadue, a 54-years-old man, responded by making fun of Chilean conservatives asking him to “clarify” comments he made as a teenager as the country suffers through an economic crisis.
Jews have been encountering resistance from all across the political spectrum and diverse countries in recent months. Earlier this month, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko gave a speech suggesting that Jews use the “Holocaust” to intimidate and control people. Yesterday in Poland, local nationalists crashed a Jewish ceremony racially defaming Poles as genocidal killers.
July 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Chile, Israel, Latin America, Palestine, Zionism |
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Sociology professor Robert Dingwall has vowed to stop wearing a face mask in solidarity with children and the disabled, asserting that he won’t be lectured by mask proponents on the morality of not covering up.
England is set to exit all COVID restrictions on July 19, dubbed “freedom day,” although lockdown proponents are desperately scrambling to maintain levels of fear that would see mask mandates remain in place.
Dingwall, who sits on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, has vowed to set the example by ditching his face mask on that day.
The professor says he is doing so in order to show “solidarity” with “people with communication difficulties, whether auditory and unable to lip-read,” as well as “all the small children whose education has been disrupted by the lack of visual clues, especially in language development.”
While mask zealots who want mandates to remain permanently often vilify those who don’t cover up as selfish and immoral, Dingwall isn’t having any of it.
“I will not allow them to suggest that I am less moral or caring and I will expect them to respect my choices as I respect theirs,” the professor told Sky News.
He also expressed doubt that masks have any benefit whatsoever in stopping the spread of COVID-19, asserting that arguments in favor of wearing them “have always been uncertain because the quality of the evidence in both directions is so weak.”
Despite members of the mask cult insisting that they are helping save lives, the science on face masks is dubious at best.
Back in February 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that a typical store-bought face mask “is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material.”
A peer-reviewed study in Denmark involving 6,000 participants found that “there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19,” the Spectator reported.
Indeed, forcing populations to wear masks, particularly in the UK, appears to have been more of a social engineering experiment by behavioral scientists to try to establish a form of collectivism in order to encourage mass compliance with lockdown rules in general.
July 10, 2021
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Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | Covid-19, Human rights |
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On Friday last, the historic city of Tours in France opened its annual fair. It’s normally a very big deal. This year is even more special as the fair celebrates its centenary. However, organisers and traders were shocked on Friday, when hardly anyone turned up.
Attendees and staff were told that they would need a “sanitary pass” to attend. To get a pass, a visitor or worker needed to show proof of vaccination or take a PCR test at the entrance. Throughout Friday, the fair was a ghost town and only 4 per cent of the staff had shown up.
Panic ensued. Traders, having spent thousands of euros for their pitches started screaming bloody murder. Others started buying and selling products among themselves. It was grim. Punters were walking away in their thousands. No-one wanted anything to do with the PCR tests piled high at the entrances.
At the 11th hour, the city backed down and all restrictions were lifted. The traders had been bombarding the local authority all day with texts and emails, threatening retribution if the sanitary pass wasn’t kicked to the kerb.
The city blinked and the fair was mobbed over the rest of the weekend. The PCR tests are still rotting at the entrances. The people of Tours stood up.
Vive La France! That’s the way it’s done. That’s people power. The French never let you down. Let it be a lesson to the businesses of the UK and Ireland.
We are sick to the back teeth of this scamdemic. We want our lives back. We want to frequent shops, theaters, cafés, cinemas, bars and restaurants again. We’ll fill your tills.
Just remember, whether we have been jabbed or not is none of your business. Same goes for face muzzles. The ball is now firmly in your court. I can’t wait to see you again.
July 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | COVID-19 Vaccine, France, Human rights |
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By Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn | July 3, 2021
In the global COVID pandemic there has not been a more important action to protect public health than the current Citizen Petition to FDA to stop the full approval of COVID vaccines until many serious concerns and issues are genuinely addressed.
There has been no significant coverage of this historic petition by mainstream and corporate social media. This cancel action is itself as remarkable as the petition itself. This is a concerted effort to keep the public uninformed about the many problems with the COVID vaccines. Any person who spends the time to peruse the 20-page petition would most likely have a very negative view of the vaccines. For the unvaccinated this awareness would greatly increase vaccine hesitancy and rejection. For the vaccinated it would produce concern and regret.
The political system would literally go crazy if the petition was seriously covered by big media. Big drug companies would jump into action to suppress political and media attention to the petition. The goal of this article is to better inform the public and motivate people to take action.
CONTEXT
Before delving into the substance provided in the petition context is needed to fully understand the critical importance of the petition and make the case for individuals to officially express their support for it as part of the federal regulatory process.
One rational reaction to reading the very detailed, 20-page petition signed by 27 physicians and medical researchers from the US and other nations is this: Why not use all the detailed concerns about the COVID vaccines to demand FDA take the experimental vaccines off the market?
