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Remembering the Intifada and its prisoners of freedom: “Ansar III: The Camp of Slow Death”

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | December 9, 2020

The great Palestinian popular intifada (uprising) that mobilized, organized and unified the Palestinian masses – especially inside occupied Palestine, but also in the refugee camps, in exile and in diaspora – launched in December 1987. As we recall its 33rd anniversary, we note that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – some estimates reaching up to 600,000 – were arrested, detained and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces during the Intifada.

There, they experienced severe torture under interrogation, harsh conditions of confinement, medical neglect and abuse, collective punishment and home demolitions targeting their families, brutal beatings and mistreatment and the widespread and systematic use of administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. Inside the prisons, however, despite all forms of repression, generations of Palestinian organizers developed “revolutionary schools” of politics, literature and organizing, developing powerful young activists to return to the streets embroiled in a great popular uprising.

In a failed attempt to suppress the Intifada, the Israeli occupation launched new prison camps and detention centers to hold the thousands of Palestinians detained in mass arrests throughout occupied Palestine. The following historical booklet, published in English in 1988 by ROOTS and Friends of Palestinian Prisoners, focuses on one such prison camp: Ansar III, “a barbed wire compound in the heart of the Negev desert.” At the time of the booklet’s publication, Janet Jubran of the Friends of Palestinian Prisoners noted in her introduction, “In one year, since the Intifada began, more than 25,000 Palestinians have been arrested. At this moment, nearly every family has one or more of its members in prison.”

This powerful booklet, including documentation, testimony and facts about Ansar III and its Palestinian prisoners – including many labor leaders, human rights defenders and journalists – was a part of the burgeoning organizing of Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora (in this case, in the United States) and the growing movement of international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is republishing this booklet today, on the 33rd anniversary of the Intifada, to bring this important historical document to new audiences, continuing to build upon this legacy of struggle, standing with the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation and return. 

Download the PDF here: Download PDF

December 9, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Mouse Utopia and The Blackest Pill – #PropagandaWatch

Corbett • 12/08/2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

You’ve probably heard about John B. Calhoun’s mouse utopia experiment by now. Everyone’s been talking about it recently. But what does this experiment really tell us about the human experience, and can we avoid swallowing the poisoned black pill of the propagandists when covering this highly anti-human idea? Join James for this important exposé of the Malthusian eugenicists behind the great reset.

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

SHOW NOTES

John B. Calhoun Film 7.1 [edited], (NIMH, 1970-1972)

Grand Theft World

Grand Theft World Podcast 005 | Unmasking Dystopia

John B. Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia Experiment and Reflections on the Welfare State

Mouse Utopia Experiment

Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population

Escaping the Laboratory: The Rodent Experiments of John B. Calhoun & Their Cultural Influence

Letting the rat out of the bag

Soylent Green – FLNWO #04

Why Big Oil

Meet Paul Ehrlich, Pseudoscience Charlatan

see What is Sustainable Development?

December 9, 2020 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

How long does immunity to covid last?

By Sebastian Rushworth, M.D. | December 9, 2020

One of the fears of many people in relation to covid has been that the immunity that develops after infection is so short lived that the infection will just keep going around and around and re-infecting everyone (until everyone is dead, I assume).

Two pieces of evidence have been presented to support this belief. The first concerns a few cases of “re-infection” that have been broadcast widely in media, even though virtually all of these cases have been either completely asymptomatic or only very mildly symptomatic the second time around – a sure sign the the immune system still remembers covid and is doing its thing to stop it.

The second concerns the fact that antibodies fade after infection. This builds on a fundamental lack of understanding of how the immune system works. Although the actively antibody producing cells diminish after an infection, these cells (so called “plasma cells”) are not responsible for immune memory. That role is filled by special “memory B-cells”, that lie dormant in the body, waiting for the infection to reappear. When it does, they quickly spring in to action and produce massive numbers of new antibody producing clones.

Now, however, covid has been around for a while, and we’re starting to get some pretty good data on how long immunity lasts after infection. There is a pre-print up on MedRxiv about a study that sought to gain a deeper understanding of what sort of immune memory is produced after a covid infection.

Before we get in to the details of the article, let’s talk a little bit about immune memory, so everyone is on the same page. Immune memory is the ability of the immune system to remember a pathogen after a first infection (or vaccination), and thereby respond much more quickly and effectively upon re-infection. It is mediated by three main types of cell. The first is the already mentioned memory B-cell, which is basically a dormant version of the antibody producing plasma cells. The second is the “memory killer T-cell”, which is a dormant version of the regular killer T cell (a.k.a CD8+ T-cell). Killer T-cells specialize in finding virus infected cells and getting them to commit suicide in a way that prevents the virus from spreading further.

The third is the “memory helper T-cell”, which among many other functions regulates the function of the other types of immune cell. Both killer T-cells and B-cells cannot become fully activated until helper T-cells have become activated. The central function of T-helper cells is shown by AIDS (Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), a disease caused by the destruction of the T-helper cells by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) – without the T-helper cells, other parts of the immune system cannot become fully activated, and the immune system is not able to function effectively.

In case you’re curious, the reason B-cells are called B-cells is because they mature in the bone marrow, so the B is for Bone marrow. T-cells mature in the thymus, so the T is for Thymus.

OK, now you know enough to understand the results of the study. 185 people with confirmed covid-19 were recruited and had blood samples drawn. 92% had not required hospitalization, so only a minority had had severe disease. The ages of the participants varied from 19 to 81. The blood samples were collected from several different sites across the United States.

The results of the study were based on analysis of the participants blood. 79% of participants only provided blood at a single time point, which varied from six days post-infection to more than six months post-infection, while the remainder (21%) provided blood at multiple time points. In other words, this was not really a longitudinal study, since most participants only had their blood analyzed at a single point in time, although there was some longitudinal data. 41 participants provided blood samples at six months or longer after infection, and this is really the group we’re most interested in, since this is the group that can tell us if there is still a good level of immune memory six months after infection.

Let’s look at the results.

