Tanzania – The second Covid coup?
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | March 12, 2021
John Magufuli, President of Tanzania, has disappeared. He’s not been seen in public for several weeks, and speculation is building as to where he might be.
The opposition has, at various times, accused the President of being hospitalised with “Covid19”, either in Kenya or India, although there remains no evidence this is the case.
To add some context, John Magufuli is one of the “Covid denier” heads of state from Africa.
He famously had his office submit five unlabelled samples for testing – goat, motor oil, papaya, quail and jackfruit – and when four came back positive and one “inconclusive”, he banned the testing kits and called for an investigation into their origin and manufacture.
In the past, he has also questioned the safety and efficacy of the supposed “covid vaccines”, and has not permitted their use in Tanzania.
In the Western press Magufuli has been portrayed as “anti-science” and “populist”, but it is not fair to suggest that the health of the people of Tanzania is a low priority for the President. In fact it’s quite the opposite.
After winning his first election in 2015 he slashed government salaries (including his own) in order to increase funding for hospitals and buying AIDs medication. In 2015 he cancelled the Independence Day celebrations and used the money to launch an anti-Cholera campaign. Healthcare has been one of his administration’s top priorities, and Tanzanian life expectancy has increased every year while he has been in office.
The negative coverage of President Magufuli is a very recent phenomenon. Early in his Presidency he even received glowing write-ups from the Western press and Soros-backed think tanks, praising his reforms and calling him an “example” to other African nations.
All that changed when he spoke out about Covid being hoax.
When he was re-elected in October 2020 the standard Western accusations of “voter suppression” and “electoral fraud” appeared in the Western press which had previously reported his approval rating as high as 96%.
And the anti-Magufuli campaign increased momentum in the new year, with Mike “we lied, we cheated, we stole” Pompeo initiating sanctions against Tanzanian government officials as one of his final acts as Secretary of State. The sanctions were notionally due to “electoral irregularities”, but the obvious reality is that it’s due to Tanzania’s refusal to toe the Covid line.
Just last month, The Guardian, always the tip of the spear when it comes to “progressive” regime change ran an article headlined:
“It’s time for Africa to rein in Tanzania’s anti-vaxxer president”
The article makes no mention of goats, papaya and motor oil testing positive for the coronavirus, but does ask – in a very non-partisan, journalistic way:
“What is wrong with President John Magufuli? Many people in and outside Tanzania are asking this question.”
Before going on to conclude:
“Magufuli [is] fuelling anti-vaxxers as the pandemic and its new variants continue to play out. He needs to be challenged openly and directly. To look on indifferently exposes millions of people in Tanzania and across Africa’s great lakes region – as well as communities across the world – to this deadly and devastating virus.”
The author doesn’t say exactly how Magufuli should be “challenged openly and directly”, but that’s not what these articles are for. They exist simply to paint the subject as a villain, and create a climate where “something must be done”. What that “something” is – and, indeed, whether or not it is legal – are none of the Guardian-reading public’s business, and most of them don’t really care.
Oh, by the by, the article is part of the Guardian’s “Global Development” section, which is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Just so you know.
So, within two weeks of The Guardian publishing a Gates-sponsored article calling for something to be done about President Magufuli, he has disappeared, allegedly due to Covid. Funny how that works out.
Even if Magufuli miraculously survives his bout of “suspected Covid19”, the writing is on the wall for his political career. The Council on Foreign Relations published this article just yesterday, which goes to great lengths arguing that the President has lost all authority, and concludes:
“… a bold figure within the ruling party could capitalize on the current episode to begin to reverse course.”
It’s not hard to read the subtext there, if you can even call it “subtext” at all.
If we are about to see the sudden death and/or replacement of the President of Tanzania, he will not be the first African head of state to suffer such a fate in the age of Covid.
Last summer Pierre Nkurunziza, the President of Burundi, refused to play along with Covid and instructed the WHO delegation to leave his country… before dying suddenly of a “heart attack” or “suspected Covid19”. His successor immediately reversed every single one of his Covid policies, including inviting the WHO back to the country.
That was our first Covid coup, and it looks like Tanzania could well be next.
If I were the President of Turkmenistan or Belarus, I wouldn’t be making any longterm plans.
African governments are crushing opposition using Israeli spyware
By Suraya Dadoo | MEMO | February 24, 2021
As internet penetration and smartphone usage increases across Africa, digital spaces have become increasingly important for organising political uprisings and opposition movements. In response, several of the continent’s regimes have shut down the internet or blocked social media apps. To sidestep the economic costs and global criticism that these online shutdowns incur, governments have turned to digital surveillance technology as a shrewder way to crush all opposition.
In a recently-released report titled “Running in Circles: Uncovering the Clients of Cyberespionage Firm, Circles”, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab — which investigates digital espionage against civil society — details how government agencies in Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe are using the surveillance technology developed by Israeli telecom company Circles to snoop on the personal communications of opposition politicians, human rights activists and journalists. These seven African countries are among 25 around the world using Circles, which is affiliated with the notorious NSO Group whose invasive Pegasus spyware has been used to target human rights defenders and journalists around the world.
How does it work?
Circles technology is sold to nation states only, and intercepts data from 3G networks, allowing the infiltrator to read messages and emails, and listen to phone calls in real time. Using only the telephone number, a Circles platform can identify the location of a phone anywhere in the world within seconds.
Circles exploits flaws in Signalling System No.7 (SS7), the set of protocols that allows networks to exchange calls and text messages between each other. This allows government agencies to track individuals across borders without a warrant, bypassing international conventions.
In 2019, 3G became the leading mobile technology in Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for over 45 per cent of all connections. With the faster — and possibly more secure — 4G networks being at least five years away from becoming the standard for mobile connectivity on the continent, Circles’ 3G-manipulating technology is ideal for power-hungry African leaders looking to cling to power by spying on critics.
The spying revelations came as African governments — including some named in the Citizen Lab report — are cracking down brutally on protestors and opposition groups.
Nigeria
Recent #EndSARS protests triggered a deadly response from Nigeria’s state security apparatus, with the government able to infiltrate the movement’s organisational structures successfully.