Indeed, the biggest name on the list of signatories is the esteemed Dr. Peter McCullough of Baylor University. He has been very outspoken and honest about many pandemic issues. He has said that, considering the high numbers of deaths and serious health impacts associated with taking the vaccines, FDA should do what it has done in the past when new medicines and vaccines had high negative impacts. Take them off the market.
Why not petition FDA to do this? Just imagine what stopping the whole COVID vaccine effort worldwide would cause. Political and public health systems would not know what to do. They would be totally stunned and flummoxed. So, though the current petition does not do this, it definitely took considerable courage to make the case to FDA to not move quickly from an emergency use authorization to full approval of the COVID vaccines.
People who have not fallen victim to the endless propaganda of the political, big media and public health systems promoting COVID vaccine jabs may not be willing to seriously examine the medical and scientific details of the petition. The problem is cognitive dissonance. Too many people will not easily resolve their propaganda induced positive views of the vaccines with the medical and science details in the petition. But that is what must happen. People must temper their fear of COVID infection with awareness that vaccines are now experimental and have not been sufficiently proved safe for all users.
The potential frustration and fear if the vaccines were deemed insufficiently safe could be mitigated by advocating for early home/outpatient treatment and preventive use of a number of cheap, safe and fully approved generic medicines. The government and public health system have blocked their wide use in favor of the wait-for-the-vaccine strategy that serves the financial interests of vaccine manufacturers. As presented in detail in Pandemic Blunder and this website, there are mountains of medical evidence to justify the treatment protocols. They are legitimate, proven alternatives to experimental and insufficiently tested vaccines that might be fully approved by FDA.
To achieve true protection of public health we need an avalanche of official public support for the petition. More details later on how people can do this.
WHAT THE PETITION EMPHASIZES
A week after the June 1 petition, lead authors of the petition published an editorial in the British Medical Journal with the title “Why we petitioned the FDA to refrain from fully approving any covid-19 vaccine this year.” Here are some key statements that use plain language to summarize key parts of the petition:
“The message of our petition is ‘slow down and get the science right—there is no legitimate reason to hurry to grant a license to a coronavirus vaccine.’ We believe the existing evidence base—both pre- and post-authorization—is simply not mature enough at this point to adequately judge whether clinical benefits outweigh the risks in all populations.”
“We focus on methods and processes, outlining the many remaining unknowns about safety and effectiveness—and suggest the kinds of studies needed to address the open questions.”
“Trials by vaccine manufacturers were designed to follow participants for two years, and should be completed before they are evaluated for full approval.”
“We also call on FDA to require a more thorough assessment of spike proteins produced in-situ by the body following vaccination—including studies on their full biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, and tissue-specific toxicities.”
“We all agree that there remain many open, unanswered questions surrounding the efficacy and safety of covid-19 vaccines that must be answered before the FDA gives serious consideration to granting full approval.”
“Some surveys suggest that vaccine hesitancy in the United States is due, in part, to lack of full FDA approval. While approval might lead to increased public confidence in covid-19 vaccines, as well as provide legal support for employer-instituted vaccine mandates, to approve a medical product for these reasons is outside FDA’s regulatory purview. Approval decisions must be driven by the safety and efficacy data. The potential unintended consequences of a rushed approval may contribute to growing mistrust of the US public health and regulatory institutions.”
“For each covid-19 vaccine, the benefits may ultimately outweigh the harms. Or not. Or we may end up in a more nuanced position, finding that benefits outweigh harms for some populations, but not others. Only time—and better evidence—will tell.”
Now, some key parts of the petition itself are presented to further illustrate what medical and science perspectives have been formulated to pressure FDA to better evaluate the COVID vaccines.
A most important point made in the petition is this. Work must be done to show that there is “substantial evidence of clinical effectiveness that outweighs harms in special populations such as: infants, children, and adolescents; those with past SARS-CoV-2 infection; immunocompromised; pregnant women; nursing women; frail older adults; and individuals with cancer, autoimmune disorders, and hematological conditions.” This is so important because so many of the deaths and harmful impacts have occurred in these groups.
Most importantly: “The widespread use of a COVID-19 vaccine under EUA, particularly for a limited amount of time, also is not a valid reason to approve a product.”
And here is a critical point that many critics of the vaccines have focused on: “In-situ production of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is the target mechanism of action of all COVID-19 vaccines with an EUA at present. Therefore, the safety profile of spike protein itself (i.e., in the absence of virus) must be thoroughly understood [in all populations]. Recently, evidence of systemic circulation of spike protein or its components in subjects post-immunization was reported. All studies we are aware of to date raise concerns about the safety of spike protein, and the concentration of circulatory spikes was correlated to the disease severity in COVID-19 patients.”
