An “elite” and influential group of obesity specialists over the last decade pocketed at least $25.8 million in payments from Novo Nordisk, maker of weight loss drugs Wegovy and Saxenda, in exchange for promoting the drugs in their lectures, treatment guidelines, clinics and medical societies, according to an investigation by Reuters.
“Those payments are part of a campaign to convince U.S. doctors to make Wegovy one of the most widely prescribed drugs in history — and to persuade skeptical insurers to pay for it,” according to the report.
Wegovy and Saxenda have rapidly transformed the treatment of obesity in the U.S., with a boom in prescriptions so big in 2023 that JP Morgan doubled its 10-year sales projection, predicting sales of $71 million for the drugs by 2032.
‘They have pushed for urgent prescribing of Wegovy’
Reuters examined data from the federal Open Payments database, which reports payments made by pharmaceutical companies to doctors, other medical professionals and teaching hospitals for consulting, speaking, research, travel or meals. It analyzed payments for speaking, consulting, food and travel for two of Novo’s obesity drugs, Wegovy and Saxenda.
The analysis also excluded payment for research.
Overall, Reuters found at least 57 U.S. physicians each accepted a minimum of $100,000 from Novo in payments related to the two drugs over 10 years. It also found Novo made other large payments to some of those same doctors, but the payments were not classified as related to a particular drug and were not counted in the $25.8 million total.
Of that group, 41 of the physicians run weight-management clinics, work at academic hospitals, write obesity-treatment guidelines or hold top positions at medical societies.
Collectively, the report said:
“[They] have pushed for urgent prescribing of Wegovy and similar medicines to a large proportion of patients with obesity and for comprehensive coverage by government and private insurers. The company and some of its paid experts have called denying coverage tantamount to discrimination against people with obesity, rooted in the faulty notion that they are to blame for their condition.”
Reuters also analyzed Novo’s spending among experts involved in writing five prominent sets of obesity-treatment guidelines for doctors. Among the 109 guideline writers and editors, 53 had accepted payments from companies selling or developing obesity drugs — $8 million of the total $12.4 million of those payments were from Novo.
In a statement provided to Reuters, Novo said, “Responsible engagement between pharmaceutical companies and the medical community is good for patients and advances care and science.”
Since the Affordable Care Act created the Open Payments system over a decade ago, it has been easier to expose the kinds of financial conflicts of interest identified in the report.
However, the increased transparency hasn’t stemmed the flow of industry money, Reuters found. “Companies’ annual payments have surged from $6.5 billion in 2014, the first full year data were collected, to $12.6 billion last year,” the report stated.
Dr. Arthur Kellermann, a health administrator and former dean of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, the U.S. military’s medical school, told Reuters the investigation sheds light on a long-standing problem in the drug industry.
He called the payments “morally and ethically way over the line,” adding:
“The pharmaceutical industry still sees value in paying medical thought leaders to promote their products, and too many of them are happy to sign up for a six- or seven-figure check …
”As sales grow, Medicare and the insurance industry come under intense pressure to pay for these hugely expensive drugs … The end result is that everybody’s healthcare costs go up.”
Another recent report by investigative journalist Lee Fang similarly found a wide network of celebrities, physicians, patient advocacy groups, public health experts, academics, and community leaders have appeared in dozens of media outlets to tout the drugs without disclosing their financial ties to Novo Nordisk.
Which doctors take money from Novo Nordisk?
The report profiled several key physicians taking money from Novo.
For example, Novo paid Lee Kaplan, M.D., Ph.D., chief of obesity medicine at Dartmouth’s medical school, former head of Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, $1.4 million for consulting work and travel related to the two drugs between 2013 and 2022.
It also paid him another $976,019 million during that same period for unspecified reasons.
Kaplan, who teaches a popular obesity course taken by physicians seeking certification in obesity medicine or continuing education credits — for which Novo contributed $10,000 this year — dismissed the idea that he is a mouthpiece for the drugmaker. He told Reuters he accepts money from numerous companies and “that he’s not beholden to any one drugmaker.”
Ryan was instrumental in persuading the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to cover Wegovy and similar drugs for millions of federal workers, an agency official told Reuters.
In the process, she connected government officials with two key groups: the Obesity Action Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group, and the STOP Obesity Alliance at George Washington University. Both have ties to drugmakers.
Novo is the Obesity Action Coalition’s top corporate donor, paying it more than $500,000 annually.
STOP medical director Dr. Scott Kahan, who will assist in writing The Obesity Society’s new “standards-of-care” guidelines that primary-care doctors commonly use as a quick-reference guide, has accepted more than $300,000 from Novo.
Dr. Jamy Ard, of Wake Forest University, the incoming president of The Obesity Society who will oversee the guideline writing, has taken over $200,000 from Novo.
Ryan told Reuters she had no qualms about taking such payments, “Being a purist isn’t helping anyone,” she told Reuters.
The report also quoted Ryan speaking to a group of doctors at a conference, where she argued that these blockbuster drugs have been positive for both patients and investors. “There is nothing wrong with money,” Ryan said.
She and obesity specialist Dr. Ken Fujioka, director of the Scripps Clinic Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center in San Diego, have taken 130 Novo-paid trips over the past decade, traveling to make speeches and do consulting.
They said the travel allows them to provide medical advice that is valuable to patients, physicians and the manufacturer.
But other doctors disagreed. Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center who studies pharmaceutical marketing practices, told Reuters :
“These highly paid doctors end up drowning out the voices of people who aren’t being flown around to every medical meeting. As a result, there’s not a lot of resistance to the prevailing industry-funded view.”
‘Serious and under-discussed risks for pregnant women’
This was followed, in June 2021, by the licensing of Wegovy, and less than a year later of Ozempic, which is indicated for Type 2 diabetes, but contains the same active ingredient, semaglutide, as Wegovy, and is prescribed off-label for weight loss.
Semaglutide drugs are taken as a once-weekly injection, which is considered a benefit compared to a once-daily jab. Liraglutide is a daily shot. Semaglutide is also available as a once-daily pill under the brand name Rybelsus, another Novo drug.
These drugs mimic the GLP-1 hormone, which assists patients in losing weight by regulating their appetite.
In November 2023, the FDA approved Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, another injectable diabetes drug, for weight loss. The active ingredient in Zepbound, tirzepatide, sets this drug apart from Wegovy and Ozempic but it works similarly through a weekly injection.
Tirzepatide is sold by Eli Lilly as a diabetes drug under the trade name Mounjaro.
These approvals were accompanied by what Fang called a Novo Nordisk-driven “aggressive campaign to persuade Americans of the merits of semaglutide.”
According to a KFF Health poll, 45% of adults would take a “safe and effective prescription weight loss drug,” including 59% of those trying to lose weight.
Enthusiasm fell to just 23%, however, when they learned that treatment involved a routine injection, to 16% if either insurance did not cover the high monthly cost or if the drug was not specifically approved for weight loss.
