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The Supreme Court’s Superb Dissenting Opinion

At least three justices understand what is at stake here

By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | July 5, 2024

Three justices of the Supreme Court actually read and understood the record in our case. Justice Alito, joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, wrote an important dissenting opinion. I’d like to share a few highlights here, as it provides a roadmap to ultimately prevailing in our case.

The three dissenting justices clearly recognize that we the plaintiffs were victims of the government’s unconstitutional censorship activities:

Among these victims were two States, whose public health officials were hampered in their ability to share their expertise with state residents; distinguished professors of medicine at Stanford and Harvard; a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine; the owner and operator of a news website; and Jill Hines, the director of a consumer and human rights advocacy organization. All these victims simply wanted to speak out on a question of the utmost public importance.

Echoing the district court and circuit court opinions, the dissenting justices indicate the landmark importance of this free speech case:

If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years. Freedom of speech serves many valuable purposes, but its most important role is protection of speech that is essential to democratic self-government, and speech that advances humanity’s store of knowledge, thought, and expression in fields such as science, medicine, history, the social sciences, philosophy, and the arts.

Unlike the majority opinion, which took the government’s claim to be combating “misinformation” at face value, the dissenting opinion recognized that much of the speech that the government suppressed was true:

The speech at issue falls squarely into those categories. It concerns the COVID–19 virus, which has killed more than a million Americans. Our country’s response to the COVID–19 pandemic was and remains a matter of enormous medical, social, political, geopolitical, and economic importance, and our dedication to a free marketplace of ideas demands that dissenting views on such matters be allowed. I assume that a fair portion of what social media users had to say about COVID–19 and the pandemic was of little lasting value. Some was undoubtedly untrue or misleading, and some may have been downright dangerous. But we now know that valuable speech was also suppressed. That is what inevitably happens when entry to the marketplace of ideas is restricted.

The majority opinion suggested, without evidence, that our censorship was the result of the actions of social media platforms, who may have censored us even in the absence of government coercion. The dissenting opinion explains the flaws with this unwarranted assumption:

Of course, purely private entities like newspapers are not subject to the First Amendment, and as a result, they may publish or decline to publish whatever they wish. But government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech, see National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, 602 U. S. 175 (2024), and that is what happened in this case.

The record before us is vast. It contains evidence of communications between many different government actors and a variety of internet platforms, as well as evidence regarding the effects of those interactions on the seven different plaintiffs.

Alito focuses on Facebook and co-plaintiff Jill Hines as the clearest example (though by no means the only example) to illustrate the nature of the problem:

Here is what the record plainly shows. For months in 2021 and 2022, a coterie of officials at the highest levels of the Federal Government continuously harried and implicitly threatened Facebook with potentially crippling consequences if it did not comply with their wishes about the suppression of certain COVID–19-related speech. Not surprisingly, Facebook repeatedly yielded. As a result Hines was indisputably injured, and due to the officials’ continuing efforts, she was threatened with more of the same when she brought suit. These past and threatened future injuries were caused by and traceable to censorship that the officials coerced, and the injunctive relief she sought was an available and suitable remedy.

It’s hard to know how much more harm the Supreme Court would need to see before agreeing that at least one of the plaintiffs has standing. These examples could be multiplied. By refusing to examine the record and rule on the merits, Alito suggests that the Court actually provides a roadmap for future government censorship efforts:

This evidence was more than sufficient to establish Hines’s standing to sue, and consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.

That is regrettable. What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional in Vullo, but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.

Alito then echoes arguments I published in The Federalist following oral arguments, regarding the key differences between newspapers and social media companies in terms of their interactions with government:

Internet platforms, although rich and powerful, are at the same time far more vulnerable to Government pressure than other news sources. If a President dislikes a particular newspaper, he (fortunately) lacks the ability to put the paper out of business. But for Facebook and many other social media platforms, the situation is fundamentally different. They are critically dependent on the protection provided by §230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U. S. C. §230, which shields them from civil liability for content they spread. They are vulnerable to antitrust actions; indeed, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described a potential antitrust lawsuit as an “existential” threat to his company. And because their substantial overseas operations may be subjected to tough regulation in the European Union and other foreign jurisdictions, they rely on the Federal Government’s diplomatic efforts to protect their interests.

This dynamic sets social media companies up to be vulnerable to government coercion, in precisely the way we argued before the Court:

For these and other reasons, internet platforms have a powerful incentive to please important federal officials, and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability. When Facebook did not heed their requests as quickly or as fully as the officials wanted, the platform was publicly accused of “killing people” and subtly threatened with retaliation.

Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials’ wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were “deplatformed” or otherwise injured.

Alito perfectly describes how this abusive Stockholm Syndrome dynamic played out between Facebook and the White House:

What these events show is that top federal officials continuously and persistently hectored Facebook to crack down on what the officials saw as unhelpful social media posts, including not only posts that they thought were false or misleading but also stories that they did not claim to be literally false but nevertheless wanted obscured. And Facebook’s reactions to these efforts were not what one would expect from an independent news source or a journalistic entity dedicated to holding the Government accountable for its actions. Instead, Facebook’s responses resembled that of a subservient entity determined to stay in the good graces of a powerful taskmaster. Facebook told White House officials that it would “work . . . to gain your trust.” When criticized, Facebook representatives whimpered that they “thought we were doing a better job” but promised to do more going forward. They pleaded to know how they could “get back to a good place” with the White House. And when denounced as “killing people,” Facebook responded by expressing a desire to “work together collaboratively” with its accuser. The picture is clear.

Here we have a major social media platform responding as though they are entirely subservient to government interests. The more they try to please the government by ramping up censorship, the more abusive and demanding the government becomes.

To the dubious claim that plaintiffs cannot allege potential future injuries because—on their word—the White House has backed off the social media companies, Alito (in contrast to the majority opinion) calls the government’s bluff:

The White House threats did not come with expiration dates, and it would be silly to assume that the threats lost their force merely because White House officials opted not to renew them on a regular basis.

As Alito later quips, “death threats can be very effective even if they are not delivered every day.”

Drawing an analogy to another free speech case (Vullo) that was heard on the same day as ours, Alito explains:

In Vullo, the alleged conduct was blunt. The head of the state commission with regulatory authority over insurance companies allegedly told executives at Lloyd’s directly and in no uncertain terms that she would be “‘less interested’” in punishing the company’s regulatory infractions if it ceased doing business with the National Rifle Association. The federal officials’ conduct here [in Murthy] was more subtle and sophisticated. The message was delivered piecemeal by various officials over a period of time in the form of aggressive questions, complaints, insistent requests, demands, and thinly veiled threats of potentially fatal reprisals. But the message was unmistakable, and it was duly received.