Among the 54 individuals measured at one month post infection, 98% had antibodies. Among the 41 individuals measured at six to eight months post infection, 90% had antibodies. As mentioned before, antibodies are produced by plasma cells, and although antibodies in the blood stream decline with time as the plasma cells start to disappear, there should still be memory B-cells present for much longer, which can quickly be activated upon re-infection. That’s why it’s actually more important to look at what’s happening with memory B-cells than with antibodies, if you want to know how long your body maintains the ability to mount an antibody response to an infection. So, what did happen with the memory B-cells?

The prevalence of memory B-cells increased at each time point measured up to five months post infection, at which point they reached a stable level. There was no sign of a decline in memory B-cells after the five month mark.

Next we have the killer T-cells. At one month post infection, 61% had detectable memory killer T-cells. At six to eight months, 50% had measurable killer T-cells. It was however only possible to test for these cells in 18 individuals at the six month mark, so the confidence interval is wide, and thus it’s really impossible to say exactly what the trajectory was between the one month and six month marks. What can be said though is that a large proportion of participants still had measurable killer T-cells at six months.

Finally we have the memory helper T-cells. 94% of those measured at one month had measurable helper T-cells. Among those measured at six to eight months, that number was 89% (again, this data is based on only 18 individuals).

So, what can we conclude?

First, it’s important to note that this study had some weaknesses. The first is that, with the exception of a minority of participants, the study was cross-sectional, not longitudinal. This means that we’re not comparing people with themselves over time, we’re comparing them with other people who happen to be at a different point in the time line. It would have been better to have longitudinal data for all participants. The second is that some of the groups studied were pretty small, which creates wide margins of error. Some of the data was based on less than twenty individuals, which is really a tiny number.

A third weakness is that this study isn’t looking at how many people get reinfected with covid after a certain amount of time, it is looking at biomarkers – in other words, it is using proxy data, which is clearly a less reliable type of information than seeing what is actually happening to people in the real world. It’s kind of like doing a statin study and looking at what happens to cholesterol levels instead of looking at how many people have died after certain time point.

Having said all that, it is clear from this study that there is significant immune memory at the six to eight month time point after infection. At six to eight months after infection, 90% of measured samples still had antibodies and T-helper cells specific for covid-19, and 50% still had measurable T-killer cells. If the decline continues linearly over time from what was seen in this study, then it is reasonable to assume that most people continue to be immune to covid after infection for at least a couple of years.

You might also be interested in my article about the number of years of life lost, on average, when someone dies of covid, or my article about whether face masks are effective against covid.

December 9, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Contrary to climate alarmism and media, reef islands are GROWING despite rising sea, says new study

RT | December 9, 2020

Against all odds, low-lying reef islands actually appear to be growing in some parts of the world, despite rising sea levels, increasing their footprint and defying doomsday predictions.

Geomorphologist Murray Ford from the University of Auckland in New Zealand led a team of researchers who examined Jeh Island, one of the 56 islands that make up the Ailinglaplap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, itself one of the most endangered nations on Earth.

Ford and his team pored over aerial and satellite imagery of the island from above and made the startling discovery that not only has Jeh increased in total land area by 13 percent since 1943, it may actually have once been four separate islands which have now morphed together due to net land-mass gains.

“Counter to predictions, popular media coverage and political proclamations, recent studies have shown the majority of reef islands studied have been stable or have increased in size since the mid-20th century,” the research team from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, led by Ford, explains.

According to the geomorphologist and his colleagues, the more dire sea-level rise predictions were based on the assumption that islands are static and unchanging and would therefore simply drown once the tides rose enough.

The research team found that the islands grew courtesy of recently generated organic material formed by the reef and not sediment washed inland by the tides.

“The coral reefs which surround these islands [are] the engine room of island growth, producing sediment which is washed up on the island shoreline,” Ford explains. “Healthy coral reefs are essential for this process to continue into the future.”

Research dating back as far as 2018 found that among 30 coral atolls, accounting for over 700 islands in total, 88.6 percent remained stable or increased in size in recent decades, while none lost land overall.

December 9, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Climatology is a “Joke” – Nobel Laureate Dr Kary Mullis

1000frolly PhD | May 3, 2018

Nobel Laureate Dr. Kary Mullis is correct in his assessment of the current state of climate science, describing it as a “Joke”.

As he correctly points out, there is no scientific evidence whatever that our CO2 is, or can ever “drive” climate change.

There is also no published empirical scientific evidence that any CO2, whether natural or man-made, causes warming in the troposphere.

Mullis earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, he then received a PhD in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973.

His Nobel Prize was awarded in 1993.

December 9, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Those Who Don’t Fear the Lobby

By Craig Wood | Dissident Voice | December 8, 2020

With the encouragement of friends and after serving eleven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1961-1983), Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) wrote a book, They Dare to Speak Out, about influences and pressures inside the Israeli lobby.

His was the first book to point out ways the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), along with pro-Israel affiliates, use recruiting inducements and propaganda to steer political candidates toward a favorable view of Israel. It also exposed how Zionists in Israel and the U.S. get away with surreptitiously funneling money and perks to political allies while smearing its detractors — something the author had experience with firsthand.

Findley took an interest in Middle East politics in 1974 when he returned home from a humanitarian mission in the south of Yemen where he secured the release of an imprisoned American. His perceptions of the region changed after research and discussions with area experts — “Gradually, Arabs emerged as human beings” he recalled.

His trouble with the Israeli lobby began later in the 70s after he opened a dialogue with Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Arafat, against the wishes of Israel and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. While those conversations proved helpful to Americans with the freeing of American hostages in Iran, the U.S. refused to formally acknowledge the talks and Findley was tagged as an anti-Semite even though he was also against officially recognizing the PLO. In 1980 he said “it makes sense for us to talk to the PLO, to communicate with them and try to influence their behavior. It would reduce tension and conflict in that area. We can’t wish the Palestinians away — they’re a fact.”

