Does anyone in Israel in a position of power truly understand what the expressions “human rights” and “rule of law” really mean? Developments over the past ten months in Gaza would suggest “No,” that Israel’s government, its legal system, and its constitution exist solely to empower the state to do whatever it wishes, which in the current version includes the genocidal elimination of the Palestinian people and the theft of their land and property to be incorporated into a Greater Israel that plausibly will include the already annexed Syrian Golan Heights as well as all of historic Palestine running from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
But even given the fundamental dishonesty over the Jewish state and what it represents, there is something truly frightening about some recent developments which suggest that the long running United States government pander to Israel and its presumed interests have poisoned the chalice, making Americans absolutely complicit in the Israeli war crimes and other assorted crimes against humanity. And the level of control over Washington by Israel virtually guarantees that it will only get worse.
I am, of course, referring to the recent state visit of the world’s leading war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, where he was worshipped by both Congress and the White House alike together with considerable fawning from the heavily Jewish-influenced media. Netanyahu, to put it succinctly, spoke for an hour in his address to the US Congress, emitting lie after lie. And the Congress critters responded with an outburst of love combined with total subservience, delivering 53 standing ovations, close to one per minute. The most exuberant ovation occurred when Netanyahu denounced the 50,000 or so demonstrators who surrounded the Capitol building to express their disgust at the Jewish mass murderer’s presence. Bibi called the protesters, some of whom were pepper-sprayed and arrested by a heavy police presence including 360 imported New York City Policemen fresh from their beatings of protesters at Columbia University, “useful idiots paid for by Iran.” That particular lie produced paroxysms of celebration among the leaping and waving Congressmen. Given that performance, does anyone need any confirmation that free speech seems to be off the agenda when it comes to Israel and the clowns who nominally represent the American people in Washington, who once upon time swore an oath to support the Constitution, but now consider speaking ill of the Jewish state to be a “hate crime.” Indeed, bills have been introduced in Congress to that effect.
It is interesting to go through his speech to determine what Netanyahu was trying to accomplish and what lies he thought he could get away with. Actually, he did nothing but lie while blaming most of his neighbors, particularly Iran, for the turmoil that Israel has caused in the Middle East for the past 75 years. And predictably, much of the coverage of the Netanyahu appearance in the mainstream media on the following day was toothless and even laudatory. It generally reflected what was hailed as Bibi’s “fiery speech” that “did not give an inch” which vowed to continue fighting until “total victory” is achieved. “It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.” Ironically, Netanyahu was right about the clash of civilization though he was wrong about who represented which side: Israel backed completely by the US is pure evil. And the Netanyahu visit should be seen as a call to arms. The Jewish state is struggling economically and militarily in its war of extermination in Gaza and it knows it is not in any shape to take on Hezbollah and Iran, so it has decided to let the United States do the heavy lifting. Reading between the lines on what occurred in meetings with the two presidential aspirants as well as with a non-compos-mentis Joe Biden, it is clear that Netanyahu expects American boys and girls to do his fighting for him as well as covering the costs.
American complicity in the genocide in Gaza as well as in two possible wars in Lebanon and Iran due to the Israeli embrace is a tragedy for all parties involved, but the damage being done to future generations of American citizens cannot be remedied. Our country has done many bad things, but this whole hearted alliance with unmitigated evil is a betrayal of the birthright of every American.
So how low can you go, but the tale of Netanyahu visits Congress was soon joined by another truly awful story that demonstrates that there is no bottom to the evil in the minds and hearts of Israel’s leaders as well as among a large majority of the Israeli people, which Mondoweiss calls a “genocide from above and below.” Few Americans are aware of the atrocities that occur by virtue of what the Israelis choose to call their legal system. There is a body of law that is applicable to protect Jews and their interests, but where those interests collide with those of the native Palestinians, be they Christian or Muslim, only one outcome is acceptable even when something comparable to a legal procedure takes place. This has enabled the horrible settlement movement with something like 800,000 Jewish settlers having stolen Palestinian land and other property and has meant that Palestinians who were driven from their homes by force when Israel was founded have no ability to return to their own homes. At its most extreme, severely injuring or even killing a Palestinian, which occurs regularly, often at the hands of the heavily armed settlers, is a crime that is almost never prosecuted. To cite only one recent example, Palestinian-America journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was wearing a clearly visible journalist vest was shot and killed by an Israeli army sniper in May 2022. In spite of repeated demands that her murder be fully investigated, no one was ever identified or punished for the killing. Israel has also killed 20 other journalists in the past several years with no one being punished. Often Israeli soldiers stand by and watch crimes involving Jewish perpetrators, never interceding to help the Arab victim. If the Palestinians resist they are immediately labeled as “terrorists” and have no rights of self-defense against the occupiers, be they army or nominally civilians.
A story that appeared a week after the Netanyahu visit illustrates perfectly the two-tiered justice in Israel and the occupied territories. There are currently nearly 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, the number having increased sharply since the war against Gaza began. Many are Gazans, but an increasing number are from the West Bank, which is also being targeted for “settlement” and eventual annexation. Many are held under what is referred to as “preventive detention,” in which they are not charged with a crime, do not appear in any court, and are held at the will of the Israeli army or police. In jail, they are frequently tortured and starved. If they are ever released, they show the signs of the torture and Israeli human rights groups, among other witnesses, have provided substantial evidence of what is taking place behind closed doors. Israel soldiers are, for their part, not shy about what they do to Palestinians, posting photos and videos online of dead Palestinians, torture in detention areas, and the gleeful destruction of Gazan homes and property.
The story is as follows: There are a number of detention centers run by the Israeli Army that are generally used to torture Palestinians prisoners, not in the old fashioned “intelligence” role to obtain “information,” but just for the entertainment of the soldiers who are the jailers. Sde Teiman, one such center in the southern Negev desert region, recently made the news due to a particularly outrageous bit of torture engaged in by ten of the soldiers in charge of the prisoners. Conditions in Sde Taiman reportedly included “Electric shocks, amputations due to bad conditions, severe beatings, surgery without anesthesia, playing loud music until inmates’ ears bleed, deaths due to bad sanitary conditions, systematic torture and sexual abuse.”
A Palestinian from Gaza was reported serially sodomized and otherwise raped at the detention site using various implements even including a cell phone which was inserted in the man’s rectum and turned on for the amusement of the Israeli soldiers. The victim also had a wooden stick inserted in similar fashion and it was believed that he was only one of a number of other prisoners who were treated in that same way, which appears to be systemic throughout the detention facilities run by the army. The activity was only exposed when the victim began bleeding heavily both internally and externally and was unable to walk with a “serious wound in his rectum area”, which may have occurred if or when the phone was removed from inside of him and he was taken to a hospital where what had taken place was revealed. The army, somewhat uncharacteristically, sent some military policemen to the center to detain the soldiers for questioning but the suspects fought back using pepper spray and building barriers. When nine of the men (one went AWOL) were eventually taken to a nearby military base at Beit Lid, the MPs were confronted almost immediately by an angry crowd of civilians, consisting largely of settlers and ultra-nationalists, led by several Likud party parliamentarians who demanded that the soldiers be set free. Something like a melee ensued. The unruly crowd chanted its support for torture and even called for the summary execution of the Palestinian prisoners, which has been an “option” supported by some in the Netanyahu government.