Citizen Lab identified two Circles systems in Nigeria that both began operating in June 2015. One of them was being used by the Nigerian Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). In 2016, the governors of Delta and Bayelsa states also purchased Circles systems to spy on political opponents and critics. The presence of Circles products in Nigeria goes back more than a decade, when former Rivers state governor, Rotimi Amaechi, became the first Nigerian politician to use the surveillance technology in 2010.
Circles’ government clients in Nigeria have a long history of abusing surveillance technologies to conduct mass surveillance of citizens’ telecommunications. Femi Adeyeye, a Lagos-based political activist who has been detained several times for criticising the Nigerian government, is not surprised that Muhammadu Buhari’s regime is using the invasive spying technology.
Adeyeye cited several cases where Nigerians were swiftly traced, arrested and detained after criticising the government. These include journalists Omoyele Sowore, Abubakar Idris Dadiyata and Stephen Kefas. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has also reported numerous cases of the Nigerian authorities abusing phone surveillance by targeting journalists’ phones to reveal and track sources for stories investigating government corruption.
“We are already in the worst stage of dictatorship,” warns Adeyeye. “Freedom of expression, media, and political association have been further weakened by this spying technology.”
He says that Nigerian political analysts now self-censor when commenting on national political issues, after witnessing the government’s infiltration of #EndSARS. “They have seen how people have been traced, their passports seized and bank accounts frozen, and how they have been forced to go into exile.”
Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe — which has witnessed intense anti-government protests recently — Citizen Lab detected three Circles platforms, with one dating back to 2013. A second platform was activated in March 2018 and is still operating.
As in Nigeria, there has been a government crackdown on anyone exposing corruption. Investigative journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, and Jacob Ngarivhume, the leader of the opposition group Transform Zimbabwe, were detained ahead of anti-government protests last year. Circles technology is facilitating this suppression.
Equatorial Guinea
A Circles surveillance system was also found in Equatorial Guinea, where dictator Tedoro Obiang has ruled for 40 years in a climate of torture, extra-judicial executions, arbitrary arrests and the persecution of political activists and human rights defenders. Obiang has crushed protests violently and ignored demands for electoral reforms and limits on terms of office.
Morocco
Morocco’s Ministry of the Interior has been a Circles client since 2018. Rabat has a history of leveraging digital technology to unlawfully target Moroccan human rights activists.
Eroding democracy in Botswana
It’s not just countries such as these facing protests, or those with a dismal record of human rights abuses, that are spying on their citizens. Even supposed democracies are involved. Botswana is hailed widely as one of Africa’s most stable democracies. Yet, the country’s Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) was linked to two Circles surveillance systems dating back to 2015. The targets were journalists investigating corruption by politicians.
According to Moeti Mohwasa, spokesperson for the opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), Israeli companies have been selling spyware to the Botswana government for years. Mohwasa says that some of this equipment has been used to eavesdrop on opposition politicians and union leaders in the country.
Enabling authoritarianism in Kenya
Citizen Lab also reported a Circles system in Kenya. While the East African nation is often lauded as a strong democracy, critics accuse the Uhuru Kenyatta administration of being an authoritarian regime.
“In Kenya, freedom of expression and media freedoms are under constant threat,” says Suhayl Omar, a policing, surveillance and militarism researcher from Nairobi. “The Kenyatta regime has waged a war against constitutionalism and any form of opposition in Kenya.”
Omar believes that the Kenyan government relies heavily on surveillance of its citizens to crack down on any form of opposition. “For this, they look to undemocratic and violent states — like Israel — to fund, equip and train their agents and armies for these unconstitutional missions.”
Zambia
Zambia is also a Circles client. In 2019, the Zambian authorities reportedly used a cyber-surveillance unit in the offices of Zambia’s telecommunications regulator to pinpoint the location of a group of bloggers who ran an opposition news site. They were duly arrested, with the authorities in constant contact with the police units on the ground throughout the operation. Given its capabilities, it is likely that a Circles system was used to do this.
Should the Israeli government be held accountable?
African governments will justify spying by claiming that it is a matter of national security. The Israeli government, meanwhile, has distanced itself from these anti-democracy purges. Israeli Minister Zeev Elkin denied any government involvement, telling Israeli radio, “Everyone understands that this is not about the state of Israel.” But it is.
The Israeli government, through its Ministry of Defence, implicitly sanctions such activities by providing tech firms with export licences. In January 2020, Amnesty International filed a lawsuit in Israel calling for the ministry to ban the export of invasive spying software, as it was being used to attack human rights activists by the governments purchasing them. Last July, an Israeli court denied Amnesty’s request.
“The Israeli regime has actively enabled the authoritarianism of Uhuru Kenyatta,” explains Suhayl Omar, commenting on the situation in Kenya. Moeti Mohwasa in Botswana agrees about official Israeli involvement. “In recent years, the Botswana government has increasingly been eroding civil rights, and becoming intolerant of political dissent. Israel is aiding these dangerous trends.”
Friends with benefits
Although developed by private companies, the spying equipment is also a key part of the Israeli government’s diplomatic charm offensive in Africa. By helping African governments cling to power through arming them with the weapons to wage cyber-warfare on their citizens, Tel Aviv is hoping to make more African friends. The aim is to dissolve African solidarity with Palestine, and capture African votes at the UN and so defeat resolutions that are critical of Israel’s brutal military occupation. Israel is also trying to find partners to lobby the African Union to grant the occupation state observer status.
In his book War Against the People, Jeff Halper writes that Israel is exporting its expertise in population control gained through its occupation of Palestine, and leading the “global pacification” industry, assisting state security agencies around the world. The danger, Halper warns, is that gradually we will all become like Palestinians, fearful of being tracked and detained for organising a protest, defending human rights or trying to hold the powerful to account.
As repressive African governments continue looking to Israel to help them shrink the safe space for human rights defenders even further, the danger is that Abuja, Nairobi, Gaborone and other capitals across the continent may end up under digital occupation just like Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Gaza City.
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Why Would the US Stir Up Conflict in North Africa?
