Greece plans to send troops to the Sahel
By Lucas Leiroz | December 2, 2021
In a recent statement, the Greek government confirmed Athens’ interest in sending troops to cooperate with the French armed forces in the African Sahel. The project is still under consideration but tends to be approved due to the strong pressure that Greece receives from Paris to “compensate” French efforts to protect Greek territorial integrity in tensions with Turkey. The move sounds truly anti-strategic for Greece, considering that the country will have enemies it previously did not have and will enter conflicts that have nothing to do with Greek geopolitical interests.
In a recent press conference, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said that his country’s political and military leaders are currently discussing the feasibility of sending troops to Africa, where soldiers will join French military bases in order to assist in the Paris-led campaign against insurgent groups that are proliferating in the Sahel and across the region between the Sahara Desert and the West Coast.
These were some of his words: “We are considering sending a group of combat soldiers to Sahel. These are not military advisers, we already have such in the area, these are permanent combat members of the Armed Forces (…) If Turkey tries to attack and we ask for help from France, based on the military agreement we have signed, then the French forces will be there, they must be there (…) We are for them and they are for us”.
When talking about this possibility of mutual assistance, Panagiotopoulos is mentioning the recent bilateral defense cooperation agreement signed by both countries in October, which determine a series of measures to be implemented in order to strengthen the Franco-Greek military partnership. The agreement establishes that both countries must cooperate militarily with each other in conflict scenarios and also enumerates forms of commercial cooperation through measures such as, for example, the requirement that the Greek State buy frigates produced by the French naval industry.
Panagiotopoulos categorically states that sending Greek troops to Africa is a strategic measure for Greece, since, as a way of complying with the agreement signed with Paris, it would create a favorable precedent in bilateral relations and compel the French to repay the kindness, in case tensions escalate with Turkey in the future. However, Panagiotopoulos’ premise is absolutely wrong. It is not Greece that is setting this type of condition, but France. Athens is not freely proposing to send its soldiers to the Sahel – it is France that is demanding it, so there is no reason to consider this type of maneuver profitable in any way for the Greeks.
In the same sense, this type of cooperation would never benefit Greece for the simple fact that there is no military equivalence between both countries. France is one of the greatest military powers in the world, with high combat power and even nuclear weapons, maintaining an active expansionist policy in Africa and the Mediterranean, in addition to occupying a leading and prominent role in the European Union. The current situation of the Greek State is that of a country with very low military capacity, which is under constant pressure from an insurgent and expansionist power (Turkey) and which seeks alliances with France in order to defend its territorial integrity in the face of imminent threats. For France to demand “retribution” from Greece for its support on the Turkish issue is truly absurd, considering that Greece already has enough problems and difficulties just in its tensions with Turkey. Sending soldiers to Africa will significantly weaken Greece’s defense potential and leave the country even more vulnerable in its regional conflicts. So, Paris is acting abusively by requesting Greek troops in the Sahel.
Obviously, if both countries already have an agreement, this must be accomplished – or vetoed. The attitude that most benefits Greek strategic interests would be to find non-direct ways of cooperating with France on the Sahel, perhaps with logistical or intelligence support, but renouncing active military participation. If France continued to demand the deployment of troops, Athens would simply have to abandon the bilateral agreement and find another, less abusive way to establish partnerships. The current situation seems unsustainable. France will be weakening Greece with the demand for troops in African territory, and there is no sense for Athens to continue in a military agreement, whose objective is to strengthen the defense.
For years, France has maintained troops in the Sahel without any success in controlling the region. Paris is unable to maintain an occupation policy throughout the Sahel due to the immensity of the territory, which makes the area vulnerable to occupation by insurgent groups. Clandestine militias – some of them terrorists – currently control much of the Sahel zone and French troops are failing to pacify the region.
Furthermore, it is necessary to remember that in recent months a wave of indignation has started on the part of African communities against the French occupation. The main cities of West Africa are experiencing demonstrations in favor of the expulsion of the French armed forces due to the chaos and widespread, inefficient violence while being unable to contain the spread of terrorism in the region. In fact, it has become increasingly complicated for France to maintain its expansionism on African soil and now Paris seems interested in handing over to Athens a part of the responsibility of managing the chaos created by the French in the Sahel.
The Greek government has nothing to gain by engaging in civil wars on another continent that have absolutely nothing to do with Athens’ geopolitical interests. France is acting abusively by delegating the responsibility for this conflict to the Greeks. It is up to the Greek government to act prudently and avoid further conflicts, seeking to strengthen the country to face the current problems.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
French troops violently disrespect African populations during anti-occupation demonstrations
By Lucas Leiroz | December 1, 2021
Paris has always had Africa as a route for its political and economic expansionism, advancing on the continent and making it part of its international sphere of influence. However, it is possible to see that the African people are increasingly indignant with the constant presence of French military personnel in the region, which has resulted in protests taking to the streets of African cities, clamoring for a change. Now, French forces are seeing such demonstrations as a real threat and treating the population in a violent and disrespectful way, with the sole intention of asserting power and demonstrating the strength of the Paris’ agenda.