The Supreme Court majority was ready to knock down ham-fisted censorship (in Vullo) but gave a pass—at least for now—to sophisticated and debonair censorship (in Murthy).

The government’s defense of its behavior included the argument that it had the right to use the bully pulpit to “persuade” social media companies to do its bidding—”the government has free speech rights, too, don’t you see?” Alito sees right through this ruse:

This argument introduces a new understanding of the term “bully pulpit,” which was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt to denote a President’s excellent (i.e, “bully”) position (i.e., his “pulpit”) to persuade the public. But [Rob] Flaherty, [Andy] Slavitt, and other [White House] officials who emailed and telephoned Facebook were not speaking to the public from a figurative pulpit. On the contrary, they were engaged in a covert scheme of censorship that came to light only after the plaintiffs demanded their emails in discovery and a congressional Committee obtained them by subpoena. If these communications represented the exercise of the bully pulpit, then everything that top federal officials say behind closed doors to any private citizen must also represent the exercise of the President’s bully pulpit. That stretches the concept beyond the breaking point.

In any event, the Government is hard-pressed to find any prior example of the use of the bully pulpit to threaten censorship of private speech.

To repeat what I have said many times before: this case is not about constraining the government’s speech—as they falsely claim; it’s about stopping the government from constraining the speech of U.S. citizens.

The dissenting justices argue that the majority opinion applies a “new and heightened standard” of traceability in our case (p.20). Alito explains, again using the case of co-plaintiff Jill Hines, that she clearly has standing to bring the case (and we only need one plaintiff with standing to prevail):

Here, it is reasonable to infer (indeed, the inference leaps out from the record) that the efforts of the federal officials affected at least some of Facebook’s decisions to censor Hines. All of Facebook’s demotion, content-removal, and deplatforming decisions are governed by its policies. So when the White House pressured Facebook to amend some of the policies related to speech in which Hines engaged, those amendments necessarily impacted some of Facebook’s censorship decisions. Nothing more is needed. What the Court seems to want are a series of ironclad links—from a particular coercive communication to a particular change in Facebook’s rules or practice and then to a particular adverse action against Hines. No such chain was required in the Department of Commerce case, and neither should one be demanded here.

Furthermore, the Court’s majority opinion developed a novel, higher standard of repressibility of potential future harms to avoid ruling on the merits of our case:

As with traceability, the Court applies a new and elevated standard for redressability, which has never required plaintiffs to be “certain” that a court order would prevent future harm.

Having established that the Court should have found that we have standing, Alito proceeds to analyze the record on the merits, using the following legal framework:

The principle recognized in Bantam Books and Vullo requires a court to distinguish between permissible persuasion and unconstitutional coercion, and in Vullo, we looked to three leading factors that are helpful in making that determination: (1) the authority of the government officialswho are alleged to have engaged in coercion, (2) the natureof statements made by those officials, and (3) the reactions of the third party alleged to have been coerced. 602 U. S., at 189–190, and n. 4, 191–194. In this case, all three factors point to coercion.

Although the government tries to spin their interactions with social media platforms as fairly benign, examination of the record in this regard leaves no doubt: “The totality of this record—constant haranguing, dozens of demands for compliance, and references to potential consequences—evince ‘a scheme of state censorship.’” Lest there be any doubt in this regard, “Facebook’s responses to the officials’ persistent inquiries, criticisms, and threats show that the platform perceived the statements as something more than mere recommendations.” Alito concludes, “In sum, the officials wielded potent authority. Their communications with Facebook were virtual demands. And Facebook’s quavering responses to those demands show that it felt a strong need to yield.”

From here we return to the District Court in Louisiana for trial, where we have an excellent judge (Terry Doughty). We will be granted additional discovery, in which we anticipate getting enough additional “smoking guns” to cross the high standing bar set by the majority Supreme Court opinion. The District court has combined our case with an analogous case filed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is clearly named and targeted in several government censorship missives—so between Hines and Kennedy there should be no questions on the issue of standing, even under the novel and strict criteria that SCOTUS requires in this case.

In other words, we will prevail in the end. I anticipate being back at the Supreme Court in another year or two for the final ruling. At that point, SCOTUS will not be able to temporize or look away as they did this time. And when judges examine the record in our case, they have only reached one conclusion: the government engaged in unconstitutional censorship on a mass scale. And it has to stop.

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Advertiser Alliance Members Are Called To Testify After Allegations of Efforts To “Demonetize, and Censor Disfavored Viewpoints”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 5, 2024

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) is back in the headlines big time – what with the recent decision of X to rejoin the group, and now, as anticipated, the US Congress is stepping up its attempts to shed more light on what GARM actually does, censorship-wise.

Once again it is House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan who is trying to hold Big Tech – and in this case, “the advertising industrial complex” as it were – accountable.

GARM is a World Economic Forum (WEF)-affiliated initiative, launched by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA); the latter by its own admission represents more than 150 biggest brands and over 60 advertiser associations around the world.

“Brand safety” is what the group says it is offering to these clients. But Jordan, and many conservatives and media outlets and businesses – allied or perceived to be allied with them – have strong suspicions that GARM can and is being used as yet another avenue of censorship and suppression – this time via actions that result in demonetization or boycott of those who hold “disfavored views.”

Concerning GARM, Jordan started fighting what supporters must see as “the good fight” last year (first by requesting information and then by issuing a subpoena once that was ignored).

Then, this March, the Committee sent letters to five members of the GARM Steering Team including Unilever and GroupM (a media investment group) asking for access to documents and communications that might prove the overall anti-conservative bias executed by the imitative.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Jordan was not in the mood to sugarcoat the issue, as he sees it: “This coordination does not always revolve around ‘brand safety’ and ‘harmful’ content as GARM publicly claims, but instead the desire to censor conservative and other views that GARM members disfavor,” he wrote, adding that this results in content creators losing revenue, in a way that may be illegal and collusive under the Sherman (antitrust) Act.

In late June, Jordan wrote to Unilever again, and the inclusion of GroupM is pertinent given that the March letter mentioned several leading conservative media outlets as alleged targets of this conduct.

The letter is asking top representatives of the two corporations to publicly testify regarding the Committee’s misgivings around their activities.

According to a Committee spokesman’s comments made in March, “everything is on the table” in case of non-compliance with this series of requests – including more subpoenas, and congressional hearings.

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

How the Israeli Army Benefits from US Tax Law

Tax exemptions that support war crimes are not “charitable”

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 5, 2024

The United States tax code allows exemptions from federal taxes for certain categories of nonprofit organizations or groups that frequently serve either an educational or charitable purpose. Such organizations are categorized as 501(c)(3) and exempt from Federal income taxes while the donors who contribute to their support can deduct the total donations up to the limits imposed by their own overall tax liability. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recognizes more than 30 types of nonprofit organizations but only those that qualify for 501(c)(3) status can say that donations made to them are tax deductible.

