The US House of Representatives has passed a bill authorizing the government to liquidate seized Russian assets and transfer the proceeds to Ukraine. It also includes measures forcing the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owners and authorizing stricter sanctions on Russia, China, and Iran.
The bill was passed by 360 votes to 58 on Saturday. Known as the ‘21st Century Peace through Strength Act’, it rolled together a number of previously disparate bills, most notably the so-called ‘Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act’, which allows the Biden administration to confiscate billions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets held by American banks and transfer them to Ukraine.
The US and EU have blocked an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank since the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. The vast majority of these assets are held in Europe, but American banks are sitting on around $6 billion, according to multiple reports in US media outlets.
At present, the US has no legal mechanism to seize these assets, and has moved relatively paltry sums of seized Russian money to Estonia for use in Ukraine.
While the bill passed with bipartisan support, it was strongly condemned by fiscal conservatives and anti-war Republicans. US Senator Rand Paul warned earlier this year that “confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets is an act of economic war” that would undermine global confidence in the US.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a similar warning on Friday, while the Kremlin has declared that any actions taken against its assets would amount to flagrant “theft.”
The ‘Peace Through Strength Act’ also included a measure that would ban TikTok if the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell off its US operations.
The FBI and Federal Communications Commission have long maintained that TikTok passes user data to the Chinese government, but TikTok has repeatedly denied the allegation.
Beijing has argued that forcing a sale “runs contrary to the principles of fair competition and international economic and trade rules.”
The bill also authorizes additional economic sanctions on Russia, China, and Iran.
In a series of separate votes on Saturday, the House approved massive military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, which along with the ‘Peace Through Strength Act’ will now be combined into a single bill and sent to the Senate for approval. Totaling $95 billion, the legislation will provide $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion to Israel, and $8 billion to Taiwan and other countries in the Indo-Pacific region.
House Speaker Mike Johnson relied on support from Democrats to bring the bills to the House floor, but the decision may cost him his job. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), an ardent opponent of funding for Ukraine, has filed a motion to remove Johnson from the speakership. Posting on X (formerly Twitter) after Saturday’s vote, Greene called the aid “despicable,” and said that the US “should be demanding peace, not funding the military industrial complex’s blood money wars fueled by dead bodies in Ukraine.”
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has failed to act on a State Department proposal to bar certain Israeli police and army units from receiving US funds over human rights abuses of Palestinians.
Blinken has disregarded this despite the growing concern over Israeli army conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials.
A special panel at the State Department made the proposal months ago. Recommendations for action against Israeli units were sent to Blinken in December but have “been sitting in his briefcase since then,” one official told ProPublicaon 17 April.
The Israeli rights abuses in question mainly took place in the occupied West Bank before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October. They include the execution of Palestinians by Israeli border police, as well as torture and rape during interrogation.
“This process is one that demands a careful and full review … and the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question,” ProPublica cites a State Department spokesman as saying.
“Blinken’s inaction has undermined Biden’s public criticism [of Israel], sending a message to the Israelis that the administration was not willing to take serious steps,” according to several officials at the department who have worked on Israeli relations.
US President Joe Biden has publicly expressed frustration with the unprecedented number of Palestinian civilians killed in the Gaza Strip. However, US funds and arms continue to fuel the Israeli war effort, and no formal effort has been made to investigate the growing number of documented war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians in the strip.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post published an in-depth investigation detailing Israel’s role in the killing of a six-year-old and her family who were trapped in a car in northern Gaza. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington will ask Tel Aviv “for further information” on the matter.
The US has said it would look into several incidents, including late February’s Flour Massacre against dozens of starving and desperate aid seekers. Yet no US probe has been launched into the matter since an internal Israeli army investigation absolved Israel of blame, and Washington refused to condemn the killings.
The Guardian reported in January, citing interviews and State Department documents, that “special mechanisms have been used over the last few years to shield Israel from US human rights laws.”
The ProPublica report comes days after dozens of Palestinians detained by Israel in Gaza were released, with many giving testimonies of horrific treatment by Israeli forces, including humiliation and torture.
It can’t be overstated that Queer Theory thinks all children are sexual. The Queer Cult thinks society has constructed a myth of the “innocent child” to repress children’s sexuality so they can’t explore and experience it until they are already conditioned to be heterosexual or, at the very least, conditioned to fit into and stabilize a heterosexual society. – The Queering of the American Child
It has gotten as far as it has because people do not say “No” anymore.
It has crept forward, millimeter by millimeter because, people wanted to “keep the peace.”
It has hollowed out all that was sacred because people didn’t want “to hurt it’s feelings.”
Well, it is here now, and it wants your child’s innocence.
What are you going to do about it?
CHILDHOOD INNOCENCE
From The Queering of the American Child
Beneath all of this, and as a final impediment to Queer Theory, is developmental psychology, particularly childhood developmental psychology. This field has long recognized that growing up is a developmental process containing certain milestones that takes place within boundaries usually defined as “age-appropriate.” Sex, sexuality, and even romantic or many emotionally involved relationships are not developmentally appropriate for children and can do lasting psychological damage if introduced irresponsibly. Learning to categorize the world at first concretely—man, woman, boy, girl —before moving to more complicated and nuanced understandings of ambiguities and differences is developmentally crucial to developing brains. All of this stands firmly in the way of Queer Theory and its ambitions to queer the child.
Queer Theory colonized and captured developmental psychology by attacking the notion of a normal and innocent child. The Queer Theory literature will not let one escape the idea that the ruling class in society (people who own “normalcy” as Bourgeoisie private property) uses the concepts of “normal child” and “childhood innocence” to keep children from exploring their true queer nature. In this view, the normal and innocent child is a justification for pushing all children through a “cisheterosexual” developmental track.
There is perhaps no better paper to turn to than Hannah Dyer’s Queer futurity and childhood innocence: Beyond the injury of development to summarize Queer Theory’s view of the “normal and innocent child” progressing through a “normal” developmental track. What the weird title of the paper indicates is that believing in and protecting childhood innocence limits the full range of the child’s future life in terms of how queer (recall: politically radical) he might be. That is, growing up normal and safeguarded by developmental appropriateness as outlined in rigorous child developmental psychology is characterized as a kind of injury to the child! In brief, believing in age-appropriate approaches backed through child developmental psychology allegedly injures kids who might otherwise have grown up to be Queer Activists by exposing them to a “normal” childhood that threatens to “straighten” them, against their best interests.