WHAT PEOPLE CAN DO
Though FDA cannot ignore the petition, there is no assurance that it will genuinely address all of the issues and concerns in it. Or that it will postpone approval of the vaccines until there is sufficient research and analysis into all the points in the petition.
It must be appreciated that the petition is authorized by federal law. The FDA citizen petition process, described in Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR Part 10), allows individuals and community organizations to request the agency make changes to health policy. Any “interested person” can request the FDA “issue, amend or revoke a regulation or order,” or “take or refrain from taking any other form of administrative action.” Granting full approval of the COVID vaccines is a major FDA administrative action with both national and global significance.
What is needed is a massive number of people officially registering their support of the petition on the proper FDA website. This can be done anonymously. Here are important links for the petition:
Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine. As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers. He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors.
July 3, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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I often work with people who have been targeted for punishment by the Israel lobby (or the Zionist establishment, if you prefer). It’s a gratifying but difficult task because victims of Zionist smear campaigns are usually scared and confused. That reaction is logical. Zionists aim to render their targets unemployable (and thus destitute). Such viciousness reflects the behavior of the state they want to indemnify from criticism.
Mainstream journalists, administrators, and politicians are receptive to Zionist pressure because their primary obligation is to serve centers of power. In many cases, individuals with the authority to decide a target’s fate share ideological and class interests with the people who are complaining. A distinct political economy informs snitching, defamation, employment termination, and other mendacious practices. That economy is calibrated to satisfy the ruling class and uses an insidious system of rewards to ensure conformity. The flipside is a sophisticated complex of discipline and coercion assembled to ensnare people who disrupt the operation. It’s crucial to understand that you’re not simply up against devotees of Israel, but more broadly an imperialist geopolitical structure in which pro-Israel sentiment is embedded. You needn’t identify as a radical in order to recognize the breadth and depth of the problem.
Before some general pointers, though, a few qualifications:
If the lobby wants you expunged from some kind of position, there might not be anything you can do to stop it. The ruling class, which includes the lobby, views you with contempt. Its beneficiaries don’t care if you go hungry. In fact, they might well enjoy it if you do. Fighting back, then, is an existential proposition.
Once targeted, you’ll be subject to a barrage of triteness and stupidity, along with gutter talk, unfounded speculation, and spectacular racism. Don’t waste time wondering how management can listen to such obvious dingbats; doing so will only make you angrier. Yes, the people complaining about you are dopey, despicable, and dishonest. They also have power, or at least the means to communicate a language amenable to power, which in the end is all that matters. Think of them first and foremost as class enemies. Contempt for the lesser specimens of humanity is the basis on which they interact with management.
Marshalling a response is intensive and time-consuming. You may not feel motivated, which is normal, and in which case a support network becomes especially helpful. From the lobby’s point of view, bogging people down in the tedium of self-defense is an added benefit; it precludes those people from doing the work that caught the lobby’s attention in the first place. They’ve summoned you to a different type of work, one that’s no less important.
Finally, each situation is different, so the suggestions that follow may not always apply. I try to provide a sketch of issues to take into account, but your distinctive personal and professional concerns should guide your response. The list below is meant to be roughly sequential.
Contact Your Union: If you’re a non-unionized worker, keep reading.
Document Everything: Save all emails, text messages, and voicemails. As accurately as possible, transcribe any verbal conversations (and the accompanying dates and times). Annotate the employee handbook and HR documents. Find cases in which management reacted differently in a similar scenario. It’s unlikely, but proceed on the assumption that you’ll end up in court.
Do Not Admit Wrongdoing: Even if you feel that you may have done something wrong—and there’s nothing wrong with condemning Israel—keep the feeling to yourself.
Research Legal Help: Palestine Legal is a terrific resource. Otherwise, look around for specialists in employment law (or whichever relevant subfield) in your area. It’s not always easy to hire an attorney, but try your best to arrange some consultations. If anything, you’ll get a sense of whether a lawsuit is viable. Lawyering up will also make management more hesitant to dispose of you.
Go Quiet (Maybe): In general, it’s a wise long-term proposition to say nothing at all, and that’s also the case at the onset of a Zionist smear campaign. This isn’t a firm rule, just something to consider. Sometimes talking further excites your adversaries. Sometimes it makes you sound sillier or more defensive than you would prefer. Sometimes you will say things that later become a source of regret. On the other hand, speaking up can be invigorating and cathartic. It depends on the situation. Interjecting yourself into the debate can extend the news cycle, so it isn’t advisable if your goal is to wait for the controversy to blow over (never a guarantee). If your goal is to vigorously defend yourself in your own words, whatever the news cycle decides to do or however upset it makes your adversaries, then it’s probably unhealthy to silence yourself. (When I was in the news cycle some years ago, I remained silent for nearly two months on order of my lawyers. That period was extraordinarily frustrating, but it later served me well during legal proceedings.) Calm down and think through what you most want to express before taking to a keyboard.