In recent days, thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest against the French expansionism in many African countries. This week, at least two people died in western Niger due to the brutality of French troops trying to stop a demonstration. During the action of the military convoy that tried to prevent the people from protesting, several shots were fired, leaving, in addition to the fatalities, eighteen injured people – eleven of them seriously wounded. This same convoy had previously performed similar scenes in Burkina Faso, where French military personnel shot at four protesters last week, generating a wave of indignation and revolt on the part of the local population.
According to what has been reported by Agence France-Presse, the convoy has a force of around 100 soldiers and has departed from Côte d’Ivoire and, after circling through Burkina Faso and Niger, is on its way to Mali, where it will be joining a French military base in the Gao region. Apparently, this convoy is making an international tour of the western part of the African continent, acting as a kind of “police force” in the containment of demonstrations, ignoring local authorities and the right of the citizens of these states to demand changes in the security policies that are being implemented in their countries.
The French forces reported that the shooting in Niger was motivated by the protesters’ own actions. According to the troops, the protesters tried to block the convoy’s passage, which was why the soldiers, trying to open the way, acted with the use of force. Obviously, regardless of the actions taken by the protesters, it is inconceivable for trained military personnel armed with war equipment to act with total force against unarmed civilians. Although it is admitted to partially use military power to disperse protesters, it is absolutely reprehensible that this resulted in lethal gunshots, killing innocent citizens who only exercised their civil right to protest against the presence of foreign troops in their country.
Also, there are images and videos circulating on the internet recording the horror scenes that took place in Niger this week, where it is possible to note that the use of force by the French far exceeded the reasonable line to simply disperse a human barricade of protesters. In one of the videos, it is possible to see a French Mirage 2000 strike aircraft dropping flares and tear gas bombs in a high-speed, low altitude pass over the protesters. There are also reports of shootings from military drones.
Commenting on the case, the Nigerien Interior Ministry said in a statement that “an investigation has been opened to determine the exact circumstances of this tragedy and determine responsibility”. However, it should be noted that this is not the first time that such actions have been carried out with impunity by French forces. Not only are the African people tired of the immeasurable violence perpetrated by French troops, but the very governments that “allow” such actions also wish to put an end to them, however, they lack the power to do so.
Faced with immense military asymmetry, with African countries being much weaker than France and still sharing a problematic heritage from the colonial ties of past centuries, West African governments do not have many options to respond to the suffering of their own people. There are no ways to retaliate or punish the French for their criminal acts – and there are no viable ways to expel the Europeans either.
In Mali, the military tried to end the French presence through a coup d’état last year, but the Paris’ forces continue to act freely against the local population in many situations, such as the massacre of 22 civilians during an attack to a Malian village earlier this year. In fact, there seems to be no alternative path for the African states, which, as long as they do not have a political, economic, and military structure strong enough to coercively expel foreign troops, will continue to suffer the consequences of Paris’ neo-colonial expansionism.
France, on its part, has diminished its interest in the African continent. The failure of the occupation of the Sahel showed that the French project for Africa was unfeasible and that, therefore, Paris should change its focus on international projection – which has gradually turned to the European and Mediterranean space itself. On the other hand, France does not want to simply “abandon” Africa, as this would open the way for another world power to occupy this space.
The French project, therefore, consists of reducing the presence of their troops in the African space, but preventing a real “independence” on the part of African governments, preventing them from seeking new alliances. In practice, this materializes in actions such as the ones of this convoy, which spread chaos and instability in the region. The French objective in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Niger is to prevent, through intimidation, a maneuver such as the one that happened in Mali – and, in Mali, the aim is to prevent the military’s plan to succeed.
Indeed, France “does not want” Africa at the moment, but it is not willing to allow Africans to follow their own path of independence. Fostering social chaos, disorder and violence seems to be the French tactic in this regard.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
With Low Vaccination Rates, Africa’s Covid Deaths Remain Far below Europe and the US
By Ryan McMaken | MISES WIRE | November 23, 2021
Since the very beginning of the covid panic, the narrative has been this: implement severe lockdowns or your population will experience a bloodbath. Morgues will be overwhelmed, the death total toll will be astounding. On the other hand, we were assured those jurisdictions that do lock down would see only a fraction of the death toll.
Then, once vaccines became available, the narrative was modified to “Get shots in arms and then covid will stop spreading. Those countries without vaccines, on the other hand, will continue to face mass casualties.”
The lockdown narrative, of course, has already been thoroughly overturned. Jurisdictions that did not lock down or adopted only weak and short lockdowns ended up with covid death tolls that were either similar to—or even better than—death tolls in countries that adopted draconian lockdowns. Lockdown advocates said locked-down countries would be overwhelmingly better off. These people were clearly wrong.
Undaunted by the increasing implausibility of the lockdown narrative, the global health bureaucrats are nonetheless doubling down on forced vaccines—as we now see in Austria—and we continue to be assured that only countries with high vaccination rates can hope to avoid disastrous covid outcomes.
Yet, the experience in sub-Saharan Africa calls both these narratives into question: Africa’s numbers have been far, far lower than the experts warned would be the case.
For example, the AP reported this week that in spite of low vaccination rates, Africa has fared better than most of the world:
[T]here is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said….
Fewer than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated. For months, the WHO has described Africa as “one of the least affected regions in the world” in its weekly pandemic reports.