Borrowing from Foucault’s idea that the scientific disciplines serve as a regulatory “regime of truth” that perpetuates the status quo, Queer Activists like Dyer argue that psychologists are deeply “implicated in the harming of gay kids.”185 Queer Theory takes developmental psychology to task “for their catastrophic support for beliefs that queer childhood was not viable or healthy.”186 In this view, psychologists have served as a strong arm for the normal society , taking “queer children” and “straighten[ing] out their futures.”187 Allowing young children to understand the world in terms of simple, unambiguous, concrete, natural, normal, and real categories crucial to their healthy development, categories like man, woman, boy, girl , is, from the demented view of Queer Theory, an act of “straightening” kids and stealing from them the possibility of a queer future, thus oppressing them.
According to Queer Activists, what used to be called “gender identity disorder” harmed “queer” children because “as a diagnostic classification [it] assumed the ability to detect impulses not yet organized as queer identity and realign them with heterosexuality.”188 That is, “gender identity disorder” was a way to “fix” children rather than allow them to be “who they really are.” And allowing children to be “who they really are” requires ditching old paradigms in favor of “embracing [children’s] queer curiosity and patterns of growth.”189 Queer developmental psychology must “address the child as always already queer.”190
The idea that developmental psychology should abandon traditional theories and practices in favor of queer possibilities rests on the idea that society scripts children’s futures. Queer Theory claims that the soul is the prison of the body , and society convinces children’s souls to materialize certain futures on their bodies. That is, Queer Theory argues that disciplines like psychology serve to discipline kids that are stepping out of line, convincing them to get back on a predetermined developmental track, ultimately growing up and performing as a straight man or a straight woman. In this view, society treats all kids as “proto-heterosexuals” needing continuous developmental conditioning.
Before Queer Theory colonized the discipline, developmental psychologists worked to help children understand that “It Gets Better.”191 They worked with children to help them constructively navigate their issues. An “it gets better” approach treats a child’s disorders as disorders that can be addressed while stressing that things will improve in time. Queer Theory could not tolerate that message because that message doesn’t address the here and now as defined on the cult’s terms. Queer Activists think that telling kids “it gets better” only stabilizes a definable future within the current sociopolitical order. “It gets better” postpones feelings to the “mythical adulthood,” requiring children to tolerate the intolerably oppressive social fabric they are drowning in.
A queer conception of child development is meant to “rupture conventional schemas of ‘growing-up,’” as it undoes “anticipated congruency” and “the enforcement of strict borders between childhood and adulthood.” Queer Cult Psychology “find[s] pleasure” in tearing down traditional theories of childhood developmental stages and replacing them with queer possibilities. That this is likely to induce crises for the children, as we saw, is considered a queer opportunity. That it will lead to psychological damage and personality disorders is viewed as an oppressive myth used to uphold the “normal” status quo of a cisheteronormative society.
For Queer Activists, the key societal construct that justifies the traditional and alienating [as Marx would use it!] developmental track is “childhood innocence.” The Queer Theory literature is unambiguous in this claim. Queer Activists believe that “childhood innocence” is a political construct that normal people use to keep children from learning about their true queer sexuality and desire. The “innocent child” is nothing more than a myth normal people tell society to control what children are exposed to. “Childhood innocence” keeps children away from forbidden knowledge—away from taking a bite of the apple . Queer Activists believe they must “queer the rhetoric of innocence that constrains all children and help to refuse attempts to calculate the child’s future before it has the opportunity to explore desire.”
The Queer Cult does not believe that children are innocent. Queer Activists believe children are full of queer sexuality and desire, claiming that society just suppresses and restricts those instincts to protect a normal child and their normal future . What they lack is initiation . In this view, all children are capable of reason and consent—capable of true human agency, as someone like Paulo Freire would define it. Queer Activists, like Dyer, claim that making childhood sexuality taboo “hurt[s] children’s curiosity and imagination” in an effort to protect a child’s “assumed proto-heterosexuality.”192 The Queer Cult isn’t interested in labeling things as too taboo for children. The Queer Cult is invested in fully ramping up the taboo while “understanding the possibility for children and youth to recruit amounts of bodily pleasure.”193
Queer theories of childhood are often brave in the ways that they wade into such taboo territory in order to show how what is considered perverse is often a mode of securing heteronormativity. Queer theory can be helped in its desires to prove that children are capable of possessing complexity and sexuality by exploring work done in the fields of early childhood studies and sociological studies of childhood. This is because these fields and their associated methods of inquiry prioritize the child’s possession of knowledge and agentic relation to the world. (Dyer, 2016)
It can’t be overstated that Queer Theory thinks all children are sexual. The Queer Cult thinks society has constructed a myth of the “innocent child” to repress children’s sexuality so they can’t explore and experience it until they are already conditioned to be heterosexual or, at the very least, conditioned to fit into and stabilize a heterosexual society. In this sense, society uses the language of childhood sexual trauma to “foreclose careful consideration of the child’s agentic relationship to perverse and queer sexuality.”194 Defining children as innocent prevents all children from being exposed to queer forms of sexuality and desire before their future is settled. The “innocent child” has but one path to choose from—cisheterosexuality—as all other queer possibilities are deemed “developmentally inappropriate.”
BULLDOZING THE WALL
Hannah Dyer’s Queer futurity and childhood innocence isn’t an outlier in the Queer Theory literature. Queer Activists consider childhood “an arguable crucible or ground zero of all sexual politics.”195 They think this way because they believe children are pawns that normal people use to protect their dominant interests. In this view, who gets to decide what “a child,” “childhood,” and “innocence” mean determines the future of society. If normal people get to define these concepts, then the future will be normal. If Queer Activists get to define these concepts, then the future will be queer . “Queer futurity” is a vision of a future that isn’t limited by current societal norms and expectations, particularly those related to sex and sexuality. Hannah Dyer and other Queer Activists make clear that any hope for queer futurity is lost in the concept of “the innocent child,” so “the innocent child” is a barrier they know they must destroy. Or, as Queer Activist Lee Edelman says in his book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive :
Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we’re collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis ; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital Ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop.196 (Edelman, 2004, p. 29)
Queer Activists queered developmental psychology because the discipline was a significant barrier to Queer Cult initiation. In the past, psychologists considered children innocent and incapable of grasping the concepts of sexuality and desire. This was a huge problem for Queer Activists who believed that children must explore sexuality , gender, and desire before the clock of “normalcy” strikes midnight. Twenty years ago, it would have been considered child abuse to discuss sexuality and desire with little kids. Likewise, “affirming” a child’s mental health disorder would have been considered psychologically abusive. Queer Pedagogy would have been stopped dead in its tracks. Today, all of this is considered developmentally appropriate.