Nevertheless, he was maligned by hard-case Zionists and shunned by colleagues in his own party for the rest of his career. President Ronald Regan going so far as to avoid any contact with him during a campaign stop in his district. Hollywood star Bob Hope backed out of an agreement to help Findley with his 1980 campaign after hearing stories he was a PLO sympathizer and betrayer of Jews.

Two years later Findley lost his bid for re-election by less than 1% of the vote. AIPAC executive director Thomas A. Dine noted three days after the election that 150 students from the University of Illinois had been recruited to “pound the pavement and knock on doors” adding “This is a case where the Jewish lobby made a difference. We beat the odds and defeated Findley.” Despite both candidates raising similar amounts of money, Dine estimated that $685,000 of $750,000 raised by Findley’s opponent came from Jews.

Among others who incurred the wrath of the Israeli lobby were reporters, educators, and politicians from both parties. Former Illinois Governor, Senator and Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson Il (D-lL) received numerous honors from Jewish organizations before he became the target of a smear campaign when he criticized Israeli polices and called for a halt in settlement funding. After that Senator Rudy Boschwitz (R-MN) commented at a breakfast gathering in Chicago that Stevenson was “a very steadfast foe of aid to Israel” and Dine would chime in again “The memory of Adlai Stevenson’s hostility toward Israel during his Senate tenure lost him the Jewish vote in Illinois and that cost him the gubernatorial election.”

Like Stevenson, U.S. Senator and Congressman J. William Fulbright (D-Ark) was accused of being anti-Semitic for questioning aid to Israel and advocating for an investigation that exposed an illegal scheme Israelis used to funnel five-million dollars into the American Zionist Council. Before leaving the Senate he warned “Endlessly pressing the United States for money and arms—and invariably getting all and more than she asks—Israel makes bad use of a good friend.”

Tentacles from the Israeli lobby put a stranglehold on campus too. Curricula focusing on Arab culture and history were investigated for possible anti-Israel biases, academic conferences were mercilessly scrutinized for speakers critical of Israeli policies and AIPAC created files on intellectual dissidents including Jews like Noam Chomsky. Not content with ostracizing critical thinkers and threatening to cut off academic grants, AIPAC and its ilk started training student activists in 1979 to increase pro-Israel influence on campus with the Political Leadership Development Program. Four years later over 5,000 students were onboard with their agenda.

Other Jews worried privately about blowback or even losing their jobs if they openly complained about Israeli injustice. First Amendment champ and Jewish writer Nat Hentoff frequently wrote about those fears in his New York Village Voice column. And radical Jewish journalist I. F. Stone noted the massive amounts of hate mail reporters received if they expressed “one word of sympathy for Palestinian Arab refugees.”

In Minneapolis, journalist Richard Broderick used his weekly “Mediawatch” column in the Twin City Reader to point out media biases favoring Israel when it invaded Syria in 1982. This disturbed some readers including area movie distributors who threatened to pull advertising. Not wanting to lose a huge amount of revenue, the paper’s editor offered disgruntled advertisers space for a 1,000 word unedited rebuttal.

Broderick came under fire again that summer after calling out local media for not bothering to check a source Senator Boschwitz used to suggest Syria welcomed the attacks. After doing some research he discovered that Boschwitz’s source, the American Lebanon League (ALL) was not only in favor of Israel invading Syria in 1982, it was according to the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee (ADC) “the unregistered foreign agent of the Phalange Party and the Lebanese Front. They work in close consultation with AIPAC, which creates for them their political openings.”

After Broderick made the information public, Senator Boschwitz got on the phone and balled him and his editor out — and according to Broderick during a recent FB chat with me, the Chief of Staff in Senator Boschwitz’s office informed the business association representing predominantly Jewish theater owners that the Twin City Reader had a “Nazi” on its staff. He also mentioned he wasn’t anti-Israel or dissing Boschwitz, he was simply doing his job as a reporter by investigating a source and had no idea he’d be fired for that. Nonetheless he was told not to write anymore commentaries, which he refused to do and was let go a few weeks later.

Lucky for Findley he didn’t have a boss who could get rid of him for checking sources or looking for pieces of information that might solve a puzzle. Although he had trouble with sources who were reluctant to go on record, he found enough who weren’t and collected more than enough surprising facts and discovered enough underhanded strategies to keep readers turning the page. His narrative which sometimes evokes the sinister cleverness of a spy novel can also be a reliable reference for those interested in how a foreign power, along with its operatives, affected so many Americans from the 50’s to the early 80’s.

The book is as timely today as it was when it was first published in 1984 because when it comes to smearing critics of Israel, with few exceptions — the Israeli lobby still gets its way.

They Dare To Speak Out is available to read for free here.

Craig Wood is a Minneapolis writer and member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at craig2mpls@yahoo.com

December 8, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 8, 2020

U.S. officials have long criticized Japan for its supposedly unprovoked military attack on Pearl Harbor, which enabled President Roosevelt to fulfill his desire to intervene into World War II. As I showed in my blog post yesterday, the Japanese attack was hardly unprovoked, given Roosevelt’s actions that were designed to provoke Japan into “firing the first shot,” which would enable Roosevelt to exclaim: We’ve been attacked! We are shocked! This is a day that will live in infamy! Now give me my declaration of war so that I can enter World War II.

Given the outrage over what the court historians and the U.S. mainstream press have long maintained was an unprovoked attack by Japan on the United States, why have these same court historians and mainstream media outlets given a pass to the U.S. government for initiating an unprovoked attack on Cuba in 1961?

Oh sure, there have been countless books and articles written about how the attack turned out to be a debacle for the U.S. government, specifically the CIA, one of the three main elements of the national-security branch of the federal government. But they never go after the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government for doing what Japan supposedly did — initiate an unprovoked attack on an independent country.

The U.S. national-security establishment has long maintained that it had the “right” to initiate its attack on Cuba because Cuba had established a communist government and a socialist system.

But since when does a disagreement with a country’s political and economic systems justify an unprovoked attack on that country? If Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor because of America’s New Deal system, which was characterized by both socialism and economic fascism, would that have made the attack justifiable? Does the U.S. government today have the “right” to attack Vietnam, China, North Korea, and, yes, Cuba because they have communist and socialist systems? Indeed, do communist regimes have the “right” to attack the United States because the U.S. has a “capitalist” system, or does the principle work only one way?