Yet disaster for Africa has long been predicted for several reasons even beyond the availability of vaccines. For instance, it is known that lockdowns are especially impractical in the poorest parts of the world. This is because populations in places with undeveloped economies can’t simply sit at home and live off savings or debt. Rather, these people must go out into the world and earn a living on a day-to-day basis. Starvation is the alternative. Moreover, much of this work is done in the informal economy, so enforcing lockdowns becomes especially difficult.
Source: Our World in Data (Confirmed Deaths per Million, November 19, 2021; Share of People Vaccinated against Covid-19, November 19, 2021).
It was also assumed covid would be especially deadly in Africa due to the fact many large households live in small housing units.
But that “conventional wisdom” flies in the face of the reality of covid in Africa, which is that there have been fewer deaths.
The “experts” have groped around, looking for possible explanations.
Some sources, for example, insist that the low death totals are only an artifact of incomplete reporting on covid infections and that “a lack of good qualitative data was the issue.”
But Richard Wamai at Northeastern University rejects the claim it’s all about case reporting, and says that “local systems for reporting deaths in Africa make it difficult to hide COVID-19 casualties.” In a paper for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Wamai and his coauthors conclude, “[T]here is no evidence that COVID-19 mortality data is less accurately reported in Africa than elsewhere” and “While the true picture of infections and mortality in the continent has yet to fully emerge, the quality of data for other diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, indicates that Africa has the capacity to collect and report valid disease surveillance data.”
In any case, the World Health Organization reports that covid deaths in Africa make up only 2.9 percent of covid deaths, while Africa’s population is 16 percent of the global total. Africa’s covid total could double or triple, and Africa would still be faring far better than Europe and the Americas.
Wamai et al. also note that at this point “[i]t is likely that SARS-CoV-2 has already been widely disseminated through Africa… If so, widespread infection is likely to also result in widespread natural immunity.”
In other words, continued claims by health officials—both in Africa and elsewhere—that mass death is right around the corner with the “next wave” look increasingly implausible.
It looks increasingly likely that the lack of covid mortality in Africa is not due to a data issue nor a situation in which covid has been “contained” up until now. So then why is Africa doing so much better than the wealthy West?
Naturally, the advocates of forced lockdowns and coerced vaccines would prefer to ignore this issue altogether, but the undeniable reality of Africa’s experience has forced mainstream researchers to publicly admit the many ways that many factors can explain covid’s prevalence beyond vaccination rates and mask mandates.
For instance, mentioning that obesity is an important factor in covid mortality has in the past been likely to get one savaged in the media for “fat shaming.” Yet the Africa situation has forced the well informed to admit that yes, obese populations clearly suffer more from covid. In Africa, not surprisingly, we find that obesity rates are far below those found in North America and Europe.
Other possible explanations forwarded as reasons for Africa’s situation include past exposure to other coronaviruses, youthful populations, fewer patients lacking zinc and vitamin D, past use of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccination, climate, genetic background, and parasite load. In addressing the African “enigma” one group of researchers in the journal Colombia medica dared even suggest it’s possible—although not conclusively shown at this point—that “a mass public health preventive campaign against COVID-19 may have taken place, inadvertently, in some African countries with massive community ivermectin use.”
Source: “Global Obesity Levels,” ProCon.org, last modified March 27, 2020; Our World in Data (Share of People Vaccinated against Covid-19, November 19, 2021).
In the West, however, the media drumbeat around covid has consistently been “Shut up, stay home, get jabbed, and stop doubting the experts on forced vaccines.” Fortunately, however, the African situation has forced many researchers to ask inconvenient questions.
In fact, it’s amazing Africa has not been overcome by mass death considering that covid lockdowns and covid “mitigation” measures have contributed to the impoverishment and mass starvation on the continent. Or as Germany’s DW News puts it, “Measures put in place to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus are pushing millions of people in Africa into severe hunger.” And as Wamai notes, “[S]ome of the excess deaths in Africa “can be attributed not to the disease, but to lockdown measures that cut off access to medical care for other illnesses.”
But Africa hasn’t gotten the bloodbath that was promised, and as one Nigerian put it, “They said there will be dead bodies on the streets and all that, but nothing like that happened.”
This perverse ban on ivermectin, cheap and proven to work
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | November 23, 2021
GIVEN the feared winter resurgence of Covid infection despite, or because of, the government’s mass vaccination programme, the continued ban on ivermectin in this country becomes ever more perverse.
It beggars belief that the British public is still denied access to this proven prophylactic and treatment. If the public health authorities are genuinely worried about pressure on hospitals, why have not the Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Public Health England, the NHS and Department of Health all gone flat out over this last year to approve ivermectin with the same zeal they gave emergency authorisation to the limited trialled, novel gene therapy, Covid vaccines?
The answer is widespread misinformation from the top down. Put ‘ivermectin’ into the Google search box and what do you come up with? Topping the list is a warning from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) why it should NOT be used to treat or prevent Covid-19. Their reason? It’s as simple as the fact that they have not approved it and, because they have not approved, it cannot be used. Trials are ongoing they say. Maybe some are. But plenty have been completed, as Dr Pierre Kory’s paper (he was the lead author) ‘Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of Covid-19’, published by the American Journal of Therapeutics earlier this year, made quite clear.
By contrast with this detailed review of the evidence the FDA’s substantive concern appears to rest on random reports of harms deriving from self-medication with ivermectin.
