‘With partnerships encompassing over 850 interfaith organizations, influential decision makers, and a network of more than 5 million activists and 250 social media influencers, Cam leads, a united front against Jew hatred”.
This is how the Combat Antisemitism Movement describes itself.
It sounds like an independent campaign group at the head of a global movement, but does it actually lead anything?
The movement advertises that its key initiatives include the global coalition of cities fighting anti-semitism and specialized collaborations with US governors and state legislators.
They say that they reach millions through digital campaigns, influencer partnerships and an innovation lab. They have partnerships with nearly one thousand groups.
The movement started with a pledge to fight antisemitism. It now has more than 850 organizations signed up as members from across the globe, from the South African Jewish board of deputies to the Russian Jewish Community Foundation, the Sweden Israel Alliance and UK Lawyers for Israel to stand with us Brazil.
It looks like a very extensive global network, but who is behind it? Answering that question requires peeling back several layers of the onion.
First, there is no organization registered in the US under that name. There is, however, a Combat Hate Foundation which runs the movement, registered with the Internal Revenue Service.
Public documents show that it is funded by a variety of Zionist foundations. The largest contributors seem to be foundations associated with the Kansas based Beren family, which made its fortune in the oil and gas industry.
During a 2021 controversy about the movement, The Forward reported that it functioned as a dark money front group for the Kansas oil billionaire, Adam Beren.
It can be revealed that the Combat Hate Foundation is part of a joint venture run by the Israeli regime. The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is in charge. It is run via the ministry’s deniable corporate intermediary, Voices of Israel, yet, there is no mention of this relationship on the website of the Combat Antisemitism Movement.
A strong clue is that on the board of governors is Brigadier General Sima Vaknin Gill, former Israeli intelligence officer and Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy, but the relationship is spelled out on the voices of Israel website.
‘Voices of Israel’ has a joint venture agreement with Israel, led by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combat Antisemitism.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement, in other words, is part of the covert Zionist regime network.
The impressive nature of the 850 partner organizations takes on a rather more sinister hue given this revelation.
Tuesday is the anniversary of the creation of Druzbha – the world’s longest oil pipeline, and one of the most technically sophisticated pieces of man-made engineering every created. Here’s what’s important to know about the project, why it was conceived, and why the US and its allies tried, but failed, to stop it.
October 15 marks the 60th anniversary of the inauguration of the Druzhba (‘Friendship’) oil pipeline. Conceived in 1958 at a meeting of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance – the Soviet-led analogue to Western European integration, Druzhba helped forge closer economic links between the USSR and its Eastern European allies, and eventually, between Russia and the whole of Europe.
Drawn up to aid an economic boom being experienced by Eastern Europe, Druzhba was built to replace more costly and infrastructure-intensive rail-based oil deliveries.
Sourcing oil from the Volga-Ural oil and gas basin and starting off in Almetyevsk, modern-day Tatarstan, Druzhba runs west to Mozyr in Belarus, where it splits into two routes – one to eastern Germany via Poland, and another through Ukraine toward Bratislava in Slovakia, Prague in the Czech Republic and Budapest in Hungary.
Members of the Soviet-led economic alliance, namely Albania, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, contributed equipment and know-how, with the USSR and Poland delivering 730,000 tons of 420-1,220 mm pipes, East Germany pumps for pumping stations, Hungary automation equipment and communications gear, and Czechoslovakia valves and fittings.
The US sought to sanction the project into submission, slapping restrictions on Western European sales of large-diameter pipes to the Eastern Bloc after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Russian Chelyabinsk’s industrialists saved the day, creating pipes of the necessary diameter.
The success of the project led to the construction of a second line – known as Druzhba-2 and running along the same route, in 1974.
With Moscow selling oil to allies via long-term contracts, Eastern Europe was largely insulated from the oil shocks suffered by the West in the 1970s and early 1980s. Between 1971 and 1980, Hungary’s material national income rose by 62%, East Germany’s by 59%, Poland’s by 73%, Czechoslovakia’s by 57%, and capital construction in these countries grew 1.9, 1.7, 2.2, and 1.8 times, respectively.
This allowed the region to build tens of millions of new apartments, industrial goods and finished products ranging from cars and electronics to household goods.
After the USSR’s collapse, Germany’s reunification and the European Union’s expansion, Druzhba became a key source of fuel for Europe’s economic prosperity, helping Eastern Europe with its difficult transition to the market, and Germany in its effort to build on its status as an industrial powerhouse.
Accounting for expansions (including extensions to deliver oil to southern Germany and Austria), Druzhba holds the record as the longest oil pipeline network in the world, consisting of a whopping 8,900 km of pipe, 46 pumping stations, 38 intermediate pumping stations, and reservoirs that can hold up to 1.5 million cubic meters of oil.
Druzhba is also one of the most technically-sophisticated manmade engineering projects in history, crossing the Volga, Oka, Don, Dnepr, Dniestr, Vistula and Dunabe rivers and hundreds of smaller waterways, thousands of roads and railways, the Pinsk Marshes and the mountains of Carpathia.
The pipeline has an estimated capacity to pump up to 2 million barrels per day, or nearly a fifth of Russia’s total oil output. Until recently, it accounted for up to half of all Russian oil exports.
Killing Druzhba?
The US, the Eu and Ukraine have taken a series of steps to try and effectively kill the Druzhba-based energy partnership between Russia and Europe, with the EU banning deliveries of Russian oil through the northern portion of the pipeline in the summer of 2024, and Ukraine raising transit costs by more than 75%, and in July 2024 prohibiting supplies of Lukoil oil through the pipeline’s southern line to Hungary and Slovakia.
While Russia has proven able to replace its dependence on Druzhba by forging new energy ties with countries in the Global South, including India and China, Europe has been trapped by its own restrictions into buying more expensive and less dependable energy sourced in the US, leaving economic growth stagnant and industrial competitiveness in jeopardy.
Florida residents must feel like they have been taking a beating from major hurricanes in recent years, but what do the data show?
The problem with human perception of such things is that the time scale of hurricane activity fluctuations is often longer than human experience. For example, a person born in the 1950s would have no memory of the beating Florida took in the 1940s from major hurricanes (a total of 5). But they would have many memories of the hurricane lull period of the 1970s and 1980s, each decade having only one major hurricane strike in Florida. Then, when an upswing in hurricane strikes occurs, it seems very unusual to them, and they assume that “hurricanes are getting worse”.
Another problem is that any statistics for an area as small as Florida, even over 100+ years, will be pretty noisy. Landfalling hurricanes for the eastern U.S. would be a better metric. And statistics for the entire Atlantic basin would be even better, except that satellite coverage didn’t start until the 1970s and hurricane intensity in remote areas before then would be poorly measured (or not measured at all).