The surging popularity of the medication led to shortages and made Novo Nordisk one of the most valuable global pharmaceutical companies, behind Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly.
The shortages raised concerns because the drugs are not made for short-term use. Studies show that when people stop taking them, they regain much of the weight they lost, or potentially gain even more weight. Most people who start taking the drugs and want the effects to last will have to stay on them long-term.
But recent pharmacy claims data shows that most people who start taking Wegovy stop taking it within a year, some because of side effects and some because of the high cost of the drugs.
In addition to suicidal ideation and thoughts of self-harm, pancreatic cancer and gastrointestinal disorders, other adverse effects linked to semaglutide are also becoming apparent. A study using data from EudraVigilance, also found metabolic, nutritional, eye, renal, urinary and cardiac disorders were also reported.
Despite the high drug cost and the associated risks, there is an ongoing debate about whether insurance companies and Medicare should cover the cost of weight loss drugs, which would increase profits exponentially.
Reuters reported that Wegovy’s U.S. prescribing label recommends the drug for anyone with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, the threshold for obesity and for people with a 27 BMI who also have a weight-related medical condition.
That would cover about 46% of American adults — about 120 million people, according to the report.
A study published in March in the NEJM estimated that if Medicare were compelled to cover Wegovy, with an estimated 23% discount, it would cost $27 billion to treat just 10% of patients with obesity enrolled in Medicare. That would equal nearly a fifth of the yearly spending for Medicare’s program covering prescription drugs.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
Austrian Doctor Cornelia Tschanett’s U-Turn on the vaccinations:
“We have carried out around 3,000 to 4,000 vaccinations in my practice. And as few side effects as we saw at the beginning. This slowly became more the case over the course of the year.
You may not notice the first cases that much or dismiss it as an isolated case. Possibly also as a psychological overreaction. Towards the end of the year this increased. Then more and more people came with supposed complaints after the vaccination. And then you question your own perception a bit. And it was also difficult to discuss it.
We will then have it in the course of autumn 2021. There are also groups founded by doctors who also vaccinate. And then you realize they perceive the same thing in their patient clientele. People report the same complaints such as cardiac arrhythmias, insane fatigue, persistent muscle pain, nerve inflammation. This then slowly became reproducible. And then of course you also try to look for scientific discourse. And that was shocking to me that that wasn’t possible. That was dismissed.
It was actually an absolutely dogmatic and certain and rock-solid statement, this is not from the vaccination. And the more patients came, the greater the inner conflict became for me and for many doctors, who actually want the best for their patients.
An impressive, the first case, was a 16-year-old boy, who arrived at us 48 hours after the second dose with nausea and chest pressure. I took an EKG and the EKG was impressively changed. So not normal for a 16 year old.
We then sent him to the hospital. A massive myocarditis of the heart was diagnosed there. Thank God he got well again. But that was the moment where I really stopped. Because people come at the same time, mothers with their children, young people, and they have literally said the sentence very often, “I don’t know what’s right, I put my life in her hands.” And this power of trust induces an enormous responsibility for me personally, to be honest. It makes no difference whether you have seen this case once or ten times. The risk exists, the connection is vacant. Until proven otherwise, we actually have to educate people about what we see and what experiences we have. A person has this right if he or she decides to undergo physical intervention, who is so small decides.
That was an inner conflict for me, because the social pressure to vaccinate as many people as possible and to vaccinate all age groups was very great. And on the other hand, personal experience as a doctor has increased, that this is not possible without side effects. That was the moment when I thought to myself, I can’t continue to vaccinate here, I have to stick to the truth, I have to live up to this trust.
We must have had 300-400 people, who have come to us with the feeling that they have had problems since the vaccination. I have about 60-80 EKGs, the ones on previously young, healthy people had clear changes or rhythm disturbances have shown.
Empirical data demonstrates that, although US warmongering may fatten the pockets of military contractors, the consequences for citizens around the world have been dire.
Former Congressman Ron Paul was met with a decidedly mixed reaction in 2007 when, during the height of the so-called “War on Terror,” he lambasted the pernicious influence of US-backed militarism around the globe.
But since then his analysis has gone mainstream, and now a new study from Brown University provides empirical backing for the claim the US war machine is making Americans – and the world – less safe.
“There are more militant groups than there were when we started the so-called ‘War on Terror’ in 2001,” said Stephanie Savell, a senior researcher with the university’s Costs of War project. “There are more recruits to those groups, there’s a ton of blowback to all of this military action around the world,” she added.
“And we’re seeing in Iraq and Syria right now that the US presence in these places in the name of counterterrorism actually… makes it more likely that [US troops] engage in aggressive actions abroad,” the researcher emphasized.
In other words, war and violence only beget more war and violence.
The United States military currently has a “footprint” in 78 countries according to Savell’s research, a full 40% of the world’s nations. Her study also pinpoints 800 US military bases around the globe (controversy over what constitutes a “base” provides some uncertainty to this count – some have placed the number of military installations at over 900).
Meanwhile, US and allied troops have been attacked some 82 times in Iraq and Syria since October 17 as American support for Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza has fueled rage throughout the Arab world.
Savell’s research has also found that at least 4.5 million deaths have occurred as a direct or indirect result of US-led wars since September 11, 2001.
“We’ve gotten extremely far in the direction of using the military as the primary tool of US foreign policy,” said Savell. “And arguably, that’s not keeping Americans or anyone else in the world any safer.”
“A lot of times what’s happening is that the US is providing funding, weapons and training for regimes that are very far from democratic. They’re using those tools to crack down on political dissidents and political opponents. And it’s really creating and fueling a cycle of blowback in which those targeted groups are then joining militant movements,” the researcher stressed.
Contrary to America’s oft-stated goal of promoting democracy and “freedom,” another study demonstrated the United States militarily backs 73% of countries deemed “dictatorships” throughout the world. US belligerence has damaged the country’s global reputation in recent years, especially in the Middle East, where Russian President Vladimir Putin has forged diplomatic relations on the principles of sovereignty and mutual respect.
Recently the late Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” went viral on the TikTok platform. The missive cast opposition to the United States throughout the Arab world as a function of resistance to the country’s militarism, contradicting the oft-repeated “they hate us for our freedom” mantra of the post-9/11 era.
US lawmakers responded by renewing calls for the banning of the TikTok platform, and British newspaper The Guardian removed the letter from their website lest Americans be encouraged to further engage in wrongthink.
The announcement on Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will seek reelection for a fifth term in office came as no surprise. That he chose the occasion of a Kremlin ceremony conferring the Hero of Russia medals to servicemen who had taken part in Russia’s military operation against Ukraine to make the announcement is striking.
Putin was found responding to an exhortation by the Hero of the Donetsk People’s Republic Artyom Zhoga, commander of the famous Sparta Battalion (who succeeded his son Vladimir, who died at the age of 28 in 2022 and was posthumously awarded the title “Hero of Russia”) that the entire Donbass would like him to participate in the election. There is no question that Col. Zhoga voiced a collective wish of the Russian people.