Photo credit: FAROUK BATICHE/AFP via Getty Images
By Vladimir Odintsov – New Eastern Outlook – 09.02.2021
The Trump administration, which left the US political Olympus, actively sought to sow contradictions in the unity of the Arab world in the Middle East, to divide these countries, to force the states that yield to the influence of Washington to lose even more identity and independence in their politics, to obey only the dictates of the American-Israeli elite. It was to this end that active steps were taken to build a new configuration of the region with forceful pressure on Muslim countries for diplomatic recognition of Israel. Although it was clear to everyone, including in the US itself, that without a solution of the Palestinian question by Tel Aviv, no Abraham Accords made between the leaders of individual Muslim states and the Jewish state would bring these countries peace and political stability.
Trump’s initiatives to involve North African countries in the game of chess, conceived by his administration, in which Israel was supposed to be the leading figure, brought no calm to the political situation either. And Donald Trump’s baiting of Morocco on “US support for the kingdom’s sovereignty over the territories of Western Sahara in Africa” for agreeing to recognize the Jewish state has only exacerbated the situation in the region. Political activists in countries such as Algeria and Libya, which for decades have supported the Polisario Front, which insists on the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), opposed Washington’s decision.
As a result, the Polisario Front declared the end of a 30-year truce and mobilized the population to fight the “Moroccan occupiers” and began preparing for hostilities with Morocco, whose army also said it would conduct an operation in Western Sahara to “restore the unity of the nation.” The military has already entered the buffer zone, ignoring its obligations to the UN, which, in fact, was the trigger for a new armed conflict in Africa. The military operations have already started, involving the use of artillery and MLRs, as well as peacekeepers, who fired APCs to repel the Polisario’s attack in the direction of the border town of Guerherat. The main hope of the Polisario rebels is Algeria, which was already considering stepping up its forces against the kingdom.
Mohammed Salem Ould Salek, one of the leaders of the Polisario Front, accused the Moroccan authorities of fomenting war in the region. In addition, he stated that his organization, as well as the SADR administration, had lost confidence in UN Secretary General António Guterres because his recent report did not comply with the letter and spirit of the joint UN-African Union (AU) plan to resolve the conflict in Western Sahara.
Another Polisario Front representative, Sidi Mohammed Omar, quoted by AFP, believes that the Guterres report gives a false impression of calm, when in reality there is chaos in the region. He claims that the Moroccan authorities have grossly violated human rights in the occupied territories by abducting, torturing and killing Polisario and SADR functionaries.
At the same time, in spite of the ongoing tension around the problem of Western Sahara, it should be noted that since the arrival of the new US President Joe Biden in the White House, despite the breakdown of the truce, the rebels are not trying to make a serious offensive in the lands controlled by Rabat. They are clearly hoping that the new US administration may renegotiate Trump’s agreement with Morocco on Western Sahara. Moreover, Polisario is well aware that, without the necessary support from the international community and with insufficient firepower, a prolonged war with Morocco is clearly untenable. Therefore, the recent loud statements of the Polisario fighters are more a desire to draw international attention to the situation in Western Sahara, to get the support of world powers to put pressure on Morocco to withdraw royal troops from the occupied territories.
The Moroccan authorities are already accusing the authorities of neighboring Algeria of covertly supporting the Polisario. Other countries, in particular the United Arab Emirates, which opened a diplomatic mission in Western Sahara 10 days before the start of the war, are involuntarily brought into the conflict. In addition, the situation escalated after the government of Côte d’Ivoire, followed by several other small African states, including Gabon, Comoros, and Sao Tome and Principe, decided to open their consulates in Laayoune, a small town claimed by the SADR. In Western Sahara, such steps were perceived as flagrant violations of international law, UN and General Assembly resolutions on the decolonization of Western Sahara. The SADR protest was supported by Algeria, Polisario’s traditional sponsor, Namibia, and several other African countries that have recognized SADR independence.
The danger of the current escalating conflict in Western Sahara is that a new war could not only scorch Morocco and the SADR, but also spill over into Algeria. In this situation, with African countries and the Arab world deeply concerned about the events in Western Sahara, Egypt has taken the initiative to play the role of mediator and peacemaker, calling on Morocco, Polisario and Algeria to refrain from further escalation.
To better understand the situation, it is necessary to recall that Western Sahara was under Spanish control until 1953. But when a new political-military organization, the Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguia el-Hamra y Río de Oro (Polisario), appeared in the territory, it began to advocate the independence of the two regions, with Algerian support, without ruling out the possibility of armed struggle. As a result, Madrid abandoned its colony and withdrew its troops, to be replaced by soldiers from Morocco and Mauritania. The fighting continued until 1991, when representatives of Rabat and Polisario signed a UN-brokered ceasefire agreement.
The people of Western Sahara were given the opportunity to determine the fate of their land, including through a referendum in 1992, but due to disagreements over who could participate, the vote did not take place. Subsequently, Morocco refused to support the idea of calling a new referendum, agreeing only to grant autonomy within the state.
Today about 80% of Western Sahara is controlled by Rabat, the remaining 20%, which is mostly desert surface, has gone to the rebels.
On the issue of ownership of the disputed territories the international community has remained neutral for the last 30 years, 117 out of 194 UN member states still do not recognize the independence of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, in fact, as well as the sovereignty of Morocco over these lands. However, Algeria, Argentina and several other countries sided with the SADR, and France, along with 19 states, agreed to a plan for autonomy in the region. Forty-five states, including Russia, advocate a people’s right to self-determination.
As for Rabat’s resumption of diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv, one can hardly expect any active steps from the kingdom in the near future. First, they clearly intend to wait for the new US administration’s decision on Trump’s “initiatives,” especially with regard to support for “kingdom sovereignty over the Western Sahara territories in Africa.” In addition, the Supreme Court of the Kingdom has already received a lawsuit from a group of lawyers demanding the cancellation of the deal with Israel, and until the end of this lawsuit official Rabat is not willing to take any action against Israel.
As for the Biden administration, it had another urgent task to clean up Trump’s “Augean Stables,” only this time in relation to the situation in Morocco-Western Sahara-Algeria, and in the North African region as a whole.