Most of the organizations that may be eligible for 501(c)(3) designation “fall into one of three categories: charitable organizations, churches and religious organizations, and private foundations. A group must operate exclusively for one of certain purposes to be considered a charitable organization by the IRS: charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, or preventing cruelty to children or animals.” The IRS further defines “charitable” activities as “relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”

A 501(c)(3) organization is also “forbidden from using its activities to influence legislation in a substantial way, including participating in any campaign activities to support or deny any particular political candidate. It’s also typically not permitted to engage in political lobbying.” A private foundation is typically “held by an individual, a family, or a corporation and it obtains most of its income from a relatively small group of donors. Private foundations are subject to stricter rules and regulations than public charities. A public charity is a nonprofit organization that receives a substantial portion of its income or revenue from the general public or the government.”

It is worth considering how a 501(c)(3) is supposed to work when one examines how the numerous organizations that constitute the Israel Lobby in the United States have attained that status, which enables them to avoid US taxes while also attracting donors through tax deductions in spite of the fact that they lobby heavily, which ignores US laws, and exist to support and empower a foreign government that is engaged in a genocide. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), regarded as the wealthiest and most politically powerful of the Lobby groups, even boasts about its lobbying ability as well as the amazing success of its associated PAC in endorsing favorable to Israel political candidates. The heavily politically engaged Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the pro-Iran war Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) are likewise 501(c)(3). Smaller foundations such as the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation, founded by the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, are likewise 501(c)(3) and engaged in supporting illegal settlement development in Israeli occupied Palestine.

The 501(c)(3) status enables many Jewish and Israel-oriented groups to obtain large sums of money which are then used politically to enabled the corruption of the political process in the United States to the benefit of both Israel and domestic Jewish-favored issues. And being non-profit most definitely does not mean that anyone is going broke or working out of shabby offices in some dank suburb. AIPAC reported in excess of $90 million in earnings since Israel has been at war in Gaza, plus ADL $105 million in 1922, and FDD $18 million in earnings in the same year. The chief executives of the three organizations are, respectively Howard Kohr, Jonathan Greenblatt, and Mark Dubowitz. They earned $1,055,000, $993,000, and $771,000 respectively in 2021-2022.

This all means in practice that there is a steady cash flow from the United States to Israel that far exceeds the $3.8 billion plus special appropriations annually that President Barack Obama foolishly guaranteed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2016 in a bid to maintain Jewish donor and media support for Hillary Clinton’s election. Grant Smith, who heads the “Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP)”, has estimated that the annual total going to Israel far exceeds $10 billion and, which does not include other freebies like US government co-development and production projects and disbursements like the $14 billion gift from President Joe Biden to Israel in April to help pay for and arm that nation’s extermination of the Gazans.

Israel and the Jewish community also get an enormous free ride from some state governments. Smith has described how one such board that he has identified in Virginia is a unique example of a state’s economic policies being manipulated by a dedicated Israeli fifth column in government. It is named the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB).

The VIAB is actually part of the Virginia state government. It is funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia and is able to access funds from other government agencies to support Israeli businesses. It is staffed by Israelis and American Jews drawn from what has been described as the “Israel advocacy ecosystem” and is self-administered, appointing its own members and officers. Only Virginia has such a group actually sitting within the government itself though other states have similar advisory or “trade” commissions. VIAB is able to make secret preferential agreements, to arrange special concessions on taxes and to establish start-up subsidies for Israeli businesses. Israeli business projects have been, as a result, regularly funded using Virginia state resources with little accountability. It has been estimated that the cash flow in favor of Israel from Virginia alone has exceeded $500 million annually.

Smith has reported how VIAB is not just an economic mechanism. Its charter states that it was “created to foster closer economic integration between the United States and Israel while supporting the Israeli government’s policy agenda.” Smith also has observed that “VIAB is a pilot for how Israel can quietly obtain taxpayer funding and official status for networked entities that advance Israel from within key state governments.” The board grew significantly under Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe’s administration (2014-2018). McAuliffe, regarded by many as the Clintons’ “bag man,” has received what are regarded as generous out-of-state campaign contributions from actively pro-Israeli billionaires Haim Saban and J.B. Pritzker, who are both affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Terry McAuliffe as governor met regularly in off-the-record “no press allowed” sessions with several Israel advocacy groups and spoke frequently about “the Virginia Advisory Board and its successes.” That was, of course, a self-serving lie by one of the slimiest of the Clinton unindicted criminals. In short, the VIAB is little more than a mechanism set up to carry out licensed robbery of Virginia state resources to benefit Israel. As a side benefit to us Virginians, its reckless activities have led to numerous zoning and environmental violations.

Judging by all of the above, one would reasonably have to accept that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, that there are many “non-profit” federal tax-exempt foundations and other boards and organizations that exist in the United States to benefit Israel. That said, however, there are a couple of pro-Israel 501(c)(3) “charitable” foundations that boggle the mind for their openly stated mission. They consist of several organizations that have been established and exploited to support the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which, as noted above, are currently engaged in carrying out what is widely recognized to be a genocide in Gaza as well as persecution of Palestinians on parts of the illegally occupied West Bank. They are perhaps deserving of some special attention.

The best known and largest of the Israeli army focused “charities” is the “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces” (FIDF) which stages annual rallies and gatherings both in Los Angeles and New York to raise money for those brave warriors who are nearly every day bombing hospitals and schools and killing many thousands of children. The gatherings are well attended by the usual celebrities and politicians and widely reported in the accommodating media. The group, based in New York City, boasts of how it works directly with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Friends of IDF raised a record $60 million at a Los Angeles gala in 2018. Major Donald Trump financial supporters Miriam and Sheldon Adelson donated $10 million, matched by Israeli-American Hollywood figure Haim Saban and his wife, Cheryl.

FIDF claims to be the only 501(c)(3) certified IDF fund raiser in the US, but there is at least one other organization that has been in the news recently. It is “The Association for Israel’s Soldiers” which also goes by “The Friends of LIBI” and “LIBI USA”, which is a volunteer outfit based in Brighton, Massachusetts. It actually also claims to be part of Israel’s Ministry of Defense and its job is to cover expenses that are not part of the Israeli government budget. As money is fungible, that frees up money for more warlike purposes. But that description inevitably makes one wonder how an element of the Israeli government is able to collect tax exempt money that is also deductible as federal income taxes donations which are apparently repatriated from the US to Israel without any “charitable” or “educational” function intruding in America?