Finally, tropical cyclone statistics for the entire tropics would be the best (if one was trying to determine if climate change is impacting cyclone intensity or frequency). But satellite data for the global tropics is, again, limited to the period since the 1970s. Global tropical cyclone data before the 1970s is sketchy, at best.
So, keeping in mind that any trends we see for Florida are going to be strongly influenced by the “luck of the draw” and the quasi-random nature of hurricane tracks (hurricanes are steered by the large-scale flow of air in the mid-troposphere, say around 20,000 ft altitude or so), what are the statistics of Florida major hurricane intensity and frequency since 1900?
Florida Major Hurricane Intensity & Number
The following plot shows the intensity of major hurricanes (100 knots or greater maximum sustained wind speed) striking Florida since 1900, updated through recent (2024) Hurricane Helene:
As can be seen from the linear trend line, there has been no significant trend in the intensity of major hurricanes striking Florida since 1900.
But what about the number of hurricanes? The next plot shows there has been a weak upward trend in the decadal totals of major hurricanes striking Florida since 1900:
Note that the 2020s number might well increase, since the end of the current (2024) hurricane season will be only half-way through the 2020s. While Hurricane Milton has just been classified as a major hurricane, in 2 days time it is expected to be under increasing wind shear, so it is not obvious it will strike Florida as a major hurricane, and so I did not include it in the above charts.
Another feature of the second chart above shows that a native Floridian born in the 1960s or 1970s would indeed have experienced an increase in major hurricanes striking Florida during their lifetime. But their first couple of decades of personal experience would have occurred during a historic lull in hurricane activity.
Why Start In 1900?
There is reason to believe that the number and/or intensity of major hurricanes striking Florida in the early 1900s has been underestimated, which would bias the trends in the above plots in the upward direction, spuriously suggesting a long-term increase in activity. First of all, there were virtually no people living in Florida in 1900. The population of Miami in 1896 was 444 persons. The intensity of a hurricane is based upon its maximum sustained 1 minute windspeed, which usually covers a very small area. Even with people now inhabiting much of the Florida coastline, it is rare for a coastal anemometer to measure the intensity that the National Hurricane Center gives to a hurricane, because those winds cover such a small area. So, how could it ever be known how intense some hurricanes were in the early 1900s?
Evidence for Long-Term Hurricane Fluctuations Unrelated to Water Temperature
Modern concern centers on the possibility that warm sea surface temperatures from global warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions is making hurricanes stronger or more frequent. But studies of coastal lagoon sediments along the Gulf coast and Caribbean deposited by catastrophic hurricane landfalls show large fluctuations in activity on centennial to millennial time scales, even in the absence of the unusually warm sea surface temperatures measured today. (Example here.)
It should also be remembered that not long ago the U.S. experienced an “unprecedented” 11-year drought in major hurricane strikes. That significantly impacts our perception of what is “normal”. When the lull had reached 9 years, a NASA study found such an event was a 1-in-177-years occurrence. As I recall, that was increased to 1-in-250 years when the lull reached 11 years.
The point is that there is a huge amount of natural decadal- to centennial-time scale variability in hurricane activity in Florida (or any other hurricane-prone state). But with increasing numbers of people thinking that the government is somehow influencing hurricane activity (I’m seeing a lot of this on Twitter), I doubt that actual data will have much influence on those people, and as I approach 70 years on this Earth I have noticed a long-term decline in critical thinking regarding weather, climate, and causation. I doubt that trend will change any time soon.
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine to impose a settlement after some NATO countries had undermined the Minsk-2 peace agreement for 7 years. On the first day after the invasion, Zelensky confirmed that Moscow contacted him to discuss negotiations based on restoring Ukraine’s neutrality.[1] On the third day after the invasion, Russia and Ukraine agreed to start negotiations on a peace based on Russian military withdrawal in return for Ukrainian neutrality.[2] Zelensky responded favourably to this condition, and he even called for a “collective security agreement” to include Russia to mitigate the security competition that had sparked the war.[3]
The negotiations that followed are referred to as the Istanbul negotiations, in which Russia and Ukraine were close to an agreement before the US and the UK sabotaged it.
Washington Rejects Negotiations Without Preconditions
In Washington, there were great incentives to use the large proxy army it had built in Ukraine to weaken Russia as a strategic rival, rather than accepting a neutral Ukraine. On the first day after the Russian invasion, when Zelensky responded favourably to start negotiations without preconditions, the US spokesperson rejected peace talks without preconditions as Russia would first have to withdraw all its forces from Ukraine:
“Now we see Moscow suggesting that diplomacy take place at the barrel of a gun or as Moscow’s rockets, mortars, artillery target the Ukrainian people. This is not real diplomacy… If President Putin is serious about diplomacy, he knows what he can do. He should immediately stop the bombing campaign against civilians, order the withdrawal of his forces from Ukraine, and indicate very clearly, unambiguously to the world, that Moscow is prepared to de-escalate”.[4]
This was a demand for capitulation as the Russian military presence in Ukraine was Russia’s bargaining chip to achieve the objective of restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. Less than a month later, the same US spokesperson was asked if Washington would support Zelensky’s negotiations with Moscow, in which he replied negatively as the conflict was part of a larger struggle:
“This is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine… The key point is that there are principles that are at stake here that have universal applicability everywhere, whether in Europe, whether in the Indo-Pacific, anywhere in between”.[5]
The US and UK Demand a Long War: Fighting Russia with Ukrainians
In late March 2022, Zelensky revealed in an interview with the Economist that “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”.[6]
The Israeli and Turkish mediators confirmed that Ukraine and Russia were both eager to make a compromise to end the war before the US and the UK intervened to prevent peace from breaking out.