The rioters were so aggressive that they actually broke into the Israeli military base and there was considerable support for their actions even coming from Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who said he was “shocked” to see IDF troops being detained for questioning “in a way that is suitable for arresting dangerous criminals.” He added that the soldiers were doing a “holy job” at the base. Far-right Knesset member Simcha Rotman called the troops “heroes,” instead attacking Israel’s “justice and enforcement systems” for detaining them.
Typically, later in the day, when asked by the press about the rape accusations, US State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel refused to say whether gang raping and torturing Palestinian prisoners would be considered a war crime, even if conclusively demonstrated by witnesses and other evidence. Patel explained “So the reports of abuse are deeply concerning, and we have been clear and consistent with Israel and the IDF that they need to treat all detainees humanely and with dignity in accordance with humanitarian law.” He said that the US was going to let “due process” play out in this case. The western media that is bothering to cover the story are refusing to even use the word “rape” or “sodomy” in reference to the allegations, with the BBC describing how the soldiers are accused of “severely mistreating a Palestinian prisoner” while the New York Times prefers to call it “suspected abuse”.
At the heart of the discussion is the fact that Israel’s Knesset uniquely has a proposed law that was first formulated in 2022 by current National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir which would give automatic immunity to any soldier or policeman who kills or seriously injures any Palestinian. The immunity does not apply if the victim is a Jew. The law still has not passed through parliament, but many conservatives in Israel believe it is the guideline used by the military and judiciary de facto. Ben-Gvir has, in fact, denounced the questioning of the nine men as “shameful,” adding that the Israeli security establishment should support the soldiers and “learn from the prison service: light treatment of terrorists is over. Soldiers need to have our full support.” Ben-Gvir is also supporting a separate bill that would authorize the systematic execution of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. It also does not apply to Jews. In a video statement, Ben-Gvir said that Israel should be able to kill Palestinian prisoners with a “shot to the head.” He also recommended that Palestinian prisoners be given just enough food to keep them alive until the execution law comes into effect.
So, when it comes to human rights Israel lives in another parallel universe where there is one set of rules for Jews and other for gentiles. Perhaps the easily visible brutality evident in the recent Netanyahu speech to Congress coupled with stories like that out of Sde Teiman and the daily horror inflicted on the Gazans will bring about some kind of wake-up for the American public, which has been heavily propagandized and continues to believe in the myth of the perpetual victimhood of the Jewish people. The real victims of the “miracle of Israel” are those in western countries that the Jewish diaspora continues to buy and manipulate as well as the poor Palestinians who are forced to live under a form of daily repression and humiliation that is almost unimaginable.
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.
Germany’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was based on political objectives, and the government implemented countermeasures that often contradicted scientific evidence and the opinion of the government’s own scientists, according to documents leaked by a former employee of Germany’s public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
An unnamed whistleblower released the “RKI Files” to investigative journalist Aya Velázquez, who on July 23 published the unredacted files — totaling 3,865 pages — in their entirety on Substack.
The RKI is Germany’s equivalent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S.
According to the German newspaper Schwäbische Zeitung, the RKI Files “contain explosive details” about “child vaccinations and ‘resistance from the population,’” and show “that the RKI took a much more differentiated view of Corona policy than those responsible for politics and most of the media led the population to believe.”
“A whistleblower, a former employee of the RKI, approached me and passed on the data set to me” for reasons of “conscience,” Velázquez wrote on Substack.
Other revelations include evidence of policymakers targeting and “nudging” children, and knowledge by policymakers and scientists that the COVID-19 vaccines were ineffective and led to severe adverse events.
Despite this knowledge — and for political reasons — government officials pursued measures rewarding the vaccinated and punishing the unvaccinated.
The RKI Files also reveal that policymakers and scientists sought to publicly ignore evidence of a “flattening curve” early in the pandemic, and evidence that masks and mass testing would not be useful in preventing infection.
Although some have questioned the legitimacy of documents contained within the RKI Files, the Robert Koch Institute, in an announcement carried by German news program Tagesschau addressing the publication of unredacted documents, did not confirm or deny the legitimacy of the documents themselves or their contents:
“The Robert Koch Institute has criticized the publication of unredacted minutes of the RKI crisis team on the COVID pandemic. The RKI expressly condemns the unlawful publication of personal data and trade and business secrets of third parties in these data sets and, in particular, any infringement of third-party rights.”
Other German mainstream news media outlets, including the mass-circulation Bild and Zeit newspapers, also reported on the release of the files.
‘Clear evidence that the general public was deliberately deceived’
Widespread “vaccination of children” and policies barring the unvaccinated from many public spaces — for which the RKI “provided supposedly scientific legitimacy” — weren’t based on “rational, scientific considerations” but on “political decisions,” Velázquez wrote.
Stefan Homburg, Ph.D., professor of public finance at the University of Hannover in Germany, was part of a team that worked with the whistleblower to release the unredacted RKI Files. He told The Defender the documents show decisions were made “exclusively by politicians” and that “RKI did not support these measures.”
“We have now clear evidence that the general public was deliberately deceived,” Dutch lawyer Meike Terhorst told The Defender. “Politicians made the decisions, not health authorities.”
Dr. Christof Plothe, a member of the World Council for Health steering committee, told The Defender the files “show that it was never science that initiated ineffective and harmful masking, traumatizing social distancing and lockdowns, or that introduced a novel gene therapy labeled a ‘vaccine’ … It was politicians that demanded the measures.”
Germany’s pandemic-era Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach figures prominently in the documents. Plothe said Lauterbach has “never worked with patients and is a pure lobbyist of Pharma.”
German toxicologist Helmut Sterz, previously a researcher for major pharmaceutical companies — including Pfizer — told The Defender the documents show that pandemic decisions “were made by those who are responsible for the creation of this ‘pandemic’” and that “Real experts ‘disappeared’ from the public debate.”
Germany enacted among the strictest set of COVID-19 restrictions in Europe, according to the Oxford University COVID-19 Government Response Tracker.
“The measures that the German people were subjected to, besides mask mandates and social distancing rules, [include] a ‘lockdown of the unvaccinated’ that banned people from [public places] … Compulsory vaccination was imposed on military members and all people working in the health sector,” Plothe said.
Documents reveal EU discussions to ‘skip the Phase 3 trials’ for Pfizer shot
“Normally, you plan 12-18 months from the start of Phase I. EMA and Pfizer are considering whether to skip Phase III trials and go straight into broad use. If the regulators decide that, then it can go faster than 12-18 months,” the document says.
Minutes from an April 27, 2020, RKI meeting state, “There will be several vaccines that have been developed and tested in a fast-track process. Relevant data will only be collected post-marketing.”
According to German medical magazine Aertzeblatt, RKI documents from January and February 2021, after the first COVID-19 vaccines were introduced and administered, reveal discussions questioning the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, stating it was “less perfect” and its “Ecology needs to be discussed.”
A Jan. 29, 2021 document (page 135), for instance, states that “STIKO [RKI’s Standing Committee on Vaccination] recommends vaccine only for <65-year-olds, as there is a lack of evidence for >65-year-olds, very wide confidence intervals, too uncertain, as two highly effective RNA vaccines are available.”