It does not require any particular brilliance to realize that both politically and economically Israel is not treated like everyone else by governments at various levels in the United States. At risk of being repetitive, how is it possible that organizations that are committed to supporting war crimes and even genocide by a foreign nation are allowed to have tax breaks that enable them to collect more money to corrupt the system that feeds them? How is it possible that the foreign army carrying out the war crimes is also allowed to benefit directly from the exemption from taxation? Those are questions that need to be answered!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel vs Hezbollah: Strategic stakes and regional implications

By Shivan Mahendrarajah | The Cradle | July 5, 2024

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. — Former US secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld

As tensions escalate between Hezbollah and Israel, analysts are meticulously wargaming potential conflict scenarios. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his religious-nationalist coalition, a confrontation with the Lebanese resistance movement is more than speculation – it is a strategic consideration. This coalition views a potential war as a means to address longstanding security concerns and strengthen its political position.

A key part of Tel Aviv’s strategic thinking is the hope that the US might be forced into taking a more active role in confronting Israel’s adversaries – Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran – thereby neutralizing threats that have persisted for decades. This concept of “clearing the decks” of regional enemies remains a central theme in Israeli strategic discussions.

Historical roots of Israel’s strategic confidence

For the occupation state, this potential conflict is a “war of choice” driven by historical and ethnonationalist motivations. But it is also premised on past Israeli military advantages that are long gone in today’s missile-laden West Asia.

The Six-Day War of 1967 fostered a belief in the invincibility of the Israeli military, the superiority of Zionism, and the manifest destiny of its ‘chosen people.’ It was with similar hubris that Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in 1941. Fast forward eight decades, and today, Israelis are informing US officials “that it can pull off a ‘blitzkrieg’” in Lebanon.

In 1967, the psychological impact on neighboring Arab states was profound due to the decisive defeat of their armies. This sentiment persisted until 2006, when Lebanon’s Hezbollah emerged politically victorious, shattering the perception of Israeli invulnerability and altering regional power dynamics.

Further shaping Israeli delusions of military superiority is the ethnonationalist rhetoric prevalent in Tel Aviv’s policy decision-making circles, embodied by extremist ministers like Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have revived the ideologies of the once-banned Meir Kahane. While a few sober military voices in Israel advocate for a diplomatic solution to the northern border crisis, hubris and ethnonationalism currently dominate the discourse.

Strategic imperatives for Hezbollah and Iran

Conversely, for Hezbollah and Iran, this conflict is a “war of necessity,” something neither can publicly admit nor provoke directly. Both have been marginalized and sanctioned by the US on Israel’s behalf, causing untold domestic pressures and economic hardships – an untenable situation that demands a direct challenge of Israeli policies.

But reversing sanctions cannot happen at the negotiating table. Israelis are arrogant and obstinate; they will not negotiate in good faith. Take, for example, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran nuclear deal. When former US president Barack Obama finalized the agreement, Netanyahu whined that Israel needed “compensation.” Obama offered Israel a military package, but as soon as he left office, Netanyahu, Jared Kushner, and AIPAC manipulated the “very stable genius,” former president Donald Trump. JCPOA was annulled. The compensation package, by the by, was not returned to US taxpayers.

Iran–Hezbollah must drag Israel to the edge of the precipice. Tel Aviv must stare into the abyss and realize that with a gentle push by the region’s Resistance Axis, it will lie mangled at the bottom of the chasm. Iran–Hezbollah, however, cannot push it over the edge, as this could lead to a nuclear nightmare. Today, in its “war of choice,” Israel has already hinted at using “unprecedented” and “unspecified” weapons against Hezbollah, implying a possible nuclear threat.

The Axis must instead show Israel a path back from the edge: a treaty that settles outstanding concerns. Tehran offered Tel Aviv and Washington a “Grand Bargain” in 2003 but was rejected. A new grand bargain is indispensable for Israel and the Axis of Resistance, yet the conditio sine qua non for a lasting treaty is Israel’s military defeat by the Axis.

The threats and counter-threats are flying, each aiming to gain “leverage” and deterrence.

Earlier this month, Iranian foreign affairs adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Kamal Kharrazi, said that were Israel to launch an all-out offensive against Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic and other factions of the Axis of Resistance would support Lebanon with “all means” necessary.

Iran has previously warned that it may be compelled to revise its nuclear doctrine in response to Israeli aggression. It is suspected that Iran may have already crossed the nuclear threshold. Even without nuclear capabilities, Iran has the ballistic missile and warhead capabilities to destroy Tel Aviv, Haifa, and other major cities. Israel is a “one-bomb country”: it is minuscule, and its population is concentrated in a few central hubs. Iran and the Axis do not have any need for multiple nuclear warheads.

As General Hajizadah explained in a speech, the Khorramshahr missile can deliver 80 warheads. If the IRGC launched 100 missiles, that’s 8,000 warheads on major Israeli cities. Israel would be foolish to trust in its integrated air defense system after the IRGC’s successful strikes on 13 April.

2024 is not 2006

Comparing the potential 2024 conflict with the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war is a popular frame of reference, but both sides have learned lessons since then. In particular, there have been significant advancements in military technology and tactics over the past 18 years.

Hezbollah has developed new tactics and weapons, such as the Almas Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM), which has proven effective against Israeli military assets. Additionally, Hezbollah’s air defense capabilities have posed new challenges for Israeli drone offensives.

The Israeli air force ruled the skies in 2006, but whether it can do so in 2024 is unclear. Hezbollah has air defense capacity (such as the Sayyad-2 medium-range surface-to-air missile). It is not known if it has newer models, like Iran’s Khordad-3. This could be a surprise.

Israeli intelligence assessments of Hezbollah’s capabilities are likely to be imprecise. Past successes against groups like the PLO and Black September are no longer relevant. Recent failures, such as Tel Aviv’s inability to foresee Hamas Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October, underscore the limitations of Israeli intelligence.

US involvement

This has been Israel’s objective since 9/11: have Americans fight Israel’s wars. Although Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Charles Brown stated that the US may be unable to assist Israel, this must not be taken as a serious military assessment. It is a political statement on behalf of the Biden Administration, which does not want to join a major war until after the 5 November election. Netanyahu, however, knows that Israel controls Congress and American media. Congressman Thomas Massie is the exception, among 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, who AIPAC has not bought. Once war begins, Israel’s minions in the White House, media, and Congress will campaign for US military participation. As Netanyahu said, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily; move it in the right direction.” He is correct.

If the US intervenes – a high-probability event – Hezbollah and Iran will (reluctantly) welcome it. For the Axis to secure a “Grand Bargain,” it must inflict catastrophic damage on US land-based and sea-based assets in West Asia. Washington will only abandon Israel if ships, bases, and hundreds (or thousands) of American lives are destroyed because of Israel.