The Ukraine war has turned out to be a defining event in Putin’s political life. There was some misjudgement initially when the special military operation commenced in late February 2022 that it would be a short-lived affair and President Vladimir Zelensky would take up the Russian offer to negotiate. But where Moscow went horribly wrong was that the US wouldn’t get into a proxy war with them with such gusto and manipulate Zelensky from seeking peace.(See an excellent account, in English, of the US’ sabotage of the Istanbul Agreement, titled Peace for Ukraine authored by a distinguished German troika of a diplomat, an historian and a general.)
Indeed, Putin eventually steered the tentative special military operation out of the woods by making a tactical withdrawal of troops in the northern sectors, allowing a large mobilisation of troops to pursue a war of attrition and ordering an effective multilevel fortification of the frontline. In retrospect, his military decisions turned the tide of war and Russian weaponry and military technology outclassed what the US and NATO supplied to Kiev.
As of now, Russian forces are pressing ahead all across the 900-km frontline and the momentum might carry them far, even across the Dnieper. Crimea and the Black Sea are not in any serious danger; the four new territories are resource-rich and Russia controls all the ports in the strategic Sea of Azov, which is an important access route for Central Asia from the Caspian Sea via the Volga-Don Canal.
However, although the US failed to achieve a military victory in Ukraine, the Biden Administration will try to prolong the conflict for as long as possible through 2024 hoping to bleed Russia in a gruelling struggle as in Afghanistan in the eighties. But it is a vain hope.
Sergey Naryshkin, chief of Russia’s foreign intelligence service wrote last week in the agency’s journal Razvedchik (The Intelligence Operative) that “there is a high probability that further support for the Kiev junta, especially given the increasing ‘toxicity’ of the Ukrainian theme for transatlantic unity and Western society as a whole, will accelerate the decline of the international authority of the West.
“Ukraine itself will turn into a ‘black hole’ absorbing material and human resources the further it goes,” he continued. “In the end, the US risks creating ‘another Vietnam,’ which every new US administration will have to deal with until some sensible person who has the courage and determination to break this vicious circle takes over in Washington.”
Ukraine will remain a priority issue for Russia and that is one main reason why the Russian elite and the nation at large want Putin to remain in power until 2030. The heart of the matter is that Putin also brilliantly tweaked the economic and social policies to sequester the lives of ordinary Russians from the usual deprivations characteristic of a ‘war economy’. Life moves on, and the ‘new normalcy’ is working well.
Putin has scattered the US’ goal to entrap Russia in an apparent quagmire — sending the Russian economy into a tailspin and stoking social discontent and creating conditions for an insurrection against the regime — to weaken Russia and remove it from the global stage as an increasingly effective counterpoint to the western hegemony by fuelling fissiparous tendencies to threaten the unity and integrity of the Russian Federation.
In reality, Putin’s achievements are a work in progress and his continuance in power remains a pre-requisite for Russia’s re-emergence as a ‘superpower’ surpassing even the Soviet Union in some ways in circumstances that are as much challenging as offering opportunities that must be creatively seized in a volatile world environment in historic transition.
Putin tested the waters and has put Russia on the right side of history, so to speak, which presents a study in contrast with the disarray and lack of conviction and mediocre leadership in the US and the transatlantic system as a whole.
If the above-mentioned essay by Naryshkin (entitled 2024 Is the Year Of the Geopolitical Awakening ) is taken as benchmark, the world in transition can be expected to have a trajectory on the following lines:
A fundamental conflict between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ world, which has been maturing below the surface through the three decades since the end of the cold war, has “moved into an open phase” with the commencement of Russia’s special military operation and has “acquired a geographically all-encompassing character” in the last year.
An increasing number of countries that “share the ideas of multipolarity and adhere to a traditional worldview” are pushing back the West’s globalist and anti-humanistic agenda.
Consequently, the risks of instability are multiplying, which lead to “an increase in the chaotic nature of the processes taking place in the foreign policy arena.” The emergent situation demands “remarkable restraint and foresight” from world leaders.
In sum, the current situation is “increasingly reminiscent of a class revolutionary situation, when the ‘upper classes’ in the face of the weakening United States can no longer provide their own leadership, and the ‘lower classes’, as the Anglo-Saxon elite refer to all other countries, no longer want to obey Western dictates.”
In order to preserve their global hegemony, the Euro-Atlantic elite will follow the well-trodden path of creating controlled chaos — de-stabilising the situation in key regions by pitting some ‘recalcitrant’ states against others and “forming a sub-system around them as operational and tactical coalitions controlled by the West.”
However, “responsible world players, especially Russia, China and India and some others demonstrate their readiness to resolutely resist external threats and independently implement crisis management.” Even the closest allies of the US are striving to diversify external relations faced with lack of confidence in America as provider of security. The eruption of Israel-Palestine conflict is “a sobering example” for many Western politicians.
In such a backdrop, “the world stage will be marked by a further intensification of the confrontation between the two geopolitical principles — namely, the Anglo-Saxon, or island, ‘divide-and-rule’ and the continental ‘unite-and-lead’ directly antagonistic to it. Manifestations of this fierce confrontation in the coming year will be observed in even the most remote regions of the world.”
Interestingly, in Naryshkin’s prognosis, it is not the Indo-Pacific but the Arab world that will remain “the key arena of the struggle for a new world order” in 2024. By the way, the essay appeared on the eve of Putin’s daylong trip to the UAE and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday where he recieved a hero’s welcome. In an extraordinary courtesy by the host countries, Putin’s presidential jet was flanked by four armed Su-35 multi-role 4th + + generation multi-role fighter jets noted for great combat power, high speed and matchless flight range.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the liberal media, and the liberal Establishment behind it, hates “right-wing extremists.” Since 2016, when Trump was elected on a control-the-borders platform, “right-wing extremism” has replaced “Islamic terrorism” as the new bogeyman. Don’t like mandatory vaccines and COVID lockdowns? You’re a “right-wing extremist” and deserve to be censored. Don’t like censorship? You’re defending “right-wing extremists” so you must be one yourself. Don’t like the war on Russia? You must be a “right-wing extremist” like Putin, who is the new Hitler because he doesn’t like LGBTQ indoctrination and mandatory sex change surgery for toddlers.
In the past, being antiwar, pro-free-speech, pro-civil-liberties, and pro-alternative-medicine put you on the left side of the spectrum. Now those are all signs of “right-wing extremism.”
What’s so terrible about all this “right-wing extremism”? Ultimately, it’s all about the Nazis. If you are pro-free-speech, you’re giving a platform to Nazis. If you support the COVID dissidents, you must like that one guy with the swastika tattoo at the rally where RFK Jr. spoke. And if you don’t support the war on Russia, and refuse to click your heels and sig heil for Zelensky, it must be because you are a follower of the new Hitler, Vladimir Putin.
