Truth and politics are often mutually exclusive concepts when dealing with the progressive American Left. This unfortunate fact is being driven home in spades in an ongoing spat between two lefty online personalities.
Anyone following Aaron Maté (149K followers on Twitter); The Young Turks (TYT, with 440K followers as an institution, and as many followers each tracking the activity of co-hosts Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian); the comedian Jimmy Dore (274K followers); or any number of other Twitter personalities whose online paths have crossed with any of the above; knows these left-leaning social media stars have been engaged in a vicious feud. Full disclosure, I have appeared on both Maté’s podcast, Pushback, as well as The Young Turks radio show. At issue is Syria and, more pointedly, the contention by both Uygur and Kasparian that Maté is shilling for President Bashar Assad.
A tale of two narratives
The sheer drama and vitriol which has emerged as a result of this feud has been entertaining for those who get a kick out of leftwing internecine warfare. Maté’s use of Jimmy Dore’s popular online program The Jimmy Dore Show as a platform for promoting his arguments has torn the scab off old wounds created when Dore left The Young Turks and struck out on his own, appears to underpin at least some of Uygur and Kasparian’s anti-Maté invective. However, more interesting is the fact that, as Maté pointed out in a recent interview with The Hill, the progressive wing of the American Left has hit a brick wall over the issue of Syria. Criticism of Assad has run up against the lies used to sustain US military hegemony in the Middle East.
“I think,” Maté noted, “that that meltdown reflects just like a general hostility they [The Young Turks] have towards people who are upholding actual progressive values and upholding actual journalism standards.” While the smear campaign waged by Uygur and Kasparian has been as unconscionable as it has been factually wrong, the fact that there is controversy among the progressive wing of the American political Left should not surprise anyone.
As Maté observed, “[t]he reason why they slandered me at that time is because I was in Syria and Syria is a, you know, touchy subject for many people on the Left. It has been divisive.”
Syria is a touchy subject, especially for progressives who primarily focus on notions of human rights and democratic values. Maté has come under attack for taking a contrarian stance on two of the most hot-button issues surrounding Assad: allegations of chemical weapons use, and the suppression of political free will through the conduct of elections designed to keep the reins of political power in Syria firmly in his hands. (It should be pointed out that Maté is joined by other outstanding progressive journalists, including Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Rania Khalek, and many others whose informative work predates Maté’s on the issue of Syria.)
Chemical weapons, denial and disproval
If there is a case to be made that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own population, it has not yet been made by anyone. The most widely cited incident in terms of casualties (i.e., the primary discriminator for any argument seeking to label Assad a “mass murderer”) is that which occurred in the early morning hours of August 21, 2013, in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. While the number of casualties involved remains unclear (estimates range from 281 to 1,729 people killed, with the higher figure largely agreed to be problematic), what is not up for dispute is the fact that, as the official UN report into the incident concluded, there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Sarin gas was used in the Ghouta incident.
While the UN was precluded by mandate from allocating responsibility for the attack, the US government, together with other organizations such as Human Rights Watch, aggressively asserted that the Syrian government was solely to blame. These claims, however, were not backed up by the science on the ground. A detailed forensic analysis of the rocket used in the Ghouta attack – an improvised 330mm-to-350mm rocket equipped with a large receptacle on its nose to hold chemicals—by Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undermined the claims made by the US government assigning culpability for the attack. Not only were the weapons used not included in the arsenal of chemical weapons declared by the Syrian government to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which oversaw the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons capability between 2013-2014, but the short range of the weapon made its being fired from government-held territory impossible.
Seymor Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, published an article in the London Review of Books in December 2013 which outlined a case for Turkish complicity in helping arm the rebels with Sarin nerve agent. Hersh’s claims were vindicated by Turkish media reports, quoting Turkish members of parliament, who outlined the factual case sustaining Hersh’s key point that the Turkish government was behind the Ghouta attack. New analysis of the Ghouta attack reinforces the findings of Lloyd and Postol, assigning a 96% probability that the Sarin attack of August 21, 2013, was carried out by anti-Assad rebels. Moreover, this finding is supported by video evidence, authenticated on June 21, 2021, which shows the rebels firing the Sarin-filled rockets on the day in question. Long story short – the Sarin attack used by President Assad’s opponents as evidence of his status as a mass murderer was not the work of the Syrian government.
Allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government are numerous, as is the mountain of evidence which shows these claims to be as false as the ones made regarding the Ghouta attack. Central to the ongoing TYT-Maté dispute is the Douma incident of April 7, 2018, where once again the Syrian government was accused of employing chemical weapons against civilians, killing scores. The US government used the allegations as justification to launch air strikes against the Syrian government. The US case for military action, always weak, was further undermined by reporting from Maté that exposed the lies of the OPCW in bending to US pressure to falsify evidence in order to sustain the justification for US airstrikes.
The attention Maté received as a result of his outstanding reporting on Douma considerably raised his profile – he was invited to testify at an Arria-Formula Meeting at the UN Security Council in September 2020 on the Douma controversy. But it also opened him up to attacks by TYT, with co-host Kasparian deriding Maté as “the guy who denies that Syrian children were killed with chemical attacks.”
What Kasparian and her co-host Uygur get wrong is the fact that Maté does not deny anything, he simply reports the facts, which sustain the truth about the Douma attack – that it was a false-flag incident perpetrated by the Syrian rebels. Similar to what transpired at Ghouta in August 2013 – which set up the Syrian government to be attacked by the US in retaliation.
Intellectual incuriosity
However, one of the big problems with Maté’s reporting for the progressive wing of the American Left is that, in order to embrace it, they would need to radically alter their view about the legitimacy of the Assad regime, something they are loath to do. The formulation which sustains the current policy position of the progressive Left on Assad is that he is a brutal dictator who has, and will again, use chemical weapons against those who oppose him. The simplicity of this line of argument is that, so long as one can sustain the narrative that Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people, delving into a fact-based discussion about whether or not he is a brutal dictator is avoided by the logic that any man who uses chemical weapons against his own people is, by definition, a brutal dictator.
The reporting done by Maté and others on the allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government has, by proving these allegations wrong, undermined the foundational argument used to sustain the notion of Bashar Assad as a brutal dictator. Stripped of this core argument, Assad’s critics are now called upon to venture into uncharted waters (at least for them) and examine the personal biography of the man they detest, the circumstances surrounding his rise to power, and the nature of his political struggle against deeply entrenched special interest groups opposed to meaningful political reform.