The CIA and its acolytes in the mainstream press have always maintained that Castro’s Cuba posed a grave threat to U.S. “national security” and, therefore, that their unprovoked attack was justified.

Really? How exactly was “national security” threatened by a communist regime and a socialist system in Cuba, no matter what definition is given to that nebulous and meaningless term? Was a communist regime and a socialist system in Cuba going to somehow cause the East Coast to fall into the ocean? Was the Cuban army somehow going to invade Florida, without a navy, and work its way up the East Coast and conquer Washington, D.C., and take control over the United States? Or was the danger that socialist ideas would seep into the minds of U.S. officials, the American people, and the mainstream press, inciting them to expand existing socialist programs, such as Social Security, public schooling, a central bank, progressive income taxation, and welfare, or adopt new socialist programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid?

And while we are on the subject of unprovoked attacks, it’s worth asking how the U.S. government justified its repeated attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Even Lyndon Johnson referred to the CIA’s assassination program as “Murder, Inc.,” which is precisely what it was, especially given the CIA’s assassination partnership with the Mafia, the world’s premier criminal organization specializing in drug dealing, racketeering, and murder.

Why can’t the court historians and the mainstream press just accept the truth: The U.S. government initiated an unprovoked attack on Cuba in 1961 that was no different in principle from Japan’s supposed unprovoked attack on the United States in 1941? The real reason for the unprovoked attack on Cuba was that U.S. national-security state officials were furious that the Cuban revolution had succeeded in ousting from power the pro-U.S. Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, who was one of the most brutal, crooked, and corrupt dictators in the world. U.S. officials were even more furious that Castro, unlike Batista, wished to establish a truly independent nation, one whose government refused to take orders from U.S. officials, especially those in the Pentagon and the CIA. It was that desire for Cuban independence that motivated the U.S. national-security state to do the same thing that Japan had supposedly done some 20 years earlier — initiate an unprovoked attack on another nation.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education.

December 8, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Caitlin Johnstone: Biden’s prospective new defense secretary is another professional war profiteer

By Caitlin Johnstone | RT | December 8, 2020

Joe Biden’s possible new secretary of defense pick may be celebrated by the MSM, but his nomination only serves to underline the grim truth: corporations are running America’s war machine, and they’re doing it for profit.

The mass media are reporting that the Biden camp has selected former general Lloyd J. Austin III to be the next secretary of defense, assuaging fears among antiwar activists that the position would go to bloodthirsty psychopath Michele Flournoy as commonly predicted.

As has become the standard ritual for Biden’s cabinet picks, the mass media are holding a parade to celebrate the fact that Austin would be the first black chief of the US war machine, while virtually ignoring the murderous agendas he has facilitated throughout his career. As head of Central Command, Austin actively campaigned to resurrect the Pentagon’s spectacularly failed program of trying to arm “rebels” in Syria to fight ISIS, and in 2014 he backed immunity for US troops from war crimes prosecutions by the government of Afghanistan. He helped spearhead the Iraq invasion, and he is a member of the same private equity fund which invests in defense contractors as Flournoy and Biden’s warmongering pick for secretary of state, Tony Blinken.

Austin is also a member of the board of directors for the war profiteering corporation Raytheon, where he went immediately after his military career. Raytheon spends millions of dollars a year actively lobbying the US government to advance policies which are beneficial to the multibillion-dollar arms manufacturing giant, which of course means lobbying for military expansionism and interventionism. The previous secretary of defense, Mark Esper, also worked for Raytheon, spending years as one of the top corporate lobbyists in DC under the position of ‘Vice President for Government Relations‘.

And you know what? I say why not.

Seriously, why not? Why shouldn’t the head of the US murder machine come from a corporation which has made billions of dollars facilitating war crimes in Yemen? Why shouldn’t the most depraved and bloodthirsty regime on this planet have its depravity and bloodshed advanced by a professional war profiteer? The mass military slaughter of the US and its allies has only ever been about power and profit, so why not be honest about it?

Hell, why stop there? Why not make Raytheon itself the secretary of defense? Didn’t the Supreme Court rule that corporations are people anyway? Make Raytheon the secretary of defense, make Boeing secretary of state, make Goldman Sachs the secretary treasurer, make ExxonMobil the head of the EPA, make Amazon the CIA director, and Google the director of national intelligence. Then you’d have a completely honest face on the head of the US empire.

It’s absolutely insane that our world is being dominated by war profiteers who actively push for more violence and bloodshed because they make money selling the weapons used to perpetrate it. It’s no less evil than if plutocrats were cruising the world murdering people and selling their skins for money; the same number of people would be killed for the same profit incentive, yet people who would recoil in horror at that idea pay no mind to the fact that functionally the same thing is happening with corporate powers like Raytheon.

The only difference between the US war machine and a band of armed crooks murdering people for money is that the US war machine does it at a far greater scale. As long as that’s going on there’s no reason to pretend otherwise. Hopefully people start looking past the smiley-faced mask of the empire and begin opening their eyes to the blood-spattered face beneath it.

Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz

December 8, 2020 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

New Study Claims Vaccinated Children Appear To Be “Significantly Less Healthy” Than Unvaccinated

By Arjun Walia | Collective Evolution | December 4, 2020

A new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has, according to the authors, discovered that vaccinated children require far more healthcare than unvaccinated children. At least that’s what they found from the group of children used to collect the data.

This type of study is interesting to see given the fact that studies comparing unvaccinated children to vaccinated children are lacking, there aren’t many of them. These studies are, as the authors state, “rarely conducted.”

None of the post licensure-vaccine safety studies have included comparisons to groups completely unexposed to vaccines.

The study concludes that “the unvaccinated children in this practice are not, overall, less healthy than the vaccinated and that indeed the vaccinated children appear to be significantly less healthy than the unvaccinated.

