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How Taiwan Became an Issue

By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | August 22, 2024

Given that official Washington seems increasingly determined to fight Beijing over Taiwan, concerned Americans are right to wonder: how did the question of Taiwan come to be of such purported importance to these global powers?

While several closer islands, such as the Penghu (or the Pescadores as they are now known), were incorporated into the Chinese polity during the period of Ming blue water exploration in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Formosa (or Taiwan as it came to be known) never was.

After shuttering its large scale naval activities in the mid-fifteenth century, the Ming were thereafter largely content to let the rival trading companies of the Portuguese and Dutch quarrel for influence on Formosa, where trade revolved around tea and camphor.

In an odd bit of history repeating itself, the island first became a central focus of a ruling mainland Chinese regime as a result of a civil war that needed concluding: displaced by the invading Manchurian forces (the eventual Qing), in 1661 what remained of the Han, Ming ruling clique retreated to Formosa. It was following their ultimate defeat in 1683 that Formosa started to become ethically and administratively integrated into China (a process completed around a century later).

Despite its import as a trading hub in the centuries thereafter, when the Japanese took possession of Formosa at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), per the terms of the Treaty Shimonoseki (1885), the island’s new rulers found a society, economy, and polity virtually untouched by modernity.

And while initially brutal, putting down an anti-Japanese insurgency of emigre Han Chinese and native Taiwanese, the Japanese colonial administration of the island, which lasted until the end of World War II, would see the island transformed into an educated, urbanized, and rationalized society with living standards far higher than on the mainland.

Despite the increasing gap, most Taiwanese, whose cultural links with the mainland were still strong, were open to rejoining mainland China when the war finally ended—although it is worth noting that this willingness proved short-lived, the Kuomintang (KMT) regime needing to viciously suppress a mass uprising against its terrible misrule in 1947.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at whose feet a great deal of blame for a whole host of problems may be laid, also laid the foundation stone for misadventure in dealing with China, including Taiwan.

Indeed, while there was a reasonable possibility that Taiwan could have been its own independent country at the end of the Second World War, it was FDR and his successor, Harry Truman, who ensured this would not happen.

Ignoring the wisdom of multiple of his predecessors, who had refused to get involved either in internal Chinese squabbles or its feuds with neighboring Japan, FDR began supporting the KMT regime of Chiang Kai-Shek.

Mao had, at least on one occasion, expressed ambivalence, stating for the record in 1936 that he did not consider Taiwan to be a “lost territory.”

However, at a meeting in Cairo (1943) FDR acquiesced to Chiang Kai-Shek’s insistence that Taiwan be returned to China. Once that had happened, and once Harry Truman safeguarded his retreat in Taiwan, the calculation from Beijing’s perspective changed.

As in the seventeenth century case of the Ming and Qing, no government claiming to be the legitimate government of China could brook the continued existence of a rival claimant to the title occupying a large island fortress less than one hundred miles from the mainland shore.

Virtually all the primary and secondary sources are in agreement: the outbreak of mass war in Korea led to the fate of Taiwan being drawn into the Cold War paradigm. From official histories to revisionist and post revisionist accounts, whatever the particular nuances of the account in question, including libertarian realists who point to the domestic political incentive structures that principally drove foreign policy decision-making, the decision to fight the Cold War made certain Taiwan would be an American protectorate following Chiang and the KMT’s flight to the island following their loss of the Chinese Civil War to Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

To be sure, there were many voices in the State Department who had championed abandoning the incompetent, corrupt, and brutal Chiang and simply making the best of things with the communist government they saw as inevitably on their way to winning the resumed Chinese Civil War—these would mostly be purged or resign during the (second) red scare, however, and the constraining Cold War atmosphere that followed meant that possible openings to China were unable to be grasped.

That this logical move, to exploit the growing divisions between Moscow and Beijing, was unable to be grasped by eager Cold Warriors was largely due to the efforts of the “China Lobby,” the supporters of “free China,” or the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Some, like New York businessman Alfred Kohlberg, had financial interests at stake; others, like the former U.S. Ambassador to China Patrick J. Hurley, had personal and ideological commitments; still others, like Senators Barry Goldwater and William Knowland, combined these factors; while media magnate Henry Luce, owner of Time and Life, ensured high profile oppositional platforms. They combined to resist moves to normalize relations with Beijing and abandon Taiwan, despite the desire of several White House administrations to do precisely that.

As authoritative, mainstream historians, such as Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, readily admit, it was these forces that made the clean break with the authoritarian and provocative Taipei regime, desired by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, impossible.

When Ronald Reagan, a rabid Taiwan champion, won the White House it cemented the unhealthy status quo.

Taiwan continues to enjoy a strong lobbying presence on Capital Hill, abetted now by the complex of think tanks aligned with military industrial and foreign governmental interests. None of them are ever going to say something so obvious as the truth: the fate of Taiwan has literally nothing to do with the well-being of the American people or even the American state in general.

It is about power—Washington’s power, specifically.

As Dave DeCamp reported back in 2021, a fundamental change came over official Washington during the Donald Trump years: no longer was Taiwan viewed as a “problem” in Sino-American relations. Rather, it was viewed as an “opportunity” to advance Washington’s anti-Beijing, containment agenda.

Americans should be made aware of this fact; the only thing China “threatens” is Washington’s attempted domination of the region through its network of clients.

Taiwan is increasingly front and center in this battle.

For its part, Taiwan has remained since the 1950s a primary objective of Beijing and this is unlikely to ever change.

August 23, 2024 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular | China, United States | Leave a comment

CDC Stands by Water Fluoridation After Report Linking Fluoride to Lower IQs in Kids Finally Published

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 22, 2024

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) on Wednesday published a controversial report linking fluoride exposure to neurotoxic effects in children, after public health officials tried for years to block its publication and water down its conclusions.

The report, which analyzed published studies on fluoride’s neurotoxicity, concluded with “moderate confidence” that higher levels of fluoride exposure in drinking water are consistently linked to lower IQs in kids.

It’s the first government publication to concede what fluoride researchers have long reported: that the chemical added to the drinking water of hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and celebrated as one of the 10 greatest health achievements of the 20th century carries a serious risk of neurological damage, particularly for pregnant women and young children.

“The NTP monograph provides more than sufficient evidence against the deliberate exposure of humans to fluoride through intentional fluoridation of drinking water,” said risk analysis scientist Kathleen Thiessen, Ph.D., who was not involved with the study but co-authored the 2006 National Resource Council study on fluoride toxicity.

Thiessen told The Defender, “A conclusion of ‘moderate confidence’ of neurotoxic effects, especially on unborn and newborn children, ought to mean an immediate elimination of water fluoridation and minimization of fluoride exposure to the population.”

The report reviewed existing studies that assessed the relationship between fluoride exposure and neurodevelopmental effects in children and adults from across the world, including places where fluoride occurs naturally in groundwater and places like the U.S., Canada and Mexico, where it is intentionally added to drinking water or food.

The authors concluded that exposure to drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams per liter (mg/L) is consistently associated with lower IQ in children. That’s only twice the amount the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends be added to drinking water in the U.S. to prevent tooth decay.

Most environmental toxins regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are more strictly controlled. Typically, human exposure is banned at 30 times the level of their known toxic effects. None of the chemicals regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act are permitted at a margin of less than 10.

The researchers found that almost all of the high-quality studies identified — 18 out of 19 — found a link between fluoride exposure and lower IQ in children. And 8 of 9 high-quality studies that looked at neurodevelopmental links other than IQ also found a link.

They said they were less confident that there was a consistent link between low levels of fluoride exposure in water and neurodevelopmental issues, and that more research is needed in that area. However, they also noted that water is not the only source of fluoride exposure.