Developmental psychology was the great wall that prevented Queer Activists from presenting, discussing, and encouraging developmentally inappropriate ideas, concepts, and themes with kids. The discipline was bulldozed by Queer Activists who endlessly declared that “childhood innocence” creates an unjust distinction between appropriate and inappropriate discussions and content. Queer Theory dissolves distinctions, melding opposites together and creating a new whole understood on its own terms. In this case, Queer Activists claimed that what is considered appropriate or inappropriate is arbitrarily defined by those in power for their own benefit. So, nothing is appropriate or inappropriate—everything is contextual and subjective. But, because Queer Activists claim to know the truth about how the world works, they think they are the only ones who can determine the correct context of any given situation. Ketanji Brown Jackson felt she couldn’t define the word “woman” during her U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing because Queer Activists have bullied everyone into thinking that question must be deferred to them. Queer Activists think they are the only ones capable of answering questions related to sex, “gender,” and sexuality. Their insight is considered sacred , and they say talking to kids about sex, sexuality, and desire is not only appropriate but necessary.
The Queer Cult uses Queer Pedagogy to coerce children to bite the apple and learn about the secrets of queer sex, sexuality, and desire. Queer Pedagogy exists to take innocent children and initiate them into the revealed knowledge of the Queer Cult. This initiation process intentionally places kids into an identity crisis. Now, a parent can’t take their child to a developmental psychologist to address sex and “gender” confusion because the psychologist serves only to affirm the initiation . The only thing waiting for a child with “gender dysphoria” on the other side of the referral is Queer Cult Psychology.
Queer Activists, following Eve Kosofsky Sedwick’s seminal work Epistemology of the Closet, fundamentally believe that innocence/initiation is a binary that must be overcome. Like the binaries of “appropriate” vs. “inappropriate” and “man” vs. “woman,” innocence vs. initiation must be dissolved, revealing a new, higher truth: namely, that innocence is a social construct normal people use to initiate children into cisheterosexuality. In this view, innocence is initiation and initiation is innocence. Queer Activists think the two concepts are the same if one can only view them from the more elevated state of queer consciousness.
“The closet” is where the magic happens—where innocence and initiation become one and the same. Queer Activists use Queer Pedagogy to force kids into the closet where they develop their queer consciousness and transcend their innocence through initiation into the Queer Cult. The closet, where you keep secrets from others like your parents, is where children are initiated, learning that they aren’t so innocent after all—they’re queer .
Some parents are demanding their day in court after learning that the “inclusive” education their children are receiving is queer . When that day arrives, they are met by the expert testimony of a Queer Cult psychologist who is all too thrilled to tell them that their “innocent” child isn’t so innocent after all. “If you scratch a child,” they might say, “you will find a queer.”197
Bill Clinton Begins the Phony Era of Pandemics and Bioterrorism
In November 1997 US Secretary of Defense William Cohen held up a 5 lb bag of Domino sugar in front of an army of cameras and told the world that if the bag contained anthrax it could wipe out NYC or Washington, DC.
That was not true, but it provided a fitting justification for the start of the DOD’s “biodefense” vaccine program, begining with mandatory anthrax vaccinations for soldiers in March 1998.
“In April 1998, President Bill Clinton read a Richard Preston novel, “The Cobra Event,” about a biological attack on the U.S. using a lethal virus that spreads like the common cold.
“It scared the bejesus out of him,” recalls Kenneth Bernard, a now retired U.S. Public Health Service official who was then representing the U.S. in Geneva at the World Health Organization.”
The USG invested in a new smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, based on the older Dryvax vaccine. The fact that it caused high rates of myocarditis (1 case in 175 doses administered according to CDC) has been ignored.
And the biodefense era began, supplying handsome contracts to those who promised remedies in the new wild west of biowarfare and infectious disease. Many of those who got the contracts had friends in high places, like FOB Ronald Perelman, who made a killing on a smallpox remedy (Tpoxx) that was eventually used as a monkeypox drug. Did it work? Who knows?
The 21st Century ushered in a well-coordinated push to generate fear about:
a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic,
jumps of deadly viruses from animals to humans (“spillover,” zoonoses and epizootics were the new terms to be mastered), and
biologic warfare threats
The 2002-3 SARS outbreak and the Avian influenza (bird flu) outbreak — both beginning shortly after the anthrax letters—were hyped to the max to generate fear of pandemics and biological warfare.
How many people did these infectious diseases kill in the US and around the world?
The anthrax letters caused 5 human deaths, all in the US.
The CDC and mainstream media claim that avian flu has killed over 100 million chickens. It has not. USDA rules have forced growers to cull over 100 million chickens. When one chicken has a positive PCR test for bird flu, every chicken in the chicken house (and sometimes all those on the farm) must be killed. Was that test even accurate? But expansive claims like these are what gets the public going, and putting up with incursions on their freedoms.
So, on the basis of a bioterrorism ‘performance’ using letters containing anthrax spores sent to Congress and the media that were made in a lab, and two relatively minor zoonotic diseases that failed to kill a single American, we Americans were led by the nose into the era of BIODEFENSE.
In 2009 the Pandemic Preparedness/Biosecurity Agenda really took off with an expensive BANG!
The WHO’s Director-General Margaret Chan declared a Pandemic Phase Level 6 for a “swine flu” outbreak that was milder than a normal influenza outbreak: triggering tens of billions of dollars in “sleeper “contracts that the WHO had initiated (and most likely been cut in on) between national governments and vaccine manufacturers. The contracts guaranteed that nations would buy millions or hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines for any future Level 6 pandemic that a WHO Director-General declared.
The contracts did NOT say that the definition of a Level 6 pandemic could be changed so that any new virus at all could meet the definition. But that is what happened. The definition of a level 6 pandemic was changed so that it was meaningless, and a few weeks later Director-General Margaret Chan declared a level 6 pandemic, the contracts were triggered, and on the order of a billion doses of H1N1 flu vaccines were administered. Grandfathered in. Liability-free. Some caused serious side effects: especially the European Pandemrix brand made by GSK. Regulators identified very serious problems early and simply covered them up. Problems like being associated with 10 times higher rates of serious adverse events than other H1N1 vaccines.
Drugs were also ushered in without a license. Here is some archived information on the drugs and other products given EUAs for the mild 2009 swine flu.
Having wrought great harm in 2009, the WHO bounced to another debacle with West Africa’s Ebola pandemic of 2014. Below I have excerpted from a Royal Society opinion piece, but there are many others that provided strong criticisms of the WHO response, including from some of the WHO’s strongest supporters. It seems that really bad mistakes can lead to calls for reform and a bigger budget. We’ve seen Congress “solve” problems this way all the time. Then those “reform” efforts can be used to move an organization in the new desired direction. In this case, the WHO was maneuvered in the biodefense direction.