According to German magazine Tichys Einblick, the documents show that as early as the beginning of 2021,” the RKI knew about serious side effects of vaccinations, for example from AstraZeneca. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, practically all important top politicians were publicly vaccinated with precisely this shot.”
These admissions came despite public rhetoric at the time stating that the shots would protect against both the spread of and infection from COVID-19.
Problems post-vaccination soon began to pop up in the RKI documents. A Feb. 8, 2021, document references a political furor in Germany after 14 fully vaccinated residents of a nursing home tested positive for COVID-19. The same document admitted that vaccination does not prevent less severe cases of the virus.
RKI documents from March 12 and March 15, 2021, referenced the identification of severe adverse events following AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination in Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria, and an April 9, 2021, document discusses a high rate of thrombosis cases tied to the AstraZeneca vaccine, particularly in males.
“It is particularly bad that the RKI recognized many vaccine injuries caused by AstraZeneca, but did not warn the public,” Homburg said. “The constant political pressure is also remarkable.”
‘It must be cool to get vaccinated’
The RKI Files also revealed efforts on the part of the German government and the country’s public health authorities to specifically target children with COVID-19 restrictions — efforts that were marked by political interference:
A May 19, 2021, RKI document states, “Even if STIKO does not recommend vaccination for children, [then-Health Minister Jens] Spahn is still planning a child vaccination program.”
A May 21, 2021, document states that while pediatric associations “are reluctant to vaccinate children … Politicians are already preparing vaccination campaigns to vaccinate the relevant age groups.”
A July 14, 2021, RKI document reveals discussions of an “influencer vaccination challenge on YouTube” and “developing material for younger target groups,” which would “be approached with more humor” — even vaccine reactions and side effects. “It must be cool to get vaccinated,” the document stated.
The minutes of a Dec. 15, 2021, RKI meeting reveal that Germany’s health ministry was “considering booster vaccination of children, although there is no recommendation and in some cases no approval for this.”
Such measures were promoted despite early knowledge that children were not significantly affected by COVID-19. A Feb. 26, 2020, RKI document referred to data from China finding that 2% of cases were in children, while a Nov. 30, 2020, document suggested that school settings were unlikely to contribute to the spread of the virus significantly, but that school closures would “exacerbate” the situation.
And a Dec. 4, 2020, RKI meeting examining data from several countries concluded that school reopenings did not lead to significantly greater spread of the virus.
‘The vaccinated must receive privileges of some kind’
Despite such findings, there was political pressure to reward the vaccinated and punish the unvaccinated, according to the RKI Files.
A Nov. 5, 2021, document said that media rhetoric regarding “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” was “not correct from a scientific point of view,” because “the entire population is contributing” to new waves of infection.
Yet, authorities decided to continue blaming the unvaccinated for the spread of COVID-19, because it would serve “as an appeal to all those who have not been vaccinated to get vaccinated,” according to the document.
The document also noted that Spahn “talks of the [pandemic of the unvaccinated] at every press conference … so it can’t be corrected.” The document contains an acknowledgment, though, that “one should be very careful with the statement that vaccinations protect against any (even asymptomatic) infection” because “as the time between vaccinations increases,” infection becomes more likely.
A May 10, 2021, RKI document contained a determination that telling the truth to the public would “cause great confusion,” while maintaining existing vaccination recommendations would serve “to save [the] vaccine.”
Instead, a Jan. 7, 2022, document stated that “the vaccinated must receive privileges of some kind,” including fewer travel restrictions, and that this was an objective that the German Health Ministry desired, while calling for further “testing of the unvaccinated after entry” into the country.
Similarly, a March 10, 2021, document suggested that COVID-19 vaccination should be promoted to the public as a means “to be able to participate in social life again,” for people who were tired of “bans and restrictions.”
Yet, a Dec. 4, 2020, RKI document suggested that the vaccinated should continue to comply with “hygiene measures,” while a Dec. 30, 2020, document suggested that the vaccinated should still wear masks, “as there is still a risk of transmission.”
German authorities wished to ‘avoid drawing attention’ to flattening curve
The RKI Files further reveal that, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, there was political pressure to maintain restrictions, despite the “flattening of the curve.”
A March 25, 2020, document admitted that “the curve is slowly leveling off,” but said, “We should avoid drawing attention to this in our external communications, to encourage compliance with measures.”
A Nov. 18, 2020, document contains an admission that respiratory illnesses were “well below” the previous year’s level, with a downward trend. Similarly, a Nov. 30, 2020, document states that general respiratory illnesses were “well below previous years.” A Jan. 27, 2021, document stated that a “no-COVID” policy is not feasible.
And according to a Feb. 25, 2022, document, RKI was prevented from downgrading its overall risk assessment of COVID-19 from “very high” to “high” even after the mostly mild symptoms of the Omicron wave were evident, due to intervention from Lauterbach and the German Health Ministry.
Use of masks by general public deemed ‘problematic’ — but imposed anyway
The RKI Files also contain acknowledgments that masking and testing policies were ineffective in limiting the spread of COVID-19 but were pursued for political reasons:
A Jan. 27, 2020, document states that masking “does not make sense” for asymptomatic people, as there was no evidence that it would be a “useful preventive measure for the general population.”
An Oct. 23, 2020, document stated that FFP2 masks (similar to N95 masks) would be “misused” by the public and not offer protection, but instead might instill a false sense of security in people. “The harms of FFP2 masks may outweigh benefits,” the document states.
An Oct. 30, 2020, document says, “FFP2 masks have no added value if they are not fitted and used correctly” and are useless outside of “occupational health and safety.”
A Jan. 13, 2021, document states that FFP2 masks “can lead to health problems for people with preexisting conditions and should therefore remain an individual decision” and that “A general FFP2 mask requirement is not considered sensible.”
A Jan. 18, 2021, document found “No technical basis for recommending FFP2 masks for the population,” noting the risk of “undesirable side effects.”
Yet, by July 2, 2021, RKI documents contain suggestions, based on the American Academy of Pediatrics, for general mask wearing for children age 2 and older and that “The wearing of masks should be maintained … even at low incidences and should be understood as maintaining basic measures.”
RKI documents also questioned mass COVID-19 testing. A Feb. 3, 2020, document stated that positive PCR results after recovery “do not necessarily mean infectiousness,” while a July 29, 2020, document found that COVID-19 testing was ineffective, but a “political desire” for testing had to be “met.”
Similarly, a Dec. 16, 2020, RKI document suggested the suspension of elective procedures (planned operations), due to “pressure from the state governments.”
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran, the Palestinian group and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in separate statements today.
The Palestinian resistance movement said Haniyeh was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran.” He had been in Iran to attend the swearing in ceremony of the Islamic Republic’s new President, Masoud Pezeshkian, yesterday.
“Early this morning, the residence of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was struck, resulting in his and one of his bodyguards’ martyrdom. The cause is under investigation and will be announced soon,” the Revolutionary Guards said.
Asked about the news, the Israeli occupation army said: ‘We do not comment on these reports.’ While Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu said “Haniyeh’s death makes the world better.”