Zelensky had contacted former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to mediate the peace negotiations with Moscow. Bennett noted that Putin was willing to make “huge concessions” if Ukraine would restore its neutrality to end NATO expansion. Zelensky accepted this condition and “both sides very much wanted a ceasefire”. However, Bennett argued that the US and UK then intervened and “blocked” the peace agreement as they favoured a long war. With a powerful Ukrainian military at its disposal, the West rejected the Istanbul peace agreement and there was a “decision by the West to keep striking Putin” instead of pursuing peace.[7]
The Turkish negotiators reached the same conclusion: Russia and Ukraine agreed to resolve the conflict by restoring Ukraine’s neutrality, but NATO decided to fight Russia with Ukrainians as a proxy. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu argued some NATO states wanted to extend the war to bleed Russia:
“After the talks in Istanbul, we did not think that the war would take this long… But following the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, I had the impression that there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue—let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine”.[8]
Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy chairman of Erdogan’s political party, confirmed that Zelensky was ready to sign the peace agreement before the US intervened:
“This war is not between Russia and Ukraine, it is a war between Russia and the West. By supporting Ukraine, the United States and some countries in Europe are beginning a process of prolonging this war. What we want is an end to this war. Someone is trying not to end the war. The U.S. sees the prolongation of the war as its interest”.[9]
Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksandr Chalyi, who participated in peace talks with Russia, confirms Putin “tried everything” to reach a peace agreement and they were able “to find a very real compromise”.[10] Davyd Arakhamia, a Ukrainian parliamentary representative and head of Zelensky’s political party, argued Russia’s key demand was Ukrainian neutrality: “They were ready to end the war if we, like Finland once did, would accept neutrality and pledge not to join NATO. In fact, that was the main point. All the rest are cosmetic and political ‘additions’”.[11] Oleksiy Arestovych, the former advisor of Zelensky, also confirmed that Russia was mainly preoccupied with restoring Ukraine’s neutrality.
The main obstacle to peace was thus overcome as Zelensky offered neutrality in the negotiations.[12] The tentative peace agreement was confirmed by Fiona Hill, a former official at the US National Security Council, and Angela Stent, a former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia. Hill and Stent penned an article in Foreign Affairs in which they outlined the main terms of the agreement:
“Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries”.[13]
Boris Johnson Goes to Kiev
What happened to the Istanbul peace agreement? On 9 April 2022, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson went to Kiev in a rush to sabotage the agreement and cited the killings in Bucha as the excuse. Ukrainian media reported that Johnson came to Kiev with two messages:
“The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is thateven if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the UK and US] are not”.[14]
In June 2022, Johnson told the G7 and NATO that the solution to the war was “strategic endurance” and “now is not the time to settle and encourage the Ukrainians to settle for a bad peace”.[15] Johnson also published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing against any negotiations: “The war in Ukraine can end only with Vladimir Putin’s defeat”.[16] Before Boris Johnson’s trip to Kiev, Niall Ferguson had interviewed several American and British leaders, who confirmed that a decision had been made for “the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin” as “the only end game now is the end of Putin regime”.[17]
Retired German General Harald Kujat, the former head of the German Bundeswehr and former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, confirmed that Johnson had sabotaged the peace negotiations. Kujat argued: “Ukraine had pledged to renounce NATO membership and not to allow any foreign troops or military installations to be stationed’, while “Russia had apparently agreed to withdraw its forces to the level of February 23”. However, “British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened in Kiev on the 9th of April and prevented a signing. His reasoning was that the West was not ready for an end to the war”.[18] According to Kujat, the West demanded a Russian capitulation: “Now the complete withdrawal is repeatedly demanded as a prerequisite for negotiations”.[19] General Kujat explained that this position was due to the US war plans against Russia:
“Perhaps one day the question will be asked who did not want to prevent this war… Their declared goal is to weaken Russia politically, economically and militarily to such a degree that they can then turn to their geopolitical rival, the only one capable of endangering their supremacy as a world power: China… No, this war is not about our freedom… Russia wants to prevent its geopolitical rival USA from gaining a strategic superiority that threatens Russia’s security”.[20]
What was Ukraine told by the US and the UK? Why did Zelensky make a deal given that he was aware some Western states wanted to use Ukraine to exhaust Russia in a long war – even if it would destroy Ukraine? Zelensky likely received an offer he could not refuse: If Zelensky would pursue peace with Russia, then he would not receive any support from the West and he would predictably face an uprising by the far-right / fascist groups that the US had armed and trained. In contrast, if Zelensky would choose war, then NATO would send all the weapons needed to defeat Russia, NATO would impose crippling sanctions on Russia, and NATO would pressure the international community to isolate Russia. Zelensky could thus achieve what both Napoleon and Hitler had failed to achieve – to defeat Russia.
The advisor to Zelensky, Oleksiy Arestovych, explained in 2019 that a major war with Russia was the price for joining NATO. Arestovych predicted that the threat of Ukraine’s accession to NATO would “provoke Russia to launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine”, and Ukraine could join NATO after defeating Russia. Victory over Russia was assumed to be a certainty as Ukraine would merely be the spearhead of a wider NATO proxy war: “In this conflict, we will be very actively supported by the West—with weapons, equipment, assistance, new sanctions against Russia and the quite possible introduction of a NATO contingent, a no-fly zone etc. We won’t lose, and that’s good”.[21]
NATO turned on the propaganda machine to convince its public that a war against Russia was the only path to peace: The Russian invasion was “unprovoked”; Moscow’s objective was to conquer all of Ukraine to restore the Soviet Union; Russia’s withdrawal from Kiev was not a sign of good-will to be reciprocated but a sign of weakness; it was impossible to negotiate with Putin; and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg subsequently asserted that “weapons are the way to peace”. The Western public, indoctrinated with anti-Russian propaganda over decades, believed that NATO was merely a passive third-party seeking to protect Ukraine from the most recent reincarnation of Hitler. Zelensky was assigned the role as new Churchill – bravely fighting to the last Ukrainian rather than accepting a bad peace.
The Inevitable Istanbul+ Agreement to End the War
The war did not go as expected. Russia built a powerful army and defeated the NATO-built Ukrainian army; sanctions were overcome by reorienting the economy to the East; and instead of being isolated – Russia took a leading role in constructing a multipolar world order.
How can the war be brought to an end? The suggestions of a land-for-NATO membership agreement ignores that Russia’s leading objective is not territory but ending NATO expansion as it is deemed to be an existential threat. NATO expansion is the source of the conflict and territorial dispute is the consequence, thus Ukrainian territorial concessions in return for NATO membership is a non-starter.
The foundation for any peace agreement must be the Istanbul+: An agreement to restore Ukraine’s neutrality, plus territorial concessions as a consequence of almost 3 years of war. Threatening to expand NATO after the end of the war will merely incentivise Russia to annex the strategic territory from Kharkov to Odessa, and to ensure that only a dysfunctional Ukrainian rump state will remain that is not capable of being used against Russia.
This is a cruel fate for the Ukrainian nation and the millions of Ukrainians who have suffered so greatly. It was also a predictable outcome, as Zelensky cautioned in March 2022: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”.[22]
[1] V. Zelensky, ‘Address by the President to Ukrainians at the end of the first day of Russia’s attacks’, President of Ukraine: Official website, 25 February 2022.
[2] S. Raskin and L. Brown, ‘Ukraine and Russia to meet for peace talks ‘without preconditions,’ Zelensky says’, New York Post, 27 February 2022.
[3] M. Hirsh, ‘Hints of a Ukraine-Russia Deal?’, Foreign Policy, 8 March 2022.