Reading the article below, it appears that the WHO is an inept, disorganized bureaucracy that has a large stable of authors to write policy briefs, press releases and has other employees who put on conferences. But the WHO has little understanding of actual epidemics and does not like to dirty its hands tending to them on the ground.
What did the UK Royal Society publish about the WHO’s response to West Africa’s Ebola pandemic?
However, after the initial errors of downplaying the outbreak [26], the WHO did maintain continued activity in tackling Ebola. The WHO documents its role in training healthcare workers and burial teams in infection control, community engagement activities and providing epidemiological data [27]. Furthermore, the organization published numerous technical guidance documents, hosted a series of meetings on vaccine options, developed diagnostic tools and expanded laboratory services [21, p. 1309]. Yet none of these activities provided direct patient care, strategic managerial oversight or the infection control that the outbreak response needed. Ultimately, due to a vacuum of international leadership in the operational response (which several in the international community expected the WHO to perform), the patient care, infection control and management were left to others, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a new UN body (United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response—UNMEER) and even the domestic and international militaries [10,19,28].
All reviews attribute some blame to the World Health Organization (WHO) for its delay to take action and for a lack of an operational response in the outbreak. However, while the WHO made some pivotal mistakes, as it itself admits [8], the outbreak exposed tensions between the normative and operational roles of the WHO, and furthermore between what the WHO is able to do (suffering from financial and organizational constraints) and what the global community expects the WHO to do.
The WHO admitted:
“The initial response was slow and insufficient, we were not aggressive in alerting the world, our surge capacity was limited, [I would suggest that WHO staff chose not to endanger themselves or that WHO was instructed to allow the Ebola outbreak to expand across Africa—Nass]we did not work effectively in coordination with other partners, there were shortcomings in risk communication, and there was confusion of role and responsibilities at the three levels [Headquarters, Regional Office and Country Offices] of the organisation [20,21].”
… despite the launch of a WHO Roadmap in August 2014 strategizing the end of the epidemic within six to nine months, [the WHO is full of planners, but has a dearth of doers—Nass]a coordinated international response with WHO at the helm failed to materialize [25] with the outbreak rapidly developing into a humanitarian emergency.
So, the WHO has been failing upward with every global infectious disease crisis for at least the past 20 years, well before COVID.
What does the organization offer us? Apart from providing a hook for globalists to gain more power, control and wealth, the WHO offers nothing to the citizens of developed nations. It does provide some benefits to developing nations, but those benefits could probably be achieved at a much lower cost, and with preferable local decision-making and control, through another organization or through health ministries.
Exactly one year ago, the investigative journalist and author, Alison Young, published a report in USA Today on an accident that occurred on December 9, 2019 at the University of Wisconsin’s Influenza Research Institute.
The accident involved experiments with an H5N1 influenza virus that had been modified through GoF to make it transmissible among ferrets. The research team leader—a renowned virologist named Yoshihiro Kawaoka—had gained international attention (or notoriety) for his controversial GoF research on H5N1. As Alison Young reported:
… in late 2011 the world learned that two scientific teams – one in Wisconsin, led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, and another in the Netherlands, led by virologist Ron Fouchier – had potentially pushed the virus in that direction. Each of these labs had created H5N1 viruses that had gained the ability to spread through the air between ferrets, the animal model used to study how flu viruses might behave in humans.
The ultimate goal of this work was to help protect the world from future pandemics, and the research was supported with words and funding by two of the most prominent scientists in the United States: Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Kawaoka contended it would be “irresponsible not to study” how the virus might evolve in nature. “Some people have argued that the risks of such studies – misuse and accidental release, for example – outweigh the benefits. I counter that H5N1 viruses circulating in nature already pose a threat,” he said at the time.
In Nov. 2013, a needlestick accident happened on Kawaoka’s research team, followed by failure to adhere to the established quarantine rules. Though no human infection resulted from this accident, it was nevertheless alarming. Young’s report continues:
By 2014, there was a growing discomfort at the highest levels of the U.S. government about the risk of an accident with an engineered virus.
Wisconsin’s needlestick incident, which drew questions within NIH but wasn’t publicly known, was soon followed by a series of high-profile accidents at federal labs in 2014 – from safety breaches with anthrax and avian influenza at the CDC to the discovery of forgotten vials of smallpox that had been kept for decades in a storage room on the NIH campus.
The funding pause remained in place for three years until it was finally lifted in December 2017. But it was only in 2019 that some of the halted experiments were quietly allowed to begin again under a revised federal oversight process, which was criticized for keeping secret the details of the new experiments and the basis for the government approvals.
The second accident on Kawaoka’s team occurred less than a year after GoF experiments were allowed to resume. This time, a lab researcher in training was working with ferrets infected with the GoF-modified H5N1 when his respirator hose was discovered to have detached from his hood, allowing him to breathe the possibly contaminated air in the cabinet. Again the quarantine rules were not properly followed, and nor was the incident promptly reported to the NIH.
Though the accident purportedly did not result in a human infection, it nevertheless raises many questions about the prudence of manipulating the H5N1 virus in a lab in order to make it infectious and transmissible among mammals.
Alison Young’s report prompted me to start reading her book, Pandora’s Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk, published on April 25, 2023. Young has a long history of researching and reporting on Bio-labs and their checkered past. Most lab manipulation of pathogens is purportedly done to develop vaccines against them in the event that their natural iterations should ever evolve to infect humans, but this rationale is highly questionable if not downright mendacious.
Indeed, on December 18, 2013, the Foundation for Vaccine Research wrote a letter to the European Commission, signed by 56 scientists (including Nobel Laureates) in which they sharply criticized the GoF experiments on H5N1 by virologist, Ron Fouchier.
The 56 scientists vehemently express their opinion that naturally-occurring H5N1 does NOT efficiently transmit to humans and therefore poses little risk to humans.
Far more dangerous, they claim, is the possibility of a lab-modified H5N1 virus escaping from a lab. The scientists refer to the resurgence of H1N1 influenza in 1977 after a 20-year hiatus, most likely after escaping from a lab in the former Soviet Union.
Did the death rate from measles in the United States decline by over 98% between 1900 and 1962, the year before the first measles vaccine was introduced?
According to the CDC’s data, the death rate from measles had already declined over 98% between 1900 and 1962, which was before the measles vaccine was introduced in the United States.
This official United States government data shows that in 1900, the rate of mortality from measles was 13.3 per 100,000 individuals and by 1960 it was 0.2 deaths per 100,000 individuals. The death rate was also 0.2 deaths per 100,000 individuals in 1961 and 1962. And the first measles vaccine did not come onto the market until 1963. Meaning, an over 98% decline in measles mortality between 1900 and the early 1960s before there was a measles vaccine.