Taking to X, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote: “Yes, all your enemies will perish Israel.”
While senior Hamas leader Sami Abu Zuhri said: “This assassination by the Israeli occupation of Brother Haniyeh is a grave escalation that aims to break the will of Hamas… Hamas is a concept and an institution and not persons. Hamas will continue on this path regardless of the sacrifices and we are confident of victory.”
Born on 29 January 1962 in Al-Shati refugee camp in the besieged Gaza Strip, Haniyeh was elected head of Hamas’s political bureau in 2017.
He was appointed as the Palestinian prime minister in 2006 after Hamas won the national elections but was dismissed the following year after factional fighting broke out between the group and rival Fatah, from which President Mahmoud Abbas hails.
Haniyeh served three years in Israel detention during the First Intifada in 1989 and was later exiled in 1992 to a no-man’s land between Lebanon and Israel. He has lived between Turkiye and Qatar after leaving Gaza in 2017 and has been active in negotiations efforts to bring an end to Israel’s ongoing genocidal war in Gaza.
Why lifestyle changes (and lifestyle medicine) are often a better option than pharmaceuticals and conventional medicine when it comes to preventing, treating and managing chronic disease:
Lifestyle changes target the root cause of chronic disease. They help avoid environmental damage, pollution and chemical and plastic waste entering our ecosystems. Future generations are positively impacted by focusing on lifestyle factors.
A new randomised trial in The BMJ is being touted as proof that surgical face masks are effective at an individual level for reducing respiratory infections
Whether to wear a face mask to prevent respiratory illnesses has been one of the most divisive debates during the pandemic.
After a Cochrane review in 2023 found that face masks made “little or no difference” to the spread of respiratory viruses, the issue became highly politicised.
Tom Jefferson, lead author of the Cochrane review, told me “There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop.” The interview was picked up by media such as the New York Timesand CNN, sparking an international furore.
New York Times columnist, Zeynep Tufekci pushed back in her own column arguing that despite no high-quality data, we could still conclude from less rigorous observational studies, that masks do in fact work.
Well-known science historian and co-author of Merchants of Doubt Naomi Oreskesagreed with Tufekci, claiming the public had been “misled” by the Cochrane review because it prioritised high-quality studies and excluded less rigorous ones.
When former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was challenged about her controversial mask mandates in light of Cochrane’s findings, she lied to Congress claiming that the review had been “retracted” when it had not.
Then, in September 2023, former White House physician Anthony Fauci told CNN, “There’s no doubt that masks work.” Fauci said that while studies might show masks do not work at a population level, they do work “on an individual basis.”
Could this be true?
Well, a new study published in The BMJ is being touted as proof that face masks are effective at an individual level for reducing respiratory infections.
The study
Researchers in Norway performed a ‘pragmatic’ randomised trial in the off-peak period of “the normal influenza season” to determine if wearing a surgical face mask in public could reduce the risk of contracting a respiratory illness.
This study was sufficiently powered to detect a difference in outcomes in a real-world setting.
Over a 14-day period (between Feb-April 2023), 4647 participants were randomly assigned to either wear a surgical mask in public places (shopping centres, streets, public transport) or not to wear a surgical face mask in public places (control group).
The group wearing masks showed an absolute risk reduction of ~3 percent in “self-reported symptoms consistent with respiratory infection” (8.9% mask group; 12.2% control group, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.87; P=0.001).
The authors concluded, “Wearing a surgical face mask in public spaces over 14 days reduces the risk of self-reported symptoms consistent with a respiratory infection, compared with not wearing a surgical face mask.”
In an accompanying editorial, the authors of the study anticipated their findings would inflame an already divisive debate, and called for more “open and nuanced discussions” about face masks.
“We know exactly what to expect,” they wrote.
“Mask non-believers will describe the effect size as too small to be of interest, and they will intensively highlight any source of potential bias that might have inflated the results in the wrong direction. Of course, the mask believers will do the same but in the opposite direction.”
The authors said they would welcome “a nuanced debate around the potential biases and the interpretation” of the study findings, so here I go….
Analysis
I would argue that an absolute reduction of 3% in self-reported symptoms from people wearing masks is not a clinically meaningful result.
There are several reasons why.
First, in such a study, you obviously cannot blind the participants to one group or the other. People know they’re wearing a mask and may be less likely to report symptoms if they feel “protected.”
In fact, a pre-specified subgroup analysis showed a “beneficial effect was estimated for participants who reported that they believed face masks reduced the risk of infection,” indicating the study suffered from ‘reporting bias.’
Second, the study found wearing a mask changed people’s habits which may have accounted for the small difference between groups.
For example, people in the control group were more likely to attend cultural events than people wearing a mask (39% and 32%, respectively; P<0.001). Also, a larger percentage of people in the control group visited restaurants compared to those wearing a mask (65% and 53% respectively; P<0.001).
This is similar to the cluster-randomised trial of community-level masking carried out in Bangladesh. The study found a small effect of face masks which could be explained by changes in behaviour; 29% of people in villages wearing masks practiced physical distancing, compared to only 24% in the control (non-masking) villages. The apparent small effect of masks could therefore be due to physical distancing.
Third, masks were mandated across the world to reduce the burden of covid-19. But in this study, there was no difference in the number of self-reported or registered covid-19 infections between the control group and those wearing masks.
Fourth, the study showed people wearing a mask in public places sought healthcare for respiratory symptoms at a similar rate to people who weren’t wearing a mask, indicating that the mask was not reducing the burden on the healthcare system.
Fifth, with an intervention like surgical masks, compliance is always an issue because participants can feel uncomfortable or self-conscious wearing a face covering in public, and a small reduction in risk may not be worth it.
In this trial, only 25% of participants reported “always wearing a face mask” in public and 19% wore them less than 50% of the time. Had the trial been longer than 14-days, it’s likely that compliance would have diminished along with the small benefit.
The most reported adverse effect of wearing masks in public places was the unpleasant comments from other people.
This may also explain the difference in dropout rates. At follow-up, 21% of people assigned to wear masks did not respond to the questionnaire, compared to 13% in the control group, which again, suggests reporting bias.
Conclusion
What this study shows is that wearing a face mask in public during the flu season, might reduce the sniffles by a small percentage, but it won’t change whether you seek healthcare and might actually make you less inclined to go out and have fun.
This study does not show that community masking reduces the healthcare burden of disease associated with respiratory illnesses, which was the justification for mandating face masks during the pandemic.
I’d add that viruses are smaller than the pores in surgical or cloth masks (and masks are rarely worn properly), so it’s unlikely to be an effective public health intervention.
At the start of the pandemic before masking became political, Fauci had the right idea when he told 60 minutes, “Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.”
As shown in the 2023 Cochrane review, hand hygiene is likely to be more effective at reducing the burden of respiratory illnesses, and has no real downsides.
Have you heard of the “Sentient World Simulation”? Do you know that the Defense Department revealed two decades ago that they were working on putting together a real-time model of the earth and every person in it? And do you know that project has effectively been swept under the rug and was never mentioned again? Well, you’re about to! Get ready for this week’s fascinating look back through The Corbett Report archives.
