China warns US against Taiwan visits
RT | May 23, 2024
US lawmakers must end any visits to Taiwan and adhere to the One-China policy, or be ready to face the consequences, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, said during a press conference on Thursday.
His comments came in response to a statement by the chairman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, who announced on Tuesday that he would not be deterred by China’s threats and would lead a US delegation to Taiwan, which he called a “dearest friend and partner and ally” of Washington, at the end of the month.
Beijing considers the self-governing island to be an inalienable part of China, and has been pushing towards a peaceful reunification, vehemently condemning any separatist movements that seek Taiwanese independence.
Wang said Beijing firmly opposes any form of “official exchanges” between Washington and Taipei, and urged US representatives against interfering in the island’s affairs in any way and under any pretext.
He added that the warning extends to the US Congress, whose representatives are an “integral part of the US government” and should therefore abide by the One-China policy officially acknowledged by Washington and only maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the island.
If Congress members do visit Taiwan, Wang warned that it would be interpreted as a “serious violation” of the One-China principle, an attempt to damage China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a “seriously wrong signal” for Taiwanese separatist forces.
“If the US insists on its own way, it must be fully responsible for the consequences,” Wang stressed.
Meanwhile, the Chinese military announced on Thursday that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has kicked off a series of joint drills near Taiwan to serve as “punishment” for separatist forces seeking independence and as a “stern warning” against any external forces aiming to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
The exercises are said to involve the PLA’s army, navy, air force and rocket force, all of which will carry out drills in various areas around Taiwan, focusing on combined sea-air combat-readiness patrol, battlefield control and joint precision strikes.
The Closing of the Internet Mind
The definition of online freedom has been depressingly constricted over the last thirty years
By Aaron Kheriaty, Debbie Lerman, Andrew Lowenthal, and Jeffrey Tucker | The American Mind | May 22, 2024
You have surely heard that your search results on Google (with 92 percent share of the search market) reflect not your curiosities and needs but someone or something else’s views on what you need to know. That’s hardly a secret.
And on Facebook, you are likely inundated by links to official sources to correct any errors you might carry in your head, as well as links to corrections to posts as made by any number of fact-checking organizations.
You have likely also heard of YouTube videos being taken down, apps deleted from stores, and accounts being canceled across a variety of platforms.
You might have even adjusted your behavior in light of all of this. It is part of the new culture of Internet engagement. The line you cannot cross is invisible. You are like a dog with an electric shock collar. You have to figure it out on your own, which means exercising caution when you post, pulling back on hard claims that might shock, paying attention to media culture to discern what is sayable and what is not, and generally trying to avoid controversy as best you can in order to earn the privilege of not being canceled.
Despite all the revelations regarding the Censorship Industrial Complex, and the wide involvement of government in these efforts, plus the resulting lawsuits that claim that this is all censorship, the walls are clearly closing in further by the day.
Users are growing accustomed to it, for fear of losing their accounts. For example, YouTube (which feeds 55 percent of all video content online) allows three strikes before your account is deleted permanently. One strike is devastating and two existential. You are frozen in place and forced to relinquish everything–including your ability to earn a living if your content is monetized–if you make one or two wrong moves.
No one needs to censor you at that point. You censor yourself.
It was not always this way. It was not even supposed to be this way.
It’s possible to trace the dramatic change from the past to present by following the trajectory of various Declarations that have been issued over the years. The tone was set at the dawn of the World Wide Web in 1996 by digital guru, Grateful Dead lyricist, and Harvard University fellow John Perry Barlow, who died in 2018.
Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, somewhat ironically written in Davos, Switzerland, is still hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that he founded. The manifesto waxes lyrical about the liberatory, open future of internet freedom:
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
And so on it went with a heady, expansive vision–tinged perhaps with a dash of sixties utopian anarchism–that shaped the ethos which drove the building of the Internet in the early days. It appeared to a whole generation of coders and content providers that a new world of freedom had been born that would shepherd in a new era of freedom more generally, with growing knowledge, human rights, creative freedom, and borderless connection of everyone to literature, facts, and truth emerging organically from a crowd-sourced process of engagement.
Nearly a decade and a half later, by 2012, that idea was fully embraced by the main architects of the emergent app economy and the explosion of smartphone use across the world. The result was the Declaration of Internet Freedom that went live in July of 2012 and garnered a great deal of press attention at the time. Signed by the EFF, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and other liberty-focused organizations, it read:
To be sure, it was not quite as sweeping and visionary as the Barlow original but maintained the essence, putting free expression as the first principle with the lapidary phrase: “Don’t censor the Internet.” It might have stopped there, but given the existing threats coming from growing industrial cartels and the stored-data marketplace, it also pushed openness, innovation, and privacy as first principles.