“Additional exposures to fluoride from other sources would increase total fluoride exposure,” the report stated. “The moderate confidence conclusions may also be relevant to people living in optimally fluoridated areas of the United States depending on the extent of their additional exposures to fluoride from sources other than drinking water.”

Thiessen said pregnant women are often exposed to higher levels of fluoride because they drink much more water than others. And formula-fed infants are also at particularly high risk.

“While fluoridation of drinking water is the main source of fluoride intake for millions of people in the U.S., and probably the easiest to eliminate, it is not the only source of fluoride exposure, with toothpaste and tea probably being next in importance,” she said.

Fluoride advocates like the American Dental Association (ADA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the CDC argue that adding fluoride to water is an important public health practice because it prevents tooth decay by exposing teeth to low levels of fluoride throughout the day and strengthening teeth.

Federal health officials have been recommending water fluoridation for more than five decades. However, in the last several years as the NTP report has moved closer to publication, support for the practice has appeared to wane among some public health officials.

The U.S. surgeon general in 2015 officially lowered the recommended dosage for water fluoridation from 0.7-1.2 mg/L to 0.7 mg/L after considering adverse health effects. And in 2020, out of concern for the forthcoming findings in the NTP report, the U.S. surgeon general’s office declined to make a public statement endorsing the practice.

A spokesperson for the CDC told The Defender in a statement that the agency continues to support water fluoridation at current recommended levels.

“These recommendations are based on current scientific evidence and prioritize the safety, security, and health of all individuals,” the agency said. “Continued research is needed to better understand the health risks and benefits associated with low fluoride exposures.”

The spokesperson also said, “While concerns have been raised about potential risks associated with high fluoride exposure, it is important to note that these concerns are primarily based on studies conducted in countries with higher fluoride exposure than in the United States.”

However, some of the highest quality studies to date have been done in Canada and Mexico, where exposure levels were the same as exposure levels in parts of the U.S. And a paper published in JAMA Network Open in May found that children born to women exposed during pregnancy to fluoridated drinking water in Los Angeles were more likely to have neurobehavioural problems.

The ADA, AAP and EPA did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.

The long road to publication

For more than two decades, researchers have drawn a link between fluoride exposure and neurodevelopmental issues. In 2006, the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science released a report on fluoride toxicity that identified serious health issues associated with fluoride exposure and called for further research.

The NTP, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsible for producing scientific research meant to inform policymaking, in 2016 began working on its review of fluoride’s neurotoxicity in humans.

After six years and multiple rounds of peer review, the NTP finalized its report in May 2022 — but public health officials within multiple agencies across HHS blocked its publication, according to emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.

The NTP was compelled to send the report out for another round of peer review. Each round of peer review compelled the NTP to walk back some of its conclusions in what critics called an attempt to “delay it, to water it down.”

Former NTP director Dr. Brian Berridge told The Defender the report received unprecedented scrutiny because of challenges to the report by biased stakeholders. He said he believed it was an outcome of public health agencies’ desires to protect the practices they already have in place.

A draft version of the report was made public in March of 2023 under court order.

The order came as part of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Food & Water Watch, Fluoride Action Network, Moms Against Fluoridation and other advocacy groups and individuals suing the EPA in a bid to force the agency to prohibit water fluoridation in the U.S. due to fluoride’s toxic effects on children’s developing brains.

After initial hearings in June 2020, presiding Judge Edward Chen placed the trial on hold pending the release of the report. After plaintiffs introduced evidence of agency attempts to suppress the report, Judge Chen ordered its release in draft form and the trial continued in January and February of this year.

The report, along with four major fluoride studies using birth cohorts — where researchers collect epidemiological data during pregnancy and then from children over their lifetimes to study a variety of health outcomes tied to environmental exposures — was key evidence in the trial.

The trial concluded on Feb. 13, and Judge Chen has not yet issued a decision.

The report finalized yesterday consists of one part of the NTP’s research. The other part, a meta-analysis, is forthcoming in a peer-reviewed journal.

NTP Director Rick Woychik said in a statement to The Defender that the delay in the report’s publication was due to an attempt to “get the science right” because “fluoride is such an important topic to the public and to public health officials.”

Woychik emphasized that water fluoridation “has been a successful public health initiative.”

Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs in the case against the EPA, said the final version of the report, “confirms and actually further strengthens the NTP’s prior conclusions,” because the finalized version includes a supplemental review of more recent literature published between 2020 and 2023, which also finds a consistent link between fluoride exposure and adverse neurodevelopmental effects.

Connett added:

“Here you have an expert body of the US government confirming that fluoride is a neurotoxicant. That by itself is a very significant conclusion and should really prompt the question among policymakers and the public as to whether we really want to be adding a neurotoxicant to our water supply while questions remain about the precise doses that caused this effect.”

‘We didn’t sign up to add a neurotoxicant to our water’

The number of scientists and health professionals opposed to fluoridation has increased over the last several decades. Thiessen said the final publication of the monograph — and the forthcoming meta-analysis — provides important evidence for their position and might signal a change in the status quo public health position on fluoride.

“One hopes that it will help convince many more professionals that one of the 20th century’s top 10 public health achievements has in fact been terribly misguided from the beginning.”

The lawsuit brought public attention to the debate over water fluoridation ongoing among scientists working in public health for years, with many mainstream outlets addressing an issue that had often been disregarded as a conspiracy theory.

Connett said the government report ought to raise public concern and get more people asking questions about fluoridation. He said:

“This isn’t what people signed up for when we started adding fluoride to the water. We didn’t sign up to add a neurotoxicant to our water. We signed up for something that could help our teeth. Now that we know that it can affect their brain, we really need to go back to square one.”

Fluoride Action Network board member Rick North told The Defender that awareness about issues with water fluoridation has been growing for years.

“Fluoridation is a house of cards and it’s going to fall. It’s only a matter of when. The NTP report just made it sooner.” He said he hopes the final release of the report means a decision in the case against the EPA will come soon.

“For more than four years, Judge Edward Chen has waited for the final NTP report. Now he’s got it — even more scientific backing that fluoridation is an unreasonable risk to human health,” he said.

Stuart Cooper, Fluoride Action Network executive director, said the publication of the report was historic. “This report, along with the large body of published science, makes it abundantly clear that the question isn’t whether fluoridation is safe, but instead how many children have been needlessly harmed,” he said.

The report sometimes makes contradictory statements, Kim Blokker, a board member of Moms Against Fluoridation, told The Defender, showing the influence of the public health agencies on the reporting. “Do not be fooled by this attempt to muddy the waters of this otherwise definitive report, which contains more than enough evidence to prove the shockingly detrimental effects of fluoride exposure in young children.”

Kristie Lavelle, another board member of Moms Against Fluoridation, told The Defender they were happy to see the report finally published. “The time has come for fluoride to lose its status as a protected pollutant and to be treated the same as other recognized toxins such as lead and arsenic.”

With the publication of the report, she said, “We are one step closer to creating a world where clean water, air and food, and consequently vibrant health are the norm for our children and grandchildren.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 22, 2024 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | CDC, HHS, United States | Leave a comment

World Mosque Day: Gaza mosques bear testimony of Zionist regime’s barbarism

By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | August 21, 2024

Images of displaced Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip assembling amid the ruins to hold congregational prayers have been circulating on social media in recent months.

The Israeli regime has not even spared places of worship in the coastal territory, indiscriminately and aimlessly bombing them, most recently last week in Gaza City.

At least 100 people were killed, many of them unrecognizable, after the Israeli regime bombed a mosque at the al-Tabin School in the Daraj district during the pre-dawn prayers last Saturday.

As the world marks ‘World Mosque Day’, a total of 610 mosques have been completely destroyed in the Israeli genocidal bombings in Gaza in the past 320 days, according to the Gaza Media Office.