[4] US Department of State, ‘Department Press Briefing’, US Department of State, 25 February 2022.
[5] US Department of State, ‘Department Press Briefing’, US Department of State, 21 March 2022.
[6] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.
[7] N. Bennett, ‘Bennett speaks out’, YouTube Channel of Naftali Bennett, 4 February 2023.
[8] R. Semonsen, ‘Former Israeli PM: West Blocked Russo-Ukraine Peace Deal’, The European Conservative, 7 February 2023.
[9] CNN, ‘Son dakika… Numan Kurtulmuş CNN TÜRK’te: (Rusya-Ukrayna) Birileri savaşı bitirmemek için çabalıyor’ [Last minute… Numan Kurtulmuş on CNN TÜRK: (Russia-Ukraine) Someone is trying not to end the war], CNN Turk, 18 November 2022.
[11] A. Sobczak, ‘Diplomacy Watch: Did the West scuttle the Istanbul talks or not?’, Responsible Statecraft, 12 September 2024.
[12] Guardian, ‘Ukraine has offered neutrality in talks with Russia – what would that mean?’, The Guardian, 30 March 2022.
[13] F. Hill and A. Stent, ‘The World Putin Wants How Distortions About the Past Feed Delusions About the Future’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2022.
[14] R. Romaniuk, ‘Possibility of talks between Zelenskyy and Putin came to a halt after Johnson’s visit – UP sources’, Ukraniska Pravda, 5 May 2022.
[15] E. Webber, ‘Boris Johnson warns against seeking ‘bad peace’ in Ukraine’, Politico, 23 June 2022.
[16] B. Johnson, ‘For a Quicker End to the Russia War, Step Up Aid to Ukraine’, Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2022.
[17] N. Ferguson, ‘Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S.’, Bloomberg, 22 March 2022.
[18] J. Helmer, ‘Whr. Gen. Kujat: Ukraine War is Lost, Germany Now Faces an Angry Russia… Alone’, Veterans Today, 25 January 2023.
The Israeli war against Lebanon could end at a stalemate, as violent confrontations at the border indicate that [an Israeli victory] will not be easy, CNN said in a recent report.
According to the network, Hezbollah’s level of resistance has surprised many observers, particularly following the recent Israeli aggression and assassinations, including that of Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Nevertheless, the Resistance remained organized and continued launching its missiles and rockets against “Israel”.
Hezbollah holds the upper hand in the South
Israeli occupation soldiers fighting in Lebanon have abundantly expressed to CNN that the open, mountainous terrain of Lebanese territories, where Hezbollah fighters are present, makes the operation more difficult to carry out.
One occupation soldier, who had fought in Gaza and is now deployed against Lebanon, highlighted the stark differences between the northern front and his experience in Gaza.
“The challenge is not that Hezbollah is more equipped by Iran or have more training. The challenge is the switch in the head from months of fighting in an urban territory versus fighting in an open area territory,” he said, adding that the most basic maneuvers, including the IOF line-up and how they move, differ.
Additionally, despite claims of the Israeli military being “far more superior” to Hezbollah’s freedom fighters on paper, due to its more sophisticated weapons arsenal, larger battalions, and stronger allies, the soldier confirmed that all their strongholds are rendered worthless in open battle in the Resistance’s homeland.
Guerrilla warfare proves deadly for Israeli soldiers
In the same context, Daniel Sobelman, an international security expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the IOF underwent a similar experience during the 2006 July war against Lebanon.
“Hezbollah were up against the strongest military in the Middle East, there were literally hundreds of Israeli air raids per day, and artillery, and all the capabilities that a modern, advanced military has to offer. And they were not defeated. They survived. And throughout the entire Israeli offensive, Hezbollah was able to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel every day,” he said.
Following “Israel’s” humiliating defeat in 2006, it has spent the past two decades preparing to confront Hezbollah once again, until Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, which was completely unprecedented and unexpected, according to Sobelman.
And while “Israel” decided to wage war against Hezbollah, expecting to end it unscathed, it is worth noting that Hezbollah has also been preparing for war, and “that is never the case with guerrilla warfare.”
Additionally, “Israel” is fighting on lands Hezbollah are masters in and are driven and determined to inflict massive losses against the IOF, Sobelman added.
“They’re entrenched in underground facilities and they’re playing a defensive game,” he said of Hezbollah’s fighters, noting that “it doesn’t matter how many of them you kill, still (in a guerilla war) the weaker side ultimately wins by imposing a sustained accumulation of costs.”
Revisiting “Israel’s” defeat in 2006, Sobelman said today’s scenario is exactly what happened during the July War, noting that despite the occupation’s material superiority, it was still unable to achieve any of its war objectives.
History repeats itself
Therefore, the next move could potentially constitute the deployment of more occupation troops along the northern front, which could quickly transform the current battle into a bloodier one.
“Israel” announced that four divisions of 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers each have been deployed to fight in Lebanon. However, Hezbollah remains undeterred, and continues ambushing the occupation forces and inflicting severe losses among their ranks.
On October 11, the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, in defense of its lands and in support of Gaza, targeted five Israeli forces in Ras al-Naqoura, four of which had been trying to evacuate the casualties that preceded.
In this context, Ziv Hospital in the occupied North announced that it has been receiving influxes of injuries and casualties amid “Israel’s” ground operation in Lebanon.
The hospital’s director, Salman Zarka, said hundreds of injuries flooded the hospital throughout the first few days of direct confrontations at the border.
Yesterday, 20 Israeli soldiers were injured along Lebanon’s southern border. While “Israel” has admitted to the deaths of 14 troops, Hezbollah confirmed that at least 35 fatalities were scored, along with hundreds of injuries, since October 1.
This feature length investigation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year long conflict. The I-Unit has built up a database of thousands of videos, photos and social media posts. Where possible it has identified the posters and those who appear. The material reveals a range of illegal activities, from wanton destruction and looting to the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and murder. The film also tells the story of the war through the eyes of Palestinian journalists, human rights workers and ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip. And it exposes the complicity of Western governments – in particular the use of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as a base for British surveillance flights over Gaza. “The west cannot hide, they cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know,” says Palestinian writer, Susan Abulhawa. This is “the first livestream genocide in history. If people are ignorant they are wilfully ignorant,” she says.
US Navy vessels were operating at the scene shortly before the explosions that crippled the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea, Danish newspaper Politiken has reported, citing a local harbormaster.
The crucial energy infrastructure, built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe, was ruptured by underwater blasts in September 2022.
The piece by Politiken was published on September 26 but largely went unnoticed. However, it resurfaced on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, with claims being reposted by Glenn Greenwald and other prominent independent journalists.