French drone strike in Mali kills 19 civilians at wedding event
Press TV | January 8, 2021
A French military drone strike in Mali has reportedly killed civilians attending a wedding event in a remote village amid France’s persisting military intervention in its former African colony under the pretext of fighting rising militancy in the impoverished — though minerals-rich – nation.
The aerial strike in central Mali’s isolated Douentza area came at a moment of growing anti-French sentiment and armed resistance across the West African country in response to the eight-year military presence of the former colonial power.
An advocacy group for Fulani herders, known as Jeunesse Tabital Pulaaku, released a list on Thursday of 19 people it said were killed by the French airstrike, including the father of the groom, as well as seven others it said were injured in the attack while attending the wedding ceremony.
“Those who were killed were civilians,” said the group’s president, Hamadoun Dicko, as quoted in a Reuters report on Friday, noting: “Whether there were jihadists around at the moment of the raid or not, I don’t know.”
The report further cited a health worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as confirming on Tuesday that civilians had been “mistakenly hit in the strike.”
This is while on Thursday Mali’s Paris-sponsored government and the French military denied eye-witness accounts and other reports blaming the French air strike for the civilian fatalities in the area, claiming that only Muslim militants were targeted.
The French army further insisted that the targets were “Islamist fighters,” claiming that their identities were confirmed by its drones prior to the bloody attack and subsequent checks following the strike.
“No collateral damage, no sign of a festive gathering or a marriage,” the French army command declared in a statement, describing the targeted site as lightly wooded and claiming that “no women or children were observed” in the area.
According to the army statement, a group of nearly 40 men was monitored by the REAPER drone for more than an hour and a half before the strike, which was carried out over one kilometer from the nearest dwellings on the edge of the village of Bounti.
Repeating the French version of events, Mali’s Defense Ministry further cited surveillance images” to state, “the strike took place during a joint operation with French forces and killed about 30 militants.”
“There was no sign of a marriage, women or children,” it added in a statement.
France maintains a military force of more than 5,100 in Mali and other former colonies in West Africa in purported efforts to counter militants it claims are linked to the al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorist groups.
The military intervention, however, has come at a cost. Five French soldiers were killed in Mali in recent days and Malian citizens have protested France’s military presence in the streets as well as on social media platforms.
Two French soldiers were killed earlier this week as an explosion hit their armored vehicle during an “intelligence” gathering mission in Mali’s eastern Menaka region, bringing the number of French soldiers killed in the nation to fifty.
The attack came less than a week after three more French troops were also killed in its former colony by an improvised explosive device in the southern region of Hombori.
This is while France is still trying to maintain power with its significant military presence in Africa. It has thousands of soldiers spread in bases across the arid Sahel region of West Africa below the Sahara, purportedly waging “counter-insurgency” operations.
Violence, however, has steadily worsened in the region with militant groups using northern Mali to launch attacks on neighboring countries.
Last January, hundreds of people took to the streets in the capital of Mali to protest the presence of French troops in the Sahel region.
Protesters gathered in a square in the center of the capital Bamako, where they burned the French flag and carried banners reading slogans such as “Down with France.”
The protest came ahead of a summit in France on the country’s military interventions in Africa.
The latest French killing of Malian civilians came as Paris faces tough choices about how to deal with its purported moves to counter extremists in Mali and other African nations without getting bogged down in a potentially un-winnable war, according to an AFP report, which pointed to the growing number of French troops killed since it launched a campaign to rid northern Mali of militants in January 2013.
It further cited French military sources as saying that President Emmanuel Macron wishes to go further in reducing the number of French troops in the Sahel region before the country’s next presidential election in April / May 2022.
“So far, the French have not really questioned the role of France in the Sahel. But you have to be very careful. Public opinion can change very quickly,” said a government source as quoted in the report.
In a sign that the Sahel mission could become a national political football, some opposition politicians in France have already started to question the wisdom of staying the course.
“War in Mali: for how long?” questioned the country’s far-left party, France Unbowed, earlier in the week.
Why Black People Cannot Trust The Pfizer Vaccine
Unrecognizable female scientist with bacteriological protection suit investigating a vaccine in the laboratory
By Wesley Muhammad, Ph.D. | The Final Call | December 16, 2020
The Pfizer pharmaceutical company beat everyone to the punch by being the first Covid-19 vaccine to be granted Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA. There is an aggressive media and government campaign to “[push] blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans to the front of the [vaccine] line, ahead of whites.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs has apparently determined that these groups will be given priority for receiving the vaccine once it is available, despite the fact that 60 percent of the Covid-19 cases and 61 percent of the deaths among veterans are White (16 percent and 22 percent are Black, respectively).
But Black people have every reason to be profoundly suspicious of Pfizer as Pfizer has a history of doing horrendous medical experiments on Black people for profit. American drug companies routinely hop across borders in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America conducting risky drug experiments with little oversight. This is a legacy of the colonial view of “The Colony as Laboratory” for the Western powers.
Foreign drug trials in the Third World are cheaper, faster, and provide huge pools of human guinea pigs for experimentation with minimal red tape or regulation. In 2006 Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the senior Democrat on the International Relations committee, cited an unconscionable Pfizer case as an example of “large pharmaceutical companies, both here and in Europe … using these poor, illiterate and uniformed people as guinea pigs.”
At the beginning of 1996 Pfizer was sitting on a new, potentially billion-dollar blockbuster drug, according to Wall Street analysts. The antibiotic Trovan was not yet approved by the FDA. Pfizer had enrolled thousands of adults in Trovan clinical trials and they wanted to debut the drug as a therapy for bacterial meningitis, but there were a number of problems. There was already an effective treatment for meningitis available, the antibiotic ceftriaxone. But Pfizer’s biggest problem was children.
In order to gain maximum market share and achieve the predicted $1 billion per year from this drug, Pfizer needed to develop an oral form that proved safe for pediatric use. But Trovan had never been tested on children, and in animal models it caused liver toxicity and joint damage. In addition, bacterial meningitis was rare in the U.S. There were thus not enough children suffering from it for a convincing clinical trial. However, as luck would have it, a ready pool of children suffering from the disease had suddenly, coincidentally, and inexplicably become available—in Africa!