Russia

Russia is a wildcard, a “known unknown.” The US security apparatus warring against Russia and supporting Israel is top-heavy with Zionists/neo-cons. Iran’s enemies and Russia’s enemies are nearly congruent: Victoria Kagan née Nuland; Kagan family (Robert, Fred, Kim, their ISW); Antony Blinken (grandson of a founder of Israel); Avril Haines (Director of National Intelligence); deputy director CIA David Cohen, Alejandro Mayorkas (Secretary of DHS), and more. It behooves Russia to punish its tormentors by damaging the only country to which they are loyal: Israel.

Moscow has been chafing at US support for Ukraine. Elena Panina, Director of the Institute of International Political and Economic Strategies, wrote on her Telegram channel in December 2023, “The best option for Russia is to respond to America in a similar way: with a hybrid war far from its own borders. The most obvious at the moment is a proxy attack on American forces in the Middle East.” In May 2024, Putin said the same thing. Terror attacks in Belgorod and in Sevastopol on a religious holiday may tip the scales in favor of Iran, especially if the US jumps into the fray. Defeating the US will increase popular support for Russia among global Muslims and help eject the US from West Asia – a goal supported by Russia and China. Iran is “too big to fail”: Moscow has made military and economic investments and alliances with Tehran, particularly after the Ukraine War began, and is on the cusp of signing a new comprehensive cooperation agreement with Tehran. The Kremlin cannot allow Iran to be defeated and the republic to collapse. It will most likely provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support through Russian satellites and aircraft in Syria. Russia allows IRGC to use its Humaymim/Khmeimim air base in Syria because IDF tries to prevent supplies from Iran from arriving at airports in Aleppo and Damascus. Russia could (if not already, given recent air traffic between Russia and the air base) deliver air defense batteries, missiles, and more for the Syrian Army and Hezbollah.

Unknown unknowns

The factors outlined above, along with China and North Korea’s investments in and relationships with Iran, complicate any predictions about the looming war between Israel and the Lebanese resistance. While their direct military participation is unlikely, these nuclear powers could supply Iran with essential weapons and ammunition. The “known unknowns,” a few of which are noted, are enough to complicate wargaming, but the “unknown unknowns” may render such scenarios moot.

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Bankers War in Ukraine – Part Seventeen of The Anglo-American War on Russia

Tales of the American Empire | July 4, 2024

Western corporate media and our corporate sponsored political leaders proclaim the war in Ukraine is about stopping Russian aggression. As this series has explained, this war was an American neocon effort to ignite a proxy war in Ukraine to destabilize and fragment Russia into smaller states that western corporations can control. This has failed horribly as Russia became stronger and more united than before war began. Even worse, the effort backfired after Russian efforts to make peace were rejected. Russia determined that it must conquer all of Ukraine to expel foreign troublemakers and protect itself, so its armies are slowly conquering all of Ukraine.

This has caused panic in the west since it had already taken control of Ukraine and began to exploit its vast resources. When war began, more farmland and factories were snatched up by western vulture capitalists at deep discounts as Ukrainian’s economy shut down and millions of Ukrainians fled aboard. Ukraine owes the west $300 billion that it can never repay unless it sells state assets, which is what the west wants. If Russia wins, none of this may be repaid and banks and governments will be forced to write off massive loans.

This explains the panic among western leaders who declare that Ukraine cannot be allowed to lose the war. Some now proclaim that NATO troops must be sent. Most citizens say that Ukraine is not worth World War III nor the death of hundreds of thousands of NATO soldiers, but their lords will lose billions of dollars!

________________________________

“All Wars are Bankers Wars”; YouTube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfEB…

Related Tale: “The Genocide Called World War I”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psXYM…

“Disaster Capitalists Ready to Descend on Ukraine”; Jeremy Kuzmarov; Covert Action; January 31, 2024; https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024…

“Zelensky to sell Ukraine off to BlackRock, Goldman Sachs”; The Grayzone; January 30, 2023; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y32lO…

Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The Nationwide 500,000 EV Charger Charade

By Geoffrey Pohanka | RealClear Energy | July 3, 2024

The word charade has several meanings, and including an act or event that is clearly false (Cambridge Dictionary), something done just for show (Vocabulary.com), or a situation in which people pretend that something is true when it clearly is not (Oxford Leaner’s Dictionary).

The charade I refer to is President Biden’s $7.5 billion dollar investment to install 500,000 electric charging stations along America’s highways by 2030. A reliable and convenient public EV charging infrastructure is critical to achieve the President’s goal of meeting the recent EPA CO2 emission regulations that require nearly 72% of U.S. new light vehicle sales to be fully electric or plug-in hybrid by 2032. Without diving deeper into the announcement, one would likely assume that $7.5 billion is sufficient to construct the 500,000 charging stations, one every 50 miles along the nation’s highways.

To identify the charade, one must first, look at the math: 500,000 charging stations, each with a minimum of four chargers, accomplished with an investment of $7.5 billion dollars. But that is only $15,000 per charging station, installed. A single high capacity charger can cost $100,000 or more, and most stations have multiple chargers. We are now in the second year of the program and only seven stations have been opened so far. At this rate, it will require thousands of years to build all 500,000 charging stations, assuming there are sufficient funds to do so.

Global consulting firm McKinsey and Company estimates that the U.S. will need 28 million charging ports by 2030. There are just two million charging ports today. To meet the goal, about 12,000 new public and private charging ports will need to be added every single day to reach the goal by 2030.

It is true that significantly more government funded charging stations are in the works and will be opened. The stations completed so far cost significantly more than what has been promised. With retailers contributing land to the projects opened so far, the cost of each station has averaged one-million dollars, with the government participation of 80% of the cost. Eight-hundred-thousand dollars for each station is significantly more than the 15,000 committed by the administration. At this rate, the 500,000 charging stations will cost the government $400 billion, not the $7.5 billion the President has promised.

If the administration is so wrong with this program, one must consider how many government programs designed to bring electric vehicles to the masses are similarly defective.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Europe’s Green Energy Plans Stall As Leading Companies Reduce Expansion Plans

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | July 3, 2024

Europe’s leading green energy producer, Statkraft, is drastically scaling back its plans for new wind and solar power plants – due to falling electricity prices and rising costs, so reports Germany’s online Blackout News, a leading site for independent German energy news.

According to company CEO, Birgitte Vartdal, market conditions have become more difficult as the company’s ambitious targets for wind energy and solar power are now being called into question.

The new Statkraft target is two to two and a half GW instead of an originally planned 4 gigawatts annually.

“In the offshore wind energy sector, the Group is now planning a total output of six to eight GW. The original target was ten GW,” Blackout News adds.

The scaleback follows other European countries’ plans to reduce expansion, including Danish energy company Orsted, which “has lowered its targets by more than ten GW” and has also “canceled two offshore wind projects in the USA and reported impairments amounting to 28.4 billion Danish kroner (approx. 3.8 billion euros).”