Communicate Your Version of the Story: Once you’ve confirmed that Zionists are snitching you out, talk to your employment supervisor (start with the one you least distrust). This isn’t to say that anyone in management can be viewed as an ally—consider yourself lucky if that’s the case—but you’ll want to register your version of the story, nevertheless. Don’t get into a political debate. Emphasize that you are being subject to an organized defamation campaign with no basis in reality.
Do Not Apologize or Try to Appease: For reasons of politics and principle, appeasement is a poor strategy. But it’s a poor strategy first of all for reasons of pragmatism: a Zionist mob intent on punishing an enemy has never been appeased short of destroying its target. Keep in mind, as well: those who do concede and appease aren’t just saving their own skin; they’re making life tougher for every future target of the mob.
Remain Circumspect: Or, put more plainly, don’t believe a goddamn word that management, HR, or anyone else paid by the institution says to you. For students, the same advice applies to deans and other administrators on your campus.
Write an Article Explaining Your Situation: An op-ed is probably best. Even if you don’t publish it, you’ll have the opportunity to sort your thoughts. You can share the article with people interested in learning more about your situation.
Decide Whether to Go Public: If so, enlist trusted people to help: coworkers, friends, professional colleagues. Streamline your talking points. Communicate to allies what you want emphasized and what is best kept private. The message needs to be firm and concise. Defending yourself against scurrilous accusations is important, and probably inevitable, but put a spotlight on the dishonesty and mendaciousness of your accusers. Let them answer for the racism inherent to their enterprise.
Be Clear: Assuming you go public, be clear about the situation and the stakes of a favorable (or negative) outcome. People need to understand exactly what they’re being asked to support or oppose. Over the years, hundreds of petitions and appeals have come into my inbox or social media feeds. The most compelling identify a specific injustice and demand a legible form of redress. Interpersonal drama with online frenemies is not a cause.
Give People Something to Do: Or at least let them know that more information is forthcoming. People want to feel as if they’re doing something useful to mitigate injustice, even if it’s only signing a petition. While making an audience aware of a problem is a worthy cause in itself, the audience will certainly ask, “What can we do to help?” It’s good to provide an answer. (This suggestion functions at an individual level, too. Don’t hesitate to privately approach friends to deploy their expertise on your behalf.) Possibilities include writing letters to your higher-ups (a template can be helpful, but if your supervisors get a bunch of messages with identical text, they’ll be less likely to take the complaints seriously); posting links to social media; organizing boycotts and strikes; and reaching out to relevant contacts.
Beware of Unsolicited Advice: If you do end up in the news cycle, prepare for tons of unsolicited advice. Some people will get angry with you for not behaving as they think they would, or as they think you should. Ignore them. Even if their hearts are in the right place, the demands on you to follow a program of their choosing do nothing to help. There will be dozens of factors they don’t know or care about. Listen to your family and your lawyers.
Beware the Social Climbers, As Well: Any kind of attention, even negative, will bring out opportunists looking to extract social capital from your unfortunate situation. As soon as the spotlight dims, these new friends will disappear. Follow your instinct. You’ll quickly realize who is trustworthy, and you’ll come to know those people as a beloved minority in the world.
Remember the Larger Context: Consider the implications of your choices on the Palestine solidarity movement. Your struggle is personal, but it isn’t individual. (For God’s sake, never start your own hashtag.) Make sure the conversation keeps returning to the Palestinian people (and to the world’s downtrodden in general). The repression and punishment of anti-Zionists in North America is coterminous with Zionist brutality in Palestine. Your actions should be aligned with the greater cause of Palestinian liberation.
Seek out Loved Ones for Support: There’s no shame in confiding to loved ones. Defamation campaigns can be brutally stressful and while you want to maintain a defiant stance in public, it’s important to process fear and vulnerability in private. You are human, after all, and empathy is the root of your outrage.
No matter what happens, you will have won simply by emerging from the fracas with your integrity intact. You have been targeted for punishment not at random, but because centers of Zionist power view you as somehow threatening. Zionists don’t achieve victory from the punishment itself, but from stifling or diminishing your voice and thus removing the threat. Forbearance is the only aspect of the situation you can control.
Zionist smear campaigns aim to make you destitute and so they tap into some primal anxieties. The best way to alleviate that anxiety is through resistance. A serious, thoughtful response may not save your job, but it will salvage your sense of place and purpose—and, if done well, it will galvanize others to take up the fight. Future generations—starting, optimally, with the next one—will enjoy the benefits of your fortitude.
June 28, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Former US Democratic presidential candidate and Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (AP file photo)
Former US Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), an anti-war campaigner and a regular Press TV contributor, has died at the age of 91.
The Associated Press reported on Sunday that Gravel, who served in the Senate from 1968 until 1981, died in Seaside, California this weekend. He was suffering with poor health.