In 1996 an unprecedented epidemic of cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) erupted oddly in the Muslim half (the north) of Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa. This was Africa’s worst ever CSM outbreak. Hardest hit was Nigeria’s largest northern state, Kano. “For Pfizer, the timing was oddly fortuitous.” Together with the World Health Organization (WHO), Pfizer “volunteered” to help. Vaccines and effective antibiotics were already long in use and could have tamed this epidemic, but curiously these were not made adequately available. It is believed that local health officials were paid off in order to obstruct efforts to halt the epidemic.
Pfizer officials saw in the Nigerian outbreak “a unique opportunity to test their drug without the restrictions of FDA clinical study protocols.” The Pfizer team roared into Nigeria on a chartered DC-9 and roared out five weeks later. But between April 3 and May 15, 1996, Pfizer engaged in an indefensible, illegal medical experiment in Kano using 200 gravely ill Nigerian children as young as 3 years old, who were either given the unapproved experimental drug Trovan or inappropriate doses of the alternative, ceftriaxone. Pfizer never obtained authorization from the federal government of Nigeria to conduct the experiment within its borders and was unable to produce any records documenting that the children or their parents were informed that they were part of an experiment.
“For weeks, Pfizer dispensed Trovan to Nigerian children and babies with complete disregard for all scientific research protocols.” A report on the Kano Experiment from a Nigerian federal panel concluded that the experiment violated Nigerian law as well as international law. Pfizer did no long-term follow up on the children and left Nigeria without any significant information about the final health impact of Trovan on this group. We now know that, due to this illegal and unethical experimentation, the children suffered various degrees of adverse effects and long-term disabilities ranging from deafness to muteness, paralysis, brain damage, loss of sight, and slurred speech; 11 died.
The successful operation of Pfizer’s Kano Experiment relied on the corruption of the local health care system. Nigerian healthcare professionals were paid almost double their normal salary to participate in the study. Pfizer hired Nigerian doctor Abdulhamid Isa Dutse to run the Kano Experiment. However, Dutse was chief “only in name.” Actually, the experiment was directed totally from Pfizer’s U.S. office. Publications on Trovan inaccurately listed Dutse as the lead author, when in fact he was kept in the dark about experiment results; data that appeared in papers with his name on them was actually withheld from him. Later Dutse lamented:
“I have trusted people and am disappointed. I regret the whole exercise, I wonder why on earth I did this.” However, after the Kano Experiment, Dutse ascended to the position of dean of the Kano medical school. Dutse’s role in the Kano Experiment seems analogous to the roles of Nurse Eunice Rivers, scapegoat for the U.S Public Service’s infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and possibly of Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, made the face of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Covid-19 Vaccine today. On October 5, 2020 Dr. Dutse walked into Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, suffered a cardiac arrest and died.
During a 1997 FDA audit of the Nigerian Trovan trial or “Kano Experiment,” Pfizer produced as proof of authorization a fraudulent letterhead document granting clearance for the trial by a Nigerian ethics committee that did not exist at the time. Dutse revealed later that Pfizer instructed him to concoct and backdate the fraudulent ethics committee letter.
In 2007 the state of Kano sued Pfizer for U.S. $2.75 billion, while the Nigerian federal government sued for U.S. $8.5 billion in damages, alleging that the pharmaceutical giant “pretended it came (to Nigeria) to render humanitarian service” but in actuality “Pfizer devised a scheme under which it misrepresented and failed to disclose its primary motive in seeking to participate in giving care to the victims of the epidemic.” Nigeria even sought criminal charges against Pfizer officials, including the CEO at the time of the experiment, William Steer. To squash the case Pfizer continued to engage in unethical behavior.
In 2010 a U.S. diplomatic cable uncovered by WikiLeaks revealed that Pfizer hired investigators to look for evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general Michael Aondoakaa in an effort to persuade him to drop the legal action. The cable reported a meeting between Pfizer’s country manager, Enrico Liggeri, and U.S. officials at the Abuja embassy on April 9, 2009, discussing using leaks to the local media to pressure the Nigerian attorney general to drop the cases against Pfizer. This effort failed. In 2011 Pfizer began making payments to the victims involved in the suit as part of a $75 million settlement. In the end, an incredible and unprecedented 12,000 Nigerians died from meningitis in the curious 1996 epidemic, despite the “help” pledged by the WHO and by Pfizer.
Now, that same Pfizer is trialing a brand new, never-before seen experimental vaccine platform—the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine—and Black people are to be “prioritized” in this grand experiment! The innovative and terrifying mRNA vaccine is the brainchild of a secretive Pentagon agency, a military technology R&D operation named the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA, as it is commonly known, “specializes in turning science fantasies into realities” but for military purposes. DARPA doesn’t actually invent things itself.
Instead, it outsources its scientific tasks to universities, military labs and defense contractors, such as Pfizer and Moderna. Pfizer has been an important military contractor for decades, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars to do research and development for the Pentagon, including biodefense contracts as far back as 2013. In that year DARPA awarded Pfizer a $7.7 million contract to innovate the type of mRNA vaccine platform that is now being rolled out in “warp speed.” DARPA awarded Moderna a similar contract of up to $25 million in 2013 as well. Thus, behind both Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 and Moderna’s mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273, is DARPA. This Covid-19 vaccine is thus a piece of military technology. And Black people are being invited to cut to the front of the line.
Yeah, we should be deeply suspicious.
This would not be the first time the government would have operationalized mass vaccinations for covert military purposes. In 2012 Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta confirmed the CIA’s unethical use of the cloak of public health and medicine to advance a military-intelligence objective by making operational use of vaccination programs. For example, the Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan have vigorously opposed polio vaccination campaigns in their lands, charging that the U.S runs a spy network under the guise of these vaccine programs and also sterilizes Muslim children. Neither of these charges are mere “conspiracy theory” as they have been proven true.
In 2010 the CIA initiated a clandestine mission to locate (and then kill) Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan through the use of a fake “free vaccination” program targeting Pakistani women and children in areas surrounding Bin Laden’s presumed hideout. CIA agents recruited senior Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi to organize a sham hepatitis B vaccination operation and paid generous sums to health workers used in the plot. Nurses would travel from house to house looking for women ages 15 to 45 to cajole into taking their needle. Mothers were paid to vaccinate their children.