The logic goes something like this: Right-wing extremists are Nazis. Nazis, as we all know, commit genocide. Therefore if we allow extremists to support border control, oppose war on Russia, speak their minds without censorship, and practice alternative medicine instead of masking and jabbing, one thing will lead to another and pretty soon they’ll be committing genocide.
You might say it’s the new domino theory.
What makes the whole thing even crazier is that there are really only two places on Earth where “right-wing extremist Nazis” are committing genocide: Israel under fuhrer Netanyahu, and Ukraine under fuhrer Zelenksy. But the liberal media, despite its ostensible hatred of right-wing extremist Nazis, supports both genocides! Zelinsky’s effort to murder and expel the Russian-speaking people of Eastern Ukraine, and obliterate the culture of any who remain, is a textbook case of genocide, and a direct descendant of Hitler’s lebensraum project with its planned murder and expulsion of millions of Slavs. And Netanyahu’s even bloodier attempt to murder and expel the Palestinians is orders of magnitude worse—probably worse than anything Hitler ever did.
Both Zelensky’s Ukraine and Netanyahu’s Israel are fanatical right-wing ultra-nationalist regimes, built on exaltation of a “master race” (Ukrainians/Jews in one case, and just plain Jews in the other) and the genocidal demonization of the untermenschen (Russian-speaking Christians in Ukraine, Palestinians in Palestine). These two regimes are the apotheosis of everything pro-tolerance, anti-racist, pro-multiculturalism liberals profess to hate. And yet the liberal Establishment loves them, and even runs nonstop pro-genocide propaganda on their behalf. Whatever can those liberals be thinking?
The Cosmopolitan Empire
When we peel back the veneer of increasingly threadbare liberalism, we find that the so-called liberal Establishment isn’t very liberal at all. Its real roots are in Trotskyism and illuminism, not classical Enlightenment liberalism, and its end-game is totalitarian global dictatorship. That, at least, is the argument of Peter Myers’ new book The Cosmopolitan Empire.
The way Myers tells it, since the Enlightenment exploded into the French Revolution, non-conservative forces have basically been divided into two camps. The first camp, the reformists, includes classical liberals, democratic socialists, moderate libertarians, and others seeking gradual, peaceful change. The second camp consists of nihilists, meaning those who seek a clean break with the current order via creative destruction so they can build a global dictatorship on the ruins. Myers traces this group from the Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt through Marxian communism and finally to the neo-Trotskyism that he sees as the real animating force behind today’s pseudo-liberal Establishment.
To his credit, Myers is not afraid of mentioning the elephant in the room: the Jewish connection to the nihilist camp. If Jews have traditionally scorned the goyim societies that hosted them, and occasionally sought to undermine those societies, it seems natural that some would participate in, or even lead, modern movements that sought to destroy traditional societies in service to a utopian vision not unlike the one that has long inspired the many flavors of Jewish messianic millenarianism. That utopian vision posits a Messiah who conquers the world and subjugates the goyim to the Jews, making the world a paradise for Jews, each of whom will own 2800 goyim slaves.
Ostensibly secular nihilist radicals, from Weishaupt to Lenin and Trotsky to H.G. Wells and George Soros, have led disproportionately secular-Jewish movements to destroy traditional religions and cultures in order to create a world state, meaning a technocratic global dictatorship ruled by a privileged elite. This one-world project, not classical liberalism, appears to be the driving force behind today’s Establishment. And that is why the “liberal” establishment supports genocidal uber-nationalists in Ukraine and Occupied Palestine. The Ukrainian Nazis (financed by Jewish oligarchs) have been weaponized against the rebirth of Russia, with its patriotism and Orthodox religion and family values; while the Zio-Nazis have been weaponized against traditional Islamicate civilization.
The faux-liberal Establishment propagandizes for such genocides and bloodbaths not because its highest value is individual freedom and dignity, as classical liberalism would have it, but because its liberal bromides are just a smokescreen for a totalitarian world domination project. In other words, it isn’t the “freedom” of two-year-olds to have their genders re-assigned that motivates them. Instead, the faux-liberals are waging war on the traditional family, the basis of organic traditional social life, because it stands in the way of their totalitarian world state. Likewise they hate Putin not because he disapproves of rainbow flags, but because he is rallying Russia to stand as a sovereign Christian-Muslim nation against impending global dictatorship.
Myers’ schema helps explain why so many atheist Jews have “transitioned” from Trotskyite to neoconservative. Max Shpak wrote:
Perhaps even more significant a factor in the origins of neoconservatism was the emergence of an independent Israeli state. While many Jewish Marxists eagerly supported the Zionist state, the more intellectually consistent Left opposed Zionism on the grounds that all nationalisms, including Jewish ones, are enemies of global proletarian revolution. Thus, Jewish leftists who once advocated internationalism for gentile nations were forced to come to terms with the implications of this ideology for their own nationalist sentiments. Thus, they needed an ideology which would let them have their cake (opposing gentile nationalism) and eat it too (by supporting Israel), and they found just such a worldview with neoconservatism.
If your position is based on truth and morality, you don’t need to make up lies to defend it, and you don’t need to hurl false accusations at those who disagree with it.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t need to circulate bogus atrocity propaganda about decapitated babies, babies cooked in ovens, and murdered pregnant women.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t have to circulate lies claiming actual dead Palestinian babies in Gaza are plastic dolls.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t have to falsely present phony audio clips as intercepted Hamas communications and claim they exonerate you of war crime allegations.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t have to circulate lies and propaganda about the hospitals you plan to attack being secret Hamas headquarters.
If your position was based on truth and morality, your official government social media accounts wouldn’t have to keep deleting posts after getting caught circulating lie after lie.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t have to circulate amazingly cringey propaganda videos like Israeli children singing about how great it will be to destroy Gaza and Israeli women doing yoga over the pictures of Israeli hostages.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t find yourself engaged in bizarre mental contortions trying to pretend history began on October 7 while sweeping all the mountains of murder and abuse which led up to it under the carpet.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t have to keep pointing at something that happened months ago to defend what you’ve been doing in the present moment in all the days since.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t need to resort to hurling false accusations of anti-semitism at those who criticize your side instead of producing robust counter-arguments.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t need to resort to accusing those who disagree with you of supporting terrorism and serving Hamas instead of defending your position like a normal adult.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t need to lie and claim that longstanding pro-Palestine slogans are actually calls for the genocide of Jews to try and get them silenced.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you wouldn’t feel the need to censor and silence everyone who disagrees with you online, on college campuses, and on all platforms of major influence.
If your position was based on truth and morality, you would get curious and do some self-examination when young people overwhelmingly reject that position instead of insisting that the young people are the problem and trying to kill TikTok and outlaw demonstrations.
If your position was based on truth and morality you would be defending it with facts, logic and rational argumentation instead of vitriol, online troll mobs and incendiary false accusations.
If your position is based in truth and morality, you can defend it in a truthful and moral way, instead of the exact opposite.