Gravel ran two unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and 2016.
He was excluded from Democratic debates during his 2008 campaign in 2007, prompting him to run as a Libertarian candidate, according to the Associated Press.
Gravel was known for his anti-war efforts in the 1970s. He spearheaded a one-man filibuster in opposition to the Vietnam-era draft, and read 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page document, known as the Pentagon Papers, into the Congressional Record, according to the AP.
The Pentagon Papers were the US military’s history of Washington’s early involvement in the Vietnam War.
Gravel was ‘voice for peace, sanity and demilitarization’
“Mike Gravel, bucked the Pentagon, the CIA and the military-industrial complex by reading the Pentagon Papers into the Senate record, thereby providing legal cover for their mass publication,” journalist Don DeBar told Press TV.
“For decades after his time in the Senate ended, he was a voice for peace, sanity and demilitarization,” added DeBar.
“If we could replace Schumer and McConnell with a pair of Mike Gravel’s, it would have a major positive impact on the entire human race. This, unfortunately, indicates how big a loss we suffer with his passing,” he stated.
Gravel was also a regular contributor to Press TV.
On the eve of the 2020 US election, Gravel told Press TV that the foundation of the election system in the United States is based on bribery.
Gravel said that “politicians are corrupt and they’re basically cowards because we have a system that is set up where you give me money to help me get elected and when I’m elected, I will vote for your economic interest, that is bribery, and that’s the foundation of our system in this country.”
June 27, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular |
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We remembered all the miseries, all the injustices, our people and the conditions they lived, the coldness with which world opinion looks at our cause, and so we felt that we will not permit them to crush us. We will defend ourselves and our revolution by every way and every means.
George Habash (1926-2008)
A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.
Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
In December 1982, following Israel’s devastating invasion of Lebanon six months earlier, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution A/RES/37/43 concerning the ‘[i]mportance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination’. It endorsed, without qualification, ‘the inalienable right’ of the Palestinian people to ‘self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference’, and reaffirmed the legitimacy of their struggle for those rights ‘by all available means, including armed struggle’. It also strongly condemned Israel’s ‘expansionist activities in the Middle East’ and ‘continual bombing of Palestinian civilians’, both said to ‘constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of the self-determination and independence of the Palestinian people’. In the four decades since then, Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people and its colonisation of their land has not ceased. Up to the present moment, all over historical Palestine, from the Gaza Strip to Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians are still under that same occupation, subject to suffocating control over virtually every aspect of their lives – and the sadistic, unaccountable violence of the Zionist state.
In addition to its endorsement by the UN, the Palestinians’ right to resist their occupation is also guaranteed by international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to protect the ‘status quo, human rights and prospects for self-determination’ of occupied populations, and as Richard Falk – an expert in international law who later went on to be appointed the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – has explained, Israel’s ‘pronounced, blatant and undisguised’ refusal to ever accept this framework of legal obligations constitutes a fundamental denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and engenders their legally-protected right of resistance. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and its flagrant disregard for international law through the construction of illegal settlements and other daily violations has continued unabated since Falk’s assessment was made during the al-Aqsa Intifada. In fact, the occupation has only become further entrenched since then with the collaboration of the comprador Palestinian Authority.
Furthermore, regardless of what is mandated by international law, the Palestinians possess a fundamental moral right to resist their ongoing colonisation and oppression through armed resistance, and that right must be recognised and supported. The multi-generational suffering of the Palestinians, perhaps none more so than those who live in the besieged and bombarded Gaza strip, is unremittingly cruel and has one central cause: Israel and the perpetual belligerence, expansionism and racism that is inherent to its state ideology, Zionism. Moreover, contrary to the Western media’s narrative that, without fail, portrays Israel as acting in ‘retaliation’, it is the actions of the Palestinians which are fundamentally reactive in nature, because the violence that Israel inflicts upon them is both perpetual and structural, and therefore automatically precedes any resistance to it. ‘With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun’, said Paolo Freire; ‘[n]ever in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed’. In Palestine, as Ali Abunimah recently wrote, ‘the root cause of all political violence is Zionist colonisation’.
Given that the Palestinians’ legal and moral right to pursue armed resistance is clear, endorsement of this position should be uncontroversial and commonplace among supporters of their cause. Yet in the West, such a position is rarely expressed – even by those who loudly proclaim their solidarity with Palestine. On the contrary, acts of Palestinian armed resistance, such as the firing of missiles from Gaza, are condemned by these ostensible supporters as part of the problem, dismissed condescendingly as ‘futile’ and ‘counter-productive’, or even labelled ‘war crimes’ and ‘unthinkable atrocities’, said to be comparable to Israel’s routine collective punishment, torture, incarceration, bombardment and murder of Palestinians. This form of solidarity, as Bikrum Gill has argued, is essentially ‘premised upon re-inscribing Palestinians as inherently non-sovereign beings who can only be recognized as disempowered dependent objects to be acted upon, either by Israeli colonial violence, or white imperial protectors’.