According to the article, American warships had been operating in the area east of the Danish island of Bornholm with their transponders switched off.
The paper spoke to John Anker Nielsen, the harbormaster at the Danish port of Christianso, located near Bornholm. He said he had decided to share details of the events of September 2022, despite initially being “not allowed to say a thing” about them.
According to Nielsen, he launched a rescue operation in the area four or five days before the Nord Stream blasts after spotting ships with their transponders switched off and assuming there was an emergency.
However, when Danish rescuers approached the scene, they saw that the vessels in question were US Navy ships, Nielsen said. The Naval Command then told Nielsen and his colleagues to turn back, the harbormaster recalled.
Politiken said Nielsen does not believe Western media claims that Nord Stream was sabotaged by Ukraine, supposedly using a yacht, named Andromeda, and a small crew to carry out the sophisticated attack.
According to the paper, the harbormaster instead has “some faith” in the version of events provided by legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
In early February 2023, Hersh authored a report claiming that US President Joe Biden had given the order to destroy Nord Stream. According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives that were detonated on September 26, 2022 had been planted at the pipelines during the previous June by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise called ‘Baltops 22’. The White House denied the report, calling it “utterly false and complete fiction.”
Senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have previously pointed the finger at the US as the possible culprit behind the Nord Stream explosions. They have argued that Washington had the technical means to carry out the operation and stood to gain the most, considering that the attack disrupted Russian energy supplies to the EU and forced a shift to more expensive US-supplied liquefied natural gas.
HART recently posted an article titled “The Witch Hunt continues”, which discussed self-censorship of doctors, General Medical Council (GMC) overreach, and how medical professionals are being erased from the medical register, despite no wrongdoing. Yet this is not a new phenomenon. If we delve into the history of how our existing ‘medical monopoly’ was established, with its roots firmly in America, it is an all too familiar disturbing playbook of censorship, corruption and subversion of ethics that spans over 130 years in the making. The existing medical monopoly was contrived by the Rockefeller family and their many contacts, which has been so successful in its takeover of medicine in America. Herein, I discuss an excellent book by Eustace Mullins titled “Murder by Injection: The Story of the Medical Conspiracy Against America”. Despite the book’s off putting title, Eustace’s careful research spanning over 30 years provides a detailed and shocking account of how billionaire tycoons have waged tyranny, economic depressions, wars and revolutions as part of a wider plan to usher in a medical care system to enslave the public through an entirely controlled medical monopoly. The whole book is free to download here.
Until the late 19th century, doctors were freelance practitioners who assumed all the risks associated with their medical decision-making. In 1832, the British Medical Association was chartered and provided the impetus for a similar organisation to be established in the United States (US), namely the American Medical Association (AMA), which was founded in 1847 with its headquarters in Chicago. From its inception, the AMA had one objective: to create a total medical monopoly of the practice of medicine, and ensure allopathy was the basis of its practice. Allopathic medicine required practitioners to receive training in a recognised academic school of medicine, which relied heavily on surgical procedures as well as medicines. Allopathy was to rival homoeopathy, which promoted non-toxic doses of natural remedies; in the mid-1800s, homoeopaths outnumbered allopaths two to one in the US – a statistic that had to be overturned when the AMA was created.
The reason this book is so pertinent in our troublesome times is that it catalogues the long, but very calculated and carefully planned demise of healthcare in America. It chronicles how the introduction of a monopoly through any means possible – including, racketeering, abuse, censorship and murder – enabled the takeover of health by federal agencies and governments, which were inextricably linked to industry and big pharma. How was such a monopoly to be achieved? It had to be orchestrated by the richest man in the world at that time, the monopolist John D. Rockefeller, who had triumphed in organising his oil monopoly. Backed by Rothschild and Wall Street colleagues, it was hoped the medical monopoly would provide even greater profits than oil, which has more than proved to be the case. Rockefeller appointed Frederick T. Gates (related to Mr Microsoft Bill Gates) as his ‘philanthropic’ agent, whose task was to dominate the entire medical education system.
In 1907, the AMA requested the Carnegie Foundation to conduct a survey of all medical schools in the US; the Foundation appointed Abraham Flexner to lead the study of medical schools. Coincidentally, Abraham Flexner’s brother, Simon, was head of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, so this was an intentional cosy and conflicted setup from the outset. Flexner, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, which was founded by Daniel Colt Gilman, completed his report in 1910. The report and AMA decided there were too many doctors and the solution was to create a medical educational system so elitist that most students would be prohibited from considering such a career. The undergraduate training was constructed so that allopathic medicine was central to its teaching, and by 1920 the number of medical schools had declined from 650 to 50 in number.
The book goes on to describe how ‘quackery’ was established, with three key players, Morris Fishbein, George Simmons and Albert Lasker, who all began their careers as journalists. Not one of them had any credentials of practising medicine, but their collective journalist and organisational talents propelled them to the heights of power, as full-time ‘quacks’. They utilised their connections with the corrupt AMA to stifle dissent and opposition. For instance, the AMA would grant pharmaceutical companies a ‘Seal of Approval’ for their products but only if they advertised in AMA-affiliated journals. Those that opposed this, such as Wallace Abbott, founder of Abbott Laboratories, soon found out the hard way that no products would be approved, and his reputation would suffer unless he ‘cooperated’. Simmons’ practices were particularly egregious, with one critic positing: “almost every branch of the Federal Government active in the field of medicine was completely dominated by the AMA”.
Ultimately, the monopolists forced government agencies to act against anyone who posed a threat to their monopoly, including arrests and prison sentences. Simmons and Fishbein collectively controlled the AMA for over half a century, through raising money and using political clout. Fishbein had total control over all publications of the AMA and selection of personnel in various committees. Moreover the AMA was instrumental in concealing beneficial (but non-lucrative) therapies, with products of high value being rejected or their acceptance enduring unwarranted delays. The extent of the corruption detailed in this history of American medicine is remarkable. Federal agents were solicited by charitable foundations to instigate police actions to hundreds of unsuspecting health practitioners throughout the US, in a ruthless operation to arrest and imprison people distributing leaflets about natural or herbal formulas, despite no evidence anyone had been injured or killed by these remedies. Terror raids against competitors were carried out, with heavily armed federal agents breaking doors and seizing any herbal stocks from people’s homes. The book describes terrorisation of anyone active in the alternative healthcare field. Thus, the AMA became an autocracy. Physicians were trained under the Rockefeller-based medical system, which had full control over the medical examination boards. So successful was this endeavour that Americans are now treated with expensive, overpriced, ineffective and potentially dangerous drugs, a corruption that has been routinely covered up by federal agencies.