The NSA’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. The building of the massive NSA data center in Utah to permanently store copies of all digital communication sent around the world. The UK government’s “Communications Data Bill” to monitor emails, instant messages and other personal information. What was dismissed as crazy conspiracy theory just over a decade ago has become, in this post-9/11 era, the all-too-familiar stuff of newspaper headlines and talking head reportage.
In fact, it was about a decade ago that the tactic of the intelligence agencies seemed to change. Instead of keeping their activities classified–referring to the NSA as “No Such Agency,” for example, or officially denying the existence of Echelon–the government increasingly began shoving this information in the public’s face.
GLENN GREENWALD: This was the mindset that in 2002 that led the bush administration to dredge up John Poindexter from wherever it was that he was. And he actually they worked for defense contracts and they dredged him up. And he was going to start the program that they called the “total information awareness program.” And the logo—which I actually looked at in the last couple weeks that you should go and look at, just because you won’t believe how creepy it is—has the pyramid with this huge eye hovering over it, this eye that was gonna be the all-seeing eye.
And the only problem with the total information awareness program was that they just put a name on it that was too honest about what it was. It freaked everybody out and so they had to pretend that they weren’t going to go forward with it. But of course what they did was they incrementally and in a very clear way recreated the total information awareness program under a whole variety of different legislative initiatives. And this idea that every single form of technological communication by law must be constructed to permit government backdoor interception and surveillance is an expression of what this surveillance state mindset is: that there can be no such thing as any form of privacy from the US government. That is the mindset that has led the surveillance state to be this sprawling, vast, ubiquitous and always expanding instrument that state and corporate power users employ in order to safeguard their power.
Perhaps the scariest thing about something like the Total Information Awareness Office is not merely that it was proposed in the first place, or that it incorporated such blatantly creepy Orwellian imagery to convey its true nature and purpose, but that, as we sit here 10 years later, and as the core functions of the TIA office are now being openly performed by the NSA, DHS and other governmental agencies, people are now actively making excuses for this nightmarish police state.
“If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear” has always been the rallying cry for those who are too afraid of questioning presumed governmental authority to speak out against the surveillance state and the implied assumption of guilt that goes along with it. With feigned bemusement these moral midgets inevitably ask “What’s so bad about the government spying on you, anyway?”
The answer, of course, is that the very question implies that the agencies tasked with carrying out this constant Big Brother surveillance are themselves above reproach, shining lights of moral rectitude who would never abuse this incredible power for nefarious ends. For the unimaginative out there, Hollywood yarns like “Enemy of the State” have provided fictional examples of what can go wrong if someone, somewhere, abuses this power of information and surveillance to target an innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To be sure, the power that these technologies give for agencies, or corrupt groups within those agencies, to destroy the lives of targeted individuals, is itself a fitting answer to the question of why government surveillance should be troubling to us. But beyond what can happen to specific, targeted individuals in such a scenario, however, is a much larger question: What if this data, our emails, our phone calls, our credit card transactions, our social media posts, our cell phone GPS logs, and all of the hundreds of other pieces of data that are admittedly being collected on us every day, were being fed into a database so gargantuan it contains a digital version of every single person on the planet? And what if that database were being used by the Department of Defense to war game various scenarios, from public reactions to natural disasters to the likelihood of civil unrest in the wake of a declaration of martial law?
Remarkably, this is precisely what is happening.
It is called the “Sentient World Simulation.” The program’s aim, according to its creator, is to be a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.” In practical terms that equates to a computer simulation of the planet complete with billions of “nodes” representing every person on the earth.
The project is based out of Purdue University in Indiana at the Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations Laboaratory. It is led by Alok Chaturvedi, who in addition to heading up the Purdue lab also makes the project commercially available via his private company, Simulex, Inc. which boasts an array of government clients, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, as well as private sector clients like Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin.
Chatruvedi’s ambition is to create reliable forecasts of future world events based on imagined scenarios. In order to do this, the simulations “gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence.” Although not explicitly stated, the very type of data on digital communications and transactions now being gobbled up by the NSA, DHS and other government agencies make ideal data for creating reliable models of every individuals’ habits, preferences and behaviors that could be used to fine-tune these simulations and give more reliable results. Using this data, the SEAS Laboratory and its Sentient World Simulation offshoot are able to create detailed, operable real-time simulations of at least 62 nations. “The Iraq and Afghanistan computer models,” according to a 2007 Register report on the project, “each has about five million individual nodes representing things such as hospitals, mosques, pipelines, and people.”
At the time of initial reports on the program five years ago, there were only 62 country-level simulations being run by the US Department of Defense. These simulations grouped humans into composites, with 100 individuals acting as a single node. But already at that time, the US Army had used the systems to create a one-to-one level simulation of potential Army recruits. The ultimate aim would be to archive enough data on each individual to be able to make a computer model of everyone on the planet, one that could be used to predict the behaviors and reactions of every single person in the event of various scenarios.
The program can be used to predict what would happen in the event of a large scale tsunami, for example, or how people would react during a bioterror attack. Businesses can use the models to predict how a new product would fare in the market, what kind of marketing plans would be most effective, or how best to streamline a company’s organization.
The original concept paper for the project was published in 2006 and in 2007 it was reported that both Homeland Security and the Defense Department were already using the system to simulate the American public’s reaction to various crises. In the intervening five years, however, there has been almost no coverage at all of the Sentient World Simulation or its progress in achieving a model of the earth.
There is a very good chance that these types of systems are, at least for the moment, pure quackery. Computers are only as valuable as their programming, after all, and the algorithms required to accurately predict responses in chaotic systems with multiple, dimly-understood variables is orders of magnitude beyond what is currently possible. Or is it? One of the great ironies of our time, as Glenn Greenwald goes on to point out in his speech on the surveillance state, is that although we live in a time when it is possible for nebulous government agencies to know every detail of your life, from what you ate for breakfast to where you shopped last night to who your friends are, we are also living in an age of unprecedented ignorance about what are our own governments are actually doing.
GREENWALD: [There’s] one other point that’s worth making about how this works—about how the surveillance State works and how power is exercised through it and this, I think, is probably the most pernicious part—and I refer to this as the one-way mirror. The government’s one-way mirror. At exactly the same time—this is really so remarkable to me—at exactly the same time that the government has been massively expanding its ability to know everything that we’re doing, it has simultaneously erected a wall of secrecy around it that prevents us from knowing anything that they’re doing.
This is the heart of the matter. Somehow we are expected to go along with the sophomoric sophism that “If we have nothing to hide then we have nothing to fear,” yet at the same time we are asked to believe that the government must keep all manner of information secret from the public in order to carry out its work of “protecting” that public.
If the government has nothing to hide, then why doesn’t it release the notes, memoranda and findings of the 9/11 Commission in full and unredacted?
Why doesn’t it release the records of the JFK assassination investigation instead of arguing, as it is, that those records should once again be removed from a declassification review that is to take place in 2013, 50 years after the assassination itself took place?
Why doesn’t it release the full audit trail of what banks received the emergency TARP funds and in what amounts?
Is it because, after all, the government does have something to hide from the public that are its ostensible masters? Is it because the old maxim that “Knowledge is power” is more true than we could ever know, and that the government’s one-way insistence on transparency for the citizens and opacity for itself is a reflection of the power that it holds over us?