They would also have to examine the complicated relationship between Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the role played by the Turkish government in promoting Muslim Brotherhood activities inside Syria. Any honest evaluation of Syria under Bashar Assad would also be compelled to look at the role of the drought that ravaged Syria between 2006-2011, collapsing the agricultural industry and forcing some 1.5 million rural Syrians to seek refuge in major urban centers such as Homs, Aleppo, and Damascus. The role played by Saudi Arabia in channeling reconstruction money into Syria would also need further examination, along with how this money was used to build mosques promoting Saudi-backed Salafist Islam that ran counter to the secular ideology of the Assad regime.
Lastly, the role played by the US, both in terms of destabilizing the entire region by invading Iraq in 2003, and the role that conflict had on radicalizing Islamic resistance inside Syria would have to be considered. As would the decision, following the Arab Spring of 2010-11, to begin providing training, money, weapons and other support to anti-Assad forces backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers.
The resulting civil conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced several million Syrians from their homes. The involvement of Iran, Hezbollah and Russia on the side of Syria, when combined with the false allegations of chemical weapons use by the Assad government, made it easy for the progressive wing of the American Left to condemn these interventions. However, that ignores the reality that, unlike every other foreign military presence inside Syria, these came at the invitation of the Syrian government and, as such, have a legitimacy under international law the others cannot claim. When the chemical weapons allegations are stripped away, the moral foundation for opposing Iranian, Hezbollah and Russian intervention collapses.
The fact of the matter is that the reporting by Maté and others deconstructed the lies about the Syrian government’s role in the chemical weapons attacks alleged by the US, OPCW and Syrian opposition and, simultaneously, exposed the dearth of intellectual curiosity on the part of Assad’s critics – especially among the ranks of the progressive Left. The antics of The Young Turks in attacking Maté, Dore, and anyone else (including myself) who dares seek a fact-based discussion about the true nature of Syria and its president only highlights how far many mainstream American progressives have fallen when it comes to Syria. Their claims to embrace fact and intellectual curiosity in the exploration of complex social, political, and economic issues fall flat when it comes to who rules Damascus.
Whether they can recover from this collapse of moral authority and lack of intellectual integrity is unknown. The answer hinges on their willingness to re-engage with a clean slate that allows all arguments to be heard and discussed free of the kind of rancor shown to Maté by The Young Turks. As of this writing, I wouldn’t hold my breath. But in the end, it does not matter – if the Syrian reality could survive US-backed jihadists, it will survive the fiction based, angst-driven antics of an American political elite that has become irrelevant and inconsequential in any universe except the one it currently occupies for its own edification and entertainment.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
The United Nations Charter mandates “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.
Turkey and the USA are in violation of this commitment as they occupy sections of northern and eastern Syria. In northern Idlib province, Turkey is doing this in alliance with the Syrian version of Al Qaeda called Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (formerly Jabhat al Nusra).
In the northeast, the US has invaded and is occupying the area in alliance with local proxies and mercenaries. For public relations purposes, the puppets changed their name to “Syrian Democratic Forces” after US military officers said, “You have to change your brand.”
These occupations clearly violate Syrian territorial integrity and the UN Charter.
The USA, Turkey and their allies want the world to ignore their violations of Syrian sovereignty. On top of that, they want the world to authorize and approve international border crossings for travel to their occupied zones. The Bab al Hawa crossing is now the main crossing on the border of Turkey and Syria. On the Syrian side, the area is controlled by [al Qaeda affiliates in Syria] in collusion with Turkey. With Syrian civilians as hostages, Al Qaeda receives 1000 truckloads of supplies and support monthly.
This crossing is a clear violation of Syria’s territorial integrity and that is why United Nations Security Council members should vote NO to further authorization of an illegal entry point. Respecting Syrian sovereignty and the UN Charter, the aid should go through the Syrian government. If there is concern about aid being distributed fairly in Idlib, a neutral international organization such as the Red Crescent can monitor or supervise the distribution of food and supplies.
The countries which seek “regime change” in Syria use civilians as a pretext while imposing crushing economic sanctions on most Syrians. They are pouring support into the Al Qaeda zone while strangling the vast majority of Syrians who live in government zones. Under US “Caesar” sanctions, it is prohibited to support any Syrian government rebuilding of hospitals, schools, water pumping stations, electricity power stations or residential housing. Syrian civilians now lack food, medicines, electricity, [water, fuel and building materials] because of the actions of the invaders [and occupiers].
The UN Charter should be followed and enforced.
Syria Solidarity Movement calls for the removal of US and Turkish occupations of northern and eastern Syria. We call for the United Nations Security Council to NOT authorize or participate in the violation of Syrian territorial integrity at Bab al Hawa border crossing. We call for the US and western nations to stop their violations of Syrian sovereignty and their complicity and support of Al Qaeda in Syria.
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The Syria Solidarity Movement operates a modest humanitarian aid program to which all are welcome to provide US tax-deductible donations. For further information go to www.aidforsyrians.org.
Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Studies, New York University June 10, 2021 Dumbo, New York
Interview by John Kirby
Editing by Francis Karogodins
Research by Evan Dominguez, Billy Clayton Miller
“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government,” wrote Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda. In part one of Episode 17, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Media Studies at New York University, discusses the propaganda onslaught that defined the year 2020, when what was dismissed one week is confirmed the next, and why questioning official narratives “necessarily means taking ‘conspiracy theory’ seriously.”
A British friend, recovered from COVID, decided to get vaccinated despite being naturally immune. This is the email he recently sent me:
“Marc I suffered a mild stroke on Wednesday 8 days after taking the Astrazeneca 2nd dose. Since I am a marathon runner I am a very ‘rare case’. I don’t smoke, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, family history or come into any of the risk categories for blood clots…
You did warn me against taking the second dose and I wished I’d heeded your advice. I’ve taken a totally unnecessary risk with my life and I bitterly regret doing it.”
Contrary to most, Tony was informed; he had been told about the power of natural immunity, about the long—if not lifelong—duration of immunity, of the risk inherent to any medical procedure (Yes, vaccination is a medical procedure!), as well as of the rising levels of adverse events. He admitted he hadn’t imagined it could happen to him…
Though it is hard to assess precisely the actual severity and breadth of vaccine-related adverse events, it is very clear that vaccination against COVID-19 isn’t as harmless4 as pharmaceutical companies, mainstream media, academia, health authorities and the medical community have been saying. And, in contrast to high risk individuals who are still susceptible, recovered people have no real benefit to balance the additional risks of vaccination.