Again, this outlook defined an era and elicited broad agreement. “Information freedom supports the peace and security that provides a foundation for global progress,” said Hillary Clinton in an endorsement of the freedom principle in 2010. The 2012 Declaration was neither right-wing nor left-wing. It encapsulated the core of what it meant to favor freedom on the Internet, exactly as the title suggests.
If you go to the site internetdeclaration.org now, your browser will not reveal any of its contents. The secure certificate is dead. If you bypass the warning, you will find yourself forbidden from accessing any of the contents. The tour through Archive.org shows that the last living presentation of the site was February 2018.
This occurred three years after Donald Trump publicly advocated that “in some places” we have to talk about “closing up the Internet.” He got his wish, but it came after him personally following his election in 2016. The very free speech about which he made fun turned out to be rather important to him and his cause.
Two years into the Trump presidency, precisely as the censorship industry started coalescing into full operation, the site of the Declaration site broke down and eventually disappeared.
Fast forward a decade from the writing of the Internet Declaration of Freedom. The year is 2022 and we had been through a rough two years of account takedowns, particularly against those who doubted the wisdom of lockdowns or vaccine mandates. The White House revealed on April 22, 2022 a Declaration for the Future of the Internet. It comes complete with a parchment-style presentation and a large capital letter in old-fashioned script. The word “freedom” is removed from the title and added only as a part of the word salad that follows in the text.
Signed by 60 nations, the new Declaration was released to great fanfare, including a White House press release. The signatory nations were all NATO-aligned while excluding others. The signatories are: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cabo Verde, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, the European Commission, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, North Macedonia, Palau, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Uruguay.
The core of the new declaration is very clear and represents a good encapsulation of the essence of the structures that govern content today: “The Internet should operate as a single, decentralized network of networks – with global reach and governed through the multistakeholder approach, whereby governments and relevant authorities partner with academics, civil society, the private sector, technical community and others.”
The term “stakeholder” (as in “stakeholder capitalism”) became popular in the nineties as distinct from “shareholder” meaning a partial owner. A stakeholder is not an owner or even a consumer but a party or institution with a strong interest in the outcome of the decision-making by the owners, whose rights might need to be overridden in the broader interests of everyone. In this way, the term came to describe an amorphous group of influential third parties that deserve a say in the management of institutions and systems. A “multistakeholder” approach is how civil society is brought inside the tent, with financing and seeming influence, and told that they matter as an incentive to woke-wash their outlooks and operations.
Using that linguistic fulcrum, part of the goal of the new Declaration is explicitly political: “Refrain from using the Internet to undermine the electoral infrastructure, elections and political processes, including through covert information manipulation campaigns.” From this admonition we can conclude that the new Internet is structured to discourage “manipulation campaigns” and even goes so far as to “foster greater social and digital inclusion within society, bolster resilience to disinformation and misinformation, and increase participation in democratic processes.”
Following the latest in censorship language, every form of top-down blockage and suppression is now justified in the name of fostering inclusion (that is, “DEI,” as in Diversity [three mentions], Equity [two mentions], and Inclusion [five mentions]) and stopping dis- and mis-information, language identical to that invoked by the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the rest of the industrial complex that operates to stop information spread.
This agency was created in the waning days of the Obama administration and approved by Congress in 2018, supposedly to protect our digital infrastructure against cyberattacks from computer viruses and nefarious foreign actors. But less than one year into its existence, CISA decided that our election infrastructure was part of our critical infrastructure (thereby asserting Federal control over elections, which are typically handled by the states). Furthermore, part of protecting our election infrastructure included protecting what CISA director Jen Easterly called our “cognitive infrastructure.”
Easterly, who formerly worked at Tailored Access Operations, a top secret cyber warfare unit at the National Security Agency, coined the queen of all Orwellian euphemisms: “cognitive infrastructure,” which refers to the thoughts inside your head. This is precisely what the government’s counter-disinformation apparatus, headed by people like Easterly, are attempting to control. True to this stated aim, CISA pivoted by 2020 to become the nerve center of the government’s censorship apparatus–the agency through which all government and “stakeholder” censorship demands are funneled to social media companies.
Now consider what we’ve learned about Wikipedia, which is owned by Wikimedia, the former CEO of which was Katherine Maher, now slated to be the head CEO of National Public Radio. She has been a consistent and public defender of censorship, even suggesting that the First Amendment is “the number one challenge.”