The Sentient World Simulation is just one example of one program run by one company for various governmental and Fortune 500 clients. But it is a significant peek behind the curtain at what those who are really running our society want: complete control over every facet of our lives achieved through a complete invasion of everything that was once referred to as “privacy.” To think that this is the only such program that exists, or even that we have any significant details about the ways that the SWS has already been used, would be hopelessly naive.
So where does this leave a public that is at such a disadvantage in this information warfare? A public that is effectively told that anything and everything they do, say or buy, can and will be catalogued by the a.i. control grid even as the details of that grid are to be kept from them? Unfortunately there is no easy way back from the precipice that we were ushered toward with the creation of the national security state and the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. Perhaps we have already stepped over that precipice and there is no going back in the current political paradigm. These are things for an informed, aware, knowledgeable citizenry to decide through a societal dialogue over the nature of and importance of “privacy.”
But without a general awareness that programs like the Sentient World Simulation even exist, what hope do we have in counteracting it?
Do you use any big tech service or mainstream website? Do you like, comment or subscribe on social media. Do you browse reddit or use any major video streaming platform? Do you leave a digital data trail anywhere? Then you are most likely feeding the AI beast. So, what if you started to feed that beast poisoned data instead . . . ?
Welcome to a landmark episode of the Radically Genuine Podcast! I’m thrilled to present our first full video episode, exclusively available to our valued paid subscribers. Your support has made this exciting new format possible, allowing us to bring you an enhanced, immersive experience of our thought-provoking conversations.
In this shocking episode, I interview Professor Ian Harris, an esteemed orthopedic surgeon and author of the book “Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo”. This conversation unravels the complexities of surgical outcomes, challenging conventional wisdom and highlighting the critical need for evidence-based practice in modern medicine.
Key points explored:
1. The placebo effect in surgery: We dissect how patient expectations and non-specific effects can significantly influence surgical outcomes, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing these from the procedure’s direct physiological impacts.
2. Challenges in surgical research: We discuss the difficulties in conducting placebo-controlled surgical trials, shedding light on the methodological hurdles that complicate efforts to establish definitive evidence of surgical efficacy.
3. Surgeon bias and decision-making: The conversation explores the cognitive biases that can affect surgeons’ judgments, potentially leading to unnecessary procedures or overestimation of benefits.
4. Overuse of surgical interventions: Harris presents compelling arguments about the prevalence of surgeries that may lack solid scientific backing, advocating for a more cautious approach to surgical recommendations.
5. Non-operative alternatives: The discussion highlights the often-overlooked potential of conservative treatments, particularly emphasizing the benefits of weight loss and exercise for conditions like knee arthritis.
6. Financial incentives in healthcare: We touch on the complex interplay between economic motivations and medical decision-making, exploring how these factors can influence treatment recommendations.
7. Placebo and nocebo effects: The conversation examines how both positive (placebo) and negative (nocebo) expectations can impact patient outcomes, underscoring the power of patient beliefs in the healing process.
8. Informed consent and patient education: We stress the importance of providing patients with accurate, evidence-based information to facilitate truly informed decision-making about their care.
This episode serves as a compelling call to action for increased scientific rigor in surgical practice and a more critical evaluation of established medical interventions. It challenges listeners to reconsider their assumptions about surgical efficacy and encourages a more nuanced understanding of the factors contributing to medical outcomes.
Global childhood immunization rates stalled in 2023, leaving millions of children “vulnerable to preventable diseases,” according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.
The latest WHO-UNICEF estimates show that 14.5 million children missed all doses of “routine” DTP vaccines last year, an increase from 13.9 million in 2022. The report also laments the gaps in measles vaccinations, noting that outbreaks hit 103 countries.
Dr. Paul Thomas, a pediatrician and co-author of the upcoming book, “Vax Facts: What to Consider Before Vaccinating at All Ages & All Stages of Life,” told The Defender that the global vaccination programs continue to use the dangerous whole-cell DTP formulation instead of the less risky acellular version.
The whole-cell vaccine, which contains the entire Bordetella pertussis organism rather than just purified components, has since the 1930s resulted in widespread reports of neurological damage. It was phased out in the U.S. by 1997, but the formulation has continued to be used in low- and middle-income countries, potentially killing millions of children.
“The irony is that success, when it is measured by how well a country or region or doctor vaccinates, in reality rewards the pharmaceutical industry and all who profit from vaccine sales at the expense of the health of the individual and the community,” Thomas said.
Thomas, the author of a study comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, argued success should be measured on the overall health of the population, not on vaccination rates.
“The less we vaccinate, the healthier the population,” he said. “We need new metrics!”
The report comes as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, unveiled an ambitious $11.9 billion plan — including $9 billion in new funding — to vaccinate 500 million children by 2030, with existing and new vaccines.
Key findings from WHO-UNICEF report
The WHO-UNICEF report states that the stagnation in global vaccination rates highlights ongoing challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns about disease outbreaks, particularly measles, and the impact of climate change on vaccine-preventable diseases.
The report centers on the number of children who received three doses of the DTP vaccine — a key marker for global immunization coverage — which stalled at 84% (108 million) of children in 2023, a number the WHO nonetheless called “impressive.”
The global health agency blamed the data trends on poor access to health services during the pandemic that persists, and on fragile, conflict-ridden areas.
The increase of 600,000 “zero-dose” children was particularly concerning to the WHO in light of its Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) goals. IA2030 aims to “leave no one behind” by reducing the number of zero-dose children by 50% and with “500 vaccine introductions” of “new or under-utilized vaccines” in low- and middle-income countries by 2030.
Measles vaccination rates also remain a significant concern to the WHO. In 2023, only 83% of children worldwide received their first dose of the measles vaccine through routine health services, while just 74% received their second dose.
These figures fall short of the 95% coverage the WHO claims is needed to “prevent outbreaks, avert unnecessary disease and deaths and achieve measles elimination goals,” according to the WHO-UNICEF press release.
“Measles outbreaks are the canary in the coalmine, exposing and exploiting gaps in immunization and hitting the most vulnerable first,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Thomas disagreed with this take, stating that measles is not a threat to well-nourished, healthy children and that the focus on vaccines as a solution “is destroying the immune systems” of those who are highly vaccinated.
“The focus should be on making sure children of the world have adequate nutrition and adequate support of vitamins A, D and C,” he said.
Thomas emphasized the importance of comparing health outcomes for the vaccinated and unvaccinated. “The results will be shocking to all who are not informed,” he said.
Report notes ‘progress’ including HPV vax uptake
Despite the overall stagnation in global immunization rates, the WHO highlighted some areas of what it called “progress” and “resilience.”
The African region made notable strides in 2023, defying global trends by increasing routine immunization coverage. The number of zero-dose children in Africa fell from 7.3 million in 2022 to 6.7 million in 2023, with 1.5 million more children vaccinated with the DTP vaccine than in 2019, according to the report.
Bangladesh, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and Ukraine made notable strides in recovering post-pandemic vaccination rates, according to Dr. Katherine O’Brien, WHO director of the Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, and Dr. Ephrem T. Lemango, UNICEF’s associate director of immunization, who both spoke at a CNN news briefing.