But none were given an actual Hep B vaccine. Rather, blood was drawn and then some concoction was injected into them. The aim of this vaccine ruse was allegedly the extraction of DNA from children of Bin Laden to confirm that he was in the area. Spies posing as polio vaccinators got close to Bin Laden’s home. The clandestine mission was apparently successful and on May 2, 2011 U.S. Navy Seals raided the three-story compound in the suburb of Abbottabad and killed Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban was proved correct to reject the free vaccinations of Western-affiliated campaigns as these campaigns were indeed cover for military/intelligence operations.
Thus, for reasons well beyond Tuskegee, Black people are rightly suspicious of the Covid-19 vaccines being rolled out in “warp speed.”
Wesley Muhammad holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and is a student minister in the Nation of Islam. He is also a sought after speaker, author, member of the NOI Research Team and the Nation of Islam Executive Council. Follow him on Instagram @wesleymuhammad. This is part one in a series of articles.
Susan Rice has blood on her hands: Journalist
By Don DeBar | Press TV | November 15, 2020
Susan Rice is another one of the recycled Clinton people, and in fact the Democratic Party had her going back even before that.
Her mother has been around. She helped design Pell Grants. She had been with Brookings since ‘92 which is about when Susan graduated into the Clinton administration (in 1993) and went directly to the National Security Council.
She was with Bill Clinton for his administration. Obama had her – first at the UN, and then as his National Security Adviser (I think). She’s about as inside as it gets. She has blood on her hands in Africa, Rwanda.
The people’s understanding of the Rwandan genocide in the United States is exactly upside down. There was a genocide there, but it was the side that the US-backed, not surprisingly, and that was Susan Rice’s project. She was a member of the National Security Council to do international affairs and that was one big act of the Clinton administration – that move to pivot to Africa, around Rwanda.
It was also the enabling of their so-called humanitarian interventions, and in any way that’s her child.
At the United Nations, she helped bring us the destruction of Libya, enabled the situation in Syria to the extent that she could, and tried to sell authority for the US to bomb the hell out of Syria as well.
It’s going to be more war, really.
Let me remind people when Trump took office in January of 2017 the foreign policy that Susan Rice and Barack Obama and the Clintons, and John Kerry had set in motion had us where we were having war games at Russia and China’s borders from the Baltics to the Korean peninsula, on a constant basis, with a number of international incidents – including NATO members shooting down Russian pilots over Syria – any of which could have escalated, and really turning on a dime into a global thermonuclear war.
Trump for all the things he has done does not leave us – if he’s leaving – in that situation. But what they’re doing is installing the very people who created that condition to start from day one to bring us right back to the brink with Russia and China.
I think it’s very scary that Susan Rice is being considered for this. I don’t think it’s a surprise at all. Anyone who knows who Joe Biden is not surprised.
Don DeBar is an American journalist and political commentator based in New York.
Israel sets its sights on the Red Sea and Bab El-Mandeb
Dr Adnan Abu Amer | MEMO | October 6, 2020
Day after day, the magnitude of the Israeli benefits from normalisation with the Gulf become clearer, especially on the military and strategic levels. The latest benefit is talk about establishing Israeli military bases in the Gulf, the Red Sea and Bab El-Mandab, or benefiting from the Emirati bases scattered in these areas, and the military benefits for Israel brought about by controlling these international seaports.
The Emirati-Israeli agreement included many clauses with security and military aspects, which stipulate bilateral cooperation in these areas, and their commitment to take important measures to prevent the use of their territories to carry out a hostile or “terrorist” attack targeting the other party, and that each side will not support any hostile operations in the territory of the other party. It also stipulates bilateral security coordination and strengthening the military security relationship.
These carefully worded texts have increased the assumptions regarding the possibility of Israel benefitting from the Emirati military bases in the region, whether in the Gulf, Bab El-Mandab, or the Red Sea. This may lead to the establishment of Israeli military base in the Emirates, as well as its use of Emirati waters, and the possibility that it will continue down this path to increase its foothold in Socotra, the Bab El-Mandab Strait and Djibouti.
It is worth noting that the possibility of establishing Israeli military bases in the Gulf, or Israel benefiting from the Emirati military bases, is not easy, but very dangerous. This is because as much as it may give hope to the Gulf states, and the UAE in particular, to defend itself against the threat of any imagined attack from Iran, it, at the same time, exposes it to danger. This is because the fulfilment of this premise means that Israel can strike Iranian targets in the Gulf waters, or in the heart of Iran itself, which will be matched by Iran targeting these Israeli bases in the Gulf.
The agreement allows Israel to get geographically closer to Iran and allows it to improve ties with the Gulf which is a strategic area in terms of trade and oil.
Iran will not stand idly by and remain silent regarding the Emirati-Israeli move, which means the situation in the Gulf region is likely to grow tense and suffer. Iran is present everywhere through the Revolutionary Guard and its sleeping armed cells.
Security of maritime navigation in the Gulf is a purely Israeli interest within the strategy of “curbing the Iranian threat” and strengthening the relationship with the Gulf states, former Israeli Foreign Minister, Yisrael Katz, has said.
Israel aims to gain control over the most important sea straits in the region, which belong to the Emirati and Saudi bases, which enhances the expansion of Israel’s military and strategic influence.
A document by the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence revealed that the agreement with Abu Dhabi paves the way for intensifying military cooperation between them in the Red Sea. This is because it is interested in expanding security cooperation in the region, leading to strengthening the military alliance between them. This includes intensive Israeli military movement, especially through the countries of the Horn of Africa, most notably Ethiopia, at a time when Israeli arms companies are seeking to increase their exports to the Emirates.
US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the UAE and Israel had agreed to build a security and military alliance against Iran to protect American interests and the Middle East, and to increase security and intelligence cooperation to confront what he referred to as “terrorism”.
But Israel has not left Yemen out of its view, the country offers a gateway to the Bab El-Mandab Strait. Tel Aviv aims to crack down on the Palestinian resistance to prevent it from receiving the weapons that reach it from Iran through the Red Sea, reaching the Sinai, and then the Gaza Strip.