The data source for this study was all billing and medical records of Integrative Pediatrics, a private pediatric practice located in Portland, Oregon.

The study emphasizes the need for more research given the fact that, again, there is hardly any in this area. They concur with Mawson et al., 2017 , who reported: “Further research involving larger, independent samples is needed to verify and understand these unexpected findings in order to optimize the impact of vaccines on children’s health” and with Hooker and Miller 2020, who wrote: “Further study is necessary to understand the full spectrum of health effects associated with childhood vaccination.”

These studies mentioned above also had similar findings.

According to the authors,

Vaccines are widely regarded as safe and effective within the medical community and are an integral part of the current American medical system. While the benefits of vaccination have been estimated in numerous studies, negative and nonspecific impact of vaccines on human health have not been well studied. Most recently, it has been determined that variation exists in individual responses to vaccines, that differences exist in the safety profile of live and inactivated vaccines, and that simultaneous administration of live and inactivated vaccines may be associated with poor outcomes. Studies have not been published that report on the total outcomes from vaccinations, or the increase or decrease in total infections in vaccinated individuals.

This is important because, although vaccinations in some cases may protect against the target disease, what else might they be doing not only on the short term, but in the long term? It’s also important to point out that in other cases, like the HPV vaccine, there is no evidence that they do protect against the target disease.

Another great example comes from a study published in 2017 that examined the introduction of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine (DTP) in an urban community in Guinea-Bissau in the early 1980s. They found that the DTP vaccine was associated with 5-fold higher mortality than being unvaccinated. The authors state the following:

All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis. Though (this) vaccine protects children against the target disease it may simultaneously increase susceptibility to unrelated infections.

This new study points out,

Pre-licensure clinical trials for vaccines cannot detect long-term outcomes since safety review periods following administration are typically 42 days or less. Long-term vaccine safety science relies on post-market surveillance studies using databases such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC’s) Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and the Vaccine Safety Datalink. VAERS is a passive reporting system in which, according to Ross 2011, “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.” The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) can, in principle, according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM, 2013), be used to compare outcomes of vaccines and unvaccinated children. Based on the IOM’s recommendation, in 2016, the CDC published a white paper (CDC, 2016; Glanz et al., 2016) on studying the safety of their recommended pediatric vaccine schedule. Unfortunately, to date, no studies have been published comparing a diversity of outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

Below is one of many interesting graphs from the study. The orange line represents the vaccinated children, and the blue one represents the unvaccinated.

For methods used, limitations, and more please refer to the study.

The parents that I work with in New York, that I see around the country are very concerned that their rights are being taken away, that their knowledge about the science is being pushed away by an agenda that only says, unvaccinated children are a problem.

No study has every been done in this country, appropriately, to address the health outcomes of children who are vaccinated versus the children who are unvaccinated. I have been seeing families in my practice for over 20 years, that have opted out of vaccination, they are the healthiest children I’ve ever seen. – Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, a NY licensed paediatrician

Why This Is Important: Given the fact that the  National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) has paid out approximately $4 billion dollars to families of vaccine injured children, there are clearly, in my opinion, some valid points here, especially against compulsory vaccinations. Again, as mentioned above, VAERS only accounts for an estimated 1 percent of vaccine injuries, this one percent is what is recorded.

A 2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million.

Take the MMR vaccine for example, if you search on VAERS, as of 2/5/19, the cumulative raw count of adverse events from measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines alone was: 93,929 adverse events, 1,810 disabilities, 6,902 hospitalizations, and 463 deaths. Again, don’t forget about that 1% figure cited in the study.

There are a number of legitimate concerns about vaccine safety that would require quite a long and very in-depth article, but I just wanted to let the reader know here briefly. Aluminum for example, is another concern I’ve written quite a lot about.

These are a few reasons as to why vaccine hesitancy is at an all time high, even among many physicians and scientists. This has actually been observed for a while. For example, one study published in the journal EbioMedicine  in 2013 outlines this point, stating in the introduction:

Over the past two decades several vaccine controversies have emerged in various countries, including France, inducing worries about severe adverse effects and eroding confidence in health authorities, experts and science. These two dimensions are at the core of vaccine hesitancy (VH) observed in the general population. VH is defined as delay in acceptance of vaccination, or refusal, or even acceptance with doubts about its safety and benefits, with all these behaviours and attitudes varying according to context , vaccine and personal profile, despite the availability of vaccine services VH presents a challenge to physicians who must address their patients’ concerns about vaccines and ensure satisfactory vaccination coverage.

At a 2019 conference on vaccines put on by the World Health Organization this fact was emphasized by Professor Heidi Larson, a Professor of Anthropology and the Risk and Decision Scientist Director at the Vaccine Confidence Project. She is referenced, as you can see, by the authors in the study above. At the conference, she emphasized that safety concerns among people and health professionals seem to be the biggest issue regarding vaccine hesitancy.

She also stated,

The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers, we have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem, because to this day any study I’ve seen… still, the most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider…

Is there not enough information here alone to warrant informed consent? I have a hard time understanding how someone who would take the new COVID-19 vaccine, for example, would be worried about me contracting the virus if they are protected?

Why have we given governments the ability to mandate such actions? Why have we given them so much power to dictate what we do and how we want to live? Is this really how we want to live, is this really the kind of world we want to create?

A Deeper Discussion. What Do We Do About The Increasing Vaccine Pressure? 

So many are concerned about mandatory vaccination. Further, many are starting to see that mandated vaccines may not be the future, but that services and options will be denied unless you can prove you have been vaccinated. Is it still the time to point the blame? Or is there a radical new approach we must take? A shift in our worldview, re-examining who we think we are, why we are here and what world we want to create is where we will begin to find the answers we are looking for. Has the dualistic fight the enemy method worked in the past? Are we not still here regardless of having used this method in the past? Maybe it’s time for a new conversation, one that looks at ourselves in a whole new light. This perhaps is how we will solve our ongoing challenges at their core.

Below is a deeper discussion about it from CE Founder Joe Martino.  You can follow me, Arjun, here on Instagram.