In 1940, a bill for health insurance was introduced; although it initially suffered setbacks, the seed was sown to create an industry whereby the AMA would fight ‘socialised medicine’, which was the forerunner for Medicare and Medicaid. In the 1960s, the next target for annihilation was the chiropractic sector. No level of intimidation of censorship was spared and many high-profile speakers were forced to cancel lectures and lobby groups were set up to sanction and apply pressure on the Council on Chiropractic Education to the extent that the AMA Joint Committee on Accreditation of Hospitals barred chiropractors and refused accreditation of hospitals that had such practitioners. The AMA also forced the Veterans Administration to refuse payments to veterans for chiropractic services.
With their eyes set on further control, the medical monopolists realised that cancer was a lucrative endeavour and so established the next phase of the monopoly. In 1913, the same year President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, a group of doctors met at the Harvard Club in New York to establish a national cancer organisation, the American Society for the Control of Cancer (later renamed the American Cancer Society, ACS). The Rockefellers (with Rothschild and J. P. Morgan backing) funded the ACS. Similarly, funding for the Memorial Hospital (later to become the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) was also linked with the National Radium Institute, which stipulated that further funds be permitted, only assuming all cancers were treated with radium. By 1922, more than 100 radiologists had died from X-ray induced cancer. Alfred Sloan, the President of General Motors and Charles Kettering, an inventive genius of electrical systems and auto ignition were deployed. Mullins chronicles in detail how huge industry directors and partners were all interlinked with each other, such as Squibb, Bristol Myers, Johnson & Johnson, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Lehman Brothers, Chase Manhattan Bank and National Geographic. Collaborations with ‘elected’ presidents, industry players, defence industries, CIA, chemical and drug firms go hand-in-hand.
Two key names in patent medicine and journalism were Albert Lasker and Elmer Bobst. One of Lasker’s greatest achievements was his national campaign to persuade women to smoke in public. Lasker became ill with cancer and died in 1952, but before his death, he set up the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, which made Mary (Albert’s daughter) the most powerful woman in American Medicine. It is also no coincidence that 18 members of the ACS Board of Directors were executive officers of banks. Pat McGrady, who served as editor of the ACS for 25 years stated “Medicine has become venal, second only to the law”. Since “the fight against cancer” is totally controlled by the Rockefeller medical monopoly, much of cancer research is bogus and filled with falsified results, albeit by well intentioned and unsuspecting researchers. Since Elmer Bobst played a crucial role in making it possible for Nixon to become President, it was not difficult to persuade him to authorise a new and expensive “war on cancer” in 1971.
The book explains how the ACS, AMA and FDA collaboratively staged a war of censorship and intimidation, preventing discussion of effective compounds, such as laetrile, for treating cancer. The ACS, for example, opposed the regulation of potential carcinogens, such as TRIS (trisaminomethane) and DES (diethylstilbestrol). Chemotherapy was promoted as a cancer treatment in the 1960s, despite evidence that it had many serious side effects and was shown to be highly toxic and carcinogenic in animal models, as well as immunosuppressive. Cancer is as much a disease of poor nutrition and one in which the multiplication of ‘simpler’ cells are unable to differentiate because the energy balance of the body is disrupted causing the disease. One of the Director’s of the National Cancer Institute is Mary Lasker, who has close ties with the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, which is not a coincidence.
Mullins goes on to describe several instances of researchers who had discovered cancer cures either by detoxification or a diet low in salt, protein and fats, but the work was buried or destroyed to ensure the chemotherapy, radiation and surgical approaches to cancer were unchallenged. The Laskers built much of their fortune on the promotion of cigarette smoking. Although cigarette smoking is harmful and causes cancer, studies (cited in the book) have shown that there was no link between traditional air-dried tobacco and lung cancer. The tobacco industries, dominated by the Rothschilds, add chemicals and sugar to tobacco, which creates a carcinogenic substance in the nicotine tar. Air-dried tobacco lacks this carcinogen, as noted by the many primitive tribes who have smoked tobacco for thousands of years without any ill effects. Mullins explains that the ACS has vested interests in established forms of cancer treatment, for example owning 50% of the patent rights for the chemotherapy drug 5-fluorouracil. Dr Hardin James addressed the ACS in 1969, noting that “for a typical type of cancer, people who refuse treatment live an average of 12.5 years. Those who accepted surgery and other kinds of treatment, lived an average of 3 years. I attribute this to the traumatic effect of surgery on the body’s natural defence mechanisms.”
In the ‘holy church’ of allopathic medicine, there are what might be termed the four ‘holy waters’, which include immunisation, fluorination of water, use of fertilisers and contamination of the food chain. The practice of immunisation is the most pernicious in terms of its long-term effects. This practice goes directly against the discovery of modern holistic medical experts that the body has a natural immune defence against illness. The greatest heresy any clinician can commit is to publicly voice any doubt about any one of the four ‘holy waters’. The most deeply entrenched in the fabric of modern medical practice, as is glaringly apparent, is the vaccination programmes, as well as being one of the most profitable aspects of the medical monopoly. One physician, Dr Henry R. Bybee of Norfolk, Virginia, stated “My honest opinion is that vaccines are the cause of more disease and suffering than anything I could name.” Additionally, Dr Herbert Snow, a senior surgeon at a cancer hospital in London voiced similar concerns “In recent years, many men and women in the prime of life have dropped dead suddenly. I am convinced that some 80% of these deaths are caused by the inoculation or vaccination they have undergone.” The chilling accounts continue with another practitioner Dr W. B. Clarke of Indiana remarking “cancer was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination when the cowpox vaccine began to be introduced. I have had to deal with at least 200 cases of cancer, and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated person”. Is this not at least an observation worth exploring? It is unlikely modern medicine advocates will examine this alarming connection. Eventually, the outraged public will bring pressure to abandon the modern ritual of vaccinating children.
Another well-known practitioner from San Francisco, Dr J. M. Pebbles, revealed “The vaccination practice…has not only become the chief menace and the greatest danger to the health of the rising generation, but an outrage upon the personal liberties of the American citizen.” The book tells of how Wyeth laboratories was charged with $15 million in damages to an 8-year-old girl who suffered permanent brain damage after receiving a diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine. In the US, vaccines are actively and incessantly promoted as the solution for all infectious diseases. It is not a coincidence that agencies, such as the AMA, WHO, FDA, are in favour of the vaccine programmes given the revolving door that exists between Big Pharma and these agencies. It is well known that Edward Jenner ‘discovered’ the cowpox vaccine to purportedly prevent smallpox. However, smallpox was already declining before the introduction of the vaccine and many believe it would have disappeared by the end of the 19th century. After the cowpox vaccine became widespread in England, a smallpox epidemic ensued killing over 22,000 people. By 1872, 44,480 were killed, and the vaccine was finally banned in 1948. This trend is mirrored elsewhere: Japan introduced compulsory vaccination in 1872 and by 1892 there were 165,774 cases of smallpox resulting in nearly 30,000 deaths. Other European countries that submitted to compulsory vaccination saw similar high numbers of cases and deaths, whereas countries (such as Norway) who did not vaccinate had a fraction of the cases. Historians are reluctantly concluding that the 1918 ‘great flu epidemic’ was attributable to the widespread use of vaccines, as survivors were those who had refused the vaccines.