The co-founder of Wikipedia, Joseph Sanger, has said he suspects that she turned Wikipedia into an intelligence-operated platform. “We know that there is a lot of backchannel communication,” he said in an interview. “I think it has to be the case that the Wikimedia Foundation now, probably governments, probably the CIA, have accounts that they control, in which they actually exert their influence. And it’s fantastic, in a bad way, that she actually comes out against the system for being ‘free and open.’ When she says that she’s worked with government to shut down what they consider ‘misinformation,’ that, in itself, means that it’s no longer free and open.”
What happened to Wikipedia, which all search engines privilege among all results, has befallen nearly every prominent venue on the Internet. The Elon Musk takeover of Twitter has proven to be aberrant and highly costly in terms of advertising dollars, and hence elicits vast opposition from the venues that are on the other side. That his renamed platform X even exists at all seems to run contrary to every wish of the controlled and controlling establishment today.
We have traveled a very long way from the vision of John Perry Barlow in 1996, who imagined a cyberworld in which governments were not involved to one in which governments and their “multi stakeholder partners” are in charge of “a rules-based global digital economy.” In the course of this complete reversal, the Declaration of Internet Freedom became the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, with the word freedom consigned to little more than a passing reference.
The transition from one to the other was–like bankruptcy–gradual at first and then all at once. We’ve traveled rather quickly from “you [governments and corporate interests] are not welcome among us” to a “single, decentralized network of networks” managed by “governments and relevant authorities” including “academics, civil society, the private sector, technical community and others” to create a “rules-based digital economy.”
And that is the core of the Great Reset affecting the main tool by which today’s information channels have been colonized by the corporatist complex.
From COVID-19 to Campus Protests: How the Police State Muzzles Free Speech
By John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | May 21, 2024
The police state does not want citizens who know their rights.
Nor does the police state want citizens prepared to exercise those rights.
This year’s graduates are a prime example of this master class in compliance. Their time in college has been set against a backdrop of crackdowns, lockdowns and permacrises ranging from the government’s authoritarian COVID-19 tactics to its more recent militant response to campus protests.
Born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, these young people have been raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.
And now, when they should be empowered to take their rightful place in society as citizens who fully understand and exercise their right to speak truth to power, they are being censored, silenced and shut down.
Consider what happened recently in Charlottesville, Va., when riot police were called in to shut down campus protests at the University of Virginia staged by students and members of the community to express their opposition to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.
As the local newspaper reported, “State police sporting tactical gear and riot shields moved in on the demonstrators, using pepper spray and sheer force to disperse the group and arrest the roughly 15 or so at the camp, where for days students, faculty and community members had sang songs, read poetry and painted signs in protest of Israel’s ongoing war in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.”
What a sad turn-about for an institution which was founded as an experiment in cultivating an informed citizenry by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Bill of Rights, and the nation’s third president.
Unfortunately, the University of Virginia is not unique in its heavy-handed response to what have been largely peaceful anti-war protests. According to the Washington Post, more than 2300 people have been arrested for taking part in similar campus protests across the country.
These lessons in compliance, while expected, are what comes of challenging the police state.
Free speech can certainly not be considered “free” when expressive activities across the nation are being increasingly limited, restricted to so-called free speech zones, or altogether blocked.
Remember, the First Amendment gives every American the right to “petition his government for a redress of grievances.”
Along with the constitutional right to peacefully (and that means non-violently) assemble, the right to free speech allows us to challenge the government through protests and demonstrations and to attempt to change the world around us—for the better or the worse—through protests and counterprotests.
If citizens cannot stand out in the open and voice their disapproval of their government, its representatives and its policies without fearing prosecution, then the First Amendment with all its robust protections for free speech, assembly and the right to petition one’s government for a redress of grievances is little more than window-dressing on a store window—pretty to look at but serving little real purpose.
After all, living in a representative republic means that each person has the right to take a stand for what they think is right, whether that means marching outside the halls of government, wearing clothing with provocative statements, or simply holding up a sign.
That’s what the First Amendment is supposed to be about: it assures the citizenry of the right to express their concerns about their government to their government, in a time, place and manner best suited to ensuring that those concerns are heard.
Unfortunately, through a series of carefully crafted legislative steps and politically expedient court rulings, government officials have managed to disembowel this fundamental freedom, rendering it with little more meaning than the right to file a lawsuit against government officials.
In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.