If you like charts, the following is an official chart of measles mortality issued by the United States government showing the drop in measles mortality from 1900 to 1960. This chart was published before there was a measles vaccine — no doubt they would never publish such a chart today!
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee announced on Tuesday they will investigate 15 federal agencies that were briefed in 2018 on a proposal to “insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus that would have been shockingly similar to the COVID-19 virus.”
“Disturbingly, not one of these 15 agencies spoke up to warn us that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been pitching this research,” Paul said in the announcement, which noted that it took until 2021 before the public even learned of the DEFUSE project.
In announcing the investigation, Paul cited new information from documents not yet made public revealing that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Rocky Mountain Laboratories was a partner in the DEFUSE proposal.
In Paul’s letters to the agencies, he named Rocky Mountain Laboratories’s Vincent Munster, Ph.D., as the working partner in DEFUSE. Munster was co-author of a Jan. 24, 2020 New England Journal of Medicine article about “a novel coronavirus emerging in China” that neglected to mention the Wuhan lab or gain-of-function research on coronaviruses conducted there.
The letters also named the following newly discovered DEFUSE partners: the lab of Ralph Baric, Ph.D., at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Duke-NUS (National University of Singapore) Medical School and the lab of virologist Dr. Ian Lipkin at Columbia University.
Lipkin was one of the authors of the 2020 “Proximal Origin” paper that attempted to discredit the lab-leak theory of SARS-CoV-2 origins.
Paul requested the 15 federal agencies provide all documents, records and communications related to the DEFUSE project and PREEMPT Proposers Day events since 2016 at which agency personnel were present.
In addition to the NIAID and DARPA, Paul sent requests to the heads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Defense Health Agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Navy and Army, among other agencies.
USAID funded EcoHealth GOF research in 2015
Marine Corps Major Joseph Murphy, an internal DARPA whistleblower, in 2021 was the first to expose the 2018 DEFUSE proposal. Murphy said the EcoHealth proposal was later funded by NIAID — then under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci — through sub-grants to EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth Alliance in turn worked with Wuhan lab to engineer SARS-CoV-2.
Murphy shared a DARPA document outlining the agency’s decision not to approve the EcoHealth Alliance project, noting “prior work under USAID Predict,” a pandemic preparedness program that “identified high risk of SARSr-CoVs in specific caves in Asia.”
In a Senate hearing Tuesday, Paul grilled USAID Administrator Samantha Power about her agency’s funding of gain-of-function research in China through EcoHealth Alliance. Power denied knowledge of any such program, “USAID has not authorized gain-of-function research,” she said. “This is the first time seeing this.”
Paul presented a poster-sized enlargement of a 2015 paper, “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence,” co-authored by Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan lab — and others, including Baric — with an acknowledgment section that credited “USAID-EPT-PREDICT funding from EcoHealth Alliance.”
After reading sections of the paper establishing that the researchers were undeniably conducting gain-of-function research, Paul raised the 2018 PREEMPT meeting where the DEFUSE project was presented, with its intention to insert a novel furin cleavage site “which doesn’t exist in nature but makes it incredibly more infectious in humans,” he said.
Paul said USAID was at the meeting — before Power joined the agency. “But nobody from USAID and nobody from all 15 agencies ever told anyone about this project,” he said, expressing incredulity that those attending the meeting would not have made a connection between DEFUSE and SARS-CoV-2 when it emerged in 2020 and “come forward to warn us that this could be a virus not from nature.”
The DEFUSE grant proposal and the PREEMPT program
In 2018, EcoHealth Alliance’s Daszak proposed the DEFUSE (Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses) project to DARPA’s PREEMPT program. The proposal aimed to develop a bat vaccine to prevent SARS-related coronaviruses in Asia, focusing on high-risk hotspot bat caves in China.
The PREEMPT program was established to identify and mitigate emerging pathogenic threats. The DEFUSE proposal aligned with the PREEMPT program’s goals by aiming to suppress the viral population of SARS-related coronaviruses in bat populations, reducing the risk of spillover into humans.
DARPA hosted the 2018 “PREEMPT Proposers Day” to introduce potential applicants to the PREEMPT program. The event provided an overview of the program, facilitated networking among potential proposers, and provided a platform for attendees to present their technical capabilities and interest in forming partnerships.
Attendees included government personnel — the 15 agencies Paul listed — academic researchers and representatives from various organizations interested in collaborating on the project.
Presenters were allowed only a single slide and three minutes to pitch their projects. EcoHealth’s slide included the following gain-of-function research proposition:
“Experimental assays to test QS0 jump potential: Sequence QS0 spike protein similarity to high-risk SARSr-CoVs, model spike structure to assess ACE2 binding, then in vitro and ACE2 humanized mouse experiments. Use results to test machine-learning genotype-to-phenotype model predictions of viral spillover risk.”
DARPA ultimately rejected the DEFUSE proposal due to significant weaknesses, including the potential for dangerous gain-of-function research and the lack of risk mitigation plans.
Daszak under increasing scrutiny
Paul on April 9 penned an op-ed for Fox News outlining his committee’s new investigation.
“Under duress, the administration finally released documents that show that the DEFUSE project was pitched to at least 15 agencies in January 2018,” he wrote.
Paul alleged Daszak concealed the DEFUSE proposal and that UNC scientist Baric failed to reveal that the Wuhan lab had already proposed to create a virus similar to COVID-19.
On the “RFK Jr Podcast” Thursday, Paul called Daszak “the bag man for Wuhan, China” and “basically a money guy” who has been able to procure “over $100 million from the government … through schmoozing and … fancy proposals.”
Daszak was a U.S. representative to the World Health Organization’s 2021 investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which ultimately found the lab-leak theory “extremely unlikely.”
Paul, who on April 1 announced the launch of a bipartisan investigation into the origins of COVID-19, told Kennedy he believed Daszak has been concealing information about the development of viruses in China. “He’s evidence of what’s gone wrong and what has gone amok in a scientific community and the grant community,” Paul said.
House Republicans have also been investigating Daszak. In November 2023, the House Oversight and Energy and Commerce committees conducted a closed-door transcribed interview with Daszak.
Because new documents recently received by the committees under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request contradict portions of Daszak’s testimony, the committees have scheduled a public hearing with Daszak on May 1.
At issue is Daszak’s statement that EcoHealth Alliance would only be conducting gain-of-function research in the U.S. if DARPA approved the DEFUSE proposal. But the FOIA documents suggest, “EcoHealth intended to mislead DARPA and conduct the risky research at the Wuhan lab instead,” according to an Energy and Commerce Committee press release.
In the announcement for the upcoming hearing, the committee chairs quoted from their letter to Daszak:
“These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview. The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview. We invite you to correct the record.”