The World Mosque Day was instituted in honor of the Al-Aqsa Mosque after it was set ablaze in a deeply provocative act by an Australian Zionist named Michael Dennis Rohan on August 21, 1969.

The day has over the years transformed into a symbol of unity and a reminder of the importance and sacredness of the places of worship, particularly the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

The fire damaged nearly 1,500 square meters of the mosque, including the medieval minbar (pulpit), the mihrab (prayer niche) of Prophet Zachariah, and various arches and pillars, causing the roof to collapse.

Following a proposal by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the international observance of this day, also known as the International Mosque Day, was approved by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The sacred mosque, however, has continued to be a flashpoint in the long-running struggle for Palestinian freedom from the Zionist occupation with the regime often ordering attacks on the mosque.

Destruction of mosques in Gaza

Since October 7, 2024, the Israeli regime has bombed every inch of the territory in Gaza, including mosques. According to the Gaza Media office, a total of 824 mosques have been completely or partially damaged in the past 11 months, including 610 mosques that have been damaged completely.

According to Palestinian official data from 2019, the Gaza Strip had 1,117 mosques, meaning that 55 percent of all mosques have been destroyed so far, with an additional 19 percent damaged.

Beyond their religious significance to Gaza’s majority Muslim population, many of these mosques are of great cultural and historical importance, as their history dates back to several centuries.

Over the past 11 months, mosques have been deliberately targeted with displaced people inside them, such as the Ahmed Yassin Mosque in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza, the Salim Abu Muslim Mosque in Beit Lahia, and the Khalid bin Al-Walid Mosque in Khan Yunis city.

Numerous direct airstrikes, like the one on the Khalid bin al-Walid Mosque in southern Gaza, have been video-documented, and all evidence demonstrates that they had no military function, debunking false claims of the Zionist regime.

In a report in May, the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs in Gaza reported that Israeli troops have also desecrated at least 60 cemeteries during their ground invasion of Gaza, using bulldozers to dig up graves and steal the bodies of more than 1,000 people.

Furthermore, over 100 Muslim preachers and 91 ministry employees have been killed in the genocidal war, representing only a fraction of the 40,000 victims so far.

These actions by the Israeli regime flagrantly violate international laws and conventions that strictly prohibit targeting places of worship during war, according to experts.

In addition to mosques, historic churches have also been destroyed, along with numerous other civilian buildings such as schools, hospitals, and residential structures.

Destroyed historical mosques

The Great Mosque of Gaza, also known as the Great Omari Mosque, was the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip and one of the oldest in the world before its destruction by Israeli regime forces.

Built by early Muslims in the 7th century, the mosque had been damaged multiple times throughout history by earthquakes, crusaders, Mongols, and British aviation, yet it was always rebuilt.

The mosque was used as a place of worship by the local Muslim community and served as a focal point for gatherings and cultural activities for centuries.

This sandstone building could accommodate up to 5,000 worshipers, but today, only its ruined Mamluk-era minaret remains.

On December 7, 2023, it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, leaving most of the structure collapsed and the minaret bent and broken.

The destroyed Great Mosque of Gaza, the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip

The Ibn Uthman Mosque, the second largest in Gaza after the Great Mosque, was also reduced to rubble last month after Israeli warplanes fired several missiles at it.

Built in the Mamluk style, the mosque covered 2,000 square meters, with 400 square meters dedicated to its main courtyard. It had two gates overlooking the Shuja’iyya market.

The mosque had been subjected to attacks and demolition during previous wars on the Gaza Strip and was a center of confrontations with Israeli occupation forces during the First Intifada in 1987.

The Ibn Uthman Mosque, destroyed in July

Sayed al-Hashim Mosque, one of the largest and oldest mosques in Gaza, built at the site where Prophet Muhammad’s great-grandfather, Hashim bin Abd Manaf, is believed to have been buried, was also razed to the ground.

Legend says that he was a merchant traveling back to Mecca from Syria when he became ill, died, and was buried in what is now Gaza’s Daraj neighborhood.

The mosque, built from limestone in the 12th century and renovated several times, stood until it was hit by an Israeli bomb in October last year.

In Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, the Othman bin Qashqar Mosque, built during the same period as the Sayed al-Hashim Mosque, was badly damaged in an Israeli airstrike on December 7.

The destroyed Al Amin Muhammad Mosque in Khan Yunis

Among other notable destroyed mosques is the Al Amin Muhammad Mosque in Khan Yunis, destroyed in the early days of the genocidal war.

Its fallen dome, with a hole on top, has become a symbol of Israeli savagery.

The Al-Rahma Mosque, located in the Al-Amal neighborhood of the same city and once used by thousands of worshipers, was also completely destroyed.

After its destruction, thousands of Palestinians prayed next to its ruins during the last Eid al-Adha.

The Al Noor Mosque, on the seashore in Deir al-Balah Camp in the central Gaza Strip, was targeted by Israeli warships, resulting in large portions of it being destroyed.

Other mosques were bombed by warplanes while worshipers were inside, such as the White Mosque in Gaza. Some were bulldozed or blown up with dynamite.

August 21, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

A new leader for the next phase of Palestinian resistance

Yahya Sinwar, head of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas ,in Gaza City on 14 April 2023 [Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]

By Sayid Marcos Tenório | MEMO | August 20, 2024

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, announced on 6 August the election of Yahya Sinwar as the new head of the movement’s Political Bureau, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in an Israeli terrorist attack in Tehran. Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Sinwar is one of the most prominent figures in the Hamas political sphere, known for his heavy hand and for making big changes. His unanimous election is a strong message that Hamas has become stronger and more resilient despite the severe blow it received from the political murder of Haniyeh. The movement expressed its confidence in Sinwar, known as Abu Ibrahim, to lead this new delicate phase in a complex local, regional and international context.

Known for his steadfast leadership style and his resistance-focused approach to the occupation state, Sinwar has played a crucial role in shaping the resistance movement’s strategies and managing Gaza’s complex political and social relations.

Hamas wanted a replacement for Haniyeh who would send strong messages to the enemies of the Palestinian people.

Sinwar was elected head of the Hamas Political Bureau in Gaza in February 2017, also succeeding Ismail Haniyeh. He was re-elected for a second term in 2021. He led the Great March of Return in 2018, a peaceful attempt to break the siege of Gaza, as well as the Sword of Al-Quds campaign in 2021. He has also played a prominent role in strengthening relations with the axis of resistance.

The new political bureau head was the mastermind and commander of the epic Al-Aqsa Flood, which has lasted more than 300 days. In a speech at the commemoration in Gaza on 14 December 2022 of the 35th anniversary of the creation of Hamas, he foreshadowed the events of 7 October when he declared: “We will come to you [Israel], God willing, in a thunderous flood. We will go against you with endless rockets, we will go against you in an endless onslaught of combatants, we will go against you with millions of our own, like an endless tide.”

The other Palestinian factions and leaders of the axis of resistance expressed their support for Sinwar’s election, demonstrating confidence in his ability to overcome the loss of Haniyeh and to continue his legacy and that of all the martyred leaders, especially those who fell during Al-Aqsa Storm.

Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after his family was ethnically cleansed from the city of Majdal Asqualan (“Ashkelon”) by the Zionists in the 1948 Nakba. He completed his secondary education at Khan Younis Boys Secondary School. He then earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic from the Islamic University of Gaza, where he was one of the leaders of the Student Council for five years, serving as Secretary of the Artistic Committee, then of the Sports Committee, Vice-President, President of the Council, and then Vice-President again from 1982 to 1987.