As long as the most important provisions of the Emirati-Israeli agreement are related to security and military relations, Israel will work to exploit the agreement to increase its influence in the Gulf. Meanwhile, the UAE is looking for control in the Gulf with the support of the US and Israel, so there is joint Israeli and Emirati work in Yemen to establish joint military bases and areas of influence, specifically on the island of Socotra, which would allow it to completely control the path that passes from India to the West, and penetrates into Africa, which is a strategic location for Israel.
US requires Kenya to publicly back Israel or forget FTA: Nairobi
Press TV – September 22, 2020
The United States has required Kenya to support Israel’s commercial and political interests or forget a free trade agreement (FTA) with Washington, with activists warning that the inclusion of Israel in the bilateral deal would undermine the Kenyan reputation.
Washington and Nairobi recently resumed trade pact talks after a several-week halt. The US has set a raft of conditions in the ongoing negotiations for the bilateral deal.
In its objectives seen by the Kenyan newspaper East African, Washington has indicated that the conditional deal should, with respect to commercial partnerships, discourage actions that prejudice or discourage business between the United States and Israel.
The White House argues that the FTA should “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.”
The US also wants the “elimination of politically motivated, non-tariff barriers on Israeli goods, services, or other commerce imposed on Israel; and the elimination of State-sponsored, unsanctioned foreign boycotts of Israel, or compliance with the Arab League Boycott of Israel.”
“The United States published its negotiating position before negotiations began for all to see. We are negotiating with transparency and openness,” said the US ambassador to Kenya, Kyle McCarter, when asked about the inclusion of Israel in the trade talks.
“This is how we have treated the numerous other countries with which we have concluded successful free trade agreements benefiting both parties.”
The inclusion of Israel as a third party in the negotiation agenda has sparked criticism from activists who warn that the agreement could be too risky for Kenya.
The East African Tax and Governance Network (EATGN) and East African Trade Network (EATN), the groups who have been following developments on the matter, said Nairobi was being “entrapped” in the Palestine-Israeli conflict.
“Due to Kenya’s own special relationship with Israel and its pragmatic approach in dealing with issues like tensions in the Middle East, US demands for such political connotations in the USFTA would undercut the country’s reputation,” said Leonard Wanyama, the co-ordinator of the EATGN and vice-president of the International Relations Society of Kenya, a lobby for foreign policy experts in Nairobi.
This week, the Tax Network said Washington’s demand could place Nairobi in a difficult situation. It called for officials to reject the demand.
Nairobi’s own published objectives indicate the agreement must be discussed within the limits of the East African Community (EAC) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations.
Kenya also wants a deal that takes into consideration the “special and differential treatment applicable to Kenya as a developing country,” according to the report.
Traditionally, Kenya has often recognized Israel, but rarely makes a public statement endorsing one side or the other and supports the so-called two-state solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It allows Palestine to establish a representative office in Nairobi.
Last year, Israel’s Channel 13 said in a report that Israeli commandos were training local forces in more than a dozen African nations where Israeli arms exporters are already accused of being complicit in war crimes.
The channel showed footage of Israeli officers coaching Tanzanian troopers in hand-to-hand krav maga, hostage operations and urban combat, saying there was a dramatic rise in Tel Aviv’s military activities in Africa.
Tel Aviv’s policy to spice up ties with Africa, the report said, also features combined efforts by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, military, the Mossad spy agency and the regime’s security agency Shin Bet.
The report named Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, Ivory Coast and Ghana as the African countries that Israel was seeking to stake out a niche with.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made inroads into Africa a key part of his agenda, becoming the first Israeli leader to visit the continent in 50 years in 2016.
The US demand for protection of Israeli interests means that Washington seeks to counter the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which targets Israel, according to the East African report.
The BDS movement was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations and later turned international. It is meant to initiate “various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law” and end its occupation of Palestinian lands.
The BDS, which was inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, has claimed several recent successes in isolating Israel.
At Least 37 Million People Displaced by US War on Terror, Study Finds
Sputnik – 08.09.2020
A new report by the Costs of War Project has found that at least 37 million people have been displaced by the US War on Terror; however, the group warns that the estimate is conservative and the real total could be far higher.
According to a report published on Tuesday by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, at least 37 million people have been displaced, either internally or been forced to become refugees, in eight different countries as a result of the US War on Terror, begun in 2001.
For comparison, the population of the US state of California is 39.5 million, and the population of Canada is 37.59 million. However, the researchers warn that is a “very conservative” estimate, as the true number could be closer to between 48 and 59 million people.
The report focused on eight conflicts, including declared and undeclared war zones, where the US has carried out military operations under the guise of destroying international terrorism: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.
The group’s data was compiled from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In Afghanistan, some 5.3 million people have been displaced in total since 2001, although this number is in considerable dispute, as the researchers concluded that 2.1 million Afghans had fled the country since 2001, but they also found evidence that as many as 2.4 million had fled just between 2012 and 2019. Another 3.2 million have been displaced internally. The researchers noted, however, that war and civil turmoil in the Central Asian country has continued almost nonstop since the late 1970s.
In neighboring Pakistan, the US war near the Afghan border has displaced some 3.7 million people, including 360,000 refugees abroad and 1.56 million from the border area.
Meanwhile in Libya, where the US supported the 2011 overthrow of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi, at least 1.2 million people have been displaced in what the IDMC called a “state collapse trigger[ed] mass displacement.” At the start of 2020, the report notes, 451,000 remained internally displaced, and the civil war continues to rage.
Iraq has the largest total number, with 9.2 million people displaced by several wars. In March 2003, the US launched a massive invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and the brutal counterinsurgency war that erupted afterward had displaced some 4.7 million people by 2007. While the US war in Iraq officially ended in 2011, war erupted again just three years later in 2014, when Daesh roared into existence, and the US once again became involved in major combat operations in Mesopotamia. By 2020, 650,000 Iraqis remained refugees abroad, and 1.4 million had been internally displaced.
In neighboring Syria, where Daesh first established its would-be caliphate amid a civil war raging since 2011, the US became involved at several distinct levels over the years. The report was very truncated in its analysis, looking just at the five provinces where US forces fought on the ground – Aleppo, al-Hasakah, al-Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Homs – and only since 2017.