To sit in the comfort and safety of the West and condemn acts of armed resistance that the Palestinians choose to carry out – always at great risk to their lives – is a deeply chauvinistic position. It must be stated plainly: it is not the place of those who choose to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians from afar to then try and dictate how they should wage the anti-colonial struggle that, as Frantz Fanon believed, is necessary to maintain their humanity and dignity, and ultimately to achieve their liberation. Those who are not under brutal military occupation or refugees from ethnic cleansing have no right to judge the manner in which those who are choose to confront their colonisers. Indeed, expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause is ultimately meaningless if that support dissipates the moment that the Palestinians resist their oppression with anything more than rocks and can no longer be portrayed as courageous, photogenic, but ultimately powerless, victims. ‘Does the world expect us to offer ourselves up as polite, willing and well-mannered sacrifices, who are murdered without raising a single objection?’ Yahya al-Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, recently asked rhetorically. ‘This is not possible. No, we have decided to defend our people with whatever strength we have been given.’
This phenomenon speaks to what Jones Manoel calls the Western left’s ‘fetish for defeat’ that predisposes it towards situations ‘of oppression, suffering and martyrdom’, as opposed to successful acts of resistance and revolution. Manoel continues:
People become ecstatic looking at those images – which I don’t think are very fantastic – of a [Palestinian] child or teenager using a sling to launch a rock at a tank. Look, this is a clear example of heroism but it is also a symbol of barbarism. This is a people who do not have the capacity to defend themselves facing an imperialist colonial power that is armed to the teeth. They do not have an equal capacity of resistance, but this is romanticized.
As a result, large swathes of the Western left express solidarity with the Palestinian cause in a generalised, abstract way, overstating the importance of their own role, and simultaneously rejecting the very groups who are currently fighting – and dying – for it. All too often, those who have refused to surrender and steadfastly resisted at great cost, are condemned by people who, in the same breath, declare solidarity with the cause. Similarly, it is common for these same people to either ignore or demonise those external forces that materially aid the Palestinian resistance more than any others – most notably Iran. If this assistance is acknowledged, which is rare, the Palestinian groups that accept it are typically infantilised as mere ‘dupes’ or ‘pawns’, for allowing themselves to be used cynically by the self-serving acts of others – a sentiment that directly contradicts Palestinian leaders’ own statements.
A specific criticism of Hamas that is frequently deployed in this context is the ‘indiscriminate’ nature of its missile launches from Gaza, actions which both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Intentional regularly label ‘war crimes’. As observed by Perugini and Gordon, the false equivalence that this designation relies upon ‘essentially says that using homemade missiles – there isn’t much else available to people living under permanent siege – is a war crime. In other words, Palestinian armed groups are criminalised for their technological inferiority’. After the latest round of fighting in May 2021, al-Sinwar stated clearly that, unlike Israel, ‘which possesses a complete arsenal of weaponry, state-of-the-art equipment and aircraft’ and ‘bombs our children and women, on purpose’, if Hamas possessed ‘the capabilities to launch precision missiles that targeted military targets, we wouldn’t have used the rockets that we did. We are forced to defend our people with what we have, and this is what we have’.
This failure to support legitimate armed struggle is a part of a wider problem with the framing used by many supporters of the Palestinian cause in the West, that obscures its fundamental nature and how it must be resolved. Palestine is not simply a human rights issue, or even just a question of apartheid, but rather an anti-colonial fight for national liberation being waged by an indigenous resistance against the forces of an imperialist-backed settler colony. Decolonisation is a word now frequently used in the West in an abstract sense or in relation to curricula, institutions and public art, but rarely anymore in connection to what actually matters most: land. And that is the very crux of the issue: the land of Palestine must be decolonised, its Zionist colonisers deposed, their racist structures and barriers – both physical and political – dismantled, and all Palestinian refugees given the right of return.
It should be noted that emphasising the importance of supporting the Palestinians’ right to carry out armed struggle in pursuit of their freedom does not mean that their supporters in the West should recklessly call for violence or fetishize and celebrate it unnecessarily. Nor does it mean that non-violent efforts such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) are inconsequential or unimportant. Rather, BDS should be considered part and parcel of a broad spectrum of resistance activities, of which armed struggle is an integral component. Samah Idriss, founding member of the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon has stated: ‘[b]oth forms of resistance, civil and armed, are complementary and should not be viewed as mutually exclusive.’ Or, as Khaled Barakat has stressed: ‘Israel and its allies have never accepted any form of Palestinian resistance, and boycott campaigns and popular organizing are not alternatives to armed resistance but interdependent tactics of struggle’.