Portugal’s largest energy supplier, Energias de Portugal (EDP), has also reduced its investment plans – due to the “deterioration in market conditions.” Moreover, French energy supplier Engie earlier had postponed developing hydrogen projects.

Leading officials blame projects having become “much more challenging” and offering “no relative returns.”

As a result, solar and wind equipment manufacturers have seen their values plummeting and ESG equity funds have “recently suffered outflows of 38 billion dollars,” reports Blackout News.

Blackout News is operated by an independent and non-partisan small group of engineers with experience in energy management.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

X Re-Joins Pro-Censorship Advertisers’ Alliance

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 2, 2024

Given how X has gone out of its way to reveal the depth and breadth of online censorship via the Twitter Files, this makes for an awkward reunion: the company has decided to rejoin the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).

It’s a pro-censorship, World Economic Forum-affiliated advertisers’ group, that achieves its objectives through the “brand safety” route (i.e., the censorship “brand” here would be demonetization). And last summer, it was scrutinized by the US Congress.

GARM is one of those outfits whose roots are very entangled (comes in handy when somebody tries to probe your activities, though) – and the chronology is not insignificant either: formed in 2019 as a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) initiative, partnered with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

Then came another “partnership” – that with WEF (World Economic Forum), specifically, its Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment, and Sport project – a “flagship” one.

In May 2023, the US House Judiciary Committee wanted to know what exactly was happening here, and whether “brand safety” as a concept, as exercised by these entities, could be linked to censorship of online speech.

So the Committee subpoenaed the World Federation of Advertisers (and GARM), asking for records that might show whether these groups “coordinated efforts to demonetize and censor disfavored speech online.”

Committee Chairman Jim Jordan was at the time concerned that this conduct might have run afoul of US antitrust laws.

For X, despite the strides the platform has made toward protecting users’ speech since the Twitter takeover, the GARM relationship is most likely simply about (ad) money – and one of the several efforts to make the platform profitable at last.

Those who were hoping for a “free speech absolutism” on a platform like this might be disappointed, the Congress might investigate some more; but ultimately, the move represents a “realpolitik-style” compromise.

And so X is “excited” and “proud” to be back as a GARM member. The company’s “Safety” account posted something about “the safety of our global town square” apparently being relevant to this decision, but did not elaborate.

Now listed by GARM along with X are YouTube and Chanel – and, in between, some of the biggest pharma and telecoms out there.

Big Money, one might say.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US presidential candidates competing to appease ‘Israel’: Al-Houthi

Al Mayadeen | July 4, 2024

Yemeni leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik Badreddine al-Houthi underlines that the US presidential candidates are competing for who supports the Israeli occupation more.

The United States faced immense difficulty in its efforts to halt Yemeni military operations at sea, and facing the operations was not an easy task, the leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Sayyed Abdul Malik Badreddine al-Houthi, said on Thursday

Sayyed al-Houthi revealed during his weekly address that this week’s support operations for the Yemeni front included 12 operations as part of the fourth escalation phase. He noted that last week’s operations involved the use of 20 ballistic and cruise missiles, a drone, and a boat across the maritime theater of operations.

Discussing the targets, al-Houthi mentioned that six ships were targeted, bringing the total number of ships attacked since the beginning of the support operations to 162. “The Americans recognize the strength of our strikes and have acknowledged that we have forced their entire naval fleet to retreat, a valuable lesson for them,” al-Houthi asserted.

He further explained, “The Americans are re-evaluating their capabilities, tactics, and methods of combating and confronting this level of threat and danger.”

Al-Houthi also highlighted the ongoing challenges faced by US naval warships in the Red Sea, stating, “American warships in the Red Sea are being chased by missiles and drones, and they are fleeing at the highest speed they can muster.”

He concluded by affirming the resilience and advancement of Yemeni forces, “Our army and people remain steadfast, and the development of our capabilities continues to surpass and counter enemy technologies. The enemies have acknowledged the advancement of our missiles, drones, and naval boats due to the intensity and precision of recent strikes.”

Silence serving Israelis

The lack of engagement and concern regarding serious events within Arab and Islamic countries is a crisis afflicting both communities, al-Houthi said.

“One of the most dangerous points of weakness that the enemies count in their favor in the reality of Arabs and Muslims is the weakness of interaction and interest in serious events,” al-Houthi stressed.

Al-Houthi expressed concern over the diminishing attention to the prolonged aggression on Gaza, noting that many people lose interest in following events and reacting to them over time. In that light, he emphasized, “What is happening in Palestine is not ordinary news that one can get used to hearing and remain indifferent to. It is a crime of genocide against an oppressed and Muslim people, a horrific and criminal bloodbath unparalleled.”

Recalling the atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation forces, Al-Houthi cited a particularly heinous act where Israeli soldiers killed an elderly woman by running her over with tanks in front of her relatives in the al-Shujaiya neighborhood. “The Israeli enemy boasts about its horrific crimes, and it is unfortunate that they are completely ignored by Arab regimes,” he said.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Is stopping World War Three the Donald’s ‘trump card’ for winning the White House?

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 4, 2024

Donald Trump seems to have hit on a winning plan for returning to the White House – by convincing voters he is the candidate to prevent World War Three.

The Republican candidate is lately pitching the importance of ending “the horrible war” in Ukraine to prevent the United States from sliding toward a nuclear conflagration with Russia.

Trump is slamming Democrat rival Joe Biden for fueling the conflict by recklessly supplying U.S. weapons that are provoking Russia and risking the start of World War Three. That’s true enough.

After Biden’s disastrous TV debate with Trump last week, the polls are showing Trump slightly pulling ahead. The Democrat campaign is in panic mode after the incumbent president’s shaky performance confirmed public misgivings about his deteriorating mental health.

Still, however, Trump has not capitalized on taking a decisive lead in the polls. The Republican is at most a couple of points ahead of Biden –  even after the latter’s slow-motion car-crash TV debate.

Trump could pick up a lot of ballots among large numbers of undecided voters and propel his return to the White House by posing as the “anti-war candidate”.

At election rallies, the former president is touting his supposed ability to bring an immediate end to the war in Ukraine. Trump is saying he would cut off military aid to Ukraine and call on the Kiev regime to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump is boasting that he could broker an immediate peace deal if he wins the election in November and implement a settlement even before his inauguration in the Oval Office in January 2025. Thereby preventing World War Three between the nuclear-armed U.S. and Russia.

That might seem like a sound campaign plan. A large majority of Americans – some 70 percent – want their government to find a diplomatic solution to the two-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine. This reflects public opposition to the perception of another endless American war and the growing apprehension over an escalation in the conflict between nuclear powers.

Astutely, Trump is tapping into those legitimate concerns.