The book chronicles how dissenters and researchers who spoke out lost their jobs, had their laboratory notes seized and burned, and laboratory animals destroyed. In the 1970s, the swine flu vaccination campaign was ushered in, but insurance companies refused to cover against lawsuits as there were inadequate studies. This prompted a propaganda campaign by the monopolists to trick Americans into saving themselves by taking the vaccines, which resulted in billions in damage claims. The next iteration by Dr Jonas Salk in the 1950s was the polio vaccine, which Simon Flexner helped to recommend. It is disturbing that a national conference in Washington in 1988 declared that “all the cases of polio in America come from the vaccine. The naturally occurring (or wild type) polio virus has not been shown to cause a single case of polio in the US since 1979”. Even back in 1955, the Surgeon General of the US highlighted in the AMA conference that “no batch of vaccine can be proven safe before it is given to children”. Moreover, James R. Shannon of the NIH declared “the only safe vaccine is a vaccine that is never used.”
Importantly, the death by injection playbook is not new; rather, a well-orchestrated agenda has been implemented with calculated precision in multiple cycles to gradually harm and decimate populations across the globe. This book further discusses how fluorination of water has been another Rockefeller-deployed monopoly to poison millions of Americans by adding the poisonous chemical sodium fluoride to drinking water. Large quantities of fluorides are waste contaminants and byproducts from large agricultural firms, pesticides and chemical firms, such as Hooker Chemical. Predictably, Hooker Chemical became part of the Rockefeller unit when one of the Hooker family married into the Rockefeller family. Fluorides can cause serious chromosomal damage and animal model studies have shown it promotes cancer development, even at the one part per million threshold in drinking water that has detrimental consequences especially when consumed cumulatively over time. Soviet studies have further shown that fluorides were useful in inducing docile obedience in the general population. Combined with aluminium that was included in many foods, cooking pots and packaging, this has aided in slowly poisoning the mass population and of course produced Alzhiemer’s disease, in what constitutes a build up of toxic levels of aluminium, leading to cognitive and nervous system decline.
Not content with disrupting the medical and water supplies, the Rockefeller-based medical monopoly had its eye on the ‘green revolution’ and agricultural control through the contamination of crops using a ‘co-opted’ carefully constructed money laundering system. This time they developed ‘super crops’ or grains that would serve as an excellent cash cow for the US to sell to ‘developing’ nations. To achieve this goal required the soil to be pumped with huge quantities of fertiliser (the product of nitrates and petroleum), commodities controlled by the Rockefellers that helped to build an entire chemical empire. At the end of the second World War, a concerted effort was made by the monopolists to dump surplus nitrates into the American food chain. Farmers were instructed to increase their use of fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides and create a capital intensive payback scheme for the monopolists. The final sections of the book discuss how fertilisers have been used to reduce nutrients in the soil and how the food chain has been slowly contaminated. Chapter 9 lists and discusses the 18 largest drug firms and their close associations with major banking cartels and federal agencies, such as the CIA.
Collectively, these insidious links with Big Pharma and the medical monopoly, are not only a massive cash cow, but have maimed and decimated the population and continue to do so. Since the rest of the world is intimately tethered to the well-oiled Rockefeller US medical monopoly machine, it is not hard to see how the censorship, corruption and silencing of dissenters has become all too commonplace today.
We are now a year into the Israel government’s military action devastating the people and infrastructure of Gaza and since expanded into escalating violence against countries including Lebanon and Iran. Yet, even today, United States Senate members are repeating flagrant lies produced in the war’s early days to trick Americans and others around the world into supporting Israel’s war.
On Monday, Republican US Senators introduced a resolution repeating some of these old lies that helped build support among Americans for Israel’s war — that “Hamas terrorists” killed “approximately 1,200 individuals” in their October 7, 2023 attack and that Hamas used “rape as a weapon of war.” Why repeat the lies? To support the resolution’s conclusions, including that the Senate wants to “ensure the forever survival of Israel.” Left unsaid in the resolution is that the way the US government continually acts to purportedly achieve this goal includes shoveling more and more money, weapons, and intelligence to Israel for Israel to use in whatever way it chooses. Indeed, the US government’s commitment seems unfazed no matter Israel’s level of barbarity and no matter how much Israel’s actions cause further geographic expansion of the war.
To the extent American politicians repeating these baseless claims regarding October 7 are doing so because they are ignorant about what happened, they would do well to watch a new documentary — Atrocity Inc. — featuring reporter Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal was there from the beginning calling no dice on the propaganda promoted by Israel and US politicians, along with American media, that has been used to gain public support for Israel’s aggressive actions. The widespread rape allegations are ridiculous fabrications and a significant portion of the death toll is from the willful killing of Israelis by agents of their own government, Blumenthal explains in the documentary. Blumenthal also debunks other outrageous lies, including claims related to the killing of, and even beheading of, babies on October 7.
Senators, and everyone else, can watch the documentary here.
No one expected that one year would be enough to recalibrate the Palestinian cause as the world’s most pressing issue, and that millions of people across the globe would, once again, rally for Palestinian freedom. The past twelve months have witnessed an Israeli genocide in Gaza and unprecedented violence in the West Bank, as well as legendary expressions of Palestinian sumud, steadfastness.
It is not the enormity of the Israeli war, but the degree of the Palestinian sumud that has challenged what once seemed to be a foregone conclusion to the Palestinian struggle. Yet, it turned out that the final chapter on Palestine was not ready to be written, and that it would not be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who would write it.
The ongoing war has exposed the limits of Israel’s military machine.
The typical trajectory of Israel’s relationship with the occupied Palestinians has been predicated on unhindered Israeli violence and deafening international silence. It was largely Israel alone that determined the timing and objectives of war. Its enemies, until recently, seemed to have no say over the matter.
This is no longer the case. Israeli war crimes are now met with Palestinian unity; Arab, Muslim and international solidarity; and early, albeit serious, signs of legal accountability. This is hardly what Netanyahu was hoping to achieve; just days before the start of the war, he stood in the UN General Assembly brandishing a map of a “New Middle East”, a map that had completely erased Palestine and the Palestinians.