He began his political activity in his youth, leading numerous popular clashes against the Zionist occupation state between 1982 and 1988. His participation was instrumental in the founding of Majd, the Hamas internal security apparatus tasked with exposing Israeli spies. Along with Salah Shehada, he was one of the founders of the Hamas military wing, the Izz Ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in 1991.

Arrested by Israel in 1982, Sinwar spent six months in Fara’a Prison for his resistance activities. In 1988, he was arrested again and given four life sentences, serving 23 consecutive years in the enemy’s prisons.

He spent four years being held in solitary confinement.

In prison, he repeatedly assumed leadership of the Hamas prisoners’ High Command, leading a series of hunger strikes, with significant examples in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. He learnt and still speaks fluent Hebrew and has numerous writings and translations related to political and security issues.

He translated the books Shabak Among the Remains and Israeli Parties in 1992, for example, and authored Hamas: Experience and Mistakes and Al-Mayd, which documents the work of the occupation state’s Shin Bet internal security agency. He is also the author of a novel, Thorns and Carnations, which covers the experience of the Palestinian struggle from the 1967 Naksa to the First Intifada (1987-1993).

After his release in 2011 under the prisoner exchange deal which saw 1,027 Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, he was elected to the Hamas political office in Gaza and assumed responsibility for the security cabinet in 2012. He was later elected to the general political office and assumed responsibility for the military cabinet in 2013.

Now, the legitimate resistance for the liberation of the historic land of Palestine from occupation, with Jerusalem as its capital, continues under the leadership of Yahya Sinwar, a selfless anti-colonial, anti-occupation fighter.

August 20, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Calley & Casey Means: The Truth About Ozempic, the Pill, and How Big Pharma Keeps You Sick

TCN | August 17, 2024

August 18, 2024 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | United States | 2 Comments

Dear Elon, 1,000ppm of carbon dioxide is safe, we breathe it every day

Elon is scratching for a reason to keep worrying about CO2

By Jo Nova | August 16, 2024

In the interview with Donald Trump, Elon Musk tried to argue that we ought be limiting carbon dioxide because we are too close to 1,000ppm where people get headaches. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we breath out air at 40,000 ppm fifteen times a minute for our entire lives. If 1,000 ppm gave us a headache or made us nauseous, we’d have to hold our breath every time we kissed someone.

@ElonMusk: The point I was making is that, even if CO2 did not cause global warming, it is uncomfortable to breathe air with >1000 ppm of CO2. Given that the outdoor ppm away from cities is now ~420 (lol), it is already getting close to 1000 ppm indoors in cities at times. You can buy a cheap CO2 monitor and measure this for yourself.

As the global base level of CO2 keeps increasing, it will cause air quality in cities to feel stuffy and unpleasant, resulting in drowsiness, poor concentration and eventually headaches and nausea. That would not be a good future.

And then he quotes CO2meter.com which, ahem, sells CO2 meters, and has an incentive to wildly overstate the problems with CO2, which they do.

CO2 is not the problem, the stale air and other pollutants cause headaches and sleepiness.

The point of CO2 meters is not so much to warn us about excessive CO2 levels, but to indicate how well the room is ventilated. CO2 levels are just an indicator for air quality. Air with higher CO2 levels usually also has higher levels of organic compounds, humidity, body odour, mold, chemicals from furniture and paint (like formaldehyde) and potentially viruses too. When people report headaches and nausea, the high CO2 levels are not the issue, it’s the bioeffluence that causes problems. When researchers do cognitive tests with pure CO2 added to clean air, performances don’t suffer. The stale air is the problem, not the CO2. (See Zhang, and Misra where they compared the cognitive effects from badly ventilated air and clean air with high CO2 levels up to 3,000ppm. Problems disappear when they use fresh air plus higher CO2.) Well ventilated rooms may also be cooler rooms, which might explain why results so often contradict each other.

Classrooms are at 1,000ppm “typically”

While outdoor air is 420ppm, indoor levels of CO2 are commonly 1,000ppm in classrooms every day, and can rise as high as 3,000ppm if all the windows are shut. The recognized occupational health and safety levels for long term working exposure are 5,000 ppm for 8 hours straight, five days a week. It’s no big deal.

The National Collaborative Centre for Environmental Health (Canada) measured school and buildings and advises that “Typically, in an occupied classroom situation, the recommended level of ventilation would correspond to a CO2 level of approximately 1000-1100 ppm“. Furthermore, they said the “lowest level at which a human health effect (i.e. acidosis) has been observed in humans is 7,000 ppm, and that only after several weeks of continuous exposure in a submarine environment”.

The occupational limits for CO₂recommended by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) are 5000 ppm (TLV-TWA) and 30,000 ppm (TLV-STEL), based on the direct effects on acidification of the blood. — via Marc Morano and Climate Depot

At NASA The Office of the Chief Health and Medicial Officer reports that a typical spacecraft works at around 3,000-7,000 ppm (or o.3-0.7% CO2). The recommended exposure is 5,000, and the permissible exposure limit is 10,000 ppm. Although the flight surgeons found levels of nearly 7,000 were safe and “didn’t affect performance”. On Apollo 13, CO2 levels rose to 20,000ppm. Sweating and shortness of breath became a problem above 30,000 ppm.

Submariners typically live with CO2 levels of 2,000- 5,000 ppm, and when a small sample of sailors was tested at 600, 2500 or 15,000 ppm, the researchers couldn’t find any difference in results from an 80 minute test on decision making. (Rodeheffer at al) Likewise another study at the Johnson Space Centre, people did cognition tests at 600, 1,200, 2,500 and 5,000ppm and there was no dose response effect. Results look rather random.

Lowther et al looked at 51 studies in 2021, and found nothing conclusive in terms of harms from CO2 below 5,000ppm. Most studies were confounded, results were conflicting. Teams of researchers are hunting to find another problem “due to CO2”. If there was a strong negative effect of CO2 it would have shown up by now. Instead CO2 is only associated with occasional headaches and nausea — probably because it is high in crowded rooms with little ventilation.

One large review in 2019 was described as showing CO2 affected people at levels as low as 1,000ppm, but the paper itself points at the confounding data and uses the words “possible” and “potential effects” and concludes “we need more studies.”

UPDATE: Commenters Alan Klein and Mr Farnham points out the safety limits for Australian coal miners (NSW) is 1.25% CO2 which is 12,500ppm, and that is for 8 hour shifts. Brief excursions up to 3% (30,000ppm) are acceptable. See comment #17 for more details.

REFERENCES

Lowther, Scott D., Sani Dimitroulopoulou, Kerry Foxall, Clive Shrubsole, Emily Cheek, Britta Gadeberg, and Ovnair Sepai. 2021. “Low Level Carbon Dioxide Indoors—A Pollution Indicator or a Pollutant? A Health-Based Perspective” Environments 8, no. 11: 125. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments8110125

Mishra AK, Schiavon S, Wargocki P, Tham KW. Respiratory performance of humans exposed to moderate levels of carbon dioxide. Indoor Air. 2021 Sep;31(5):1540-1552. doi: 10.1111/ina.12823. Epub 2021 May 15. PMID: 33991134.

Rodeheffer CD, Chabal S, Clarke JM, Fothergill DM. Acute Exposure to Low-to-Moderate Carbon Dioxide Levels and Submariner Decision Making. Aerosp

Zhang X, Wargocki P, Lian Z, Thyregod C. Effects of exposure to carbon dioxide and bioeffluents on perceived air quality, self-assessed acute health symptoms, and cognitive performance. Indoor Air. 2017 Jan;27(1):47-64. doi: 10.1111/ina.12284. Epub 2016 Mar 7. PMID: 26825447.

h/t to Willie Soon, Marc Morano and Climate Depot.