Dive Deeper

December 8, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

The Maxwells: Mossad’s First Family of Spies

Who was running whom in the Epstein espionage ring?

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 8, 2020

The story of the deceased pedophile and presumed Israeli spy Jeffrey Epstein continues to enthrall because so little of the truth regarding it has been revealed in spite of claims by the government that a thorough follow-up investigation has been initiated. The case is reportedly still open and it is to be presumed that Justice Department investigators have been able to examine certain aspects of what occurred more intensively. A major part of the investigation has been a review of actions taken by the four government prosecutors who were most directly involved with the negotiations with Epstein and his lawyers in 2007-8. The 22 month-long review, carried out by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), finally produced a 350 page report which was released on November 12th.

The DOJ has now picked out a scapegoat for what many now think was gross prosecutorial negligence, possibly including corruption of senior government officials. He is not surprisingly Alexander Acosta, who was the U.S. Attorney for Miami when the Epstein case came up. Relying substantially on internal government emails as well as communications between the prosecutors and Epstein’s team of high-profile lawyers to reach its conclusion, the OPR review concluded that Acosta exhibited “poor judgment” in his handling of the Epstein deal. He did not inform the victims or their attorneys of developments in the case, as required by law, and overruled the lead prosecutor and FBI agents who argued that Epstein should face serious jail time. He even cut a deal with Epstein before the investigation into his crimes was completed. The OPR investigators also determined that many emails that would have materially aided the plaintiffs were not made available to their attorneys, a shortcoming that the report attributed to a “technological error.”

The email gap covers the time span from May 2007, when the prosecutor’s office prepared a 53-page draft indictment of Epstein, to April 2008, shortly before Epstein’s guilty plea and slap-on-the-wrist sentence in state court ended the federal investigation. Epstein’s defense attorneys had during that time period been engaged in an aggressive lobbying campaign to persuade the federal prosecutors to rescind the indictment and shut down the federal case. Epstein’s “sweetheart deal” with the federal government negated a possible conviction of serious crimes against 19 alleged victims, most of whom were minors. Instead of a possible sentence of between 14 and 17 years in federal prison, Epstein was encouraged by federal prosecutors to plead guilty to two prostitution-related crimes in state court to resolve the case. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a county jail on a liberal work release program, often sleeping in his own home, and the federal case was duly closed.

It is, of course, noticeable that neither Acosta, who has possibly now retired from public life, nor anyone else will be punished for what was clearly a gross miscarriage of justice. That is the way the government works these days. But there is also a much bigger problem with the report, which is that it essentially failed to follow up on an argument that Acosta made when the bungling of the Epstein case began to surface in the media last year.

There has, in fact, been a cover-up of a major element in the Epstein saga, namely his possible connection with Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad. Investigative reporter Whitney Webb has recently completed an exhaustive review of what we know about Epstein’s partner in crime, lover and accomplice Ghislaine Maxell, to include some consideration of the possible involvement of her sisters Isabel and Christine in activity initially directed by their father, known Mossad agent Robert Maxwell.

The evidence that Epstein was directly involved in intelligence work to include bribing or blackmailing prominent individuals to act on behalf of Israel, derives both from the statement made by Acosta in 2017 that “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” a comment that the Justice Department and FBI have apparently never sought to investigate further. It also derives from other external evidence. Epstein was found to be making videos of his guests having sex with his young girls, which is a version of a classic intelligence entrapment technique employed by every major spy agency worldwide and in his Manhattan mansion he had a large supply of diamonds, cash and an Austrian passport on hand if he should have to make a quick escape.

That Epstein would be linked to Israel rather than to some other intelligence service is inevitably due to his relationship with Robert Maxwell, which eventually included his daughter Ghislaine. Robert, a Czech Jew who became a naturalized British citizen, was believed by C.I.A. and other intelligence services to be a long-time agent of Mossad. After he died under mysterious circumstances, he was given a state funeral in Israel that was attended by every current and former head of the Jewish state’s intelligence service as well as by the country’s prime minister Yitzhak Shamir who eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.” Ghislaine reportedly became the principal procurer of Epstein’s young girl victims.

Also corroborating the tale of espionage even if it appears to be of no interest to the FBI and Justice Department, is a book Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales written by a former Israeli intelligence officer who actually ran the “Robert Maxwell” operation, describing inter alia how Epstein and Maxwell were blackmailing prominent politicians on behalf of Mossad. According to Ari Ben-Menashe, the two had been working directly for the Israeli government since the 1980’s and their operation, which was funded by Mossad and also by prominent American Jews, was a classic “honey-trap” which used underage girls as bait to attract well-known politicians from around the world, a list that included Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton. The politicians would be photographed and video recorded when they were in bed with the girls.

But in spite of the evidence, the role of Ghislaine, currently in custody in a maximum-security Brooklyn prison, is less well known and is possibly being deliberately concealed by the Trump Administration, which is prone to do favors for Israel. Even less known are the possible roles of her two sisters. Webb details how Maxwell and his Israeli Mossad handlers compromised the top-secret information system then in use by the U.S. government. She observes that “While Ghislaine’s own ties to intelligence have… come to light in relation to her critical role in facilitating the Jeffrey Epstein sexual blackmail operation,… little, if any attention, has been paid to her siblings, particularly Christine and her twin sister Isabel, despite them having held senior roles at the Israeli intelligence front company that facilitated their father’s greatest act of espionage on Israel’s behalf, the sale of the bugged PROMIS software to the U.S. national laboratories at the heart of the country’s nuclear weapons system… Ghislaine herself also became involved in these [blackmail] affairs, as did Jeffrey Epstein following his first arrest, as they began courting the biggest names in the U.S. tech scene, from Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capital firms to its most well-known titans. This also dovetailed with Epstein’s investments in Israeli intelligence-linked tech firms and his claims of having troves of blackmail on prominent tech company CEOs during this same period.”

Upon Robert Maxwell’s mysterious death in 1991, his sons Kevin and Ian took control of many of the interlocking companies that their father had used both to conceal assets and to obtain access and information while Ghislaine remained in the New York area and two other daughters Isabel and Christine opted to exploit the internet as an intelligence resource to build upon their father’s “legacy.”