2021 Adverse Events Reporting
VAERS US
EUROVIGILANCE EUROPE
YELLOW CARDS UK
Date
18/06/2021
04/06/2021
16/06/2021
Fully Vaccinated (Mn)
148.46
137.44
30.68
Deaths
6,136
4,572
1,356
Incidents
387,288
316,925
73,944
Death per 100,000
4.1
3.3
4.4
For over a year, mainstream media, health authorities as well as many “experts” have been downplaying the power of the immune system, dismissing natural immunity5 and proclaiming that immunity to COVID-19 was short-lived6. Simultaneously, vaccines have been portrayed as the silver bullet to this crisis, an incidental procedure with no risk whatsoever. The data shows a different picture and many are coming forward7 8, to challenge the official narrative. We will demonstrate that the official narrative is a dangerous fallacy.
The human immune system is one of the most sophisticated achievements of evolution. The survival of our species has depended on it for millenia. Today, we still very much rely on it. For the record, 99% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 recover without treatment. Only 1% of SARS-CoV-2 patients, who did not receive early home-based treatment, end up hospitalized9. In other words, the immune system overwhelmingly protects. Even vaccines are entirely dependent on the immune system: vaccines essentially teach our immune systems what viral markers to be prepared for, they are not cures per se. Without a functional immune system, there can be no effective vaccine10.
On the waning immunity fallacy
Once recovered, the immune response recedes, notably via a decrease in antibodies. It is not only natural; it is indispensable to restore the body to a normal, balanced state. Just as a permanent state of fever is harmful, a high number of targetless antibodies or T-cells constantly circulating throughout the body could create serious complications, such as autoimmune diseases11. Taking an evolutionary perspective, only those whose antibody and T-cell count waned post-infection survived. So, a decreasing number of antibodies and T-cells is reassuring, even healthy.
Antibody Levels during infection and post infection
Redline= antibodies – Blue-line= Memory B cells | Credit: Nature
But this decrease in T-cells and antibodies doesn’t mean that immunity is lost . It means the immune system has adapted to the new situation, and is now just on sentinel mode: Memory B- and T-cells, circulating in the blood and resident12 in tissues, act as vigilant13 and effective sentinels for decades:
survivors of the Spanish Flu epidemic were tested for their immunity to the 1918 influenza virus 90 years later –14,15 and still demonstrated immunity;
people who had recovered from the 2003 SARS infection demonstrated robust T-Cell responses seventeen years later16.
the wide-spread prevalence of high cross-immunity17,18,19— gained from past common cold infections—further demonstrates the resilience of natural immunity for coronaviruses.
Indeed, all recent studies show that specific anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunity remains effective20,21,22,23, possibly for a lifetime24. Our immune system is a modular platform, it can combine in an infinite number of ways to address a multitude of threats in a variety of contexts. As such it is neutral to the viral threats it faces. In other words, there is absolutely no reason to believe that those recovered from Covid-19 would lose their immunity over the years, or even the decades25 to come.
On the reinfectionfallacy
You might have also heard of people becoming reinfected by SARS-CoV-2. Indeed, immunity, natural or vaccine-induced, isn’t the impenetrable shield described by many. Essentially harmless and asymptomatic reinfections do take place. That is, in fact, the very mechanism by which adaptive immunity is triggered.
However, symptomatic reinfections are very rare26,27. Like an army that adapts its response to the size and the progression of its enemy forces, adaptive immunity provides a specific, rapid and resource-optimized response. As such reinfections are mostly asymptomatic28 and recovered patients are protected from severe disease.
In fact, innocuous reinfections can play a positive public health role by acting as continuous immune updates29 for the population. They can help form a seamless and progressive adaptation to emerging variants and strains. And indeed a recent study showed that couples with children were more frequently asymptomatic than couples without, most likely because children act as natural and harmless immunisation vehicles. The most likely reason why high density countries mostly have very low death tolls is that they have asymptomatic reinfections that regularly and widely update the population’s immunity.
On the variant fallacy
As demonstrated by the low numbers of symptomatic reinfections mentioned above, and also by multiple studies31,32, variants have thus far not escaped acquired immunity. Just as Americans can speak and interact seamlessly in England, unhindered by a few word variants33, natural immunity is unhindered by variants, possibly more so than vaccine-induced immunity. There is ample evidence of the sophistication and breadth of the human immune system, and it is clear that a few minor gene changes in the virus cannot evade its arsenal .
Across the world34, multiple studies demonstrate high levels of pre-existing cross-reactive T-cells35 and antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. In other words, many were already largely immune via other coronaviruses. This is the most likely explanation for the unexpectedly high level of asymptomatic infections during the pandemic. More importantly, this demonstrates that even with large genetic differences, prior immunity to related coronaviruses is sufficient to avoid severe COVID-19. Therefore, it is quite evident that variants are of no concern to the recovered population.
On the vaccine better-than-natural-immunity fallacy
You might have heard people stating that vaccines provide better protection than natural immunity. That is an interesting way of bending reality. How can a vaccine be more effective at immunisation than the disease it is trying to mimic?
Theoretically, there are several reasons explaining why natural immunity is better than vaccine-induced immunity:
Fewer immune targets: mRNA/DNA vaccines present only a fraction of the virus genetic code (5-10%). For example, they don’t utilize the ORF1 highly immunogenic epitopes36. Therefore, the immune system recruits a smaller number of T-cells by tapping into a narrower repertoire and consequently mounts a less effective response37. The logic: Imagine you lose a number of key players for a football tournament, you might still win, but it will be harder.
Longer immune trigger time: The smaller number of epitope targets also means that the alarm to the immune system will be delayed. This is a key driver of success in the COVID-19 battle. The wider the target repertoire, the faster the encounter between dendritic cells and identifiable antigens.
The logic: Like a party you go to, you can start partying much faster when you have ten friends there than when you have only one. They are just easier to find.
Inappropriate delivery location: The intramuscular delivery of current vaccines unfortunately doesn’t mimic viral penetration and propagation at all. Coronaviruses don’t enter the body via muscles. They do so via the respiratory tract, often infecting cell-to-cell. Contrary to muscle-delivered vaccines, natural immunity places a strong sentinel force of memory resident cells at the portals of entry38 and shuts the body entrance to the virus preemptively. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes perfect sense.
The logic: it’s much easier to stop an army coming through a narrow gorge than on the beaches of Normandy.
Recent research confirms this logic. One comparative study39 in Israel found the protection from severe disease to be 96·4% for Covid-19 recovered individuals but 94.4% for vaccinated ones, and concluded “Our results question the need to vaccinate previously-infected individuals.” Another reference comparative study40 by a team at New York University highlighted a faster, wider and more impactful humoral and cytotoxic reaction in recovered immunity versus vaccine-induced.