August 18, 2024 Posted by aletho | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Blair, UK Government Warned Over NATO War Crimes in Belgrade

© Aaron Chown

By John Miles – Sputnik – 16.08.2024

As NATO aggression in the former Yugoslavia fully unmasked the alliance as a tool of Western imperialism, newly-released documents reveal controversial former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned of the possible legal consequences of the bombing of a state-owned broadcaster in Belgrade.

“Twenty five years ago, NATO bombed the main studio of Yugoslavia’s state-owned broadcasting company, Radio-Television Serbia (RTS),” writes the independent outlet Declassified UK. “The attack at 2am on 23 April 1999 came amid Bill Clinton and Tony Blair’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo.”

“16 media workers were killed and 19 injured in the strike on RTS, which remains the single most controversial event in NATO’s 78-day military campaign,” notes journalist John McEvoy.

The UK and allied NATO forces claimed to be acting in the interest of protecting ethnic Albanians as ethnic violence broke out on all sides during the breakup of the former socialist Yugoslav republic. But President Slobodan Milošević remained a conspicuous holdout as newly-independent states deregulated their economies in line with neoliberal economic policy advocated by Western governments.

The United States would back numerous “color revolutions” after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, with wealthy donors like George Soros encouraging and standing to benefit from economic liberalization enforced by Western-led institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

The case of Milošević demonstrates a scenario during which the United States was willing to employ substantial military force to seek regime change, paving the way for NATO aggression in countries like Libya and Afghanistan.

Blair claimed the destruction of the RTS headquarters and other civilian targets was justified in the name of dismantling the “dictatorship” of Milošević. Sixteen media workers were killed during the bombing, which Amnesty International labeled a “war crime.”

“Killing journalists does not stop censorship, it only brings more repression,” claimed the International Federation of Journalists in a statement.

“We do not see how the suppression of news sources can serve any useful purpose,” said European Broadcasting Union president Albert Scharf. “Over and beyond the deaths involved, the EBU is concerned about any attempts to limit the rights of audiences to full news services.”

Declassified files now reveal that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned against the depraved attack at the time by British attorney general John Morris, who questioned how the destruction of the broadcast headquarters was related to NATO’s purported cause in ensuring “relief of humanitarian need in Kosovo.”

The UK and the United States launched the illegal act of aggression in Belgrade without a required UN Security Council resolution, demonstrating the lengths NATO was willing to go to to ensure Western hegemony after the end of the Cold War.

“We are moving towards a situation where our aim will become removing Milosevic,” admitted Blair in a note at the time, revealing that regime change was the ultimate motive of the assault. “Plainly Milosevic will threaten the stability of the region as long as he remains.”

NATO forces would go on to strike a number of other civilian targets including Belgrade’s Hotel Jugoslavija and Montenegro’s main airport, with little apparent concern for the climbing death toll. Thousands were killed or wounded by the end of the campaign while elevated rates of cancer and birth defects are still observed due to NATO’s highly controversial use of depleted uranium.

The UK would become the first of multiple Western countries to recognize the disputed breakaway territory of Kosovo in 2008. Future leader of the territory Hashim Thaci, who played a key role during the NATO aggression via his leadership of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, is currently on trial on war crimes charges at The Hague.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, under intense pressure from the United States, would controversially decide against investigating the bombing of the RTS as a war crime.

August 16, 2024 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, NATO, UK, United States, Yugoslavia | Leave a comment

The Media Conspiracy

Corbett | August 15, 2024

I’m still on August hiatus, but here’s a two-hour lecture on the history of mass media to tide you over until September! This is Lesson One of my three lesson Mass Media: A History online course. Buy the complete course for audio and video downloads, a hyperlinked transcript of each lesson and a study guide with questions and reading recommendations. Enjoy!

WATCH ON: / / / / / or DOWNLOAD THE MP4

Buy the course at NewWorldNextWeek.com

Course notes

August 15, 2024 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Routine Infant Hepatitis B Vaccination Fails to Protect Into Young Adulthood

Parents Should Not Expect a Long-Term Benefit

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse™ | August 12, 2024

In 1991, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) first recommended that all infants in the United States receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth or within 1–2 months of age. The goal was to prevent maternal transmission of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) and reduce the incidence of infections in babies. Many healthy mothers without hepatitis B or risk factors such as IV drug abuse with normal infants ask what is the benefit in their babies?

The CDC recommends that children receive three doses of the hepatitis B vaccine as part of their routine childhood vaccine schedule:

First dose: Within 24 hours of birth
Second dose: Between 1–2 months of age
Third dose: Between 6–18 months of age

What happens later in life when young people go into the medical field and are potentially exposed to hepatitis B in sick patients? Posuwan et al evaluated a prospective cohort of young people (mean age 18 years) going into medicine and evaluated their antibody titers as a proxy of enduring immunity to hepatitis B.

Posuwan N, Vorayingyong A, Jaroonvanichkul V, Wasitthankasem R, Wanlapakorn N, Vongpunsawad S, Poovorawan Y. Implementation of hepatitis B vaccine in high-risk young adults with waning immunity. PLoS One. 2018 Aug 20;13(8):e0202637. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202637. PMID: 30125298; PMCID: PMC6101408.

The investigators were disappointed to find that only 6.9% had long-lasting immunity to hepatitis B, and thus underwent booster doses upon entering medical school. It is unclear when immunity is lost in this cohort. The results are important for parents to understand that the hepatitis B shots given at birth are only applicable if the mother has hepatitis B or serious risks for carrying it including active IV drug abuse. Otherwise the vaccine schedule for this illness has little value at that age.

August 15, 2024 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | ACIP, United States | Leave a comment

Bibi’s War of Terror Agenda

By W.M. Peterson | Truth Blitzkrieg | August 5, 2024

Former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul once asserted, “There’s no history to show that Iranians are aggressive people. When is the last time they invaded a country? Over 200 years ago!”

As with many other important matters, Congressman Paul was absolutely correct; Iran has never been a warmongering state, unlike adversarial belligerents Israel and the USA.

Despite deep state meddling in the Persian nation’s affairs (e.g., the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and the 2020 murder of Major General Qasem Soleimani), Iran has never posed the slightest threat to America. Why, then, are we being maneuvered into war when there is absolutely no national interest at stake?

It’s somewhat of a rhetorical question, I admit, since by now most people who aren’t cognitively impaired understand that Israel is trying like hell to steer America’s military into the Middle East to shed more blood on its behalf. The recent provocations towards Iran are but the latest installments in an ongoing saga we’ve witnessed play out repeatedly since 2001.

Americans should know by now what to expect. After having been led by the nose into 20 years of costly wars primarily for the enrichment and comfort of Jewish intruders squatting in the Holy Land, you’d think we might have learned a thing or two about international Zionist statecraft. It’s not as if their methods of fomenting a climate of war have changed. It’s not as if we weren’t told what to expect.

In fact we were told, by none other than former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Wesley Clark.

During a 2007 interview on Amy Goodman’s political talk show Democracy Now, General Clark spoke about a detailed war agenda that was revealed to him by members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he visited the Pentagon just ten days after 9/11:

“One of the generals called me in. He said, ‘Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second… We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.’ This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, ‘We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?’ He said, ‘I don’t know…I guess they don’t know what else to do.’ So I said, ‘Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?’ He said, ‘No, no…there’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq…I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.’ And he said, ‘I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

A few weeks later, Clark returned to the Pentagon and met with the same man, recalling:

“I said, ‘Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s worse than that.’ He reached over his desk. He picked up a piece of paper and he said, ‘I just got this down from upstairs’ — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — ‘today.’ And he said, ‘This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.’ I said, ‘Is it classified?’ He said, ‘Yes sir.’ I said, ‘Well don’t show it to me.’ And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, ‘You remember that?’ He said, ‘Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you.’”