The BBC not to be behindhand entered the fray with its customary selective and biased take on ‘the science’. Its recent report entitled ‘How false science created a Covid ‘miracle’ drug‘ made not even the most minimal of checks on the veracity of their assertions, which are pulled apart here. A letter sent to a programme journalist in response to their request for information (in advance of transmission) by Dr Tess Lawrie, the Director of the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group (BIRD), an advocacy group of clinicians and scientists from around the world, setting out the science behind the case for authorising it, was completely ignored. Her letter can be found here.
How the BBC came not to ask how it was that remdesivir – a standard medication for Covid in the UK – was approved on the basis of one study when ivermectin, with 63 studies, of them 31 Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT), 7 meta-analyses, 32 Observational Controlled Trials (OCT), multiple country case studies, expert opinion, patient testimony ALL pointing in favour of the medication, was not, is inexplicable.
This is the news source the public is still told to trust.
A blog posted on BIRD last week asked whether there are indeed any genuine gripes about the quality of the evidence, as the FDA and others suggest?
No, there are not. The author argues it is down to a misinformation campaign based on misleading information produced by high profile public health agencies, like the World Health Organisation, itself a victim of disinformation tactics, that has been ‘perpetrated by a minority of corporations to manipulate and delay government action on matters that would adversely affect their income and profit’. Speculation of course. But every indication points that way.
As reported extensively in TCW Defending Freedom, for example here, the WHO is subject to the huge financial influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the organisation’s second biggest donor. Since one of the BMGF’s long-term interest is in delivering vaccines, why would they show any interest in promoting the use of cheap, old repurposed medications in the treatment and prevention of Covid-19? It’s for the very same reason that ivermectin has proved of so little interest to Big Pharma -it’s hardly the money spinner that indemnified world-wide vaccination is.
Worse perhaps than what these big interests have not done is what they have actively done to discredit ivermectin. The BIRD blog relays an analysis by Dr Kory setting out what the WHO ‘did’ with the ivermectin evidence. He says it:
· Failed to publish a pre-established protocol for data exclusion
· Excluded two ‘quasi-randomised’ controlled trials (RCTs) with lower mortality
· Excluded two RCTs that compared ivermectin to or gave it together with other medications, all reporting lower mortality
· Excluded seven other available ivermectin RCT results
· Excluded all RCTs and observational controlled trials (OCTs) investigating ivermectin in the prevention of Covid-19
· Excluded 13 OCTs, more than 5,500 patients, that showed reductions in mortality
· Excluded numerous published and pre-print epidemiologic studies.
The bottom line, however, remains – if ivermectin is good enough and provenly effective for the more than 20 lower-income countries which do distribute it and also benefit from lower Covid rates, why are the populations of wealthier nations and individuals still being denied?
It’s a point that clearly has bothered the chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association, Dr Haruo Ozaki, who would recommend ivermectin for Covid patients, noting that the parts of Africa that use ivermectin to control parasites have a Covid death rate of just 2.2 per 100,000 population, compared with 13 times that death rate among African countries that do not use ivermectin.
‘I would like,’ said Dr Ozaki, ‘the government to consider treatment at the level of the family doctor’ with the informed consent of the patient. So would we.
No Mystery Why Some Countries Are Largely Flu/Covid-Free
By Stephen Lendman | November 20, 2021
Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Macedonia, Uttar Pradesh, India, Zimbabwe, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, parts of Brazil, and other nations have the following in common:
They use known safe and effective ivermectin for treating and curing flu/covid.
As a result, the incidence of the viral illness in these countries is low.
Their success is in stark contrast to surging outbreaks, serious cases, hospitalizations and deaths throughout the US/West, Israel and in other heavily mass-jabbed countries.
Since discovered and approved for human use, around 4 billion doses of ivermectin have been prescribed worldwide.
The WHO includes it on its list of Essential Medicines.
In 2015, co-developer of the drug, Dr. Satoshi Omura, won a Nobel Prize in Medicine.
In February, British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) — comprised of medical and scientific experts from over 15 countries — recommended global use of ivermectin as a verifiably safe and effective drug for preventing and treating flu/covid.
Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy director and BIRD organizer Dr. Tess Lawrie stressed the following:
“Ivermectin is already in use around the world and can reach the poorest people long before other expensive COVID treatments will ever get to them.”
“Ivermectin has an ever-increasing evidence base that shows that it works.”
“Even the prestigious Institute Pasteur in France has confirmed that the evidence is sound.”
Front Line (Flu/Covid) Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) president/chief medical officer Dr. Pierre Kory explained the following:
“When we examine the extensive evidence on ivermectin as a treatment for (flu/covid), we still see a significant reduction in the spread of (the viral illness), as well as a reduction in hospitalizations and deaths.”
“All science needs to be scrutinized. As some of the most published researchers in our fields, we are used to having our work examined by others.”
Peer-reviewed studies showed that when used as directed, ivermectin virtually eliminates flu/covid, most often in a few days.
Noted journalist and author, former Philadelphia Inquirer/Miami Herald reporter, six-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, two-time National Book Award nominee, National Headliner Award winner Michael Capuzzo wrote about “The Drug that Cracked (Flu)Covid,” stressing:
“Hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying” are alive and well thanks to ivermectin.