There is ample evidence that vaccinating people recovered from COVID-19 doesn’t bring any benefit. It quite possibly does the opposite, because of the risk of building tolerance to elements of the virus43 translating into reduced immune potency.
On the vaccine innocuity fallacy
Without denigrating the incredible contribution of vaccines to modern medicine and public health, one needs to acknowledge that vaccines are a medical procedure. As such, vaccines should never be considered lightly. They are neither neutral, nor trivial, all the more so when they are injected into billions of people.
By their very nature, vaccines tinker with the sophisticated balance of one’s immune system. That in itself demands respecting rigid safety protocols. Though we have made considerable progress in our understanding of immunology, we are still very far from understanding its intricacies and subtleties, especially when it comes to novel mRNA and DNA technologies. Because of the risk of anaphylactic44 shock, auto-immune diseases, unforeseen interactions, design flaws, deficient quality protocols, over-dosage, and so on, vaccines have traditionally been strictly regulated.
History teaches us to be watchful45 with vaccines, from the botched inactivation of polio vaccines that ended infecting 40,000 kids46 with polio in 1955, to the 1976 swine flu vaccine47 which caused 450 to develop Guillain-Barré syndrome, to the more recent vaccine-induced outbreak of polio in Sudan48. The recent rejection49 by Brazilian health authorities of the Bharat’s Covaxin is a clear reminder of how rigorous and independent our health authorities need to be if vaccines are to promote, not hinder, public health.
Map of Vaccine Symptoms
316,925 reports (date: 06/20/21)
credit: Wouter Aukema – source: CDC
After 6 months of vaccination and a year of research, a number of red flags should be alerting the would-be vaccinated and health authorities:
Wandering nanoparticles: The lipid nanoparticles, the carriers of the mRNA, were supposed to remain in the muscle, but ended up broadly distributed throughout the body50, notably in the ovaries51, the liver52 and possibly the bone marrow.
Anaphylactic PEG: A number of concerns had been raised regarding the novel use of PEG adjuvant53. Notably, prior research had raised the risk of cardiac anaphylaxis at second injection54.
Sensitive locations: ACE-2 receptors susceptible to binding to the spike protein are highly expressed in blood vessel lining cells of highly sensitive areas, such as the brain, the heart, the lungs, the liver and both male and female reproductive systems.
Toxic circulating spikes: The spike proteins induced by mRNA/DNA vaccines have been shown to be pathogenic55,56,57,58 and highly inflammatory59, notably because of the similarity of a spike sequence to that of Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B60. It has also been found to be directly causing blood clots through platelet activation61,62. One researcher said, “Our findings show that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein causes lung injury even without the presence of an intact virus”.
BBB disruption – A recent study highlights the risk of disruption of the blood-brain barrier63, a fundamental filter mechanism to protect the brain64,65. The spike protein has also been found to cross the BBB and create inflammation in the brain,.
High adverse events: Even though most likely under-reported66, the overall number of serious adverse events versus other traditional vaccines remains very high. The 6,000+ deaths67 seen [in the US] in six months exceed all the vaccine-related deaths in 30 years. This is quite disquieting, and tends to confirm the aforementioned red flags..
Children more at risk: The Covid-19 vaccines seem to be more harmful to children and teens, notably with a growing number of myocarditis68,69 events. The fact that vaccine doses are not adjusted for body weight is notably a cause for concern given the discovery of circulating nanoparticles and spike toxicity.
These are essentially just the short-term effects of these novel vaccines. There is no long-term clinical data regarding the implications of these vaccines, notably regarding autoreactive antibodies (antibodies that target one’s own body creating autoimmune diseases).
To conclude, we question why anyone healthy and recovered from COVID-19 would want or be advised to take any risk—even the most remote—in getting vaccinated given that:
those who have recovered from COVID-19 enjoy robust immunity,
natural immunity duration is decades-long, probably lifelong,
natural immunity effectiveness is better than vaccine-induced,
variants are not an immunological concern, presenting no risk of immune escape,
vaccines are medical interventions which should never be taken lightly, especially when still experimental,
there is no benefit for COVID-19 recovered and
COVID-19 vaccines are obviously not as safe as stated initially by the manufacturers.
The 2021 seasonal peak in Europe started down on January 22 when only 0.13% of the population was fully vaccinated.
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Countries: Canada, Ecuador, Gabon, Germany, India, Singapore, Sweden, UK, USA, Tanzania, Zambia
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“Anvisa denies certificate of good practice to Bharat Biotech, which produces Covaxin” by Enzô Machida and Murillo Ferrari, CNN, March 2021
“Organ bio distribution study undertaken by the Japanese regulator”
“Potential adverse effects of nanoparticles on the reproductive system”by Shao LQ, DovePress, September 2018
“Synthetic Lipid Nanoparticles Targeting Steroid Organs” by Bertrand Tavitian, The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 2013
“PEGylated liposomes: immunological responses” by Tatsuhiro Ishida et al, Science and Technology of Advanced Materials Vol 20, 20219
“Pseudo-anaphylaxis to Polyethylene Glycol (PEG)-Coated Liposomes: Roles of Anti-PEG IgM and Complement Activation in a Porcine Model of Human Infusion Reactions” by János Szebeni et al, ACS Nano, 2019
“Superantigenic character of an insert unique to SARS-CoV-2 spike supported by skewed TCR repertoire in patients with hyperinflammation” by Ivet Bahar et al, PNAS, October 2020
“SARS-CoV-2 spike protein induces inflammation via TLR2-dependent activation of the NF-κB pathway” by Hasan Zaki et al, March 2021
“SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Impairs Endothelial Function via Downregulation of ACE 2” by John Y-J. Shyy, Circulation Reseacrh, MArch 2021
“Single intratracheal exposure to SARS-CoV-2 S1 spike protein induces acute lung injury in K18-hACE2 transgenic mice” by Pavel Solopov et al, The FASEB Journal, May 2021
“SARS-CoV-2 spike protein interacts with and activates TLR4” by Fuping You et al, December 2020
“Bacterial Toxins—Staphylococcal Enterotoxin” by Bettina C. Fries & Avanish K. Varshney
“A prothrombotic thrombocytopenic disorder resembling heparin-induced thrombocytopenia following coronavirus-19 vaccination” by Sabine Eichinger et al, The New England Journal of Medicine, April 2020
“Acquired Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura: a rare disease associated Acquired with BNT162b2 vaccine” by Dorit Blickstein et al, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostatis, June 2021
“The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein alters barrier function in 2D static and 3D microfluidic in-vitro models of the human blood–brain barrier” by Sergio H. Ramirez, Neurobiology of Disease, December 2020
“The S1 protein of SARS-CoV-2 crosses the blood–brain barrier in mice” by William A. Banks et al, NAture Neuroscience, December 2020
“Guillain-Barré syndrome following ChAdOx1-S/nCoV-19 vaccine” by Boby Varkey Maramattom et al, June 2021
“Underreporting of Side Effects to VAERS” by Vincent Iannelli, Vaxopedia, September 2017
Open VAERS data
“The C.D.C. is investigating nearly 800 cases of rare heart problems following immunization.” by Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times, June 11, 2021
“Israel reports link between rare cases of heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccination in young men” by Gretchen Vogel & Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Science, June 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease.