General Clark was having these conversations at a time when the Pentagon was entirely under the thumb of Zionist Jews who had been plotting and preparing for a global war on terror for many years prior to 2001. The battle plan disclosed to Clark is not of American provenance; it is an Israeli war stratagem smuggled into our foreign policy by duplicitous foreign agents. You’ll notice that almost every country named by the general has been ‘dealt with’ militarily in one form or another in the years following 9/11, Iran being the lone exception. That status is likely to change real soon as Israel continues to escalate tensions in the region. AIPAC control over U.S. politicians ensures there won’t be so much as a whimper of protest from the ‘American Colossus’ in response to Zionist saber-rattling and increased provocations. And, rest assured, America will defend Israel to the death when the situation in the Middle East reaches critical mass. American citizens, and especially ‘conservatives,’ need to understand how they’re being emotionally manipulated into supporting yet another war that is entirely at variance with our interests and could only spell doom for our already beleaguered nation.

Netanyahu’s War on Terror

On July 24th, Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu swaggered into the U.S. Capitol to address a joint session of Congress and to cultivate material and emotional support for his upcoming war with Iran. During the course of his nagging hour-long harangue, the Israeli prime minister received 58 standing ovations from submissive stooges on both sides of the aisle, proving once more that Pat Buchanan’s description of Capitol Hill as “Israeli-occupied territory” is as true today as it was 30 years ago.

The AIPAC-funded adulation shown this Hebrew war criminal was a sickening sight to behold. Former US Marine and United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter summed it up nicely:

“Israel has bragged about buying the US Congress. And this is the result, where a war criminal—a man who has been accused of genocide, who has arrest warrants being prepared for him by the International Court of Justice, a man who heads a State that has been defined legally as an “apartheid state,” carrying out an illegal and unjust occupation and, again, genocide of the Palestinian people—has demanded an audience to the Congress that he has bought and paid for. That’s what’s happening here. We must see it in that perspective. This isn’t an honor being given to Netanyahu by the US Congress. This is the US Congress obeying the commands of the man who leads the nation that owns the US Congress.”

In one of his most memorable lines of the day, Netanyahu affirmed with a straight face, “there is no place for political violence in democracies!” (He made the comment while referring to the recent shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania.) Within one week, however, Israel had assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran; Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut; and Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul in Gaza. The recent killing spree occurred only three months after IDF jets bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria killing 16 people, including seven diplomats. “There is no place for political violence in democracies!” quoth the mass-murdering psychopathic Jew, who once attended a two-day anniversary celebration commemorating the Irgun’s 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel.

Bibi the Butcher, that distinguished darling of America’s political class, has spent his entire adult life promoting Israel’s War on Terror.

In 1979, he and his father Benzion partnered with Irgun terrorist-turned-prime minister Menachem Begin to organize the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, a three-day event intended to “launch an international propaganda offensive to promote and exploit the issue of international terrorism,” as Philip Paull explains in his 1982 book, International Terrorism: The Propaganda War. The event was held at the Yonatan Institute, named after Netanyahu’s deceased older brother, and its purpose was to bring Western political leaders together to discuss international terrorism and the possibility of manipulating America’s military into the Middle East to wage a war on terror. The elder Netanyahu (born Mileikowsky) said in his opening address, “This conference was called to serve as a beginning of a new process — the purpose of rallying democracies of the world to a struggle against terrorism and the dangers it represents.” (George H.W. Bush spoke on the last day of the event.)

From that point on, the Western media dutifully disseminated the propaganda of the Jerusalem Conference and Benjamin Netanyahu would produce a number of books, articles and speeches throughout the 1980s and 90s promoting the doctrine of a global War on Terror. As Philip Paull wrote in 1982, “This ‘anti-terrorist’ propaganda campaign was and is being conducted in a style reminiscent of war-time ‘psychological warfare’ by journalists serving as conduits and spreaders of misinformation originating in Jerusalem.”<

Forecasting War

Netanyahu’s plan to haul America’s military into the Middle East to wage war on Israel’s enemies became a reality after September 11, 2001, a day he claimed was “very good” for Israel. (Source: New York Times, Sept. 12, 2001)

Many Americans still believe the War on Terror was launched in response to the 9/11 attacks. The fact is, however, the War on Terror was conceived many years before 2001, and the atrocities perpetrated in New York City and Washington D.C. were merely the excuse to make the war agenda operational.

In February 1982, the World Zionist Organization published ‘The Yinon Plan: A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.’ The document was published in Hebrew but was later translated into English by the eminent professor Israel Shahak of Hebrew University. It was written by military strategist Oded Yinon and detailed a plan to break up large Arab nations like Iraq and Syria and transform them into tiny ethnic statelets that would be incapable of defending themselves against Israel’s superior military might. Yinon wrote:

“The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas… is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target.”

Yinon’s vision for Iraq came to fruition following the illegal American invasion, launched on the Jewish revenge holiday Purim, in 2003. Almost immediately, America’s conquering forces disbanded Iraq’s military and the entire country soon descended into civil war between competing factions of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Prior to the invasion, Iraq had been a significant impediment to Israeli domination of the Middle East, which is why the Jews in control of America’s foreign policy selected it for annihilation. And, as an added bonus, there were the financial spoils of war to acquire as well. Oded Yinon: “Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand…is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria.”

What Yinon described in 1982 is the Eretz Yisrael (Greater Israel) project that Americans have been fighting and dying for since 2001. America’s military is not fighting terrorism; it is reorganizing the Middle East to conform with Israel’s whims and Iran is the crown jewel. This war agenda has already bankrupted America morally and financially and has destroyed the erstwhile superpower’s standing on the world stage. As noted Middle East expert Linda S. Heard wrote in an article for Counterpunch (April 25, 2006), “Oded Yinon’s 1982 ‘Zionist Plan for the Middle East’ is in large part taking shape. Is this pure coincidence? Was Yinon a gifted psychic? Perhaps! Alternately, we in the West are victims of a long-held agenda not of our making and without doubt not in our interest.”

A Clean Break and PNAC

An updated version of The Yinon Plan was drafted for Netanyahu in 1996 during his first year as Israel’s prime minister. Titled ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,’ the document was assembled for Netanyahu by neocon hawks Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. It specifically called for the removal from power of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Bashar al-Assad in Syria and recommended military confrontations with both countries as well as with Lebanon and Iran. One year later, Perle, Feith and Wurmser would all join the newly-founded Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and continue their strategizing for Netanyahu’s War on Terror.

PNAC was an elite neoconservative think-tank founded in 1997 by influential Zionists William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The majority of the group’s membership was comprised of fanatical Jews with deep ties to the state of Israel, many of whom came to power just prior to 9/11 within the administration of George W. Bush. These include: Dov Zakheim, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, David Frum, Robert Zoellick, David Wurmser, and the convicted felon Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby.

The overarching philosophy of PNAC was based on the ideology of Jewish intellectual Leo Strauss. Like many of today’s neoconservatives, Strauss was an ex-Trotskyite who promoted Machiavellian tactics and the use of lies as necessary political tools while a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Significantly, he was also a dedicated Zionist and a follower of the terrorist Ze’ev Jabotinsky. On the surface these ideological alignments appear to be contradictory, unless some understanding of the overwhelming Jewish role in both Zionism and Communism can be apprehended. Both were pioneered by the same man, Moses Hess, and both are Jewish revolutionary movements whose sole aim is to do whatever is best for Jewish interests even if it means employing seemingly opposing methods. Far-right Zionism (Jewish nationalism) and far-left Communism (Jewish internationalism) are two sides of the same shekel working in tandem as a lethal pincer for global hegemony. Attempting to explain these amorphous tendencies, Jewish historian and political theorist Murray Rothbard once noted that neoconservatives “moved from cafeteria Trotskyites to apologists for the US warfare state without missing a beat.”