A multinational public relations firm last week launched a provocative advertising campaign — under the slogan “HPV Fucks Everybody” — designed to persuade Gen Zers to get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
When asked if Merck was funding the campaign, a spokesperson for Fuck Cancer told The Defender, “This campaign has no connection with Merck and is a collaboration between Publicis Health Media and Fuck Cancer (a non profit). Please note that we are promoting a vaccine that is safe and saves lives.”
There are currently 80 cases pending in federal court against Merck alleging Gardasil caused injuries and the federal Vaccine Court has paid out more than $70 million to people making claims regarding Gardasil.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), also a Publicis client, developed the HPV vaccine technology, which it licenses, in the U.S., exclusively to Merck.
In addition to Merck and the NIH, other Publicis Groupe clients include the World Economic Forum (WEF), pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma and several pharmacy chains that administer the HPV vaccines, including Walmart, Rite Aid and CVS Health (owners of Target pharmacies and clinics).
Campaign ‘uses sex to sell its case’
The new campaign targets young adults directly through a series of ads featuring “diverse, sexy images” and edgy music, accompanying the message that it doesn’t matter who you are, you are at risk because “HPV Fucks Everybody.”
Photos of a black couple, a white couple and a furry couple kissing, and a multiracial group of young people partying are featured on the website and will be featured in the ads.
The images are accompanied by lines like, “Stop the spread. Get the shot. Keep doing you,” according to “Pharma & Health Insider” — a PR site that publishes promotional stories with a news-like appearance.
HPV transmission is likely to occur via sex, the PR story said, so the campaign “uses sex to sell its case.”
“Targeting all 18–26-year-olds who are sexually active (or who want to be), the campaign behaves just like its audience: honest, bold and unbounded by tradition,” said Alison McConnell, chief marketing officer at Publicis Health Media — one of Publicis’ “solution hubs.”
Michelle Stiles, author of “One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda,” told The Defender that campaigns run by elite global PR firms may appear absurd to a skeptical observer, but they have tremendous power to shape global public health agendas.
She said:
“The trendy and provocative messaging targeting sexually active youth for yet another vaccination campaign should hopefully be met with ample amounts of skepticism or outright laughter for those who paid attention during the previous rollout of the COVID-19 shots.
“Unfortunately, these million-dollar campaigns are extremely dangerous because they are so effective.”
Ben Mallory, executive vice president/creative director for Digitas Health, another Publicis subsidiary collaborating on the campaign, said the campaign is designed to inform young people that they will be infected with HPV, that such infection will be risky and that vaccination is the answer.
“For a generation that doesn’t discriminate, it’s important they realize that HPV doesn’t either,” he said. “That’s what the campaign communications [sic]: It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re into, if you’re not vaccinated, you’re at risk.”
Trying to reach ‘largest and most influential generation’
The campaign will air 30-second and one-minute ads on 150 college campuses and in 150 malls in major markets, and also post on lifestyle websites like Thrillist, PopSugar, the dating site Grindr.
An audio campaign will follow, along with advertising in “points-of-care,” which can include clinics or pharmacies.
On the campaign’s website, people can also sign up to “get the shot” at major retail pharmacies including Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Walmart, Target and Kroger — companies Publicis Groupe also represents.
McConnell, Publicis’ marketing director for the campaign, said they are trying to reach Gen Z because it is “the largest and most influential generation.”
This shift in focus reflects recent shifts in direct advertising by Gardasil maker Merck.
Merck’s early ads targeted parents of adolescents, but in 2022 they shifted gears and started targeting parents of young children with ads like this one, which appeals to parents of the older elementary school children.
These ads focused on marketing the vaccine as “cancer prevention” rather than as acting on a sexually transmitted disease, a strategy the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promoted to encourage more young people to get vaccinated.
Last year, Merck expanded its advertising campaign to target adults through age 45, in commercials like this one, marketing the vaccine as protecting against a long list of cancers.
According to the CDC, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. and the majority of sexually active people will get it at some point in their lives, even if they have only one or very few sexual partners.
But the vast majority of HPV infections are cleared by the immune system and less than 10% of infections are linked to any clinical symptoms. Clinical symptoms can include a variety of warts and cervical dysplasia, which may be benign or precancerous.
Yet the campaign website claims, “HPV turns into cancer about 10% of the time,” a claim public health agencies don’t make.
There are over 200 strains of the HPV virus, a subset of which are deemed “high-risk.” HPV can cause genital warts and some strains have been associated with some types of cancer. However, HPV is not the sole risk factor for any cancer, and cancers associated with HPV can also sometimes develop without the presence of the virus.
Methods like regular pap screening are highly effective and have been found to reduce the incidence and mortality of cervical cancer among women by at least 80%.
But the sample ad on the site presents HPV as something always scary and dangerous.
It says:
“HPV Fucks Everybody. In fact, there are more than 14 million new HPV infections in the US each year, because HPV doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care who you are, what you look like who you love or what you’re into. HPV will infect more than 85% of sexually active people of all races, ethnicities and genders. It can lead to genital warts, or worse, over ten types of cancer. So it doesn’t matter if your status is single, committed, or complicated. It doesn’t even matter if you’re not currently sexually active.”
The website also claims the HPV vaccine can prevent a whopping 33,700 types of HPV-related cancers. Even Gardasil 9’s package insert and the CDC website only indicate the HPV vaccine for some cancers of the cervix, vagina, vulva, penis, anus and back of the throat with the HPV virus.
The campaign also repeats Merck’s claims that the vaccine is “safe and effective” and that the side effects are “mild.”
But a series of ongoing lawsuits against Merck allege the drugmaker fast-tracked Gardasil through the FDA’s approval process and deceptively conducted clinical trials to mask serious side effects and exaggerate the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Finally, the campaign promises that getting vaccinated can “put an end to HPV. For you, for us, for them. For everyone.”
However, the Gardasil 9 vaccine is designed only to suppress nine of the over 200 strains of HPV, and recent research has shown that when the HPV vaccine suppresses certain types of “high-risk” HPV strains, those strains are replaced with other strains associated with some cancers.
While the World Health Organization has launched a global campaign to eradicate cervical cancer as a public health threat, it has not indicated a similar project for HPV.
Publicis is part of ‘the propaganda arm of the global elite’
The campaign is spearheaded by Publicis Health Media and Digitas Health, which are both part of Publicis, along with Fuck Cancer.
According to the campaign publicity, Publicis Health Media is particularly concerned with HPV because the company CEO Arthur Sadoun was diagnosed and treated for HPV-associated cancer.
Last year, the company published a holiday video where board chair Maurice Lévy and Sadoun were joined by actor Michael Douglas, who was diagnosed and treated with throat cancer a decade ago, to promote the HPV vaccine and the Publicis Groupe.
As part of its cancer marketing focus, Publicis Groupe launched its Working with Cancer initiative, at the WEF. In partnership with 30 of the largest global companies, including Pfizer, Sanofi, PepsiCola, Meta and others, the campaign seeks to “abolish the stigma and insecurity that exist for people with cancer in the workplace,” according to the campaign website.