As time passed, lack of cure could be a problem. In fact, it could mean curing disease was not a genetic undertaking at all. What about environment? Toxicity? Malnutrition? Poverty? In order to raise money, those factors would have to be pushed back out of view.
Instead, the PR people would need to flood the news with positive glow around the subject of gene research. Also known as exaggeration. Or bullshit.
You can spot the key terms in these articles. POSSIBLE, SHOULD, COULD, EXPECTED TO, SEEMS, ON THE HORIZON, MAY BE, COULD LEAD TO, EVENTUALLY, and of course, the ever-popular BREAKTHROUGH.
I dug back in my files and found a piece I wrote in 2011. As you’ll see, the “breakthroughs” touted then haven’t panned out so far. You don’t read about them in the press these days. The PR pros have moved on to other exaggerations.
The first 2011 article I cited was from Reuters, headlined: SCIENTISTS FIND “MASTER SWITCH” GENE FOR OBESITY. Here are a few choice tidbits. Note the key terms I just mentioned.
“… and say it should help the search for treatments…”
“… the regulating gene could be [a] target for drugs to treat…”
“… seems to act as a master switch…”
“We are working hard… to understand these processes and how we can use this information to improve treatment…”
Sure. You bet.
Zero results.
Next, a 2011 blockbuster piece in the Financial Times. The headline read: SCIENTISTS FIND GENETIC LINK TO DEPRESSION.
Standard trumpet blaring.
Here are the text nuggets. Again, note key terms.
“The discovery… is expected to lead to a better biological understanding of the condition and eventually to more effective antidepressants…”
“… as possibly for the first time we have found a genetic locus for depression.”
“… is likely to pin down the gene responsible…”
“… which may be the basis for designing more effective antidepressants…”
Sure. You bet.
Zero results.
Moving ahead in time—From immunology.org :
“On 17 December 2015, the journal Science voted [gene-editing tool] Crispr-Cas9 ‘Breakthrough of the Year’, saying that it had ‘matured into a molecular marvel’. It is already being used in cancer immunotherapy to edit a patient’s own T-cell genome in order to remove the gene that ‘tells’ these immune cells not to target cancerous tissue.”
It’s already being used—but where are the cures? Nowhere.
Anybody out there want to partner with me in launching a new company? This is a major winner. It covers a very broad area. Actually, there is no human endeavor it doesn’t cover. The name of the company? MAYBE COULD BE INC.
“We’re always on the edge and the frontier. We’re always breaking through. We’re always raising money. We’re always pumping our stock. We’re always ready to sell the company to a sucker with deep pockets.”
Let’s look at another type of gene research organization. This one happens to be the largest single medical research outfit in the world. It’s part of the US government: the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Their PR is different. They’re hedging their bets and covering their bases in every possible way. They’re saying YES, NO, AND MAYBE all at once. Of course, they can get away with it, because they run on taxpayer money. Their annual budget is a formidable $30 billion. Grit your teeth and read through their text that explains “genetic diseases”:
“A genetic disorder is a disease caused in whole or in part by a change in the DNA sequence away from the normal sequence. Genetic disorders can be caused by a mutation in one gene (monogenic disorder), by mutations in multiple genes (multifactorial inheritance disorder), by a combination of gene mutations and environmental factors, or by damage to chromosomes (changes in the number or structure of entire chromosomes, the structures that carry genes).”
“As we unlock the secrets of the human genome (the complete set of human genes), we are learning that nearly all diseases have a genetic component. Some diseases are caused by mutations that are inherited from the parents and are present in an individual at birth, like sickle cell disease. Other diseases are caused by acquired mutations in a gene or group of genes that occur during a person’s life. Such mutations are not inherited from a parent, but occur either randomly or due to some environmental exposure (such as cigarette smoke). These include many cancers, as well as some forms of neurofibromatosis.”
That is a DON’T BLAME US statement. “Don’t blame us if a disease we thought was genetic turns out to be something else. Don’t blame us if it’s 65.34 percent environmental, 4.52 percent genetic, and 30.14 percent who knows what. Don’t blame us if toxicity triggers genetic malfunctions and, in the absence of the toxicity, there would be zero cases of the disease. Don’t blame us if a disease has nothing to do with genes. We’re ready to jump in any direction. We may not know much, but we’re sitting on a pile of cash. Don’t blame us if we don’t have any solid genetic cures for anything. We’re working hard. That’s all you can ask us to do.”
If there is one disease the public tends to believe can be cured by gene therapy, it is sickle cell anemia. The PR pros have done a good job there. However, sicklecellanemianews.com states: “Gene therapy is an experimental technique that aims to treat genetic diseases by altering a disease-causing gene or introducing a healthy copy of a mutated gene to the body.”
Experimental. Aims to. Not an established cure. The confusion arises because, as with a number of diseases, the researchers and the PR flacks claim they’ve definitely traced the illness to a gene or two. They’ve struck gold. But, as you read further, you discover they’re just not ready to cure the patient. Clinical trials are underway. More work in the lab is necessary. The pudding is there, but the proof of it isn’t. They claim to know the cause; they just don’t know what to do with it.
In science, that’s known as a hypothesis. Or more simply, a speculation. You say you’ve found an answer, but you can’t apply it. This means: you don’t have an answer.
“There is no doubt. We went down into the mine and we found evidence of extraordinary amounts of gold. We just don’t know how to get it out. What’s that? You want to see the gold? No, I’m sorry. The public isn’t allowed down there. Only the professionals can enter. But don’t worry. We’re very close to a breakthrough. The gold will emerge soon. Trust us.”