The report also noted that global human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination coverage in girls increased from 20% in 2022 to 27% in 2023, returning to near pre-pandemic levels.
Dr. Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, said in the press release, “The HPV vaccine is one of the most impactful vaccines in Gavi’s portfolio, and it is incredibly heartening that it is now reaching more girls than ever before.”
Thomas called the HPV shot “the most dangerous vaccine on the planet other than COVID,” and argued that it “should have been removed from the market long ago.”
“The push to increase vaccine uptake is all about money,” Thomas said. “What do you think is causing the continued ‘vaccine hesitancy’?”
In its coverage of the WHO-UNICEF report, Axios noted that a new malaria vaccine began being distributed to children in the Ivory Coast. Health workers hope this will usher in a “new era” for controlling malaria in Africa.
Gavi and its ambitious plan ‘a big part of the problem’
The plan aims to vaccinate 500 million children by 2030 — which Gavi claims will avert up to 9 million deaths. Gavi is seeking $9 billion in new pledges of the $11.9 billion needed for the strategic period.
The investment plan includes the “Day Zero Financing Facility for Pandemics” designed to provide a $2.5 billion “surge financing capacity to support a rapid vaccine response during major public health emergencies.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, hosting the forum, emphasized the importance of global vaccination efforts and local production:
“This tough period has also reminded us all that every nation needed to be assured that it had the means to protect its citizens: this is what we have been calling ‘health sovereignty,’ which starts with access to the essential health products that are vaccines, which implies much more local production.”
The proposal received initial support, with $2.4 billion in new pledges announced at the launch event, including $1.58 billion from the U.S., according to the WHO press release.
Thomas said that Gavi and others involved in financing and increasing vaccine distribution are “a big part of the problem” and called for “a total paradigm shift.”
“Imagine the health and freedom and happiness that could be enjoyed worldwide if we focused on healthy nutrition, and assessed health by looking at all health outcomes when we do an intervention,” he said.
Thomas said:
“People are waking up to the truth; vaccines are destroying our health. COVID vaccines helped this awakening, but those who research the childhood vaccines will find a similar challenge. What we have been told is false.
The ICJ finding also, inevitably, means (whether the judges intend it or not) that not only Israel’s policy in these specific territories, but the Zionist project as such, is based on the irreparable injustice of violently depriving the Palestinians of their inalienable right to national self-determination. Make no mistake, this is not “merely” a blow to the crimes of Israeli occupation and annexation; it calls into question the foundations of Israel as a state, as it is built around the systematic defiance of justice, law, and elementary ethics.
However, while similarly meticulous legal assessments tend to generate complicated outcomes, that is not the case here. As has been widely acknowledged, the findings are devastating for Israel and, at least in legal terms, a clear triumph for the Palestinians and Palestine. In the words of Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns at Amnesty International, the ICJ’s “conclusion is loud and clear.”
The ICJ has recognized without qualifications that Israel’s holding of territories it seized during the Six Day War – including East Jerusalem (which Israel has officially though unlawfully annexed) and the West Bank (which it pretends to “occupy” but is, in reality, annexing) is illegal and needs to end asap.
In particular, the ICJ made it clear that all settlement must cease and that the settlers already on these territories must leave. That decision alone means that between 700,000 and 750,000 Israeli illegals should not be where they are. Not only do all of them have to leave the over 100 settlements they never had a right to establish; the Israeli state has an obligation to evacuate them. Moreover, Israel’s expropriations of land are also illegal, that is, simply put, theft. The ICJ has ordered it to return what it has stolen, that is, tens of thousands of acres.
The Israeli state is, of course, deeply implicated in the illegal acts the ICJ has ordered it to stop and even reverse. Israel’s longstanding policies of incentivizing its Jewish citizens – including de facto colonial settlers from anywhere in the world – to move into the illegally held territories and steal Palestinian land and resources is fundamentally criminal, among other reasons, because it is inconsistent with international law, particularly the humanitarian law enshrined in the Geneva Conventions.
Regarding the Gaza Strip, long a de facto concentration camp for its Palestinian inhabitants and since October 2023 the site of Israel’s ongoing genocidal massacre against them, the ICJ has clearly rejected the all-too-frequently heard Israeli argument that its forces retreated from it in 2005.
In reality, as honest legal experts have long maintained and the ICJ has now confirmed explicitly, Israel has always exerted so much stifling control over this area that it has remained an occupying power, with all the attendant obligations, whether its forces were on the ground inside the Gaza Strip or abusing its inhabitants while stationed around it.
The ICJ also clarified the issue of apartheid. As should be well known, apartheid is a recognized crime under international law (it is not merely a name for one specific criminal regime once practiced in South Africa). Under, for instance, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – not to be confused with the ICJ – the “crime of apartheid” is defined as a “crime against humanity” akin to, for instance, murder, extermination, enslavement, or torture. Also according to the Rome statute, what makes apartheid special is that it is “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”
Put simply, apartheid is, literally, one of the worst crimes a regime and the people supporting and working for it can possibly commit. In the case of Israel, unbiased experts and various human rights organizations have long argued that it is committing this crime as well. The ICJ has addressed this issue, noting arguments “that Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to segregation or apartheid, in breach of Article 3 of CERD,” that is, the “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” (also known as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ICERD).
Israel is, in sum, a state practicing the crime against humanity of apartheid, de facto annexing and settling territories it has no conceivable legal claim on, and systematically denying a whole nation, the Palestinians, their right to self-determination. The court has also finished off any pretense that Israel can justify its continuing, pervasive criminality by alleged “security” needs. Those are only some of the ICJ’s key findings. Others concern Palestinian rights to restitution, return, and reparations, for instance. For anyone even vaguely familiar with how the Israeli state operates, it is obvious that these ICJ findings have declared its core principles illegal, as they are.
Many states, at least those with enough power, break international law, some quite habitually (the US, for instance), some “only” occasionally. Israel, however, is special: By virtue of its own, freely chosen policies informed by a nationalist ideology of supremacy and colonial settlement, it has made breaking international law its reason of state: without it, it is hard to even imagine how it can continue. Note, in this respect, that its minister of defense and its prime minister are on the verge of having warrants issued against them for crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International Criminal Court, while the ICJ has already found that genocide is a plausible possibility in Gaza and, since Israel has brutally disregarded all its injunctions, will most likely confirm that finding in a final judgment in the not-too-distant future.
One thing that the ICJ findings confirm is, of course, that the Palestinians have a right to armed resistance under international law. Another thing that follows is that many things that Israel and its Western backers pretend are up for negotiation are not: Palestinians have a right to get their land back; Israel has no right to use it, in any way, not even as a bargaining chip.
A third thing also follows, but from the Israeli response: The whole Israeli political spectrum, not only Prime Minister Netanyahu and the other extremists in his cabinet, has rejected the ICJ findings. Hence, the illusion that the problem with Israel is just a few radicals in power must be buried once and for all: Unfortunately, its delusions of domination and supremacy are widespread throughout its political sphere and its society. Israel is the worst rogue state in the world, and it is also a dead end. For that, it cannot, as its elites usually do, blame external enemies or “anti-Semitism.” In reality, its own arrogance and outrageous violence against the Palestinians and its neighbors are to blame.