“We must not give the Palestinians a veto over… peace,” he said. Why? “Palestinians are only two per cent of the Arab world.” His arrogance didn’t last long. His supposedly triumphant moment in the international spotlight was short-lived.
Embattled Netanyahu is now mostly concerned about his own political survival. He is expanding the war front to escape his army’s humiliation in Gaza and is terrified by the prospect of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
And as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) continues to look into an ever-expanding file, accusing Israel of deliberate genocide in the Strip, the General Assembly resolved on 18 September that Israel must end its illegal occupation of Palestine within a year from the passing of its resolution on the matter.
It must be utterly disappointing for Netanyahu — who has worked tirelessly to normalise his country’s occupation of Palestine — to be met with total and thundering international rejection of his schemes. The advisory opinion of the ICJ, issued on 19 July, declared that “Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (is) unlawful.” This was another blow to Tel Aviv, which despite unlimited US support, failed to change international consensus on the illegality of the occupation.
In addition to the relentless Israeli violence, the Palestinian people have been marginalised as political actors. Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, their fate has been largely entrusted to a mostly unelected Palestinian leadership, which, with time, has monopolised the Palestinian cause for its own financial and political interests.
The sumud of the Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured a year of mass killing, deliberate starvation and total destruction of all aspects of life, is helping reassert the political significance of a long-marginalised nation.
This shift is fundamental as it runs contrary to everything that Netanyahu had tried to achieve.
In the years prior to the war, Israel seemed to be writing the final chapter of its settler-colonial project in Palestine. It had subdued or co-opted the Palestinian leadership, perfected its siege on Gaza and was ready to annex much of the West Bank.
Gaza became the least of Israel’s concerns, as any discussion around it was confined to the hermetic Israeli siege and the resulting humanitarian, although not political crisis.
While Palestinians in Gaza have tirelessly implored the world to put pressure on Israel to end the protracted siege, imposed in earnest in 2007, Tel Aviv continued to conduct its policies in the Strip according to the infamous logic of former top Israeli official Dov Weissglas, who explained the rationale behind the blockade as “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
A year into the war, though, and the Palestinians have become the centre of any serious discussion on a peaceful future in the Middle East. Their collective courage and steadfastness have neutralised the Israeli military’s ability to exact political outcomes through violence.
True, the number of dead, missing or wounded in Gaza has already exceeded 150,000. The Strip was already impoverished and dilapidated to begin with; today it is in total ruins. Every mosque, church or hospital has been destroyed or seriously damaged. Most of the enclave’s educational infrastructure has been obliterated. Yet, Israel hasn’t achieved any of its strategic objectives, which are ultimately united by a single goal: that of silencing the Palestinian quest for freedom, forever.
Despite the unbelievable pain and loss, there is now a powerful energy that is unifying Palestinians around their cause, and the Arabs and the rest of the world around Palestine. This shall have consequences that will last for many years, long after Netanyahu and his fellow extremists are gone.
Medical and pharmaceutical history is replete with examples of dangerous interventions that have poisoned, injured, or killed. However, events since 2020 have attracted attention as never before to medicine’s potential to be both lethal and malevolent. In The Medical-Pharmaceutical Killing Machine, Children’s Health Defense situates current perils in their broader context with the aim of helping readers understand how to protect themselves and their loved ones.
In the Greek Trojan War saga, the god Apollo ensured that Cassandra’s prophecies would never be believed, with disastrous consequences. As recounted in the book, modern medicine, too, has produced its fair share of “medical Cassandras”—doctors and writers who have tried to warn the public about medicine’s life-threatening underbelly, generally to little avail. A chapter dedicated to nine of these medical skeptics, beginning with Ivan Illich and his coining of the term “iatrogenesis” to describe adverse outcomes caused by doctors, weaves a powerful portrait of harms regularly denied and ignored, with those making the claims typically marginalized and “canceled.”
The book shows that there is no shortage of tools in the killing machine arsenal. One chapter highlights the mRNA vaccine technology inaugurated with COVID, illustrating how this new mechanism for iatrogenesis is inflicting novel forms of toxicity, not all of which are yet understood. Another chapter about assisted suicide and euthanasia describes the chilling global proliferation of policies and propaganda promoting those practices for vulnerable populations that include babies, children, people diagnosed with autism, and the mentally ill. The book also describes factors that make it possible for the killing machine to continue operating with impunity, including the ascendance of an “evidence-based medicine” juggernaut, medical gaslighting, and a ballooning global enforcement infrastructure. Nor does it shy away from confronting what some now characterize as “iatrogenocide”; a chapter asking “Why Do They Do It?” considers money, prestige, and control as three possible answers.
Ultimately, it is only by acknowledging the long-standing reality of an all-too-effective medical-pharmaceutical killing machine that people can learn to dodge the threats and work toward building a different model that prioritizes life and genuine health.
By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | May 24, 2010
A build up of heightened tension in the Middle East is escalating in the last few weeks. American and Israeli postures towards Lebanon, Syria, and Iran have become more threatening. Listening to speeches of political leaders one hears talks only about war not peace. Iranians and Israelis are continuously training hard for a possible showdown. Both sides are conducting extensive war games every month. This led Syrians to claim that Israel is preparing for a soon-to-come another war. The Jordanians also are warning that current stalemate of the peace process is an indication of a war breaking out this summer. The Russian President and his army chief hinted, a few months ago, that the US and Israel were planning for an attack on Iran.
Indeed Iran is, as it has been for last few years, the target of most of the threats and accusations of supporting terrorism. Escalating incitement against Iran the American Defense Department sent last month (April) to Congress a report on Iran’s military claiming Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US by 2015.
Ignoring the fact that N. Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel are proven to have nuclear weapons while Iran does not, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose in her speech, to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference at the UN, to focus on Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions putting the whole world at risk as she put it. According to Clinton Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, rather than Israel’s more than 200 nuclear bombs, is destabilizing the Middle East. She called on the world’s nations to rally around US efforts to hold Iran, not other nuclear countries, to account.
The accusation that Usama Bin Laden is living comfortably in Iran had received a boost after the broadcast of a documentary called “Feathered Cocaine”. This echoed the June 2003 claims of the Italian newspaper Corre de la Sierra that Bin Laden was in Iran according to some intelligence report, and according to Richard Miniter’s book “Shadow War”. … continue
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Medical and pharmaceutical history is replete with examples of dangerous interventions that have poisoned, injured, or killed. However, events since 2020 have attracted attention as never before to medicine’s potential to be both lethal and malevolent. In The Medical-Pharmaceutical Killing Machine, Children’s Health Defense situates current perils in their broader context with the aim of helping readers understand how to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Aletho News 