During Super Bowl LVII in February, it ran a commercial about the campaign that won a Gold Lion from the Health & Wellness jury at the 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June.
Publicis Groupe is an ad holding company, which recently rebranded “for the connected age” itself as a “platform,” according to its website.
As Stiles details in her book, just a few such companies — including Publicis, Omnicom, WPP and Interpublic Group — dominate the global media landscape.
Each ad-holding company has billions of dollars in revenue and serves thousands of corporate clients along with universities, nonprofits and governmental and nongovernmental organizations.
As public relations firms, they design ad campaigns and they develop and strategically place print and broadcast media content in mainstream news and PR publications for their clients. They also create public relations campaigns like those described here to develop, promote and defend the reputations of their clients.
Other tactics include flooding the media landscape with spin, developing talking points for “experts” to use in public appearances and generally “using underhanded tactics to promote and defend their clients,” Ecowatch reported.
According to Stiles, an estimated two-thirds to 80% of the content broadcast and published by corporate media comes from public relations firms.
She said:
“There is no doubt that the top three PR holding firms WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis, whose collective revenue is over 44 billion, function and should be thought of as the propaganda arm of the global elite.
“The finely-tuned, targeted messages not only create revenue for the transnational capitalist class but just as importantly define the global problems to be solved and the way in which they should be solved, leaving very little room for other creative options.”
Each agency has smaller subsidiaries and PR affiliates under the same corporate ownership, creating the appearance that there are more players in the media field than there actually are. More recently, they have also begun to “gobble up” data companies.
For example, in this campaign, two of three collaborators are part of the Publicis Groupe.
The public relations site Pharma & Health, where one of the “stories” about the “HPV Fucks Everybody” campaign was posted by MediaPost Inc., a marketing company that posts up to 50 different industry blogs.
“Adding together the global revenue of the top 250 independent PR firms ($17 billion) with the PR holding companies ($44 billion) and we are literally swimming in marketing messages intended to consolidate capital for the mega-corporations,” Stiles said.
“The medical messaging repeatedly advises us to outsource health and wellness to drugs or vaccines, poor choices indeed,” she added.
Publicis Groupe was implicated in the “Monsanto File” scandal, where the company was found to be using Publicis Consultants and FleishmanHillard, an Omnicom subsidiary, to launch a PR offensive to rehabilitate the image of genetically modified organisms and pesticides.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
Israel has deliberately destroyed dozens of archaeological sites and ancient sites in the besieged Gaza Strip since 7 October, in a blatant attempt to target Palestinian cultural heritage.
Yesterday Israeli warplanes bombed the ancient Othman Bin Qashqar Mosque in the Old City of Gaza, killing a number of Palestinians and causing damage to nearby homes.
The mosque was built in 620AH in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, and is considered one of the oldest mosques and archaeological sites in the Gaza Strip.
According to Palestinian sources, the Ministry of Culture recorded that Israeli warplanes have bombed eight museums since the beginning of the war, including the Rafah Museum, Al-Qarara Museum and the Khan Yunis Museum, in addition to destroying most parts of Gaza’s Old City, including dozens of historical buildings i.e. churches, mosques, museums and archaeological sites.
Israel has also destroyed nine publishing houses and libraries and destroyed or partially damaged at least 21 cultural centres.
The Great Omari Mosque, located in the Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza, is considered one of the most important and oldest mosques in Palestine and the first mosque in the Gaza Strip. It was destroyed in an air strike.
The mosque was named after the second Muslim Caliph, Omar Bin Khattab, and which was later described as “the beautiful mosque” by traveller Ibn Battuta.
The Israeli bombardment also targeted the Church of Saint Porfirio, located in the Zaytoun neighbourhood, which was built in 425AD and was renovated in 1856.
The Sayyed Al-Hashim Mosque, considered one of the most important mosques in the Old City of Gaza because it is thought to hold the tomb of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him)’s grandfather, Hashim Bin Abd Manaf, was also destroyed.
The Byzantine church in Jabalia, a prominent landmark in the Levant, was also levelled, along with Al-Khader Shrine in the city of Deir Al-Balah, which is the first and oldest Christian monastery built in Palestine by Saint Hilarius during the Byzantine era.
Anyone who reads history not endorsed by our national security state knows that the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was no surprise. “Tales of the American Empire” produced several tales about this topic, which provide evidence that President Franklin Roosevelt provoked a Japanese attack and ensured it would succeed. This gave him the anti-Japanese propaganda boost needed to have Congress declare war. Here are some facts about the effort to provoke Japan.
The issue of Prisoners of War (POWs) taken captive by Hamas-led Palestinian resistance forces has become one of the key justifications for Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip.
While western audiences are often presented with the image of these groups as bloodthirsty terrorists, a closer look reveals that Hamas and other factions may have treated Israeli captives more humanely than how Israel treats Palestinian political prisoners.
While the Israeli POW issue spans eight weeks, the plight of Palestinian captives has persisted since at least 1967. There are said to be some 137 Israelis that are currently being held captive in Gaza, whom Hamas claims all are males and/or soldiers.
In the seven-day truce struck in November between Hamas and Israel, the Palestinian resistance released 108 women and children held captive in Gaza. In return, Israel was to release 300 Palestinian women and children held in detention and permit much-needed aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Stanley Cohen, a US attorney who has represented both Hamas and Hezbollah members, tells The Cradle that “the laws of war do not limit Prisoners of War to State actors.” He says that “all the laws of war apply, whether it’s state actors or non-state actors.”
This would mean that the same legal obligations on the treatment of POWs should apply to both Hamas and Israel, despite there being a greater moral expectation often placed on UN member states.
How Hamas treats Israeli POWs
Access to interviews with detainees is limited due to Israeli government restrictions on media interaction with the recently freed captives, especially since the embarrassing PR blunder in late October when one of the four Israelis unconditionally released before the truce – 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz – said at a presser that “they treated us very well” in Gaza, but had endured “hell” while being taken captive.
But despite the challenges in obtaining their full stories, certain facts stand out. Recent audio recordings quoted by Israeli media have revealed statements from freed prisoners who claim they were more fearful of Israeli actions than those by Hamas. One former detainee, criticizing the Israeli government, highlighted the lack of support and the challenges faced during their captivity:
“We were sitting in the tunnels and we were terribly afraid not that Hamas but Israel would kill us, and then they would say – Hamas killed you.”
Another former Israeli captive went further in expressing disdain for the Israeli government’s responses on and after the events of 7 October:
“The feeling we had there was that no one was doing anything for us. The fact is that I was in a hiding place that was shelled and we had to be smuggled out and were wounded. Not including the helicopter that shot at us on the way to Gaza. You claim that there is intelligence, but the fact is that we are being shelled. My husband was separated from us three days before we returned to Israel and taken to the tunnels. And you are talking about washing the tunnels with sea water? You are shelling the route of tunnels in the exact area where they are.”