He “saw with (his) own eyes” the other side of the story that MSM suppress, adding:
He “wishes the world could see both sides” — notably that ivermectin is a virtual wonder drug for treating and curing flu/covid.
It’s safe, effective and cheap.
If used worldwide in lieu of toxic jabs — crucial to shun — flu/covid could be largely eliminated.
It’s not throughout the US/West, Israel and elsewhere with mass-extermination and destruction of freedom in mind.
AP News dubiously claimed that “scientists are mystified and wary (about why) Africa avoid(ed) (flu/covid) disaster (sic).”
Outbreaks are largely absent in dozens of African countries.
What AP News called “mysterious” is what it suppressed.
Widespread use of ivermectin rendered much of the continent largely flu/covid-free.
It’s where “fewer than 6% of the people” are jabbed, AP reported.
In its weekly reports, the WHO calls Africa “one of the least (flu/covid) affected regions in the world.”
What AP News should have explained, it suppressed.
Widespread use of ivermectin in many African countries prevented flu/covid outbreaks — and cured the viral illness safely, effectively, quickly and cheaply when they occurred.
Phoney ‘Tribunals’ Perpetuate Historical Fictions
By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 18, 2021
When I initially read “The Politics of Genocide” [2010] by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson I was easily able to assimilate their critique of the brazen misapplication of the term “genocide” to events in Bosnia (Srebrenica) and Kosovo, since I was familiar with those issues and had worked at the Hague Tribunal, the place where the propaganda was ultimately reformatted to resemble authoritative, quasi-judicial court verdicts. But like most members of the general public, I thought that those authors’ deconstruction of the Rwandan conflict was exaggerated and tendentious because I knew practically nothing about it, aside from the steady stream of horror stories that were fed to news consumers in the 1990s (the authors fittingly called it “enduring lies” in a related volume). To paraphrase Neville Chamberlain, Rwanda was literally a “quarrel in a far-away country, between people of whom we know nothing,” and that made it quite easy to fool all of us. In retrospect, the Rwandan pattern should have raised red flags for adhering too closely to the Bosnian script. But viewed in a factual vacuum and without any particular local expertise, the torrent of Rwandan genocidal allegations appeared largely credible and indisputable. Exactly as the “Srebrenica genocide” narrative must appear to most superficially informed members of the public.
It is only with the publication of Herman and Peterson’s meticulously researched and persuasively argued book that critical questions about Rwanda began to arise. The authors argued that the label “genocide,” far from being merely descriptive or following the legal criteria set by the UN convention, was in fact highly politicised and generally used by governments, journalists, and academics to brand as evil those nations and political movements that in one way or another interfered with the imperial designs of the global West. Two sets of rules govern the application of the term “genocide.” It is seldom used when the perpetrators are U.S. allies (or even the United States itself), while it is applied almost indiscriminately when murders are committed or are alleged to have been committed by enemies of the global West and its business or political interests. After removing media blinkers to study more closely the factual background of the Rwandan affair and applying Herman and Peterson’s analytical framework, events there came into focus and the received narrative about Rwanda was no longer making sense.
A recent reminiscence by Phil Taylor and John Philpot on Global Research about the judicial lynching of Rwandan Colonel Théoneste Bagasora, who recently passed away in prison after enduring many years of incarceration for his alleged role in genocidal killings, recalled not just the sordid impact of propaganda in misshaping public perceptions of important contemporary political issues. More importantly, it highlighted the squalid part played by “gekaufte Justiz,” as Udo Ulfkotte would undoubtedly have called it if he were alive to write a book on this subject today, in seemingly confirming and reinforcing propaganda’s toxic lies.
Taylor and Philpot demonstrate that Bagasora was railroaded by the ICTR, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which sits in Arusha, Tanzania, where he and scores of other Rwandan officials were tried. ICTR is the somewhat lesser-known but equally pernicious mirror image of the more infamous ICTY, or the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Attorney Christopher Black, with hands-on experience in both the Hague and Arusha, is unequivocal: “Bagasora was framed up. Not guilty of anything, but this is true of every one of the accused at the Rwanda Tribunal. They were all framed up.”
Black describes the technology of judicial lynching: “The prosecution targeted selected people to try to paint a picture of a government, so a few officers, politicians, party people, administrators, any Hutu intellectuals, etc. were indicted. They concocted stories and charges, all in the name of propaganda to justify the war the West conducted against Rwanda to overthrow its government.
“In 2007 thirty-seven of the [Rwanda] accused sent a letter to the UN declaring that they were political prisoners of the UN. Just think of that, the UN holding political prisoners. And it is a fact that they were.”
Black continues: “At the time I tried to get some of the accused at the ICTY [the Hague Tribunal] to join this action, but received no replies from anyone. The lawyers at the ICTY were sweetheart lawyers for the most part, except in the case of Milosevic.”
Referring to the structure of the pseudo-judicial twins, ICTR and ICTY, Black says that they are “identical in the way they chose people to target, the way they concocted evidence and arranged witnesses, in the way they tried to ensure that only weak lawyers were allowed to defend the accused (a constant battle at the ICTR), and in their control by NATO personnel at every level and in every department. They had the same prosecutor in charge of both [Carla Del Ponte], judges that went back and forth between the two, the same appeal chamber, etc. etc. Hans Köchler’s book about the two tribunals, “Global Justice or Global Revenge”, describes it best. He showed how the judges were all finally approved by the U.S.” Hence, one supposes, the indicative note in the blurb to Köchler’s book, that “the author’s main intention is to reflect upon the legal and philosophical foundations of international criminal law in the context of politics.”