Nelson Mandela’s analysis is relevant in this context, when he wrote that, ‘[n]on-violent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do’, but if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end’. For Mandela, ‘non-violence was not a moral principle but a strategy’, since ‘there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon’. Clarifying the rationale behind the African National Congress’ decision to adopt armed resistance, Mandela explained that it had no alternative course left available: ‘[o]ver and over again, we had used all the non-violent weapons in our arsenal – speeches, deputations, threats, marches, strikes, stay-aways, voluntary imprisonment – all to no avail, for whatever we did was met by an iron hand’. This standpoint is reflected in the words of al-Sinwar, who when referring to the Great March of Return protests in 2018-19, during which Israeli snipers shot dead hundreds of Gazan protestors and seriously wounded thousands more said: ‘we’ve tried peaceful resistance and popular resistance’, but rather than acting to stop Israel’s massacres, ‘the world stood by and watched as the occupation war machine killed our young people’.
Mandela’s reference to efficacy is crucial. Despite what many Western supporters seem intent on implying, although it comes at a huge cost, the Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza is not ‘futile’ and has grown enormously in effectiveness and deterrent capacity. This was already evident after Israel’s failure to win the 2014 war on Gaza and has been underlined by the recent success of the resistance in May 2021, during which it launched an unprecedented number of missiles that can now reach deep inside historical Palestine. In spite of its devastating aerial bombardment of Gaza, Israel was unable to stop the launch of these missiles and, after the losses it experienced in 2014, is now too fearful of launching another ground invasion of the strip – notably as the resistance is now equipped with greater numbers of Kornet missiles previously used to such deadly effect against Israeli tanks in Southern Lebanon. The ceasefire that was declared on May 21st was widely seen in Israel as a defeat, and was celebrated by Palestinians across historical Palestine as a victory. The military balance has changed, and although Israel is still vastly more powerful by every conventional measure, the resistance is in a stronger position now than it has been for years. It has built upon the successes of Hezbollah against Israel in 2000 and 2006 and with the support, training and further aid of the Lebanese group and others in the Resistance Axis, it has taken its capabilities to a higher level. This change is reflected in the fact that since 2014, Israeli arms sales have stagnated and its aggressions against Gaza no longer lead to an immediate rise in the stock price of its arms companies that use Gaza as a training ground and stage for its latest technologies. Shir Hever has noted that after Israel’s failures in Gaza beginning in 2014, customers of its arms companies began to ask ‘What is the point of all this technology? If you cannot pacify the Palestinians with these missiles, why should we buy them?’.
In addition to its practical impact, armed struggle has significant propaganda value. The reality is that Palestine would not have dominated global news headlines in May 2021 in the way that it did were it not for the armed resistance in Gaza that – contrary to the Western media’s singular focus on Hamas – is composed of a united front of various factions including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is a case in point in this regard, for it was their actions throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, most notably a series of plane hijackings (in which passengers were released unharmed), that implanted the Palestinian cause in the consciousness of millions of people for the first time and marked a key turning point in raising awareness of the Palestinians’ plight globally. Indeed, the Palestinian writer and PFLP spokesman, Ghassan Kanafani, believed that armed struggle was the ‘best form of propaganda’ and that in spite of the ‘gigantic propaganda system of the United States’, it is through people who fight to liberate themselves in armed struggle ‘that things are ultimately decided’.
In 1970, after the Western-backed regime in Jordan had shelled Palestinian refugee camps in the country, the PFLP – under the leadership of Kanafani’s comrade (and recruiter) George Habash – took hostage a group of nationals from the US, West Germany and Britain (Israel’s primary supporters) at two hotels in Amman. In return for their safe release, the PFLP demanded that ‘all shelling of the camps be ended and all demands of the Palestinian resistance movement met’. Shortly before the hostages were eventually released, Habash addressed them apologetically and said:
I feel that it’s my duty to explain to you why we did what we did. Of course, from a liberal point of view of thinking, I feel sorry for what happened, and I am sorry that we caused you some trouble during the last 2 or 3 days. But leaving this aside, I hope that you will understand, or at least try to understand, why we did what we did.
Maybe it will be difficult for you to understand our point of view. People living different circumstances think on different lines. They can’t think in the same manner, and we, the Palestinian people, and the conditions we have been living for a good number of years, all these conditions have modelled our way of thinking. We can’t help it. You can understand our way of thinking, when you know a very basic fact. We, the Palestinians… for the last 22 years, have been living in camps and tents. We were driven out of our country, our houses, our homes and our lands, driven out like sheep and left here in refugee camps in very inhumane conditions.