Indeed, there is a long and growing list of the kinds of speech that the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation and prosecution: hate speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, extremist speech, etc.
Clearly, the government has no interest in hearing what “we the people” have to say.
Yet if Americans are not able to peacefully assemble for expressive activity outside of the halls of government or on public roads on which government officials must pass, or on college campuses, the First Amendment has lost all meaning.
If we cannot stand peacefully outside of the Supreme Court or the Capitol or the White House, our ability to hold the government accountable for its actions is threatened, and so are the rights and liberties that we cherish as Americans.
And if we cannot proclaim our feelings about the government, no matter how controversial, on our clothing, or to passersby, or to the users of the world wide web, then the First Amendment really has become an exercise in futility.
The source of the protest shouldn’t matter. The politics of the protesters are immaterial.
To play politics with the First Amendment encourages a double standard that will see us all muzzled in the end.
The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the final link in the police state chain.
If ever there were a time for us to stand up for the right to speak freely, even if it’s freedom for speech we hate, the time is now.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
Washington Digs In Deeper on Its Support for Israel
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 23, 2024
Judging by developments over the past several weeks, it would appear that nothing going on in Washington matters quite as much as defending Israel no matter what the Jewish state does. The White House and its befuddled leader President Joe Biden are obsessed with every twist and turn of the Israel and media shaped narrative, basing it on two key words “terrorism” and “antisemitism.” It plays out like this: Israel is a victim of terrorism from enemies seeking to destroy it and those who criticize the Israeli “self-defense” response are motivated by nothing less than antisemitism. It is also being claimed ludicrously in Washington that Israel is fully capable of investigating itself if war crimes actually were committed, something that it never has done, note particularly the lack of any follow-up in cases involving the recent killing of American citizens.
The necessity to support what are obviously parts of a suspect exculpatory narrative has administration clowns like Karine Jean-Pierre, Matthew Miller, John Kirby and Antony Blinken falling over themselves trying to explain developments using arguments which are frequently clearly based on lies. Sometimes the lies are huge, like the Blinken claims that the US foreign policy does not favor Israel and treats everyone the same, or that a thorough State Department investigation has failed to sustain the claims that Israel is engaging in war crimes to possibly include genocide.
The United States is also reflexively turning on any institution or government that has managed to anger Israel and its vitriolic psychopath leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The recent decision by Norway, Ireland and Spain to recognize Palestinian statehood brings to 145 the number of countries now taking that step. The move infuriated Netanyahu who summoned those countries’ ambassadors and called it a “reward for terror.” One wonders if the US will follow suit and either break diplomatic relations with those three otherwise friendly and even allied countries or in some other fashion punish or sanction them. That terrorism often operates in two directions and Israel has been a cruel, racist and capricious occupying power seems to have escaped the attention of the Washington punditry which is only engaged in finding in Israel a perpetual victim innocent of all charges.
And then there is the recent declaration by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague that it would be seeking warrants relating to possible war crimes for Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as the leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar, plus his deputies Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh. This produced a scream of anguish from the White House which first argued that the ICC has no jurisdiction as Israel, like the US, is not a signatory to the Rome Treaty that founded the court in 2002 even though Palestine is. Joe Biden also said on Monday that “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas.” He backed up this legally irrelevant statement with the usual assertion that “we will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” The court, in fact, was created to address war crimes and genocides that had escaped normal investigation and prosecution and the 124 signatory nations to it are empowered to arrest those named individuals who have outstanding warrants if they should happen to enter their jurisdictions.
The second argument being made both by Netanyahu and the Biden squeakers is that Netanyahu and Gallant are demonstrably government officials, not terrorists, while Sinwar and his colleagues are, meaning that different standards must be used to judge their actions. Of course, the Jewish state’s mass murder of 40,000 civilians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and its deliberate use of starvation just might fit most people’s definition of terror, but apparently is not convincing to Israel, the US Congress, White House and the Zionist controlled mainstream media.
Interestingly, as a side issue, since the United States is complicit in the war crimes being committed by Israel due to its funding and arming Netanyahu’s war, it too might wind up charged by the ICC. It would be a real wake-up call and might make many Americans, including myself, very happy to see Biden and Blinken in a prison cell! And by implication the ICC’s charges are also an indictment of Israel’s other Western allies. If Netanyahu is guilty of murder, extermination and deliberate starvation of civilians, so are those who arm and fund Israel while giving it political protection. That includes not only Joe Biden, but also Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer in Britain and other Western European leaders who are sitting on the fence and regretting the death rates while also providing arms to Netanyahu. For Washington, however, unlike its European allies, given that there is a real potential threat against the US political leadership, a very sharp response has been triggered. Twelve GOP Senators have issued a threat letter to the court that stated that the US would sanction justices and other staff working for ICC as well as their families, including blocking their ability to travel to or through the United States and going after their assets. It ended with “You have been warned!” Several other bills are also currently moving through Congress that will directly challenge the authority and mission of the court, all being done to protect Israel.