‘Just a trail of lies, obfuscations and cover-ups’
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Paul said Fauci likely knew as early as 2018 about the Wuhan lab’s desire to create a coronavirus. He also said Fauci “commissioned people to say the opposite” of what they actually thought about the origins of the virus.
Fauci repeatedly denied that NIAID funded gain-of-function research under his watch. During a contentious exchange with Paul at a July 2021 Senate hearing, Fauci said, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. … The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., then-director of the NIH, in a May 2021 statement made the denial even broader, saying, “Neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses.”
Paul told Kennedy he had a 250-page document on his desk concerning a briefing for Fauci on NIH’s interaction with coronaviruses, but that “every word has been … redacted.”
“I do think there was an enormous conspiracy … because they knew that they had funded this lab in Wuhan, and that … blame would attach to them for the pandemic,” Paul told Kennedy. “And there’s just a trail of lies, obfuscations and cover-ups.”
Anyone who knew about the 2018 application by @EcoHealthNYC, UNC, WIV and others to DARPA proposing to engineer human optimized furin cleavage sites into SARS coronaviruses but who did not speak up when it became clear such a novel coronavirus was responsible for the #COVID19…
NIAID has not commented on its involvement, according to the Daily Mail. Spokespersons for the Army and CDC acknowledged receipt of Paul’s letters and said they would be responding, according to The Epoch Times.
A statement released by EcoHealth Alliance claimed Paul’s op-ed “uncritically repeats several unfounded and false claims” and that the organization “did not support ‘gain-of-function’ research at Wuhan lab” or “send ‘millions of dollars’ to another scientist to create chimeric coronaviruses.”
EcoHealth further claimed that at the time of the 2018 meeting, the DEFUSE proposal had not yet been drafted or submitted to DARPA, and that “the presence of a Federal Agency at the Proposer’s Day event does not mean that they had detailed information” about the proposal.
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The night that Neil Armstrong was one small step for (a) man from the lunar surface I was taking my first airplane flight to a hockey camp near Toronto. I remember gazing out the window of the jet as a fourteen year old in July 1969 and imagining the Apollo craft on its impossible and miraculous journey to the very moon which I and countless others had marveled at and regarded as forever out of reach.
Yet reach it we did — we being the all-powerful United States of America, then simultaneously wielding its might in the jungles of a faraway country with perverse ferocity and with the sacrifice of American youngsters in the service of the hazy ideal of protection against Communism.
For many years, while cognizant of the endless warpath trodden by the country of my birth AFTER it had emerged as the glowing victor of World War II, bursting with economic and creative energy and bestriding the rest of the globe as the Colossus, I consoled myself and others with that magnificent and scarcely imaginable achievement of lunar landings.
Placing a man on the moon, that pure and nearly snow-white surface as far removed from the heat and grime of the napalmed Vietnamese jungles, somehow unified humanity in praise and deference, and established the United States as the artificer of miracles. In so doing it also lent a burnished sheen of intimidating and awe-inspiring power to an America whose tradition of can-do individualism was seen to have vanquished its socialistic rival, Russia.
The eyes of humankind for as long as it has trodden this precious Earth have looked heavenward and followed the glowing and bright and changeable Moon with a plethora of dreams and wishes and sighs. To have reached the lunar surface, to have made that impossibly giant leap, became the stuff of insurmountable accomplishment. In sum, no matter how degraded or destructive or sinister the Deep State factions of the United States had been with their never-ending wars and atrocities, the Apollo missions were an offsetting balm, a reminder of greatness and goodness and magnificence on which all could agree as the fulfillment of one of the grandest of dreams.
I had heard, throughout the years, of the cavils of small-minded conspiracy theorists who questioned the Apollo landings, but I had dismissed them or, more accurately, simply ignored them. Knowledgeable though I was about the devastating State-sponsored murders of JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, and cognizant as I was of the sickening exhibition of destructive deception that was 9/11, Apollo was a glowing ember of hope and beneficence, an emblem of the possibilities of a beneficent collective — the very stuff that dreams are made on, dreams which all of us could share and revel in and be proud about having realized, utterly without qualm.
Nonetheless, for one reason or other, nagged no doubt by an itch fostered by State duplicity, I decided to look into Apollo a bit more closely. I decided, in fact, to do my own bit of sleuthing just to make sure that the stirrings and suspicions about Apollo could be attributed to malaise and malcontents rather than to veracity.
My looking about and digging in resulted in a personal surprise, and a personal awakening. I discovered, in fact, that the case for legitimate human footsteps upon the lunar surface was ridiculously absurd. I discovered that I — and most of the world, I supposed — had accepted a grand illusion as reality when a cool examination of the evidence led to the deflating conclusion that Apollo was a hoax. A big one, a splendid one, an unparalleled one, but a hoax nonetheless.
Determined to lay the matter to rest for myself I even lit upon a small but telling anomaly — the Apollo 11 command module’s extra-vehicular handles. Made of aluminum, these handles should have melted under the intense heat of reentry; but they didn’t. I have published my findings comprehensively here and, in a more accessible fashion, here. These are small potatoes compared to the work of Kaysing, René, Sibrel, Percy, Bennett, Allen, Henderson, McGowan, Wisnewski and many others, whose extensive investigations have revealed and exposed innumerable discrepancies and problems with the official NASA account about virtually every aspect of the Apollo missions. Randy Walsh’s recent books are highly recommended for their overviews.
But allow me, in passing, to direct your attention to this famous video clip of what has become known as the ‘lunar grand prix’:
You be the judge as you watch the robotically immobile driver and listen to the comically insipid commentary.
The single greatest argument against the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 is the fact that despite the astronomically exponential growth of computational and technological power since then, somehow or other getting ‘back’ to the moon in the 21st century has not yet been achieved.
Interestingly enough, the trailer for a new film about Apollo has just been released:
From what I can tell it brazenly suggests that NASA actually undertook to film a fake lunar landing just in case the ‘real’ one didn’t fly. I wonder why, just now, in the aftermath of a fake pandemic, this candy-coated message has been released. Is it a clever piece of propaganda designed to forestall the obvious astonishment and questioning of generations born into the internet age when they are asked to accept the clumsy and comical NASA videos of last century? Is it a sophisticated psychological way to resuscitate the halo of the Apollo achievements? What will the impact of encasing a truth within the envelope of a lie amount to, over time?
My point however is that of all the psyops, Apollo stands out supremely. Unlike the assassinations of JFK or RFK, unlike 9/11 or covid, it is not terrifyingly destructive. It is instead positive, meant to induce awe — which creates a different kind of fear among those worshipping at the altar of the miracle — and to bathe us in the aura of supreme human achievement, of conquering the unconquerable and patting ourselves on our backs, we denizens of the little species that could.