Isabel, in particular, moved aggressively and eventually became recognized as the self-styled liaison between Israel’s government and Silicon Valley. Whitney Webb recounts in considerable detail how she “mov[ed] in ‘the same circles as her father’ and vow[ed] to ‘work only on things involving Israel’ … [to become] a pivotal liaison for the entry of Israeli intelligence-linked tech firms into Silicon Valley with the help of Microsoft’s two co-founders, Paul Allen and Bill Gates.”

One has to suspect that a tale of Mossad running a major spy ring in the U.S. using a pedophile and young girls might just be too much for some folks in power to tolerate and they have made sure that the true story will never see the light of day. But the tale of how the prominent ostensibly British Maxwell family, acting for Mossad, may have systematically spied on the United States over a number of years, often pretty much out in the open, and the FBI and Justice Department saw fit to look the other way, is bigger still. That is the real story. Israel yet again spies and Washington denies.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

December 8, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The Next Fake ‘Crisis’ Has Been Planned

Vernon Coleman | November 21, 2020

December 7, 2020 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Dissenting Voices: Finding Courage to Speak Against Your Assailant

By Christine E. Black | OffGuardian | December 8, 2020

A man in a white lab coat with advanced degrees in medicine sexually abused hundreds of young girl gymnasts in his office, sometimes while their parents stood nearby. Michigan State University professor and USA gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar penetrated girls, most younger than 16, some younger than 13, with an ungloved hand, saying he was examining them internally, doing check-ups necessary for them to perform as young athletes. This doctor continued his abuse of hundreds of girls over many years.

For years, girls told other coaches, the police, university administrators, psychologists. They repeatedly told USA gymnastics officials. And yet, Nassar was not stopped until his arrest in 2016. The girls obeyed. Hundreds of parents kept taking their daughters to see him. Girls must have complained. Some probably vomited quietly in the bathroom later or cried by themselves. They kept competing in gymnastics events.

How was this doctor able to do what he did over these many years?

Well-meaning parents, coaches, teachers, attending nurses; hundreds of adults surrounded this man while he violated young girl athletes in plain view. He was able to do this because he was an “expert”, a “scientist”, someone whom others were certain knew… more than they did… what was best.

He wore a white lab coat and had diplomas on his office walls. He had a high salary, a long career, a staff, and institutions behind him.

*

In this time of lockdowns, church and business restrictions and closures, immeasurable harms, pervasive losses, and debilitating fear in response to a virus with a survival rate of higher than 99 percent for most people, we have continued to hear the slogan, trust “the Science” or follow (or obey) “the Science” and “the Scientists.” Obey government controls and “the Science” a bit longer, and it will get better.

Further, those who question “the Science” and do not conform – or even merely think differently – are named and targeted as dangerous.

The virus is real, sicknesses and deaths are real, of course, while also real are the harms, deaths, and traumas from measures thought to mitigate it.

Further, some have made huge sums of money during this time while others have lost everything – and some will make huge sums from vaccines.

When “Science” is funded by corporations and special interest groups, we may learn by asking, “Who writes the checks, and who gets paid?”

I thought science had always been about questioning, and yet lately, questioners are degraded as ignorant, superstitious, or heretical. Those touting the slogan, “Follow the Science” or “Obey the Science” have begun to sound more like Biblical literalists, not at all like what I have understood science to be. We have been told that we must obey the literal last word of “The Science”. But whose science? Funded and led by whom and to what purpose?

Published “science” on this virus has changed monthly, even weekly, over many months. Masks are ineffective; wear masks. Wipe surfaces; no need to wipe surfaces as it is airborne and does not live on surfaces. Asymptomatic spread is common; asymptomatic spread is rare.

In addition, many scientists have noted that the tests for the infection are often unreliable.

Confusions and contradictions have been dizzying. Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Azithromycin have been used around the world to prevent and effectively treat this virus in early stages and yet, scientists who share information on these drugs are maligned, threatened, and sometimes fired. How is this science?

Now, almost nine months into lockdowns, governments threaten to fine or jail people gathering for holidays, and questioners are still being called ignorant, psychopathic, uneducated, uncaring, and are also accused of getting people killed. How is this science? Science involves constant scrutiny and questioning, positing hypotheses, then continually examining and testing them in order to disprove them.

Further, a universe of hypotheses opens for our consideration. Responsible science was never, “This is the Science, period, now shut up.”

In the Stanley Milgram experiment in the 1960s, a man in a white lab coat quietly told volunteers to administer increasing levels of electric shocks to a person on the other side of a partition, when the person gave a wrong answer to a question. The experiment was staged, and the shocks not real, but participants did not know this. Some administered near lethal shock levels. Subjects thought the experiment was in learning, but experimenters were actually studying conformity and obedience to an authority figure. When people became uncomfortable and did not want to continue administering shocks, the man in the white lab coat simply stated, “The experiment requires that you continue.”

Lately, we may substitute the word, “science” for “experiment” as in, “The science requires that you continue.”

Participants continued pressing a button to shock another person even while the person screamed in pain. The screams were not real, but participants did not know this. How did experimenters get people to comply and administer almost lethal shocks to another human being? They complied because the white-lab-coated man was an expert. A scientist. A pretend one, but participants did not know that. They thought surely the scientist must know more than them.

History of science is filled with examples of scientists, especially medical doctors, who were horribly, even fatally, wrong.

Bloodletting, leeches, cauterizations of the uterus are a few of the treatments described in For Her Own Good: 150 Years of Experts Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English (Anchor Books/ Doubleday, 1978). In the late 18th century, doctors, touting science, moved to replace women healers, who had emphasized relationships and wholistic approaches. Doctors advocated more active, quantifiable, “heroic” measures. They focused on doing something.