And there’s more. Israel, which is frequently described as a “great US ally,” which it is not, and a “democracy,” which it is also not, is currently ranked in opinion polls as the most despised country in the world followed by the United States, which is rated as the country most likely to start a major war. The US, through direct Treasury transfers and various other “charity” gimmicks and trade subsidies, gives Israel, a tiny country, a huge $10 billion or so per year. This year, to fund the war, the flow has been closer to $30 billion and Biden has vowed that his mission is to keep Israel “secure” even if it means having to ignore the Constitution of the United States by engaging in a war that is not declared and which did not develop from a demonstrable threat to the United States or its vital interests. Israel, hardly a vital US interest in the real world, was completely capable of destroying Gaza without US help, it just would have had to spend its own money to do so.
The power of the Israel Lobby is such that, not only are Americans denied the truth by a twisted war narrative, critters in Congress are coming out of the woodwork to see what they can do to help “America’s greatest ally!” Bills in Congress include one particularly bizarre one that would legalize deporting to Gaza student-protesters who are arrested or detained while out demonstrating “pro-Hamas,” which is inevitably described as the felony referred to as “material support of terrorism!” The Republicans in Congress are currently taking the lead in launching legislation to benefit the Israelis, including some schemes that are so strange (or illegal) that they are worth noting. On May 17, legislation was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Cosponsored by two Republicans, Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania and Ohio Representative Max Miller, H.R. 8445 went largely under the radar to provide direct support for those wishing to serve in the Israeli army. Miller is Jewish and Reschenthaler appears to be a Christian Zionist.
The Congressmen are proud of what they have done. “Over 20,000 American citizens are currently defending Israel from Hamas terrorists, risking their lives for the betterment of our ally,” said Reschenthaler in a recent statement. “This legislation will ensure we do everything possible to support these heroes who are standing with Israel, fighting for freedom, and combating terrorism in the Middle East.”
“As our closest ally in the Middle East continues to defend itself against terror, many brave Americans have decided to lend a hand,” added Miller. “I’m proud that this legislation extends important protections to those Americans who chose to risk their lives in the fight against terror.”
What H.R. 8445 aims to do is make a series of amendments to programs that ordinarily have only been available to active duty, reserve or National Guard members of the US military — the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). These amendments would do something absolutely unprecedented in extending the benefits provided by these programs to American citizens serving in a foreign military, in this case that of Israel.
The SCRA grants American servicemembers “legal and financial protections against default judgments in civil legal cases, reduces interest rates on any pre-service loans to a maximum of 6 percent, and provides protections against home foreclosures. USERRA ensures US servicemembers are covered by relevant “civilian job rights and benefits for veterans, members of reserve components, and even individuals activated by the President of the United States to provide Federal Response for National Emergencies.”
In effect, H.R. 8445 is a measure designed to provide federal government legal and financial protections to US citizens serving with the Israeli military in both Gaza and on the West Bank. Mostly consisting of dual national settlers from the United States, there are more than 23,000 US citizens serving in the IDF as of February 2024. Some Israeli army reservists living in the US have also been summoned back to Israel to fight. Twenty-one Americans in IDF units have been killed inside Gaza, another one died along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and another was killed in Jerusalem while serving in Israel’s border police.
This number of American-Israeli soldiers is in part fed by the presence of an estimated 600,000 Americans living in areas that are under Israeli control, prior to October 7th. These settlers tend to be political hardliners supportive of the Netanyahu government’s war crimes and they often commit war crimes themselves directed against the local Palestinian population.
Pro-Israel sentiment runs deep in the White House but seemingly even more so in the GOP. Some Americans were rightly shocked when Representative Brian Mast of Florida shortly after the Hamas attacks on October 7th, arrived on the floor of the House of Representatives wearing his Israel Defense Forces (IDF) uniform. “As the only member to serve with both the United States Army and the Israel Defense Forces, I will always stand with Israel,” Mast wrote in a post on X, alongside several photos of him wearing the uniform.