Trust you? Sure. How much do you need to finish the job? Fifty million? A hundred million? Let me call my broker and sell some stock. I’ll write you a check. Just put a plaque with my name on the wall. Let me know how I’ll profit on this venture. I’m in. I’ve always wanted to invest in MAYBE COULD BE INC.
In case you need to be reminded, the RNA COVID vaccines are genetic treatments. The PR pros tell us they are working quite well. And they’re remarkably safe.
If you’re buying that line, I have electric cars for sale. And they have wings. One charge in your garage, and they’ll get you from Earth to Mars in just under two hours.
The EUA expansion1 for Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine for kids aged 12–15 was done after it failed (as I will show below) its pro-forma clinical trial2.
Abysmal Safety
Only 1,131 kids received at least one injection of the experimental vaccine. Most of them experienced side effects. Within a few days after the second shot, 66% of the kids developed fatigue, 65% developed headaches, 42% developed chills, and so on. The first shot was tolerated only slightly better. Symptoms varied from mild to severe. More than half of the kids had to resort to painkillers or antipyretics after the second injection. Given such frequency and severity of adverse effects, the sponsor had to either stop the trial because of safety, or to significantly increase its size to exclude high likelihood of death. At the trial size, if the risk of immediate death were 1 per 1,000, the trial had only a 32% probability of missing it. We are lucky that this is not the case.
From 1, Table 17. Frequency of Solicited Systemic Adverse Events Within 7 Days After Each Dose, by Maximum Severity, Participants 12 Through 15
Event
BNT162b2 Dose 1, N=1127 n (%)
BNT162b2Dose 2, N=1097n (%)
Fatigue, any
677 (60.1)
726 (66.2)
Fatigue moderate or severe
399 (35.4)
494 (45.1)
Headache, any
623 (55.3)
708 (64.5)
Headache moderate or severe
262 (23.3)
406 (37.0)
Chills
311 (27.6)
455 (41.5)
Chills moderate or severe
116 (10.2)
234 (21.3)
Fever (≥38.0°C)
114 (10.1)
215 (19.6)
Muscle Pain
272 (24.1)
355 (32.4)
Muscle Pain moderate or severe
147 (13.1)
203 (18.5)
Joints Pain
109 ( 9.7)
173 (15.8)
Joints Pain moderate or severe
43 ( 3.8)
82 ( 7.5)
Efficacy was not Shown
The media heralded 100% efficacy in COVID-19 prevention because 16 kids (1.5%) in the placebo group had putatively developed COVID-19 within 2 months after the second shot, while no kids in the experimental group had. The study reported no severe cases in the placebo group. At closer look at the definition of a case and the conduct of the trial, very mild disease or even a positive test associated with non-specific symptoms were counted as cases.
“For the primary efficacy endpoint, the case definition for a confirmed COVID-19 case was the presence of at least one of the following symptoms and a positive SARS-CoV-2 NAAT within 4 days of the symptomatic period: • Fever; • New or increased cough; • New or increased shortness of breath; • Chills; • New or increased muscle pain; • New loss of taste or smell; • Sore throat; • Diarrhea; • Vomiting.”
Add to this that the trial was in winter and the researchers solicited answers about COVID-19 symptoms, encouraging kids to keep e-diaries. Thus, a kid getting a sore throat or fever for any reason and a positive PCR test within four days of each other was counted as a case. Solicitation leads for excessive reporting of symptoms. We do not know how many of the “cases” would be more correctly classified as asymptomatic infection if not for symptoms solicitation. Also, only 1.5% of the placebo group has got adverse symptoms, compared with at least 90% in the vaccinated group. Where is efficacy?
Further, “The efficacy analysis for the 12-to-15-year-old cohort was planned as a descriptive analysis because the number of cases that would occur in the age subgroups was unknown.” Thus, this trial was a fiction from the beginning—an excuse for the HHS to start injecting 12-year-olds.
The conclusion: the COVID-19 vaccine FAILED in both safety and efficacy for 12–15-year-olds.
Possible Errors in the Trial
There are indications of other errors in the study. With the rate of treatment adverse effects close to 100%, maintaining placebo blinding was very unlikely. If a kid comes home after an injection with an unusual fatigue and headache, what parent would believe he had received placebo?
An interesting detail is that, within the first 2 months after the 2nd shot, 1.5% of the placebo group had a COVID-19 case, but only 0.3% had it within the next 2+ months. This is not necessarily an indication of foul play. It is another demonstration of uselessness of COVID-19 vaccination for kids.
The way in which PCR testing was used in the trial raises additional questions. COVID-19 PCR tests are notorious for their inaccuracy and ease of manipulation, including by selecting the amplification cycles number. The Supplemental Appendix2 says:
“The central laboratory NAAT [nucleic acid amplification test] result was used for the case definition. If no result was available from the central laboratory, a local NAAT result could be used if it was obtained using either the Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2, Roche cobas SARS-CoV-2 real-time RT-PCR test, or the Abbott Molecular/RealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay.”
This sounds like an open door for cherry-picking testing facilities on case-by-case basis.
Legal Aspects
Now this study is used to coerce and/or trick kids and young adults into getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Luckily, we have a legal recourse. Government-sponsored medical procedures require informed consent of the patients – see In re Cincinnati Radiation Litigation, 874 F. Supp. 796 – Dist. Court, SD Ohio 1995. Otherwise, they violate the due process clauses of the XIV and V Amendments. Deceit (including denying futility of COVID-19 vaccines for 12–15-year-olds, denying effectiveness of ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment and prophylaxis, or failure to disclose the risk of future ADE) and coercion (including blocking access to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine) invalidate the apparent consent. For minors, consent of the parents is also mandatory. Medical procedures that involve no more than trivial risk might be an exception, but COVID-19 vaccines are certainly not such a case.
The vaccination of the young people is not just government-sponsored, but almost entirely conducted by the government. The government cannot bypass the Constitution by relying on the opinion of the FDA, which is itself a government agency. Truth matters.
The cherry on top of the cake: government officials carry personal responsibility for their actions in violation of this principle. They cannot assert qualified immunity.
Reference
1. FDA re-Amendment. Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine EUA Amendment Review Memorandum 05262021. Published online May 10, 2021.
2. Robert W. Frenck J, Klein NP, Kitchin N, et al. Safety, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 Covid-19 Vaccine in Adolescents. New England Journal of Medicine. Published online May 27, 2021. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2107456
With many countries rapidly reaching the point where most adults have been vaccinated against covid, attention has been turning to the issue of whether or not children should also be vaccinated. This has been accompanied by an increase in claims in the media that covid is in fact more dangerous to children than was previously thought.