In September 2000, PNAC published a 90-page document titled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century.’ The document, co-authored by Rabbi Dov Zakheim, called for America to initiate a series of regime change wars in the Middle East and North Africa with an emphasis on Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and Iran. The authors of the report emphasized the importance for America to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars” but acknowledged that “the process of change is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.” One year to the month of the document’s publication America got what George W. Bush referred to at the time as ‘our Pearl Harbor.’

Conclusion

And so America teeters once again on the brink of war due to our fatal attraction to the Zionist state. The man who claims “there is no place for political violence in democracies” presides over a country that has made political assassinations its stock-and-trade and is undoubtedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks which activated its long-held War on Terror scheme. Speaking to an audience at Bar Ilan University in 2008, the war criminal recipient of 58 standing ovations from the US Congress reiterated his belief that the 9/11 attacks were in fact good for Israel: “We are benefitting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” (Source: Ha’aretz, April 16, 2008)

*Nota bene: Netanyahu listed three things, not one, but to the mind of an architect of the War on Terror, all three blend seamlessly together.*

The Israeli prime minister and his minions have nothing but contempt for America. That won’t change regardless of how many standing ovations he receives from a goyische congress or how many US dollars flow into his over-stuffed war chest. In 2001, he was filmed having a conversation with Israeli settlers about ways in which he intended to undermine the US-led Oslo Peace Accords that had been signed in 1993 and 1995. During one such conversation, he crowed: “I know what America is… America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.” He goes on to boast about his ability to manipulate the US in the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian peace process, saying, according to the Washington Post (July 16, 2010), “They asked me before the election if I’d honor [the Oslo Accords]… I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I’m concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.”

Benjamin Netanyahu ladies and gentleman. A man whose military has killed upwards of over 186,000 Palestinians this year alone and has bombed hospitals, schools, churches, aid convoys and refugee camps; a man who sanctions the anal rape of prisoners; a man American politicians hail as a conquering hero; a man millions of evangelical ‘Christians’ believe we should sacrifice more of our children’s blood for.

August 15, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism | 3 Comments

The Academic Whistleblower

A Human Sacrifice Worth Making?

By Lisa Hutchinson | Health Advisory & Recovery Team | August 14, 2024

Recently, I listened to an interview with Dr Carl Elliott based on his published book released in June 2024 titled “The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No”. Dr Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy. For years, he fought for an independent inquiry into a case of corruption at a psychiatric research study at his own university in which sadly an especially vulnerable patient lost his life. Carl experienced first hand what it is like to be an academic whistleblower, and endured a terrible experience. His own efforts resulted in him being shunned by his friends and colleagues and impeded by his own university, who denied any wrongdoing, until an independent state investigation finally vindicated his claims after a 7-year-long battle.

Carl posits that As mentioned, his foray into this is very sad and disturbing. He detailed the extraordinary case of a mentally vulnerable man, Dan Markingson, who was admitted to a psychiatric unit after experiencing a series of psychotic episodes. Despite being a danger to himself and others, he was enrolled on a clinical trial of a new multi-drug regimen. Dan was coerced into following the treatment decisions of his psychiatrist, but against the strong objections of his concerned mother, he entered the study because he gave his “consent”. Worried for his safety, Dan’s mother spent several months trying to get him out of the study, after his behaviour dramatically worsened. She wrote to the study centre and study coordinator to ask to remove her son from the study. Despite her justified concerns, she was ignored. Tragically, several months later in the Spring of 2004, Dan killed himself in extreme circumstances.

Carl discussed several stories of how participants of medical research can be deceived into taking part in experimental programmes they do not understand, even in circumstances when the mortality risks are high. Many patients are coerced into studies with blatant financial conflicts of interest or industry funding. When Carl learned of Dan’s case and raised concerns he could not get anyone to take him seriously, so he decided to do his own research and publish a book. By bringing this issue to a broader audience, Carl hoped it would prompt the university into doing something, but this failed spectacularly, and he became a despised figure in his own academic centre.

After learning of Dan’s case in 2008, Carl spent 7 years trying to get Dan’s death investigated. His efforts included creating petitions, writing to the University Alumni, writing to the FDA and federal government. Eventually, he got a state investigation, and although the ruling was positive and vindicated everything he and other critics raised, the follow up was non-existent. His efforts accomplished very little – there was no apology from the academic university, no compensation to victims, no reform, or sanctions for the wrongdoers or efforts to learn from the devastating situation. This was a demoralising ending after such a long struggle.

Ethical standards and integrity have been gradually compromised for several decades. It is unclear why there is pressure to violate ethical rules in the medical research domain. Some of the reasons are financial, but perhaps a bigger issue is the pursuit of glory for some academic clinicians. In psychiatry, balancing the interests of individual participants in trials versus the pursuit of scientific answers is compromised. In 90% of the scandals Carl teaches about at the University of Minnesota, trial participants are mentally ill, disabled, have low socioeconomic status, are vulnerable, and cannot look out for themselves – collective traits that are exploited. As he describes it, the ‘honour code’ in medicine should safeguard and offer protections for such patient groups.

Many whistle-blower stories in the 1970s and 1980s predate the rise of the Big Pharma trials of today. Among clinicians and academics there is a race for glory, status, academic promotion, awards, and prizes. In the 1990s, the financial status changed unrecognisably with recent scandals having huge money stakes, absent from earlier corruption cases. In the past 20-30 years, academic research is less about patient care and more about research funding, which is a toxic situation. Sectors outside medicine have a regulatory system, which is absent in medical research. Instead, an ‘honour’ system exists in which professionals are trusted to behave honestly. Ultimately, there is a quasi regulatory responsibility by industry for overseeing integrity in its multi-billion dollar sector. Coupled with medical arrogance, bioethics within academic centres is now funded by the same industry players funding the studies. Thus, bioethics has been absorbed into academic health centres, relocating ethics to the belly of the beast!

There is a huge difficulty in maintaining independence and not being ‘captured’ by academic medicine. When research funding for academic salaries or tenure is through government-led institutions combined with the pressure to publish findings in high-profile medical journals, this creates a dangerous authoritarian culture. Such an environment has sometimes led to the dehumanisation of the patient, and maintaining ethical standards is a challenge. In a fee-for-service culture where high financial incentives exist, dismissing adverse effects of experimental treatments and lowering the inclusion criteria threshold are all too pervasive. There are of course well-intentioned medical professionals, but corporate overlords, dependence on practice guidelines coupled with the tremendous academic workload, stymies patient safeguarding and forges academic burnout.

What do whistleblowers have in common? They are motivated by honour, integrity, and moral concerns. They have no expectation for financial gain and they do not derive any personal advantages for themselves; in fact, they usually have everything to lose, such as financial stability and reputational damage, yet they still speak out. The reason many whistleblowers persisted in what they felt was a near futile struggle for years or even decades before resolution, was they were tenacious and refused to give up. Notably, cases known to the public are only examples in which a ‘resolution’ was achieved, even though the whistleblowers had reputational damage and no apology or financial compensation for victims was provided. So the situation is likely worse in terms of the treacherous path travelled by many whistleblowers, as we only hear of the most ‘successful’ cases.

Whistleblowers who worked for the public health sector often got nowhere. All whistleblowers had a common metaphor – if they were to look in the mirror, could they live with themselves if they did not do something? Many experience a form of PTSD and none experience improved lives following their exposure. Does disillusionment occur prior to whistleblowing, or when attempts or reports are ignored? Sadly, it seems there is a slow descent into nihilism. Most whistleblowers believe that if the outside world knew what they knew, this would encourage people to defend or change the corruption – notably this never happens. They also hope that close friends or relatives will stand by them, but in its absence, an existential break occurs.