Mast is a bit confused since as a US Congressman he is supposed to “always stand with America.” He should be impeached and shown the door, but, alas, there is little or no patriotic spirit in the federal legislature, which only asks itself “What have I done today for our good friend and ally Israel.” And worse might be coming. It is reported that “House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday that he’s ready to move forward with formally inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress but he’s waiting on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to sign on.” Another Bibi victory parade in front of a cheering US Congress could be coming right up! It is the ultimate tragedy for our times that a war criminal should be thus glorified and many are beginning to think that the “wag the dog” relationship will inevitably lead to nuclear war triggered by the reckless Jewish state that will inter alia destroy the United States of America. It is definitely something worth thinking about it!
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.
Hamas: AP news report necessitates US apology to the resistance
Palestinian Information Center – May 23,2024
GAZA – The Hamas Movement said on Wednesday the press reports refuting the Israeli allegations that Palestinian resistance fighters committed sexual violence on October 7 is a new slap in the face of those promoting these baseless allegations.
This came after the Associated Press published a press report on Wednesday in which it confirmed that Israel’s allegations were not true and deliberately fabricated.
Hamas confirmed in a press statement that these allegations were used for the purpose of demonizing the resistance, and to hide the resistance’s humanitarian behavior and good treatment of Israeli prisoners who were detained in Gaza.
The Movement pointed out that the AP report is added to many international media and human rights reports that refute the Israeli allegations, proving they are mere lies and blatant fabrications.
Hamas said that all these reports require US President Biden and other officials in some European countries to apologize and stop repeating false accusations against the resistance and the Palestinian people.
The Movement called on Ms. Pramila Patten, the UN Special Envoy for Sexual Violence in Conflict Areas, to re-evaluate and review her report in which she accused the Palestinian resistance of committing sexual violence, after relying on Israeli narratives proven to be based on no professional investigation into those alleged crimes.
The AP revealed in a report published on Wednesday that many of the stories about sexual assaults on October 7 turned out to be untrue, quoting an Israeli volunteer who claimed that sexual assaults occurred during the October 7 attack as saying that he did not fabricate stories, but rather interpreted what he saw in a wrong way, indicating that he corrected that later.
The Israeli government and media claimed that Hamas fighters beheaded children and committed violations such as rape, but Hamas denied the matter and published video clips showing its fighters dealing with children in a friendly manner.
Another video clip showed Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, releasing a woman and her two children at the Gaza border.
The AP indicated that the religious non-governmental organization “ZAKA”, which was responsible for collecting bodies following the October 7 attack, admitted several months later that the stories that went viral on Hamas sexual assaults during the attack were incorrect.
A member of the Hamas political bureau, Ezzat Al-Resheq, said in a statement in English, “The world will realize the lies and falsity of the Israeli narrative that spreads misleading information about alleged atrocities committed by the Palestinian resistance.”
US pressing EU to curb Chinese exports
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. © Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
RT | May 23, 2024
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has urged the EU curb cheap imports of Chinese green technology in what could push the bloc toward a trade war with the Asian country.
During a visit to Frankfurt on Tuesday, Yellen reiterated recent claims that China’s excess production capacity threatened both American and EU companies.
“China’s industrial policy may seem remote as we sit here in this room, but if we do not respond strategically and in a united way, the viability of businesses in both our countries and around the world could be at risk,” Yellen told reporters at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.
Yellen argued in favor of 100% tariffs, which are seen by many economists as protectionist and a potential trigger for wider trade wars with China. Last week, US President Joe Biden announced the quadrupling of import duties on Chinese electric vehicles to over 100% and a doubling of semiconductor duties to 50%.
In her remarks in Frankfurt, the Yellen told EU leaders it would be “more forceful to communicate to China as a group.”
The comments come a week after the Biden administration hiked tariffs on $18 billion in Chinese goods including electric vehicles, batteries, semiconductors, steel, aluminum, critical minerals, solar cells, ship-to-shore cranes, and medical products, while retaining tariffs on over $300 billion in goods imposed by the previous administration of Donald Trump.
The EU, which sells a greater share of exports to China than the US, has been pursuing a policy of “de-risking” rather than decoupling. However, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hinted on Tuesday that the EU would join the US in imposing tariffs on Chinese goods.
“Should [it] be confirmed what I suspect, that such [Chinese] subsidies exist, then I can guarantee that the level of the duties we would impose is correspondent to the level of damage,” she said referring to an EU investigation into alleged state subsidies into the automotive industry in China.