Of course, these ICJ findings, as many cynics will remind us, will not compel Israel to change. Indeed, as UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has pointed out, Israel’s usual response to being called out is to commit even more crimes, as if to make a point about its defiance of international law. Yet it is shortsighted to believe that the ICJ’s condemnation is irrelevant.
For one thing, the ICJ has been explicit that all other states have a duty to “co-operate with the United Nations” to bring about “an end to Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the full realization of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” In addition, the judges also reiterated, in great detail, that not only other states, but also “international organizations, specialized agencies, investment corporations and all other institutions” must not “recognize, or cooperate with or assist in any manner in, any measures undertaken by Israel to exploit the resources of the occupied territories or to effect any changes in the demographic composition or geographic character or institutional structure of those territories.”
In essence, the ICJ has put all governments on this planet on notice that they are not free to do as they please about Israel and its crimes, but that they are bound by laws to help stop them and to abstain from being accomplices. That, of course, is an aspect of the findings that should concern the many hypocrites and accomplices in the EU and the US, such as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for instance, who cannot see anything but a “comprehensive compliance with international law” when he looks at Israel. But then, that’s the same Olaf Scholz, of course, who can’t figure out who blew up his country’s gas pipelines. Likewise, the leaders of the UK, with “Labour-friend-of-Israel” and, embarrassingly, human rights lawyer Keir Starmer in the lead, and those of the US, in the process of co-perpetrating the genocide in Gaza, should feel at least some discomfort: Standing by Israel will not be cost-free much longer.
Ultimately, the single most important result of these ICJ findings has to do with the enormous role that systematic obfuscation – in plain language: lying – plays for the Israeli regime and its society. All those who have long named Israel’s systemic crimes and called for resistance to them, whether outside or inside Palestine, now have, in effect, the highest court of the world on their side. There is no more room for debate about what Israel is doing, and once that has been settled, there is no argument left for defending it. The ICJ findings won’t suddenly change the world, but when the world does change, they will have played an important role.
Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
It’s hard to keep pace with all the ways the climate cult blames naturally occurring phenomena on “climate change,” be it natural disasters, violent storms, or “record” temperatures. While the weather is not getting “more extreme” as the climatistas claim, their apocalyptic rhetoric certainly is, and it’s also getting more dishonest. The conflation of shifting sands on barrier islands with rising sea levels is another scientifically dishonest claim being made by the climate alarmists.
Back in the 1980s, the first generation of global warmists promised that a catastrophic rise in sea levels was likely to submerge the Maldives, among other coastal areas, before 2020. Not only did that never happen, but the Maldives has a greater landmass now than it did when its imminent submersion was a “scientific fact” three decades ago. So, with the oceans not cooperating in rising as prophesied by “climate scientists” 30-plus years ago, the climate hysterics and the credulous media are now blaming the naturally occurring movement of barrier islands on “climate change” and rising seas.
Whenever a beach house on a barrier island is lost to shifting sands, it is now being reported as a harbinger of the coastal doom that is being caused by our carbon sinning. Just a few weeks ago, the American media was somberly reporting about yet another house on North Carolina’s Outer Banks being lost to the rising waters of the Atlantic Ocean. From an APstory dated 5/29/2024:
Another house has collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean along North Carolina’s coast, the sixth to fall along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s beaches in the past four years, according to U.S. National Park Service officials. North Carolina’s coast is almost entirely made up of narrow, low-lying barrier islands that are increasingly vulnerable to storm surges and to being washed over from both the bay and the sea as the planet warms. As sea levels rise, these islands typically move toward the mainland, frustrating efforts to hold properties in place.
There is so much that is wrong in just those three sentences. For starters, it describes a barrier island as if it is the crown of an otherwise submerged mountain or coral atoll, and thus vulnerable to being completely submerged as the seas rise up around it. But barrier islands are nothing of the sort. They are impermanent deposits of sand, which reshape, move, merge, appear, and disappear due to tides, winds, and storms.
The movement of barrier islands is not due to rising sea levels, it is due to a naturally occurring force called “longshore drift.” Where there are man-made efforts to stabilize barrier islands with jetties and sea walls, this produces other impacts on currents that cause erosion in some waterfront areas and new sand deposits in others. Beach houses in the Outer Banks are not being lost due to rising sea levels, they are being lost due to shifting sands.
This short video shows how longshore drift moves a barrier island. Winds blow the tide in at an angle against the island, not perpendicularly, but the backflow of seawater will follow gravity, which is effectively perpendicular to the island. This has the effect of slowly moving the barrier island in the direction that the wind is “pushing” it.
From NOAA’s website, “Longshore drift may also create or destroy entire barrier islands along a shoreline. A barrier island is a long offshore deposit of sand situated parallel to the coast. As longshore drifts deposit, remove, and redeposit sand, barrier islands constantly change.”
Tucker’s Island, just north of Atlantic City, New Jersey, is an example of a once populated barrier island that completely disappeared. It did not get submerged by rising tides, rather, the island’s sands were shifted by longshore drift until the island no longer existed. The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about Tucker’s Island in 2015 titled The Mystique of New Jersey’s Atlantis.
The small, picturesque island off the southern end of Long Beach Island was once a popular seaside resort. It had a lighthouse, life saving station, two rustic hotels, 20 summer cottages, and a community meetinghouse that served as a church and school. Vacationers from Philadelphia and southern New Jersey relaxed there as long ago as the late 1860s, enjoying its peaceful solitude, cool breezes, fishing, hunting, sailing, swimming and clam bakes. But Tucker’s Island’s days were numbered. Year by year, ocean tides and storms eroded it. The hotels closed in 1910 and later collapsed and were washed away. The lighthouse fell in 1927.
This NOAA link shows a series of historical maps of the New Jersey shore dating back to 1856, showing the constantly changing shape, size, and location of Tucker’s Island, until it eventually disappeared, to ultimately be replaced by growth on the southern tip of Long Beach Island.
Near Corpus Christi, Texas, the Lydia Ann Lighthouse on the intracoastal waterway is a popular destination for fishing, birding, and kayaking. Its location as a navigational aid makes little sense when looking at current maps, but current maps do not reflect the islands and channels as they existed in 1857 when the lighthouse (then knows as the Aransas Pass Light Station) went into service.
The purpose of the lighthouse was to guide ships from the Gulf of Mexico into the Aransas Pass, which lay between San Jose Island to the north, and Mustang Island to the south. At the time, the lighthouse aligned with the channel, but over the years, longshore drift pushed the pass well to the south. The Aransas Pass between the two islands is now about one mile south of where it was when the lighthouse was erected, as both San Jose Island and Mustang Island shifted south.
Like so much else related to the phony “climate crisis,” stories of rising seas eating away at barrier islands are dishonest misrepresentations of naturally occurring events.
Buck Throckmorton is a writer (“co-blogger”) at the Ace of Spades HQ blog. His career includes many years in banking and commercial lending, as well as a stint with an American auto manufacturer. Buck’s writing often takes a critical look at electric vehicles, “green” energy, and woke capital. Twitter: @BuckThrockmort; email: buck.throckmorton@protonmail.com
1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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