By those criteria, 7.1 million had been displaced, including 470,000 internally. However, 220,000 of those have been just since October 2019, when the Turkish invasion of eastern Syria pushed 220,000 Kurds from their homes, including 17,900 who crossed the border into Iraq for safety.
However, the report notes that if a different metric were used – one including all of Syria beginning in 2013, when the US started arming Syrian rebel militias – the number of displaced persons increases massively to between 44 and 51 million people.
In Somalia, where the US has waged or supported wars for decades, “virtually all Somalis have been displaced by violence at least once in their life,” the Norwegian Refugee Council is quoted as saying in the report. From a population of 15 million, some 4.2 million have been displaced by US operations, including 80,000 refugees and 3.4 million internally displaced persons.
Like Somalia, Yemen has seen war rage for decades. The US began airstrikes in Yemen in 2002, pursuing al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but conditions deteriorated catastrophically in 2015, when Saudi Arabia and several of its allies, including the US, launched a war against the Yemeni Houthi movement.
The ongoing war, in which Saudi, Emirati and Moroccan aircraft have bombarded the country and supported militias on the ground as well as forces loyal to ousted Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, has displaced 4.4 million people. In 2019 alone, 400,000 more people were displaced. According to the OCHA, 100,000 Yemenis have been killed by combat operations since 2015, and another 130,000 have died from hunger and disease.
The Philippines is the only country on the list not located in southwestern Asia or northern or eastern Africa. However, the US-supported military operations in Mindanao against groups such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Abu Sayyaf and the Maute Group have displaced some 1.7 million Filipinos, nearly all of them internally.
“In documenting displacement caused by the US post-9/11 wars, we are not suggesting the US government or the United States as a country is solely responsible for the displacement. Causation is never so simple,” the authors note in the report. “Causation always involves a multiplicity of combatants and other powerful actors, centuries of history, and large-scale political, economic, and social forces. Even in the simplest of cases, conditions of pre-existing poverty, environmental change, prior wars, and other forms of violence shape who is displaced and who is not.”
Democrats’ election platform demands end to ‘forever wars’ — most of which were launched last time Biden held office
By Helen Buyniski | RT | August 17, 2020
The Democratic Party’s 2020 electoral platform includes a call to end the US’ “forever wars” – which sounds great, except that a Democratic president started many of those wars and the party has stonewalled efforts to end them.
“Democrats know it’s time to bring nearly two decades of unceasing conflict to an end,” the platform, released in draft form on Monday and expected to be approved by Democratic leaders later this week, reads.
It’s a relatively uncontroversial statement in itself: at nearly 19 years and counting, the US war in Afghanistan is the longest conflict in American history. The various satellite wars that have sprung up as part of the “War on Terror” have devastated large swathes of the Middle East – and the US itself, which has spent upwards of $6 trillion on fighting them while much of the country slid into a permanent recession – over the past two decades.
However, the responsibility for many of those satellite conflicts lies with Democrat Barack Obama’s administration, which liberally bombed Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in addition to Afghanistan and Iraq, turning the already-disastrous two-front War on Terror of his predecessor George W. Bush into a regional quagmire. Democratic candidate Joe Biden was Obama’s vice president, cheering those wars on and defending his boss’ decisions. Now, the party wants Americans to believe only he can put an end to them.
The 2020 platform promises a “durable and inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan” along with an end to US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and a repeal of the threadbare 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that has been repeatedly (mis)used to excuse US interventions in the Middle East under the guise of fighting terrorism. All great ideas, but the party has been here before.
Despite receiving the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after his inauguration, Obama didn’t bring the peace he promised in his 2008 campaign – he just made war more palatable to the liberals who had previously protested against it. By dramatically expanding the US drone program and cloaking murderous airstrikes in the warm fuzzy rhetoric of spreading democracy and “responsibility to protect,” Obama, his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the Democrats in his administration took the wars out of sight, and out of mind for the average American.
Even while taking credit for “ending” the war in Iraq, launched in 2003 on the fraudulent pretext that leader Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction and/or was somehow involved in the 9/11 terror attacks, Obama subsequently returned US troops to Iraq under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State terror group (IS, ISIS/ISIL). However, IS is widely considered an outgrowth of the US’ botched Iraq policy, which destabilized the region by flooding the country with many of the suddenly-unemployed (but still well-armed) remnants of Saddam Hussein’s military. At the same time, the CIA has a long history of supporting terror groups that dovetail with its political aims, from arming and training al-Qaeda’s predecessors to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan to arming and training so-called “moderate rebels” whose tactics are often indistinguishable from ISIL or al-Qaeda to take out the Syrian government. Terrorism has thrived amid the war “against” it.
That the Democrats should campaign in 2020 on ending forever wars suggests they might have learned something from 2016, when then-candidate Donald Trump pledged to do just that, luring disaffected liberals who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for notorious warmonger Hillary Clinton. Her flippant dismissal of the brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – “We came, we saw, he died!” – remains chilling years after she helped reduce the country with the highest standard of living on the African continent to a failed state where slaves are sold in open markets.
But while Trump has profoundly failed to keep his end-the-wars promise, instead increasing the number of drone strikes beyond Obama’s sky-high levels, even Trump’s minimal efforts to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan have been ferociously opposed by the Democrats.
Indeed, the only foreign policy acts the self-styled #Resistance has praised from their political nemesis have been his bombings of Syria in response to extremely dubious reports of gas attacks by the Assad government. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria claimed the strike represented the day Trump “became president of the United States.”
The disingenuous call to end the military quagmires is far from the only lofty pledge embedded in the Democrats’ platform, which alternates between eye-rolling social-justice pandering and common-sense measures with broad appeal.
The party has also pledged to “end the Trump Administration’s politicization of the armed forces,” improve healthcare for veterans, “root out systemic racism from our military justice system,” and “prioritize more effective and less costly diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement tools” over military invasions in conducting foreign policy.
It remains to be seen which, if any, of those promises they will keep.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
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Not Hamas-Israeli conflict: The Palestinian cause belongs to the world
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 15, 2023
This, in his thinking, could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”
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