Beijing has said it will retaliate against any tariffs with potential duties on products including French brandy, EU wine and dairy products.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, during his recent two-day trip to China, suggested that the US had imposed tariffs on Chinese-made EVs because they had improved in quality.
He suggested that Washington wanted to prevent strong competitors from entering the American market, and described the US approach as “unfair competition.”
Chinese officials have repeatedly denounced US trade and tech policy, describing it as “economic bullying.”
America’s Constitutional State of Emergency
Perpetual Presidential Emergency Powers and the Undermining of the Constitutional Balance of Power
By Dennis Kucinich | The Kucinich Report | May 23, 2024
More than 23 years ago, George W. Bush, Jr. signed Presidential Proclamation 7463 declaring that a “national emergency exists by reason of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, and the Pentagon, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.”
The White House has demonstrated, in several administrations, both Democrat and Republican, “threat inflation” for the sake of spending endless money on wars, and manipulating fears to hold on to power to continue to spend endless money on even more wars in the ultimate protection racket.
As a result, the constitutional system of checks and balances is being obliterated in favor of an Imperial Presidency, and, as the Constitution is eroded, so too, are our liberties.
The recent chipping away at our First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights can be traced directly to the psychology of a “State of Emergency,” which licenses shredding of freedom.
Presidents no longer ask Congress for explicit permission to go to war, as the Constitution requires, under Article 1, Section 8. Courts have held that once Congress appropriates money for wars, that is tantamount to congressional approval.
The increased spending for war has militarized our culture, proliferates enemies, creates violence at home and abroad.
We must break this cycle of fear, the endless wars and the emergency powers for Presidents who are not accountable to the Congress, which is directly elected by the people.
Those of us who witnessed the events of 9/11, up close, or from a distance, will never forget the imminent danger, the fear, the grief, the loss, the uncertainty that gripped us in those days. Nor will we forget those whose lives were sacrificed, or those who gave their lives in service to humanity on that day, or those who died following long-term illnesses which began during and after the attacks 23 years ago.
That is why it may surprise some that on September 7, 2023, President Joe Biden proclaimed, “I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency previously declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.”
23 years later and trillions upon trillions of dollars spent to “make us safer” and we are still in a “State of Emergency,” facing the same terror threats?
America has been in and continues to be in a State of Emergency which has endowed the Presidency with broad powers and undermined the Constitutional role of Congress, while placing presidential emergency declarations on par with congressional declarations of war, under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Presidents from Bush, Jr., to Biden have all capitalized on declarations of a state of emergency.
Congress is a co-equal branch of government. America’s Founders did not design the Congress to be subordinate to the Presidency, but strong presidents and weak Congresses have created that condition.
According to Congressional Research Service (CRS), there are 106 laws which further empower the executive branch following a presidential declaration of a “National Emergency.” The Brennan Center for Justice has identified a total of 136 expanded executive powers.
The emergency powers may not have been used explicitly but their use is authorized once a “National Emergency” is declared. Among the emergency powers of the President, (as cited by CRS) without a need for congressional permission:
- Executive ability to detail members of the armed forces to foreign countries, without congressional approval.
- Undertake military construction.
- Carry out military construction with NATO funds.
- Order “Ready Reserve” to active duty for two years, without their consent.
- Additional penalties for “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information.”
- Lift prohibition on infectious medical waste being dumped in the ocean.
- Seize, shutdown or appropriate broadcast stations.
- Suspend laws concerning production and transportation of chemical, biological and “warfare agents.”
We live in a forever state of emergency, with forever wars, forever fears, forever siphoning off our tax dollars.
Remember:
– The Bush Administration lied when it claimed that Iraq was behind 9/11, but proceeded to characterize Iraqis as terrorists in an attempt to justify killing one million Iraqi citizens.
– Since 9/11, over $8 trillion dollars of our $34 trillion dollar national debt is attributable to wars which never had to be fought, wars which put the lives of America’s brave sons and daughters on the line.
– The United States shelved diplomacy in favor of weaponry as a means of international relations.
– At present the USA spends close to one trillion dollars a year for supporting a war machine and that nearly 60% of all discretionary spending goes for preparation for war.
– The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, (NIE) which was the (closely held) product of all US intelligence agencies, did not identify Iraq as a major threat, because it was not. The publicly available 2024 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) of the U.S. Intelligence Community brings forth two paragraphs, out of a 41 page report, regarding “global terrorism.”
There was no discussion in the ATA of the basis for President Biden’s most recent declaration of a national emergency and the “continuing and immediate threats” even though the ATA report was being drafted at about the time that the President continued the “National Emergency” in the name of a 23-year fight against “terrorism.”