It is and has also been a way to cover over the darker and rabidly perverse and destructive machinations of State factions whose goals have been and still are endless war, power and profit — sprinkled with a dash of what I call ‘brinkmanship madness’.
For it is eminently possible that the corrupt Deep State JFK sought to confront, the one that brought us to the lip of nuclear war in the Sixties and is now bringing us all to the edge of a New Tyrannical Order, replete with hot wars and wars irregular and concealed against our very humanity, has a wild and unpredictably calamitous streak.
Those at the helm can be crazy enough to bring us all down in an orgy of annihilation even as they promise themselves visions of transhumanist immortality.
Let’s see.
I thought long and hard about discussing the Moon and the myths of America’s Apollo, because these views might cast aspersion on an already fragile alliance of people protesting against the deceptions of the covid operation. But I think the time is right — maybe Fly Me to the Moon nudged me a little?
If we are going to prevail and really create a better world — as I think we indeed are on another brink of doing — what better way to begin than by discarding all of the grand illusions in favor of humility and truth?
Masayasu Inoue is Professor Emeritus of Osaka City University Medical School who specializes in molecular pathology. Reviewing his publishing resume, I wasn’t surprised to see that he has a longstanding interest in oxidative stress. His paper titled Mitochondrial Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species and its Role in Aerobic Lifepresents the following summary:
The present work also describes that a cross-talk of molecular oxygen, nitric oxide (NO) and superoxide radicals regulates the circulation, energy metabolism, apoptosis, and functions as a major defense system against pathogens. Pathophysiological significance of ROS generation by mitochondria in the etiology of aging, cancer and degenerative neuronal diseases is also described.
Lately “the etiology of aging, cancer and degenerative neuronal diseases” has been been on my mind a lot, as the young friend of a friend was recently discovered to have advanced, metastatic melanoma of unknown primary site that had spread to her brain. The day after I heard this news, I saw the following article in the New York Post:
Naturally the “troubling new study” mentions nothing about the genetic shots that have been repeatedly injected into young people for the last three years.
Listen to Professor Inoue’s “Message to the World” and try to fathom the crime against humanity he describes. It will be very interesting to see how long YouTube will allow it to remain on the platform.
Japanese Professor Delivers Stunning Message Everyone Needs to Hear
“The pandemic was used as a false pretext by the WHO to drive vaccinations of all peoples in the world.”
He says the fraudulent use of “experimental gene therapy to healthy people” was not only an “extreme… pic.twitter.com/IE4dAHYOg0
One expects that anyone involved in politics will lie whenever they think they can get away with it to burnish one’s own image and while also distorting reality to promote policies that are being favored. Nevertheless, the record of high crimes committed by a series of presidents and their top aides since the so-called “war on terror” began has established a new low for government veracity. One would have thought that the fake intelligence fabricated by a group of Zionists in the Pentagon and White House to launch the misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq would be as bad as it could possibly get, but the Joe Biden team has outdone even those unfortunately unindicted criminals by allowing itself to be maneuvered by friends in NATO and by Israel into situations that are one step short of nuclear war.
Listening to John Kirby, Lloyd Austin, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield speak suggests that a course of remedial English might be in order as they cannot articulate a sentence that is coherent, especially as they are frequently lying or being deliberately evasive. And then there is teleprompter Joe himself who can pout over the killing of 13,000 children in Palestine while also secretly sending weapons to the Israelis who are eager to slaughter still more based on the judgement that they will grow up to be “terrorists.” Joe’s idea of a exchange of views with the Israeli government is a threat to maybe do something unspecific followed by a strongly worded message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling him to “Go to hell!”
Joe’s gang cannot confirm that the Israelis are committing war crimes linked to genocide even though the rest of the world, including a majority of Americans, watch it happening on television and are convinced regarding what is taking place. But hey, Israel is a wonderful little democracy and America’s best friend and ally in the whole wide world. Or at least that is what Congress and the White House as well as the Jewish dominated media want you to believe. In reality, Israel is a racist and sectarian state that has been a US liability since it was founded, something that Secretary of State George Marshall warned about, but Harry Truman wanted Jewish money so he could get reelected. Some things never change as we watch Biden and Trump battle for the shekels by pledging their loyalty to Israel.
The latest wrinkle on the consequences of loving Israel so much comes with what is going on with Iran, which had its Embassy Consulate General building in Damascus Syria attacked by Israeli fighter planes, killing two senior Iranian generals plus a number of other Iranians, Lebanese and Syrians. For what it’s worth, embassies and consulates are generally speaking regarded as untouchable military targets under the terms of the Vienna Convention, which sought to keep enemies talking to each other even under the most adverse circumstances. In fact, Syria last fought Israel in 1973, more than fifty years ago, and has not gone to war with the Israelis since that time while Israel has been bombing Syria regularly as well as killing Iranian officials and scientists for many years. Iran, like Syria of late, has never attacked Israel.
Iran has said it will retaliate and Israel has gone on high alert. So what does Biden do? He warned Iran to back off and ignores the fact that it was Israel that did the unprovoked attacking and started the whole business and pledges “ironclad” support for the Jewish state if Iran dares to do anything serious in response. There are also reports that Israel and the US are planning jointly their possible retaliation if Iran were to strike. General Erik Kurilla, commander of the US Central Command, is now on his way to Israel and is expected to meet Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior Israel Defense Forces officials to coordinate possible US responses with those of Israel. Nota bene that President Biden has flipped the right or wrong of the entire affair over to do exactly what Israel wants, i.e. hopefully have the US go to war with the Iranians. This has been Netanyahu’s intention right from the beginning and there is also a bit of blackmail thrown in for good measure with Israel threatening to start using its secret nuclear arsenal if the United States stops supplying the Jewish state with weapons. Israeli Knesset member Nissim Vaturi, a representative in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, issued the threat in an unsubtle way while discussing the probability that Iran would retaliate against Israel for bombing its embassy. He said “In the event of a conflict with Iran, if we do not receive American ammunition … we will have to use everything we have.” In other words, Israel will have no choice but to start dropping nuclear weapons on its enemies and might also attack its friends who failed to support it, a reference to the Samson Option in which a beleaguered Israel would use its nukes to “take everyone down with them.”
The timing of the embassy attack suggests that Israel is acting as it does, i.e. taking steps to shift the narrative and restore its perpetual “victimhood,” because it definitely needs a public relations boost in a world where only the US and a few other nations aligned with Washington are not yet ready to give up on Bibi and his wild plans for regional domination. The horrific killing of hundreds of Palestinians in the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza as well as the targeted assassination of seven employees of a charity that was bringing in food to those starving due to Israel’s blocking the entry of relief supplies have been the top stories all over the world, and rightly so. The Israeli disdain for any behavior that might show weakness in the drive to remove the Palestinians from Palestine has resulted in the Jewish state’s being condemned and boycotted by much of the world with more to come.