“The two ad hoc tribunals were (and still are in the “Mechanism”) entirely show tribunals created to run show trials to frame up scapegoats for the crimes of the NATO countries involved,” Black concludes with understandable bitterness in his private communication with this author.
Going back to the Herman and Peterson analysis, both “tribunals” have been essential tools in perpetuating crude propaganda fabrications, that otherwise would probably have remained ephemeral, about the Bosnia and Rwanda conflicts by repackaging them in deceptive judicial wrapping. These sorry excuses for “international courts” are not merely a disservice to jurisprudence, to which they have inflicted incalculable damage, whose full scope will become apparent only with the passage of time. Inexcusably, they are guilty also of an appalling distortion of the historical record, arguably an even more grievous offence that may take much longer to rectify.
Former Qatar PM: ‘Israel, Arab state planned last Sudan military coup’
MEMO | November 13, 2021
Former Head of Qatar’s Ministerial Council Hamad Bin Jassim Al-Thani revealed on Friday that Israel and an Arab state had planned the latest military coup in Sudan.
In a series of tweets commenting on Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan’s announcement of the formation of a new sovereign council, he posted: “The hands of the Israeli occupation along with the hands of a state from the region are behind this.”
Twitter users commenting on his tweet noted that the Arab state he referred to was the UAE, adding that several leaks relating to the issue have proven this.
“What happened in Sudan is a result of initial planning, cooperation and coordination between Israel and an Arab state,” Al-Thani tweeted.
“Unfortunately, this state claimed in the international meetings that it had changed its policies and started to concentrate only on economy and development,” he added.
The former senior Qatari official asserted that he did not reveal “this fact” to make headlines and stressed the importance of respecting peoples’ will.
Pfizer Says COVID Vaccine ‘Safe’ for Kids — But Pfizer Has Lied About Kids and Drugs Before
In 1996, Pfizer’s drug, Trovan, was still in the clinical stage of development when the drugmaker tested it, without parents’ consent, on about 200 children.
By Chelli Stanley | The Defender | September 30, 2021
Pfizer last week told the public and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) its new experimental COVID vaccine is safe for young children.
It’s a familiar story, similar to one the vaccine maker told in the past about another drug it tested on children — a story that had a terrible outcome.
Both stories began with this simple claim: “These drugs are safe for your children.”
In 1996, Pfizer, the transnational multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company, was working to bring a new drug — Trovan — to market. The drug was still in the clinical stage of development, when Pfizer made a decision that reportedly cost the lives of many children, and triggered an international firestorm.
Pfizer took its unlicensed Trovan to Kano, Nigeria, during a meningitis outbreak — though Trovan had never been tested in children or against meningitis.
According to Pfizer whistleblower, Dr. Juan Walterspiel, Pfizer sent unskilled doctors to Kano, who were unlicensed to practice medicine in Nigeria, and who had limited experience treating meningitis in children.
Walterspiel also reported the staff were so unskilled they could not place IV lines, and quickly resorted to orally administering the drug to children.
In the short two weeks Pfizer was in Kano, staff worked with 200 children, and gave 99 of the children unlicensed Trovan, despite the children’s desperate state. Pfizer did this even though Doctors Without Borders was operating in the same Kano hospital, treating children for free, with medicine proven to work well against bacterial meningitis.
Doctors Without Borders realized what Pfizer was doing and in a statement said they “were shocked Pfizer continued the so-called scientific work in the middle of hell.” They “communicated their concerns to both Pfizer and the local authorities.”
Pfizer gave the other 101 children ceftriaxone, which is proven effective for meningitis. However, many children were “low-dosed,” with only one-third of the recommended amount. Because Pfizer didn’t have enough skilled medical personnel to administer ceftriaxone by IV, staff injected it directly into the children’s butts or thighs.
But “the shots were severely painful, leading to ‘great fear and sometimes dangerous struggles with children.’” So Pfizer lowered the dose significantly to ease the severe pain caused by the shots.
Pfizer said available data indicated the dose remained more than sufficient, but the drug’s manufacturer, Hoffmann-La Roche, said the reductions could have sapped the drug’s strength.
“A high dose is essential,” Mark Kunkel, Hoffmann-La Roche’s medical director, told the Washington Post. “Clinical failures … and perhaps deaths of children could have resulted from the low dosing.”
According to a lawsuit against Pfizer, “five of the children who received Trovan and six of the children who were ‘low-dosed’ with ceftriaxone died, and others treated by Pfizer suffered very serious injuries, including paralysis, deafness and blindness.”
Of the 200 children treated by Pfizer, 181 were gravely injured, and 11 died.
The Washington Post investigated Pfizer’s ethics, stating, “Some medical experts questioned why the company did not switch to the proven pills when it was clear the young patients were approaching death.”
“It could be considered murder,” said Evariste Lodi, the leading Doctors Without Borders physician in Kano, after reading a report that Pfizer kept a child solely on Trovan until the child died.