I think most people intuitively agree that children shouldn’t be vaccinated unless the benefits to them outweigh the risks. That is probably the reason for the sudden up-tick in the claims of danger. While you might convince young adults to vaccinate themselves “for the greater good”, even though there is almost certainly no benefit to them personally, you will have a harder time convincing parents to let their children be vaccinated if there is no actual benefit to the children.
That is especially true in light of the mounting evidence that the covid vaccines can cause harm, such as findings from the CDC that some of the vaccines cause an increased risk of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), particularly in boys and young men. This comes on the heels of earlier findings that some of the vaccines increase the risk of serious blood clotting disorders, particularly in young women. Let’s remember, the vaccines were invented only a little over a year ago. It is possible (in fact quite likely) that there will be new revelations of harm going forward. So if you want to convince parents to let their children be vaccinated in spite of this increasing evidence of harm, then you need to convince them that covid is in fact a real danger to their children.
With that in mind, let’s look in to the claim that covid is a danger to children. I’m going to be using mainly Swedish statistics, since those are the ones I’m most familiar with, and since Sweden is better than virtually every other country in the world at producing reliable statistics. In Sweden, nine children (i.e. people under the age of twenty) have so far died of covid, according to official statistics. In total, 13,913 people have died of covid in Sweden, which means that people aged 20 or over constitute the remaining 13,904 covid deaths.
There are currently around 2,414,000 children in Sweden (four of which are mine). If we divide the number of deaths by the number of children, then we find that the risk of having died of covid for a Swedish child is 0.00037% (one in 268,000). That is after a full year and a half of the pandemic. To put that in some perspective, in 2020, 15 children in Sweden died in traffic accidents. So the risk of a child in Sweden dying of covid during the pandemic has been around half the risk of that child dying in a traffic accident. Note also that Sweden has the safest roads in the world, yet children are still twice as likely to die in a traffic accident as they are to die of covid, and that’s during a raging pandemic.
Let’s move on and look at this from another angle. Sweden’s adult population is around 7,980,000 people. The risk of a Swedish adult thus far having died of covid is 0.17%. As mentioned, the risk of a child having died is 0.00037%. What that means is that children are 500 times less likely to die of covid than adults!
Ok, I think we’ve established that the risk covid poses to children is infinitesimal. At least the risk of dying is infinitesimal. I can already hear two counter-arguments being trotted out, however. The first is that children can get long covid. This argument is weak. It’s been shown that long covid is rare in adults, and there is no reason to think that it is more common in children. In fact, the opposite is almost certainly true.
The second counter-argument is that covid can cause MIS-C in children, the Kawasaki-like disease that people were getting all hot and bothered about last summer when it was first discovered. I recently listened to an interview with Paul Offit (an American pediatrician who has managed the impressive feat of first grossly underestimating the severity of the pandemic and then grossly overestimating its severity) in which he said that MIS-C “isn’t that uncommon”. I thought that was a pretty funny thing to say. Either something is uncommon or it isn’t. It can’t be both. Well, is it uncommon or isn’t it?
According to the CDC, there have at present been 4,018 cases of MIS-C in the US. There are around 73,000,000 children in the country. What that means is that the risk of a child in the US having experienced MIS-C up to now is 0,006% (one in 18,000). In other words, MIS-C is rare. And of the children who are unfortunate enough to get it, more than 99% recover. Out of 73,000,000 children in the US, only 37 have actually died of MIS-C over the course of the pandemic (one in 1,970,000). Children do many things every day that are more likely to kill them, and we don’t bat an eyelid.
To sum up, covid is not a threat to children. At least not more of a threat than many other risks we take for granted and happily let our children take, like riding in cars and crossing streets. In order for it to make sense to vaccinate children with this being the case, it has to be clear beyond any reasonable doubt that there are virtually zero risks associated with the vaccine. Why? Because if the covid vaccine is associated with even a very small risk of harm, then the risk associated with the vaccine could well be greater than the risk associated with the infection. Since it is at present far from clear that vaccination is less risky to children than infection, it is deeply unethical to vaccinate them.
If we go ahead and vaccinate children because we hope that it will marginally decrease the risk to adults (on top of the risk reduction already seen from vaccinating almost the entire adult population), then we are putting our children at risk for our own gain. We should be the ones taking risks for our children. It shouldn’t be the other way around.
“New Normal Newspeak” is a new series of short articles highlighting how our language has come under assault in the past eighteen months.
***
Ever since the beginning of the “pandemic”, and its transition into the clear “New Normal” (or “Great Reset) agenda, the English language itself has become a battleground. Words and phrases are being stretched and twisted into new, bizarre or contradictory meanings, or weighted with implications that never existed before.
“New Normal Newspeak” is our attempt to catalogue these changes, and stop the real meaning of words being memory-holed forever.
Our first example is a very, very literal one.
The phrase “Herd Immunity” has existed for decades, and most of us had probably come across it at some point prior to March 2020. It had a clear meaning, which was available from (among other places) the World Health Organization website:
Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.”
However, after the “pandemic” hit, this erstwhile totally uncontroversial theory became the subject of fierce debate, and proponents of it suddenly found themselves described as “genocidal”.
It was at this point that the WHO changed their website, updating their definition of “herd immunity” to totally remove the concept of “natural immunity”:
‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.
Vaccination has never before been considered the only path to herd immunity and adding that you can’t create immunity through exposure is completely unscientific, flying in the face of centuries of medical knowledge.
Changing this definition during an alleged pandemic, just before experimental and untested vaccines were about to be released, is a clear sign that they were pushing an agenda.
Professor Harvey Risch talks with author John Leake about how hydroxychloroquine — a safe, effective, and inexpensive drug — was fraudulently misrepresented and suppressed by public health agencies, academic journals, and the mainstream media. This propaganda campaign has resulted in the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
The aging neocons who have been practicing regime change ops in the Middle East for decades are now launching a project targeting Turkey – perhaps in honor of the deceased Don Rumsfeld.
Erdogan’s Turkey has long been something of a thorn in Washington’s paw, given its ongoing refusal to buy inferior US military equipment (it was booted from the US’ F-35 program for insisting on buying Russian S-400 missiles, making the Americans who still store their nukes at Incirlik somewhat nervous), its refusal to place the good of Israel above its own benefit, and its rumblings of discontent regarding the US’ pleas for support (or at least safe passage) to its Syrian ‘moderate rebel’ militant groups, which Ankara considers to be little more than terrorists.