Reports on the health of detainees suggest that there was a gradual decrease in food quantity inside Gaza, with claims that prisoners lost between 10 to 15 percent of their body mass. Dr Yael Mozer-Glassberg, an Israeli pediatrician, described the children’s experience as “psychological terror,” though her account should be viewed with some healthy skepticism.
Mozer-Glassberg’s accounts are the closest thing to a detailed explanation of how the freed Israeli captives were treated. According to a report published by Haaretz, the doctor repeated the following story of two children, stating that “the older one wouldn’t eat until the younger had finished eating and felt full,” adding that “these are the kind of stories I heard from my grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor.”
When reading the language she employs to describe the conditions of the former captives, it is quite apparent that her account is geared towards exaggeration and that the doctor is not a neutral source.
Conflicting claims
On the other side of the spectrum are the Hamas-released videos showing the handover of mostly Israeli detainees to the International Red Cross. The footage is characterized by high-fives, smiles, waves, hugs, and even Arabic expressions of gratitude to their captors – visuals the Israeli government dismisses as propaganda.
Government spokesperson Eylon Levy said that Hamas “releases footage of crowds terrorizing the hostages in their final moments of captivity,” stating that the videos show how the group “continues to document its own atrocities.” Levy’s portrayal was a clear exaggeration, to say the least.
Tel Aviv’s health ministry has even gone as far as to suggest POWs were administered “drugs” to make them appear happy. Yet contrary to Mozer-Glassberg’s portrayals of terror, these videos provide more direct insights into the experiences of the freed Israelis.
Emily Hand, a 9-year-old Israeli girl who was held by Hamas, was returned to her father during the recent prisoner exchanges. Her father, Thomas, who had been paraded across western media after incorrectly being informed that his daughter was killed on 7 October, stated that “she [Emily] has lost a lot of weight, from her face and body, but generally doing better than we expected.”
Thai negotiator Dr Lerpong Sayed asserted that those he helped release were well cared for, receiving shelter, clothes, food, and water, with mental support provided equally to Thai and Israeli detainees – who he said were held together. There have also been reports of friendships blooming from within the Palestinian resistance groups’ detention tunnels, one between an Israeli woman and a Thai Worker. Claims of intentional injuries during transport and a letter expressing gratitude from a released captive’s family remain contested and unverified.
Hamas alleges that Israeli airstrikes have killed around 60 Israelis they were holding captive, including their Palestinian guards, with 23 of the bodies still trapped under rubble. The Israeli army, blaming Hamas, has discovered two of these corpses.
Amid varying accounts from families and doctors, it appears that conditions in the facilities where Israeli detainees were held were unpleasant, possibly exacerbated by Israel’s cutoff of all essential services at the start of the war.
A lack of hygiene, water, food, medicine, and electricity are all realities for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living in Gaza right now. If anything, the conditions that the Israeli captives faced were consistent with, if not better, than those faced by Gaza’s civilians.
How Israel mistreats Palestinian Prisoners
Unlike the Israeli detainees, freed Palestinian political prisoners have spoken directly to the international media and provided horrifying accounts of physical abuse, including torture, beatings, and even rape. According to a number of Palestinian women and children who were freed in the latest exchanges, they were threatened by Israelis not to speak out about their treatment in detention.
“There are no laws. Everything is permitted,” Lama Khater, a freed Palestinian captive, told the media. “I was led to the investigation handcuffed and blindfolded, I was threatened with being burned, I was explicitly threatened with rape and with deportation to the Gaza Strip,” she added.
Palestinian journalist Baraah Abu Ramouz, who was also freed from Israeli detention, gave the following testimony of what she witnessed:
“The situation in the prisons is devastating. The prisoners are abused. They are being constantly beaten. They’re being sexually assaulted. They are being raped. I’m not exaggerating. The prisoners are being raped.”
Mohammed Nazal had his fingers broken, his back bruised, and hands fractured by Israeli prison guards. “One week ago, we were savagely beaten with metal bars. I put my hands on my head to protect it from injury, but the soldiers did not stop until they broke my hands,” the 18-year-old freed prisoner said. Despite his clear injuries and horrifying testimony given to the media, where he said he was left lying on the floor in pain and was denied medical treatment, the Israeli authorities tried to claim he was a liar and released a video claiming he was unharmed. His testimonies and medical reports were later verified, revealing that Israel had lied and not Mohammed.
Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian icon and activist who was being held without a charge, looked shaken and weak following her release, stating:
“The circumstances in the prison are very difficult, with daily abuse against female prisoners. They are left without water or clothes, sleeping on the floor and being beaten… The Israeli authorities threatened me with [targeting] my father if I spoke about anything that happens in prison.”
Their testimonies consistently highlight that conditions inside Israeli prisons further deteriorated after 7 October. Freed detainees spoke of physical and psychological abuse, and deprivation of essentials such as food, water, medical care, and proper sleeping arrangements.
Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association, Adameer reports that over 7,600 political prisoners are held in Israeli military detention, with more than 3,000 of these civilians captured since 7 October – far surpassing the total number of Israelis held in Gaza.
The overlooked Palestinian struggle
Tel Aviv’s claims that these Palestinians are all “convicted terrorists” is a farce. Israel’s military court system maintains a near 100% conviction rate for Palestinians, while thousands more are held under what is called “administrative detention” — jargon for those individuals detained without any charge. One testimony, which I recorded last year, came from now 22-year-old Abdul-Khaliq Burnat, who told a harrowing story from when he was held in Israel’s notoriously brutal al-Moskobiyya detention center:
“They shouted at me, beat me with their fists, slapped me and used tools. I was restricted with a plastic zip tie which cut into my wrists, whilst I was strapped to a chair in a stress position for 20 hours of the day … for three days they had me in a smelly, tiny cell; it was so cold in there and there wasn’t any light, I was stripped of all my clothes for the whole time and tied up naked, they didn’t give me any food and I couldn’t even use the bathroom.”
During his detention in May of 2021, Abdul-Khaliq says that he was informed daily by Israeli interrogators about how many women and children were being killed in Gaza at that time. His captors then brought his then 17-year-old brother Mohammed to the same detention center and beat him so severely that he was hospitalized on three separate occasions.
Mohammed Burnat still languishes in Israeli jail, where he has been held without a charge since his 2021 arrest. Abdul-Khaliq, who was first held captive for 13 months, at the age of 17, has again been taken captive by Israeli forces following the 7 October operation, and is currently being held in administrative detention.
When taking into consideration that the plight of Palestinian political prisoners represents one of the most important issues in contemporary Palestinian society, one can begin to understand the rationale and strategic thinking behind the resistance’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation to capture Israeli POWs.
Cases of torture, sexual abuse, and psychological trauma have been well documented throughout decades of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and detention of its people, yet this has not received a fraction of the media attention afforded to the Israelis imprisoned only two months ago.