On the other hand, Biden’s administration is pushing ahead with military support for the Kiev regime in a way that seems insanely reckless. This week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced another $2.3 billion in military aid to Ukraine. Biden has said he will support Ukraine for as long as it takes and shows no sign of backing away from military confrontation. The president has approved the supply of longer-range missiles to Ukraine and given his permission to strike Russia.

The issue of war and peace – and without exaggeration the issue of world peace and survival of the planet – could be the one that wins the White House for Trump.

Biden does not have a reverse gear when it comes to his policy of supporting Ukraine in a futile war that it is losing badly and only provoking Russia.

Such madness is bound to be a vote loser and yet Biden and his administration appear to have no way back from the abyss. Combined with Biden’s appalling policy of supporting Israel – especially for younger American voters who would normally lean toward a Democrat – Trump could exploit the anxiety over Ukraine to his electoral advantage.

It’s not just about the danger of an all-out war with Russia. The American public is rightly incensed by the vast amounts of taxpayer money – over $100 billion at least – being shelled out for a corrupt regime in Kiev while so much public need is neglected at home.

The trouble is Trump’s lack of credibility. Ordinarily, a presidential candidate declaring his opposition to starting World War Three would be a clear winning platform, one would think.

Recall the first time Trump ran for the White House back in 2016 when he promised all sorts of splendid things about making America great again by stopping endless U.S. wars around the world and putting an end to “American carnage” at home.

Trump did not deliver then despite all his braggadocio about “draining the swamp”. During his presidency, Trump broke the taboo of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine. In 2018, he approved sending $47 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles to the Kiev regime while it was attacking the ethnic Russian population in the former Ukrainian territory of Donbass. That military backing of the Kiev regime led to the current conflict after Moscow intervened in February 2022 to stop the merciless killing of the Russian population.

On Trump’s recent bragging about how he would quickly end the war in Ukraine, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, dismissed it as empty “subjective” talk. That’s a diplomatic way of saying Trump hasn’t a clue about resolving the conflict.

Trump is all about the expedient winning of votes, not about winning genuine peace. The only way to create a peaceful resolution in Ukraine and elsewhere is for the U.S.-led NATO military bloc to scale back from Russia’s borders and eventually disband in conformity with international law. NATO is a self-appointed war machine to serve Western imperialist power and one that is in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and the upholding of international law. NATO exists to enforce U.S. power unilaterally without any respect for international law – despite the American and European rhetoric about “rules-based order”.

The war in Ukraine is but one symptom of the United States as a failing and frustrated imperialist power. Washington’s hostility towards Russia is consonant with its relentless belligerence towards China and its support for Israel’s genocide in a desperate bid to control the Middle East. Trump is on board with U.S. imperialist power projection against China and slavishly supporting the Israeli regime. His talk about criticizing NATO expenditures is just carping to get Europeans to pay more for the American protection racket. The only thing different from Biden is a superficial matter of style and a seemingly more reasonable view of the conflict in Ukraine.

Posing as a candidate to avert World War Three over Ukraine might be enough to get Trump back to the White House. It might work as an electioneering ploy. But it won’t change a damn thing about stopping U.S. imperialist violence and the constant threat to world peace that Washington and its NATO war machine engender. The Donald’s “trump card” for peace in Ukraine is another worthless deuce.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Trump Goes Full RFK Jr., Targets Chronic Childhood Illness, Big Pharma As Campaign Pledge

By Jefferey Jaxen | July 3, 2024

In a recent video, former President Donald Trump signaled he would establish a “special presidential commission of independent minds” to determine what is causing the increase in chronic illness.

“This conversation is long overdue… it’s time to ask what’s going on” stated Trump.

Many involved in this space demanding investigation and justice for years, and even decades, have seen several opportunities pass by to ask ‘what’s going on’ with little change ever occurring.

Meanwhile, one of the major pillars of RFK Jr.’s 2024 campaign is to investigate chronic illness in children – a message that he has been consistent on through his career.

With the Democratic party currently engulfed in uncertainty, the unofficial RFK Jr. – Trump alliance found on this topic is hopeful for several reasons. It increases the percentage that something will actually get changed as more attention begins to focus on this topic. It puts Big Pharma on notice while upping the chances whoever is the next president is will carve out a space to aggressively approach chronic childhood illness by any means necessary.

Despite presidential candidates dipping their toes into this conversation, it has been parents who have carried the torch for decades seeking answers and raising awareness to the increasing chronic illness and disease that have plagued their children.

Ten days before Trump took office in 2017, he met with RFK Jr. to discuss forming a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity to which he would lead.

“The President-elect is exploring the possibility of forming a committee on Autism, which affects so many families; however no decision have been made at this time,” his transition team said in a statement provided to The New York Times. “The President-elect looks forward to continuing the discussion about all aspects of Autism with many groups and individuals.”

For reasons still unknown to this day, the Trump team decided not to green-light the commission which may have proven useful going into the early stages of COVID vaccine development.

Why look at vaccine safety and it’s link to chronic illness?

A formal exchange between attorneys at the Informed Consent Action Network and US Health and Human Services in 2018 states:

“… the increase in HHS’s childhood vaccine schedule over the last 30 years from 8 vaccine injections to 50 vaccine injections (plus 2 injections during pregnancy) has occurred in lockstep with the increase in the rate of autoimmune, developmental and neurological disorders in children from 12.8% to 54%. HHS has no explanation for why U.S. children today are plagued with a chronic disease and disability epidemic.”

Meanwhile, safety review periods in clinical trials for vaccines are too short, often days or weeks, to detect most chronic health conditions further hamstringing an entire body of health and research.

Why is this a campaign issue?

The economic burden of America’s chronic illness problem began to get much-needed attention with a 2018 report from the Milken Institute estimating $1.1T in direct costs and $3.7T [in indirect costs].

The COVID response torpedoed the mainstreaming and critical mobilization of the medical and research communities into the burden of chronic disease, especially among children. Closed off was this investigative avenue to the funding and national effort needed to address this problem.

One only needs to look at how the dominant culture went to war with the benefits of vitamin D, sunlight, and fresh air during the COVID response to see the lengths those from corporate media to heads of regulatory agencies will go to silence simple, lifesaving information when it protects power, control and pharmaceutical product lines.

Yet it’s not all about the shots.

An article from Politico titled, How Washington Keeps America Sick and Fat states, “the federal government has devoted only a tiny fraction of its research dollars to nutrition… Studying the relationship between diet and health is such an afterthought that Washington doesn’t even bother tracking the total amount spent each year.“

After reviewing the federal budget documents, Politico found, “the National Institutes of Health and the Agriculture Department — the two agencies that fund the majority of government-backed nutrition science — share of research dollars devoted to nutrition has stayed largely flat for at least three decades, and pales in comparison to many other areas of research.“

Pharma outspends all other industries in lobbying. Meanwhile, there is no major lobbying force behind boosting nutritional research funding. America’s sick-care, pharmaceutical product-based ‘health’ paradigm appears rooted, driven, and amplified by the lobbying efforts of corporate interests.