Unfortunately for the health of the young republic, the heroic approach contained an inherent drift toward homicide,” write Ehrenreich and English. “Since the point was to prove that the treatment was more powerful than the disease, it followed that the more dangerous a drug or procedure, the more powerful a remedy it was presumed by most doctors to be. For example, blisters (induced by mustard plaster, etc.) were a common treatment for many diseases. In an 1847 paper, a physician observed that extensive blistering had a disastrous effect on children, sometimes causing convulsions, gangrene, and even death. He concluded from this that blisters ‘ought to hold a high rank’. in the treatment of diseases of childhood.’ (Ehrenreich and English, p. 46)

Bloodletting was another regular remedy of the time, in addition to other “cleansings,” including inducing vomiting and using laxatives and enemas.

Bloodletting was used by physicians well into the 20th century for many ailments; including accidents, malaria, childhood fevers, pregnancy discomfort, and anemia.

Many physicians in the early 19th century bled until the patient fainted or pulsed ceased, whichever came first,”

… according to Ehrenreich and English, who examined historical documents and biographies of the time (Ibid. p. 46).

Bloodletting was common during the yellow fever epidemic of 1873. Laxative purges, accomplished by the administration of calomel, a mercury salt, were considered an all-purpose remedy for everything from teething pain and diarrhea to chronic diseases.

Long term use caused the gums, the teeth, and eventually the tongue and the entire jaw to erode and fall off”
(Ibid. p. 47)

According to historians, physicians knew of these side effects but performed these procedures anyway.

During the cholera epidemic in St. Louis, physicians ran around with calomel loose in their pockets and simply doled it out by the teaspoonful (Ibid. p. 47)

In For Her Own Good, historian Ann Douglas Wood describes treatments used in the mid-nineteenth century for almost any female complaint – manual investigation, leeching, injections, and cauterization (without anaesthetic except a bit of opium or alcohol).

William Potts Dewees, an American medical professor, and Dr. Hughes Bennett, a famous English gynaecologist, widely read in the U.S.,…

both advocated placing leeches right on the vulva or neck of the uterus, although Bennett cautioned the doctor to count them as they dropped off when satiated and some may be lost.(Ibid. p. 123)

These men were scientists and doctors; people listened to them and did as they directed.

Questionable, even barbaric, practices have been carried out in the name of science. Eugenics programs advocated and performed forced sterilizations in the U.S. well into the 20th century and some in the 21st century.

Lobotomies and electroconvulsive shocks for the mentally ill were supported by the science. Scientists were certain they were doing the right thing.

Those who listened to them and submitted to their authority believed them.

Certainties may cause us to wonder. During the run up to the U.S. war in Iraq, across almost every major media outlet, we heard over and over words like “indisputable,” “irrefutable” about the “evidence,” supporting the necessity of war. We heard that war was “inevitable,” was “inexorable,” that the science was unquestionable. Former General Colin Powell appeared all over networks with scientific-looking charts behind him while he held a vial of some substance, to demonstrate the science. People who questioned that war’s absolute and immediate necessity were mocked, bullied, vilified, fired, threatened, sometimes even with death.

–

We learn and change and do differently. Outliers, outsiders, and challengers often lead us to new and important discoveries. And yet, lately our culture seems to suggest that those questioning “the Science” or the “scientists” should be condemned or not allowed to speak at all – even when many scientists disagree. Lately, we have been told, and many believe, that speaking up or stepping out of line may get us killed – or may get someone we love killed. This strikes me as a dangerous psychological trick.

Stepping away from dominant groups or voicing alternatives to dominant narratives can be very difficult. It can sometimes feel, or actually be, life-threatening. And yet, once you have had to speak up, perhaps alone, against a dominant group, or a domineering person, who threatens your life or the life of a loved one if you speak, you are forever changed. You may never be able to comply automatically and without question with the white-lab-coated scientist, telling you to press the button or the doctor, telling you to lie back on the table, or the scientist telling you to take the pill.

An assault survivor may be told by their assailant, “If you speak up, or step out of line, I’ll kill you – or your family.”

This statement is just a few characters away from, “If you speak up or step out of line, it’ll kill you” (the virus). Or alternatively that you (or it) will kill someone you love.

Those who have gathered courage to stand and speak against an assailant; a dominant group; an authority figure, may have a lot to teach us.

My friend, Lucy, killed herself twenty-five years ago. Her father, a Christian missionary and leader in the church and in the community, sexually abused her. The church did not believe her when she told. They turned their backs. Her mother did not believe her. Lucy spoke the truth of her experience even though she thought she may die. She stood against a church and its leaders and her own family. Sadly, Lucy did not survive. But I have — and can remember her and share her story.

Boys in State College, Pennsylvania were raped by Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky from 1994 – 2009 while many suspected or knew but looked away and did nothing. Those boys had to speak up against Sandusky, his wife, a whole football program, an entire town and culture that revered the sport, and a university built around the famous program. They had to tell their mothers, mothers who had believed Sandusky, a man who had started a non-profit organization to help and guide young boys.

Many sexual abuse survivors have had to stand against the Catholic Church. You are forever changed after standing up against powerful groups, institutions, or individuals – whether it be the church, the military, the town, the national scouting program, the department, “the Science”. I admire those who have had to do so, often initially alone. It can feel in the beginning like you may die, whether or not someone actually threatened you with death. And yet, people trust their hearts and instincts and speak up anyway, usually at great cost.

Many, including brave children, have stood and spoken when their conscience, their instincts, their safety, or their faith would not allow them to do otherwise. Once you have had to do this, it becomes much harder to believe, without question, that “everybody” knows better than you do, the authority figure knows better than you do, that the narrative must be swallowed whole.

You have been irrevocably changed. You have faced death or the prospect of death.

You have faced the threat…

“Speak up or act up and I’ll (it’ll)
kill you”

… and you have survived.

Christine E. Black’s work has been published in Antietam Review, 13th Moon, American Journal of Poetry, New Millennium Writings, Nimrod International, Red Rock Review, The Virginia Journal of Education, Friends Journal, The Veteran, Sojourners Magazine, Iris Magazine, English Journal, Amethyst Review, and other publications. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Pablo Neruda Prize.

December 7, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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