‘Twitter Files’ co-author Michael Shellenberger says Democrat Congressman Dan Goldman has “no evidence” to back up his “wild conspiracy theory” about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
Mr Goldman tried to regurgitate claims to Mr Shellenberger that the laptop’s contents could have been manipulated by Rudy Guiliani or the Russians.
Mr Shellenberger testified to the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponisation of the Federal Government last week about the existence of a “Censorship Industrial Complex” which, he says, includes the Department of Homeland Security, big tech companies and government contractors.
“The Democrats the whole time were saying that’s just a conspiracy theory, and here we were presenting them with files – and it’s Twitter files, Facebook files … like actual documents,” Mr Shellenberger told Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi.
“Then he goes and presents this wild conspiracy theory for which there has never been any evidence and there has only been evidence going the other way.
“When the New York Post published that article … they provided not only the computer store signature of Hunter Biden on the receipt left at the computer store repair shop he left the laptop at and the New York Post published the FBI subpoena for the laptop from him.
“Twitter’s own internal staff evaluated the New York Post article and they said there’s no evidence that this was the result of a Russian hack and leak operation.
“To have a sitting member of Congress, over three years later, continue to perpetuate a conspiracy theory without any evidence … that is literally the definition of conspiracy theorising.”
When the United States wants to fabricate a reason to, euphemistically speaking, “intervene” in any part of the world, it needs to create a “credible threat”. When there’s none, American intelligence, diplomatic and other assets create one. For instance, during the Kuwait crisis, Iraq was effectively pushed into taking control of its tiny oil-rich southern neighbor, an event Washington DC soon (ab)used to the maximum, launching the (First) Gulf War, one of many American invasions and bombings of Iraq. The belligerent thalassocracy seems to like this recipe so much that it simply can’t help but keep using it everywhere. A senior US diplomat and member of the Foreign Service April Glaspie met Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990, and told him the following:
“We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”
Barely a week later, on August 2, the US and its numerous vassals and satellite states launched Operation Desert Shield, which led to Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. It’s important to note that this wouldn’t be the first time Secretary Baker has lied, as evidenced by his infamous promise of “not one inch to the east” given to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev regarding NATO expansion beyond the borders of former East Germany. However, in less than a decade, the world’s most aggressive neocolonialist alliance spread nearly 41 million inches (over 1000 km) precisely to the east and effectively restarted the Cold War (although it could be argued it never ended). However, that’s all long-forgotten history now, right? Well, not really.
As previously mentioned, the US loves recycling “proven” foreign policy frameworks. The latest example would be Venezuela, a nation Washington DC has been eying for decades at this point. Formerly a (neo)colony of the US, under the leadership of the late Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, Caracas became arguably the most fiercely independent nation in South America. It has pushed back against several American attempts at a casus belli, particularly during Trump’s presidency, when the infamous John Bolton tried to push for the invasion of Venezuela. Since then, the South American country has significantly strengthened its position, firmly allied to Russia, China and other superpowers of the emerging multipolar world.
After Joe Biden became president, Venezuela did get some breathing room, as Washington DC looked to the east (remember, the same one it promised not to expand to). The Biden administration’s crackdown on the oil industry led to the depletion of the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve), which then had to be restocked somehow. The US government unwillingly looked to Caracas. The pro-Biden elements in the DNC are extremely worried that if the SPR isn’t resupplied adequately, it would be impossible to prevent the further growth of gas prices ahead of the 2024 presidential election, which could completely destroy their already plummeting chances for successful reelection. Precisely this might be Venezuela’s once-in-over-a-century opportunity.
Namely, apart from the long overdue recognition of legitimacy by the US, finally putting an end to its crawling aggression against the South American country, Venezuela might get the chance to settle an old territorial dispute with neighboring Guyana, a (former?) British colony. On December 3, Caracas even held a referendum on annexing nearly 160,000 km² of the area known as Esequibo, a very oil-rich region that comprises approximately 75% of Guyana’s territory. A logical question would be, why? Why is Venezuela making such a move at this time? Several days ago, Zero Hedge argued that President Maduro has significant leverage over President Biden, who recently boasted about leading “the most powerful nation in the history of the world”.
It should be noted that Venezuela, while extremely oil-rich, has been having a lot of issues extracting enough oil due to its outdated industrial capacity, primarily thanks to US sanctions that have been preventing much-needed modernization. Thus, Caracas might be opting to take (or retake, in its view) these areas from Guyana so it could finally extract more oil, which could strengthen its position, particularly vis-a-vis the US. However, Brazil expressed concern about the possible instability on its northern border, so it increased its military presence in northern areas, which border both countries. Although Brazil‘s official position is that of de-escalation, the US probably hopes any major changes to the strategic situation in the north could pit the South American giant against Venezuela.
Under President Lula, Brazil maintains good relations with Caracas, but their relationship wasn’t always like that, particularly under former president Bolsonaro, who recognized US puppet Juan Guaido as the “legitimate leader”. While both are effectively out of the picture, the return of any antisocialist leaders to power in Brazil could result in tensions that Washington DC would gladly (ab)use to put a dent in the emerging multipolar world. On the other hand, Maduro might not make the move on Esequibo, as all this could be a ploy to get more concessions from the US, particularly in terms of lifting sanctions that could reinvigorate the Venezuelan economy.
Either way, the possible Venezuelan intervention in Guyana would be virtually impossible to stop, particularly in the initial phase. The small country simply doesn’t have the power necessary to prevent such an operation, as Venezuela is vastly superior militarily. Perhaps Maduro could give the US “guarantees” that he won’t expand “an inch to the east”, which would be a fitting analogy to America’s foreign policy. However, Caracas should tread carefully, as the wounded beast in Washington DC is desperate for a win after it made a historic mistake of taking on Russia, a resurgent superpower that has effectively defeated America’s crawling aggression in Europe. The belligerent thalassocracy doesn’t need much in terms of excuses for an invasion, especially so close to home.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Living through five or six major wars has hardened me to what I thought were the extremes of inhuman cruelty and brutality.
Two things made those extremes almost bearable: the brutality always revealed – at least according to the media coverage – the viciousness of the enemy. It was therefore quite understandable when our “brave men and women” pulverized the enemy.
Films of Japanese torturing captive Americans somehow justified holding Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II; and only a small percentage of Americans found the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki unreasonably vengeful at best, at worst, depraved.
The media giants in America portrayed the North Koreans as barbaric beasts with their captives, quite unlike their southern counterpoints – our allies during the Korean War. No one ever felt the need to explain how the South Koreans were a civilized breed while the North Koreans were absolute savages, at least according to the official line.
In Vietnam, our warriors justifiably (or so the media made us believe) dropped napalm on the North Vietnamese who had the gall to hide in villages and tunnels to ravage our invaders. At least it was accepted practice until some rogue photojournalist filmed a young girl screaming down a Vietnamese road in flames. … continue
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Israel has deliberately destroyed dozens of archaeological sites and ancient sites in the besieged Gaza Strip since 7 October, in a blatant attempt to target Palestinian cultural heritage.
Aletho News
Aletho News 