For 22 years our people have been waiting in order to restore their rights, but nothing happened… After 22 years of injustice, inhumanity, living in camps with nobody caring for us, we feel that we have the very full right to protect our revolution. We have all the right to protect our revolution…
We don’t wake up in the morning to have a cup of milk with Nescafe and then spend half an hour before the mirror thinking of flying to Switzerland or having one month in this country or one month in that country… We live daily in camps… We can’t be calm as you can. We can’t think as you think. We have lived in this condition, not for one day, not for 2 days, not for 3 days. Not for one week, not for 2 weeks, not for 3 weeks. Not for one year, not for 2 years, but for 22 years. If any one of you comes to these camps and stays for one or two weeks, he will be affected.
You have to excuse my English. From the personal side, let me say, I apologize to you. I am sorry about your troubles for 3 or 4 days. But from a revolutionary point of view, we feel, we will continue to feel that we have the very, very full right to do what we did.
Habash’s words should be listened to carefully. The urgency that underlines his message is even more palpable half a century later, for the Palestinians – consistently refusing passive victimhood – have now lived in the wretched conditions Habash depicts for 73 long years, not 22.
Revolution, Mao Zedong once remarked, ‘is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle’. The same is true of decolonisation, in which although past struggles have been multi-faceted, armed resistance of some kind was almost invariably an integral component of the struggle. Palestine is no exception. Beyond endorsement of BDS and other civil society campaigns, the Palestinians’ unassailable right to pursue armed struggle must be supported by those who choose to stand in solidarity with them and their righteous cause.
June 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Hamas, Hezbollah, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, PFLP, Zionism |
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The following letter was sent today to Canada’s Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and called on “the Canadian government to stop legitimizing the crimes of apartheid…and suspend all instances of Zim-operated ships docking and unloading in Canadian ports.” This action is part of the growing demand that Canada must hold Israel accountable, through economic sanctions and a bilateral arms embargo.
June 15, 2021
Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra
Ottawa, Ontario
In recent weeks, people of conscience in Canada watched in horror as the Israeli regime ruthlessly targeted Palestinians from all regions of historic Palestine. What started as a popular movement to #SaveSheikhJarrah residents from further ethnic cleansing expanded into a broad unity of Palestinians from Jerusalem to Gaza to Haifa to Toronto and Vancouver all sending the same message. Palestinians will no longer accept the status quo of Israeli apartheid.
As part of this burgeoning movement, Palestinian-Canadians and their supporters have actively participated in rallies, pickets and #BlockTheBoat actions. The latter refers to the efforts to stop Zim-operated ships from either docking in, or unloading, at U.S., Canadian and other international ports.
Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd is Israel’s largest and oldest cargo shipping company, dealing in Israeli manufactured military technology, armaments and logistics equipment, as well as consumer goods.
The Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and a large coalition of all major Palestinian workers unions and professional associations have called on fellow trade unions and workers worldwide to boycott Israel and businesses that are complicit with its apartheid regime. They specifically urge “refus[ing] to handle Israeli goods” and “supporting [union] members refusing to build Israeli weapons.”
Last month, and in response to the above appeal from Palestinian trade unions, South African trade unions refused handling cargo from an Israeli ship in Durban. Dockworkers in Italy have also successfully blocked a recent shipment of munitions and armaments destined for Israel.
At Canada’s largest port in Vancouver, there was a successful community picket on June 8 that tied up both the Port entrance and a busy intersection; activists from a diverse range of groups stated clearly – “Israeli Apartheid Not Welcome in Vancouver Ports”. (The same message was also delivered on June 14 at the Prince Rupert Port.)
Port Authorities in Canada fall under the Ministry of Transport. As such, Mr. Alghabra, allowing and enabling such Israeli apartheid profiteering makes both the ports and the Canadian government further complicit in the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians. Both B’tselem and Human Rights Watch have been clear in exposing the system of Israeli governance as apartheid. We, the undersigned organizations, expect the Canadian government to stop legitimizing the crimes of apartheid, and to refuse to give economic incentives to such abhorrent behaviour.
Your ministry is already mired in controversy for refusing to cancel a contract with Elbit Systems to purchase one of their drones. Who would have imagined that the Canadian Ministry of Transport would be so entangled with Israeli apartheid? We call on you to observe your government’s alleged respect for international law and human rights and suspend all instances of Zim-operated ships docking and unloading in Canadian ports.
Popular protest is not going to stop as long as Palestinians are not free.
c.c. PM of Canada, Justin Trudeau
Vancouver Fraser Port Authority
Signed:
BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish Territories
Canada Palestine Association
Palestinian Youth Movement Vancouver
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Endorsed by:
Anti-Imperialist Alliance, Ottawa
BAYAN Canada
Canadian Peace Congress
Communist Party of Canada
Gabriela BC
Independent Jewish Voices Vancouver
Just Peace Advocates
Niagara Movement for Justice in Palestine Israel
OPRA – Oakville Palestinian Rights Association
Palestinian Canadian Community Centre – Palestine House
Poetic Justice Foundation
Regina Peace Council
Sulong UBC
West Coast Coalition Against Racism Society
June 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | Canada, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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