Nevertheless, even in those countries that have made illegal pro-Palestinian expressions, demonstrations calling for a ceasefire have attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters. The governments confronting elections later this year, including the US and Germany, are under considerable pressure to respond to the popular sentiment. Indeed, it is already being mooted that President Joe Biden might well fail to be re-elected due to his kid gloves handling of Netanyahu who has assessed Biden’s weakness and has heedlessly taken US support as a given while also ignoring the warnings that are now coming out of Washington and elsewhere over the genocide taking place.
Indeed, it would be useful to speculate that the conflict in Gaza is in part being used as a smokescreen for developments with Iran and other Israeli neighbors that may prove more dangerous in the long run. Even the well-informed might be surprised to learn that even though Israel is not actually at war legally with several of its neighbors, it is nevertheless de facto at war with three countries, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. It has been exchanging fire with the Lebanese Hezbollah militias on its northern border on an almost daily basis since fighting with Hamas began in October and has sought and apparently obtained US guarantees of direct support should Hezbollah escalate its activity. In Syria, which has not in any way attacked Israel, the Israeli air and missile forces have staged numerous attacks against targets that it invariably claims to be “Iranian” even though most of the casualties are Syrians. There have been missile and bombing attacks on Syria nearly weekly since 2017, including a number of recent incidents involving both Damascus and Aleppo international airports that endangered civilian passengers and air crews.
As reported above, the most recent and most damaging attack was directed against the Iranian Consulate General, which was attached to the Iranian Embassy located in an upscale neighborhood in Damascus, Syria’s capital. The building was completely destroyed by six missiles fired from F-35 fighter planes that had crossed over the Syrian border from Israel, killing several long-serving diplomats alongside Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi. It was also reported that Brigadier General Hossein Amirollah, the chief of general staff for the al-Quds force in Syria and Lebanon, was among the victims as was at least one Hezbollah member. Sources in Syria confirmed that a total of 13 people were killed in the attack, including six Syrians. Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said afterwards that “We consider this aggression to have violated all diplomatic norms and international treaties. Benjamin Netanyahu has completely lost his mental balance due to the successive failures in Gaza and his failure to achieve his Zionist goals.” Both Iran and Hezbollah vowed revenge.
And just days before the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the Israeli military had launched massive strikes against a target in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo which killed at least 40 people, most of them soldiers. The air strikes hit a weapons depot, resulting in a series of explosions that also killed six Hezbollah fighters.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) subsequently revealed that it had strengthened air defenses and called up reservists in expectation of a response either from Lebanon or directly from Iran itself. Zahedi was an important Iranian official, reportedly responsible for the IRGC’s operations in Syria and Lebanon, for Iranian militias there, and for ties with Hezbollah, and was thus the most senior commander of Iranian forces in the two countries. His killing was the most significant death of a senior Iranian official since the murder in Baghdad of General Qassim Soleimani by the Trump Administration in January 2020. As the IRGC is a US-designated terrorist organization, Washington may have in advance approved of the Israeli action, though that was denied by the Pentagon.
Iran’s possible reprisal includes the capability to respond by directly launching missiles from its own territory rather than via any of its proxy groups, which include the militias it supports in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Responding to that possibility, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has warned on social media that if Tehran attacked from its territory, Israel would react and “attack in Iran.” Iran may therefore choose to respond indirectly or through a proxy, but any major reprisal would be giving Israel an excuse to elevate the conflict, which just might be the main reason for the attack on the Consulate General in the first place. It is, however, widely believed that the Iranian leadership is eager to avoid any escalation into a major or even a minor exchange that could be referred to as a war. Nevertheless, posters have gone up around Tehran in a sign of public pressure for an Iranian response. “The defeat of the Zionist regime in Gaza will continue and this regime will be close to decline and dissolution,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech to the country’s officials in Tehran. “Desperate efforts like the one they committed in Syria will not save them from defeat. Of course, they will also be slapped for that action,” he added.
Israeli Defense Minister Gallant responded to the Ayatollah, saying that Israel is “increasing preparedness” in the face of threats from all across the Middle East. Gallant said that the country’s defense establishment is “expanding our operations against Hezbollah, against other bodies that threaten us,” and reiterated that Israel “strikes our enemies all over the Middle East… We will know how to protect the citizens of Israel and we will know how to attack our enemies.”
Intelligence sources in Washington suggest that Iran will try to respond by possibly blowing up an Israeli Embassy or other building, or even by assassinating an Israeli official, but they will more likely do something indirectly through a proxy like Hezbollah or the Houthis. They could also send a more subtle message by accelerating their nuclear program, though there is a danger that that would definitely bring the US into the game, which is precisely what Israel would like to see. They want to cripple Iran but would much prefer that all the heavy lifting – and the casualties and costs – be endured by Washington. If a US intervention were to occur and there were a misstep, it could easily escalate into a regional war with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran all lined up against the US and Israel with China and Russia likely to be playing a supporting role aiding the Arabs and Iranians. And don’t forget that Israel is nuclear armed. If it gets in trouble it would see itself as a victim and would be tempted to do something very dangerous.
So it is easy to see that Israel has staged a deliberate provocation to draw Washington into its wars. It is playing with fire in an attempt to once and for all establish its dominance over all of its neighbors. Interestingly, the tone deaf Biden Administration appears to be falling into the trap set by the Israelis. Beyond the “ironclad” pledge, it also voted against a Russian and Chinese drafted UN Security Council resolution to condemn the Israeli attack on the Iranian Consulate General. The vote should have been a no brainer given the clear violation of international law and act of war committed by Israel in doing what it did, but the US was joined by Britain and France in casting the veto vote “no” reportedly after “Diplomats said the US told council colleagues that many of the facts of what happened on Monday in Damascus remained unclear.” It all means that Biden is stepping in it yet again in a situation where Netanyahu is in control and running circles around him.
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 councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
By Kit Klarenberg | Mint Press News | January 28, 2025
Ever since Tel Aviv’s 1948 creation, much has been said and written about ‘Greater Israel’ – the notion Zionism’s ultimate end goal is the forcible annexation and ethnic cleansing of vast swaths of Arab and Muslim lands for Jewish settlement, based on Biblical claims this territory was promised to Jews by God. The mainstream media typically dismisses this concept as antisemitic conspiracy theory, or at most the fringe fantasy of a minuscule handful of extremist Israelis.
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