In a statement about the child’s death, a Pfizer spokeswoman said “researchers had no reason to suspect the experimental medicine was not working.” Pfizer also said Trovan was “at least as effective as the gold standard treatment,” despite it having never been used in children, or for meningitis.
Pfizer designed the clinical trial in Kano “in six weeks, though the risks and complications of such a trial would typically require a year to adequately assess,” The Atlantic reported.
The parents in Kano have maintained they were not notified of an experiment, and that Pfizer did not have their consent to use their children in a drug trial in the middle of a health crisis. They organized to sue the drugmaker, while caring for children injured during the experiment.
Pfizer maintains the Nigerian parents gave full consent for their critically ill children to be used in an experiment, though even Pfizer admits no parent ever signed a consent form.
The lawsuits dragged on for years, as Pfizer refused to admit to any wrongdoing. “We are fed up with this case,” said a father who lost his daughter. “Our children are dead and some are maimed.”
Pfizer said “the trial was conducted appropriately, ethically and with the best interests of patients in mind; and it helped save lives.”
However, even the approval letter Pfizer submitted to the FDA about the Kano trial was exposed by a Nigerian doctor, who “said that his office backdated an approval letter and this may have been written a year after the study had taken place.”
The community of Kano has been profoundly affected — “the experiment shaped public perception of Western drugs in the region. Parents told their children about it. Teachers lectured about Pfizer in classrooms. Pundits spoke of Western physicians seeking human guinea pigs.”
Pfizer acknowledged the severe nature of the meningitis outbreak to a Nigerian investigative committee, then said, “Pfizer’s intervention was therefore strictly a humanitarian gesture aimed at saving lives. It was totally devoid of any commercial undertones.” The company called it “the humanitarian trial.”
“If I had the power, I would take away their medical licenses,” said Lodi.
Pfizer’s Trovan history gets worse
In the initial development of Trovan, Walterspiel reported that Pfizer tried another study and:
“ … the study failed and several patients developed severe post-operative infections and one woman had her uterus removed. Pfizer dispatched risk managers and asked affected patients and relatives to fill out checks for whatever amount they felt right against their signature to keep the payments confidential.”
Pfizer made no such offer in Kano. The families of Kano had to sue Pfizer repeatedly, and received no compensation until nearly 15 years after the incident occurred.
Pfizer did not let these mere setbacks of death, maiming and international scandals deter the company. Within a few short years, the drugmaker brought Trovan to market in both the United States and Europe.
Expecting to reap financial windfalls, Pfizer aggressively marketed Trovan — until it discovered the public in both the EU and U.S. was reeling from liver damage, liver failure and death as a result of taking Trovan.
Reports of adverse reactions grew until Europe took Trovan off the market completely, and the FDA severely restricted the public’s access in the U.S.
A New York Times article detailed how Trovan’s serious side effects became known only after it was given to the public. “The case showed how a new drug, marketed by an expert like Pfizer, could be swiftly prescribed to thousands of patients before all the side effects were known. Pfizer said its tests of Trovan had not revealed any serious problems.”
In 2000, William C. Steere Jr., then chairman of Pfizer, acknowledged some side effects only become known after a drug is approved, saying, ”You put the drug in the general population, and then everyone is taking it. We just hold our breath and wait to see if there is something unique with the drug.”
‘If I had an enemy, I would not let him take their drugs’
Pfizer was repeatedly sued in Nigeria and the U.S. for its actions in Kano. In 2009, Pfizer agreed to pay $75 million, despite initially being sued for $8.5 billion.
The company got involved in several more scandals that exploded when Wikileaks published several U.S. Embassy cables detailing Pfizer’s communications.
A Pfizer lawyer described in the cables that “Pfizer has worked closely with former Nigerian Head of State Yakubu Gowon. Gowan spoke with Kano State Governor Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, who directed the Kano AG to reduce the settlement demand from $150 million to $75 million.”
In another cable, a top Pfizer representative in Nigeria said:
“Pfizer had hired investigators to uncover corruption links to Federal Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa to expose him and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases. Pfizer’s investigators were passing this information to local media. A series of damaging articles detailing Aondoakaa’s ‘alleged’ corruption ties were published in February and March.”
A cable showed a Pfizer representative commenting that “Doctors Without Borders administered Trovan to other children during the 1996 meningitis epidemic, and the Nigerian government has taken no action.”
The accusation prompted Doctors Without Borders to publish a strongly worded press release stating that they did not give anyone Trovan, and were in fact the first to speak out about Pfizer’s unethical actions.
Finally, the cables showed that “Pfizer was not happy settling the case, but had come to the conclusion that the $75 million figure was reasonable because the suits had been ongoing for many years, costing Pfizer more than $15 million a year in legal and investigative fees.”
The original lawsuit also sought prison terms for Pfizer officials.
Scandals continued even after the case was settled, when Pfizer demanded that anyone collecting the money give a sample of their DNA. Several people refused, distrusting what Pfizer may do with their DNA. They were not allowed to get compensation as a result.
Pfizer said it “always acted in the best interest of the children involved, using the best medical knowledge available.”
Najib Ibrahim of Kano said of Pfizer, “If I had an enemy, I would not let him take their drugs.” Abdul Murtala said, “Pfizer reminds me of recklessness with human lives.”