Under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has become quite recalcitrant indeed, far from the ideal domesticated state keen to babysit American nukes and stage American missiles in exchange for coveted membership in the deteriorating NATO structure (not long ago fetchingly described by French President Emmanuel Macron as “brain dead”). Clearly what it needs is a shot in the bottom from that great big needle marked ‘Democracy’ – and who better to deliver that than the good old boys from the Project for a New American Century, many of them the old same men who led and lied the US, blindfolded, into the chaos of Iraq.
Enter the Turkish Democracy Project, a non-profit organization which – it should be clear from the name – has nothing to do with democracy or, really, Turkishness. The group’s website is about as subtle as a nuclear bomb, blaming President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for “dramatically alter[ing] Turkey’s position in the international community and its status as a free and liberal democracy” and calling for “a nonprofit, non-partisan, international policy organization that opposes its destabilizing behavior, supports genuine democratic reform, and holds the forces of corruption and oppression within Turkey to account.” In other words: “We want a piece of your country. Resist and be annihilated.”
It’s not that the US thinks Turkey is stupid. But they believe, and are likely correct, that the US will never have as good a time as now to strike. With its military still feared by many parts of the world (even though its bark is at this point far worse than its bite, and its image still suitably ferocious to put much of the actual war-fighting business to fleeing instead of fighting), the main business must be – if the US expects to do something other than flee home with its tail between its legs – “shock and awe.”
But given that these shock and awe tactics will be taking place in the Middle East, an area which has seen the worst the US can throw at its enemies over the last 20 years of perpetual warfare and realizes all the money in the world can’t give even the largest military on Earth the stamina of the gods, it’s likely these dyed-in-the-wool bloodshed-artists will have to change with the times. To invade a militarily competent nation like Turkey – especially one which, inconveniently, happens to be backed by NATO – is unlikely to be a walk in the park, no matter how many phony war crimes the PNAC crew manage to cook up. Gas attacks have become cliche, and any talk of “weapons of mass destruction” will elicit a chortle at best.
So the TDS, if recent events are any indication, has instead gotten to work with the kind of color revolution-style events that have largely replaced shock and awe in other regime-change hotspots. They’re cheap, they’re easy, and in this case – a protest in Istanbul against Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention? – they require exactly zero imagination. It’s much easier to con the rest of NATO if you don’t have to make them think.
Thousands of activists took to the streets on Thursday, either on their own or hailing from various NGOs, denouncing Turkey’s withdrawal from the European human rights treaty known as the Istanbul Convention. Erdogan’s executive order removing Turkey from the treaty, first adopted back in March, argued the country’s women are protected by domestic laws rather than the international human rights treaty – which he argued had been “hijacked” by the LGBTQ+ community.
The hoary old PNAC boys behind the TDS likely couldn’t believe their luck when something like this fell into their lap. But will they be able to modernize?
The group’s CEO is Mark Wallace, who’s also the CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran – another unsubtly named regime-change operation (and a regime change that has failed repeatedly). An old hand at overthrowing Middle Eastern nations the old-fashioned way, Wallace held several positions with the George W. Bush administration while the nation was attempting to crush Iraq (apparently shocked the children had run forward with IEDs instead of handfuls of wildflowers to welcome their new rulers).
Indeed, numerous fellow veterans of the Iraq regime change effort and abortive attempts to overthrow Iran have bubbled up in the swamp gas to give regime change in Turkey a go. Wallace is joined by other bottom-feeders like former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman and UANI intel chief Norman Roule, as well as glorified mustache-carrier, would-be thug, and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. Former Bush adviser Frances Townsend is there, as is former associate deputy director of operations for the CIA (and Blackwater vet) Robert Richer. At least a few members of the shadowy pro-Israel Foundation for the Defense of Democracies were listed and then memory-holed, and Bush’s brother Jeb is there, a speech bubble forever hovering above his head reading “please clap.”
Oddly enough, however, the only currently listed actual employee aside from CEO Wallace is a (presumably) former assistant English professor at Princeton University. No, that’s not suspicious at all. Carry on, I’m sure Turkey will welcome you (and your desired partitioning of the country) with open arms!
With Erdogan still trustingly paying his country’s NATO dues, Ankara is unlikely to expect any sort of real attack, though the leader is likely on guard, given former President Trump’s on-again, off-again announcement to clear out US soldiers from Syria. He is likely to be on the lookout for foreign meddlers among the protesters, however. And Erdogan’s allies with their ears to the ground both inside and outside Turkey have already pegged this absurd attempt at bringing back ‘democracy’ for what it really is. While some have linked it to the infamous Gulen movement, referring to the cleric who most recently was accused of trying to overthrow Erdogan in 2016, Gulen’s movement itself seems to have ties to the same ‘Greater Israel’ plan to redraw the lines on the map of the Middle East, a plan Israeli military strategist Oded Yinon devised decades ago (and which the neocons appear to have used as their foreign policy guide ever since). Former Turkish opposition lawmaker Aykan Erdemir, senior director for Turkey at the FDD, was accused of being connected to Gulen in 2017 and had his assets seized, strengthening the case for the connection between Gulen’s organization and the notoriously pro-Israel FDD.
But with all of NATO’s heads turned to this human rights drama, surely the other countries in the alliance also participating in the drawing-and-quartering of Syria won’t expect a military attack on Turkey as well – not without some warning. The map of Greater Israel shows Turkey losing a mere corner of their land compared to Syria, which takes quite a beating – one which Turkey clearly expects to be a part of, having already staked its claim effectively to certain border regions of Syria under the logic of keeping the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) away. But this is all temporary, and eventually the region must settle into its new form. An Israel-first arrangement will not go down well with any of the other combatants, and, unlike the US and its European partners, Turkey won’t just sit on its hands and sigh wistfully while its share of the Syrian pie is handed to the US by way of Tel Aviv.
Because that’s who the ultimate beneficiary of this mess is supposed to be. Named after the Israeli military strategist who devised it, the Yinon project hopes to balkanize the Middle East and assemble the shards into a single nation consisting of the choicest morsels of those countries in between the Euphrates and the Nile rivers. Iraq has already been cut in half, Syria has shrunk dramatically even as the war goes on, and Egypt is run by a pliant leader who will do what the US and Israel tell him – as General Wesley Clark said over a decade ago, the plan was to take out seven countries in five years. They’re running a bit behind, but never underestimate the abilities of a bunch of old war criminals with nothing to lose.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Telegram.
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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