Profit-driven industry is happy to let accurate and beneficial information about nutrition and the harms of their products die on the vine of public awareness. Channeling their efforts more into protecting their products from much-deserved bad press and the outing of known harms into the public conversation.

For American children to thrive, these malevolent, corporate-influence cartel networks, wherever they operate within the medical, nutrition, agriculture, or environmental sectors must be splintered in a thousand pieces and scattered to the winds. Political alliances in efforts to better this situation is a much needed step forward.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Frankenfoods v2: Exploiting the Bioequivalence Principle

Alliance For Natural Heath | March 14, 2024

Got Milk GE-yeast-fermented-whey-protein drink?

You may have heard about the new “animal-free dairy milk” called Bored Cow. It’s being billed as a more animal and environmentally friendly option to traditional milk that comes from a ruminant’s udders. It all sounds great until you dig a bit deeper to learn that it is produced using synthetic biology (synbio), using genetically engineered (GE) yeast that is then put into a so-called ‘precision fermentation’ system. While the whey protein in it is the same as that found in cow’s milk, that’s only a small part of the overall story. Emerging data from some scientists, like John Fagan from the Health Research Institute (HRI), says the fermentation isn’t as precise as claimed, and there’s a lot of other compounds in the milk, some of which have never been recorded by science before. That might mean that drinking Bored Cow ‘milk’ on a daily basis could have unknown and potentially dangerous human health implications. This might just be one product, but it matters because powerful special interests are working to make synbio the tech platform of our food system moving forward—where farms are replaced with fermentation tanks—in the name of protecting the environment.

What’s happening here is an effort to get consumers to believe they can enjoy all the flavor, mouth feel, and nutrition of real cow’s milk…without the involvement of any cows (hence the “Bored Cow” name). Bored Cow is made with whey protein produced through a process called “precision fermentation,” a form of synbio. This involves taking a gene for whey protein and inserting it into a GE yeast. The yeast is put into fermentation tanks with other nutrients to help it grow. At the end the GE yeast is supposed to be filtered out, leaving only the milk protein. Bored Cow takes this protein and adds vitamins, minerals, and other ingredients to mimic the taste, consistency, and nutritional content of real cow’s milk.

Far from ‘bioequivalent’

The marketing hype behind Bored Cow starts falling apart when you learn that it’s not even close to being equivalent to real milk from pasture. HRI’s independent testing found 92 unknown compounds in this synbio milk. Fagan, HRI’s chief scientist, said these compounds are “completely novel to our food…They are nutritional dark matter.”

The FDA must be on top of this, right? Wrong. Bored Cow has not undergone safety testing at the FDA. Perfect Day, the manufacturer of the synbio whey protein, determined it was “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) and voluntarily notified the FDA of this determination; in response the FDA said it had no questions. Given how rife the GRAS process is with conflicts of interest, this is akin to taking the company’s word for it that its novel synbio whey protein is safe.

Nor is it very likely that Bored Cow is nutritionally equivalent to real milk. Just as meat is more than just protein, milk is far more than a simple combination of whey and various vitamins and minerals. Milkfat contains 400 different fatty acids. Milk has two types of proteins, whey and casein—and there are several different types of these two proteins contained in milk, and a whole bundle of other compounds like lactoferrin and bioactive peptides that help prime the immune system.

Does synbio milk have this nutritional complexity? It doesn’t seem like it, as casein, to use just one example, which comprises 80 percent of the protein in cow’s milk, isn’t listed as an ingredient. Further, according to HRI’s tests, the amino acid composition of Bored Cow is “strikingly different” than that of milk.

Laws not fit to purpose

Bored Cow is representative of a whole new generation of GE foods that are in development, some of which we’ve written about previously. Older genetically modified (GM) foods were created by modifying the genome of a living plant by inserting, for example, an herbicide-resistance trait. That was nothing compared to what’s going on now. GE yeast or fungi are being used as little factories to manufacture food components that regulators say are biologically equivalent to their natural counterparts, so, they say, no additional testing is required because the foods have been shown to be safe through their long history of consumption. But, as we’ve seen, getting a yeast to make one protein found in milk, fermenting it, then adding nutrients, and slapping “milk” on the label doesn’t make it milk. Nor, for that matter, is lab-grown meat biologically equivalent to pasture-raised meat.

And herein lies the problem. The entire framework for dealing with genetically engineered foods in the US is fundamentally broken. That’s because the federal government decided decades ago that the final product is all that matters, not the process used to create that product. This was codified in the 1986 Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology, which was updated in 1992 and again in 2017. Astoundingly, it wasn’t updated to install more robust safety measures to protect Americans from new and previously unthinkable forms of food. It was updated in large part to remove or mitigate “unnecessary costs and burdens” that “limit the ability of technology developers” to “navigate the regulatory process” which also “hamper economic growth, innovation, and competitiveness.” That is, the Framework was updated to make it easier for the biotech industry to ger their frankenfoods onto our dinner plates!

We’re worried that what’s coming are further “updates” to this framework that allow GE foods and those developed using synbio technologies to be considered “bioequivalent” to their natural counterparts—in essence, drinking the lab-grown food industry’s Kool-Aid. If regulators determine that synbio milk is equivalent to real milk, will consumers be allowed to make their own choices, or will we be sold out as we were with the sham GMO labeling law that allowed companies to hide the GM contents of their food in scannable codes?

Some countries are already moving in that direction: Costa Rica just adopted new regulations which treat a wide-range of gene edited products as equivalent to conventionally-bred products. This is something we have to keep a keen eye on.

The advent of lab-grown meat, plant-based meat, and products like Bored Cow show how inadequate our current laws are in dealing with these foods. Of course it matters how these foods are made! CRISPR, the gene-editing technology, is known to produce unintended outcomes. What evidence is there that eating food grown in laboratories from genetically modified yeast—food that is significantly different than the food we have evolved to eat over human history—is safe, much less healthy?

Put simply, the fake meat and milk synbio manufacturers are exploiting old rules never intended for synbio products so they can escape doing any safety testing before their products hit the market. They’re using all-too-familiar revolving doors with the FDA to get their way, and they want to deceive us into thinking they’re saving the planet from those nasty, carbon dioxide-producing animals while offering us foods that are as safe and healthy as those produced on real farms with the help of real animals—without any of it.

We’re watching these developments closely, and we’ll alert you as soon as we see an opportunity to take political action on this critical issue. In the meantime, please share this article widely, as we need a lot more awareness of how synbio makers are using the principle of ‘bioequivalence’ to get their questionable foods into our mouths.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

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