The pattern continues, with 12-year-old injured during Pfizer COVID trial
Maddie de Garay was 12 when she voluntarily participated in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trial for 12- to 15-year-olds in Ohio. After she took the second dose on January 20, 2021, her life changed.
Her mother, Stephanie de Garay, spoke at press conference in June, held by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), during which she described the maiming of her child and Pfizer’s disregard towards Maddie and the family — despite Maddie being part of the trial in order to determine whether Pfizer’s covid vaccine is safe for children.
Stephanie said:
“All we want is for Maddie to be seen, heard, and believed, because she hasn’t been. And we want her to get the care that she desperately needs so that she can go back to normal. She was totally fine before this. They’re not helping her.”
Stephanie said within 24 hours of the second dose, Maddie “developed severe abdominal and chest pain. She had painful electrical shocks down her neck and spine that forced her to walk hunched over. She had extreme pain in her fingers and toes.”
Maddie went to the ER immediately, as instructed by Pfizer’s vaccine trial administrator. After doctors ran few tests, she was sent home with a diagnosis: “Adverse effect of vaccine initial encounter.”
In the first five months after getting her second dose, Maddie would return to the ER eight more times.
“Over the next 2.5 months, her abdominal, muscle and nerve pain became unbearable. She developed additional symptoms that included gastroparesis, nausea and vomiting, erratic blood pressure and heart rate, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, and then seizures.
“She developed verbal and motor tics, she had loss of feeling from the waist down and muscle weakness, drastic changes in her vision, urinary retention and loss of bladder control, severely irregular and heavy menstrual cycles, and eventually she had to have an NG tube put in to get nutrition. All of these symptoms are still here today. Some days are worse than others.”
Maddie’s doctors began to suggest she had “functional neurological disorder due to anxiety” and even tried to admit her to a mental hospital. Her family fought it.
It took five months for Maddie to get an MRI of her brain and appropriate blood tests, which she got when her family went elsewhere for medical advice after talking to others who were adversely affected by the COVID vaccines.
Stephanie said:
“What I want to ask is: Maddie volunteered for the Pfizer trial. Why aren’t they researching her to figure out why this happened so other people don’t have to go through this? Instead, they’re just saying it’s ‘mental.’”
The de Garay family has joined with emerging grassroots advocacy groups whose members’ lives suddenly changed after they got a COVID vaccine. They are asking the CDC and FDA to recognize their injuries, the medical community to believe and help them, the media to share their stories, for the public to know about these injuries as part of informed consent, and for their injuries to be studied so that solutions can be found.
Since being injured by new vaccines still in phase 3 trials, they have been subjected to stonewalling, cover-ups, bullying, refusal to collect the data and blanket denials.
Pfizer has not commented publicly on Maddie’s case.
At the September FDA advisory meeting on Pfizer COVID boosters in the U.S., Steve Kirsch, executive director of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, said Pfizer did not record Maddie’s extensive injuries in its clinical trial results. Kirsch also noted Pfizer marked the entirety of Maddie’s injuries as “abdominal pain.”
Kirsch reported Pfizer’s fraud to FDA acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, but no investigation has been launched into Pfizer for allegedly erasing Maddie’s extensive injuries from its trial data for children.
© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
ROBERT MALONE INTERVIEWED BY JIMMY DORE
anti_republocrat | September 15, 2021
Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA technology, is interviewed by Jimmy Dore. Malone is not “anti-vax,” but he is “pro-ethics” and believes that all medical procedures require truly informed consent, with absolutely no coercion. He shares the view of Geert Vanden Bossche, whom he mentions in the interview, that the vaccines help to generate the variants because they are non-sterilizing. He says they should be targeted toward those who are at highest risk from the virus, seniors and those with multiple co-morbidities. I personally disagree with that. I think they should be taken off the market altogether, but at least he is adamantly against mandates.
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The Biggest Threat to Peace in Middle East
By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | May 24, 2010
A build up of heightened tension in the Middle East is escalating in the last few weeks. American and Israeli postures towards Lebanon, Syria, and Iran have become more threatening. Listening to speeches of political leaders one hears talks only about war not peace. Iranians and Israelis are continuously training hard for a possible showdown. Both sides are conducting extensive war games every month. This led Syrians to claim that Israel is preparing for a soon-to-come another war. The Jordanians also are warning that current stalemate of the peace process is an indication of a war breaking out this summer. The Russian President and his army chief hinted, a few months ago, that the US and Israel were planning for an attack on Iran.
Indeed Iran is, as it has been for last few years, the target of most of the threats and accusations of supporting terrorism. Escalating incitement against Iran the American Defense Department sent last month (April) to Congress a report on Iran’s military claiming Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US by 2015.
Ignoring the fact that N. Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel are proven to have nuclear weapons while Iran does not, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose in her speech, to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference at the UN, to focus on Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions putting the whole world at risk as she put it. According to Clinton Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, rather than Israel’s more than 200 nuclear bombs, is destabilizing the Middle East. She called on the world’s nations to rally around US efforts to hold Iran, not other nuclear countries, to account.
The accusation that Usama Bin Laden is living comfortably in Iran had received a boost after the broadcast of a documentary called “Feathered Cocaine”. This echoed the June 2003 claims of the Italian newspaper Corre de la Sierra that Bin Laden was in Iran according to some intelligence report, and according to Richard Miniter’s book “Shadow War”. … continue
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