Some whistleblowers feel a sense of guilt because of their complicity in their own industry. Others feel guilt out of a sense of disloyalty to their peers or not wanting to expose an entire institution into disrepute. The notion that whistleblowers are heroic victorious figures that embark on a ‘David versus Goliath’ image is a falsehood! Perhaps the whistleblower is a rare breed; many who are concerned might be more realistic or disillusioned to begin with, so have a lower expectation in terms of likely justice. Possible reasons there are not more whistleblowers is because they know their action would be futile, they could get disciplined, they did not want to snitch on friends or colleagues, or they had a (misplaced) loyalty to their institution. Indeed, a recent BMA survey reported that 61% of doctors polled about patient safety concerns would not raise concerns because of fears that they or their colleagues might be “unfairly blamed or suffer adverse consequences”.

Organisational loyalty is puzzling because an institution intrinsically seems to instil loyalty, but fighting something that undermines it, ironically goes against those who expose it. One way to address this would be to establish independent organisations to investigate such cases. Although many are aware bad behaviour exists, those in senior leadership positions do not ask, so the corruption remains under the radar. One example was at the Karolinska Institute over lethal synthetic trachea transplants, in which a surgeon had falsified results and misled the hospital about the health of those who received the transplants. While the surgeon involved, Paolo Macchiarini, received a prison conviction, the Swedish legal authorities and Karolinska Institute did not apologise to whistleblowers or compensate the victims. This high-profile case did not tarnish the institute’s reputation; in fact, it is rare for institutions to suffer in medical corruption cases. Leaders at academic institutions worry that if problems are exposed, it will deleteriously impact them, so silence or internal handling is considered the best policy.

One would think it would be better to come clean so that things can be remedied, and the error not repeated, in the hope wrongdoers are punished and institutions reformed. However, in his research and experience, Carl has never come across an institution that took positive resolution steps. Academic organisations still attack anyone who threatens their reputation. Often the senior figures in such scandals, such as Deans, Presidents or Directors, have left by the time a scandal is exposed, which one might think would help reduce any reputational damage. Although no one currently employed would be implicated in such scandals if the culprits have departed, the corrupt behaviour remains unchanged, so it is hard to offer an explanation.

The general public has a high opinion of doctors, believing medical professionals have strong ethics and want to help people and save lives. While this is true for many doctors, modern medicine has become big business financially. Patients are nowadays consumers, which is an inevitable slide into corruption. The marketing of medical devices and drugs has become more covert, such as bribes given to doctors. The scandals involved to preserve the illusion of integrity internally and externally are egregious. Carl is sceptical that a greater awareness of Big Pharma and how their marketing efforts operate would result in a more-positive outcome.

Ultimately, drug representatives are salesmen: they try to get doctors to prescribe their drugs. For many years, the vast majority of marketing was aimed at doctors not patients, although direct-to-consumer advertising is now ubiquitous. Huge financial sums are at stake, and most doctors do not like to imagine their prescription decisions are influenced by Big Pharma. Drug representatives have developed relationships with doctors – they are mercenaries. In the blockbuster drug era, especially in the USA, it is possible to make billion dollar drug sales for chronic illnesses, and doctors can be exploited to earn millions. Other than consultancy, doctors can receive lavish gifts, such as expensive dinners or premium tickets to expensive events. In the 1990s, the development of script tracking enabled the ability to measure in real time how marketing efforts affected doctors script sales. All drug representatives have access to the same data, so they compete for doctors with highest prescriber practices.

Ultimately, all the systems follow the same money trail. People who run the hospitals are worse, and according to Carl, those getting most from industry have the largest bribes. This farce is omnipresent; alarmingly, many bioethicists are not averse to taking industry money, highlighting that we are falling off the bioethics cliff. It is striking how universal and commonplace the language of medicine has become to describe the human experience. People define themselves on the basis of a medical diagnosis, illustrating how marketing has infiltrated our lives. For instance, people describe medical interventions as the person they are inside and how this fulfils their authentic self. It is an illusion that an intervention helps you become who you really are on the inside. Carl suggests pressure exists either to fit in or to stand out, which are two sides of the same coin.

Does bioethics have a rescue philosophy? In general, bioethics is a huge disappointment, with the status quo unchanged since the 1980s. Bioethics has taken up residence in academic health centres and is controlled by the same corrupt forces. It is sobering that not a single medical research scandal exists, whether patient care, sexual abuse, or research misconduct, in which a bioethicist has criticized their own institution. They know how unwelcome it would be, so they keep quiet! The conclusions of Carl’s book and interview are disheartening: being a whistleblower is not worth the hassle or personal devastation involved for the noble individuals who speak out. Since the Covid era, whistleblowers have become more prolific as many no longer accept the associated injustice. Let’s hope this seeds change and a much-needed new cultural shift to inspire and support future academic whistleblowers rather than deter them. The brave but solitary path of the academic whistleblower must be a human sacrifice worth taking!

August 15, 2024 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States | Leave a comment

Big Pharma Funds COVID Fact Checkers

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 9, 2024

FactCheck.org, the organization that flags “misleading” COVID-19 content for Facebook, is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropic organization funded by pharmaceutical giant and vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson (J&J), YouTube commentator Jimmy Dore reported.

Dore said his own shows have often been slapped with a “misleading” label when he covered issues related to COVID-19 or vaccines.

“These fact check organizations aren’t there to check facts,” Dore said. “They’re there to push a political point of view and an agenda and to discredit people.”

Dore said when the organization “fact-checked” his work in the past, its claims were always “bogus.” He said FactCheck.org never reached out to consult him about his content, it twisted his words and it never even pointed to any erroneous facts.

Instead, he said, “They didn’t like my headlines,” and they would say they were misleading.

Johnson & Johnson’s viral vector COVID-19 vaccine received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in February 2021. After the shot was linked to dangerous blood clots, its use was suspended a couple of months later and it was eventually completely pulled from the market in May 2023.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was established in 1952 by Robert Wood Johnson II, who ran J&J with a bequest of shares from the pharmaceutical giant. Today, although the foundation says it has diversified its holdings, it holds nearly $2 billion in J&J stock.

Its current CEO, Dr. Richard Besser, formerly worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he was acting director during the H1N1 outbreak.

When Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) first sounded the alarm in 2021 about FactCheck.org on Twitter (now X), the organization responded by saying, “The views expressed by FactCheck.org do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.”

The organization continues to receive funding from Robert Wood Johnson for its work “correcting health misinformation.” It reiterates on its website, the foundation “has no control over our editorial decisions.”

“The fact checking organization,” Dore said, quoting Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., “is in collusion with Big Pharma.”

Watch ‘The Jimmy Dore Show’ here:

August 11, 2024 Posted by aletho | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine | 2 Comments

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Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu: Leave No Palestinian or Arab Alive

By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | July 23, 2017

Israeli Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu seems to have picked up where the late Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef left off. The Israeli army, Eliyahu said, must slaughter the Palestinians “and leave no one alive.” The Palestinians, the good rabbi continued, must be “destroyed and crushed in order to end violence.” Here is Eliyahu’s algorithm:

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million.”

There is more to this “logic” than meets the eye and ear. Eliyahu even postulated that the Israeli army ought not to get involved in arresting Palestinians because “If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people. We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”

You may say that this is just an isolated case. No Israeli official believes that, right? … continue

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The destroyed Great Mosque of Gaza, the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip

The Ibn Uthman Mosque, destroyed in July

The destroyed Al Amin Muhammad Mosque in Khan Yunis

Yahya Sinwar, head of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas ,in Gaza City on 14 April 2023 [Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]

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