The CATO Institute, whose pocket Constitution I carried with me during my years in Congress, suggests amending the National Emergencies Act to rein in Executive power by requiring congressional approval, and putting expiration dates on emergency powers.
Does the US have enemies? Yes. Should we be on our guard? Yes.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
We should also be vigilant against government manipulating our love of country, playing with our fears, in order to control us, or to use us to support the continued erosion of our US Constitution and advance the malevolent ambitions of the military industrial complex, of which President Eisenhower warned in 1961.
Tucker Carlson Sets Record Straight on Allegations of Hosting Russian TV Program
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 22.05.2024
Tucker Carlson has refuted reports that he has become a host on Russian television.
This claim was unequivocally false, the journalist told Sputnik.
“By claiming I work for a foreign government, Newsweek is trying to justify a FISA warrant that would allow the Biden administration to continue to spy on me. It’s disgusting,” he said.
Similarly, in a post on X, Neil Patel, the CEO of the Tucker Carlson Network, said the network “has not done any deals with state media in any country.” He added that “Whoever is currently pretending to be the old Newsweek brand would know that if they had checked with us before printing like news companies are supposed to do.”
Tucker Carlson’s representative Arthur Schwartz also dismissed such reports as “pure nonsense” in an an email to Forbes.
Earlier, Newsweek reported that the US journalist – a former Fox News anchor – was launching his own show on Russian state TV. The unsubstantiated claim that was then widely picked up by users on social media.
Carlson was fired by Fox News in April 2023 after the outspoken anchor spent over two years using his popular prime time “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show to pillory the Biden administration, the military-industrial complex, and US warmongering. He has since launched a new media company and interview show on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Earlier in the year, Carlson said that his lawyers warned him that the United States could arrest him on sanctions violations for conducting an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. However, the pundit said he was happy to face such a risk and rejected the premise of such charges.
On February 9, the American journalist released his interview with Putin, which garnered over 100 million views in 24 hours on X. The long-time TV news anchor said at the time that he organized the interview because he felt it was his journalistic duty to inform Americans about the realities of the conflict in Ukraine and its consequences.
Needless to say, the hypocrisy of Western journalists and legacy media was laid bare in the attack they launched at Tucker Carlson, accusing him as a traitor after the sit-down with the Russian leader.
Furthermore, in a series of clips posted to his internet channel about his experiences from his eight-day stay in Russia, Carlson attempted to debunk myths and stereotypes about Russia and life in the capital in the midst of the West’s sanctions ‘total war’.
Peter Daszak Gets DOD and CIA Funding. Why Don’t They Ask About That?
“Suspending” HHS funding to EcoHealth is pure theater. No real oversight is happening.
BY DEBBIE LERMAN | MAY 17, 2024
Peter Daszak is the President of EcoHealth Alliance, the organization most closely associated with the potential lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that may have started the Covid crisis.
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has recently done a lot of “research” on Daszak and EcoHealth, resulting in a published report on May 1, 2024 with the earth-shattering finding that there exist “serious and systemic weaknesses in the federal government’s—particularly NIH’s—grant making processes.” Furthermore, these very bad weaknesses “not only place United States taxpayer dollars at risk of waste, fraud, and abuse but also risk the national security of the United States.”
This sounds pretty serious: Our taxpayer dollars and our national security are at risk. Some very bad things are happening, apparently. What are those bad things? “Weaknesses in the NIH’s grant making process.” Is that really all the Committee could come up with? If those grant-making weaknesses are so terrible, what does it recommend we do about them?
Based on its findings, the Committee recommended some very broad, but not very specific, actions:
- To Congress: “Reign in [they used “reign” instead of “rein” – a noteworthy Freudian slip] the unelected bureaucracy, especially within government funded public health.
- To the Administration: Recognize EcoHealth and its President, Dr. Daszak, as bad actors…and ensure neither EcoHealth nor Dr. Daszak are awarded another cent, especially for dangerous and poorly monitored research.
The Administration must have taken heed, because a mere two weeks later, on May 15, 2024, the Subcommittee made this triumphant announcement:
“HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.”
Note the bizarre disconnect between the description of “this corrupt organization” and its “abhorrent, indefensible” actions, and the accusations leading to such extreme claims, which include conducting research without proper oversight (nobody ever does that!), violating requirements of its NIH grant (a bureaucratic infraction) and “apparently” making false statements to the NIH (not even for sure).
In any event, “swift action” must be taken. What exactly is that action?
“HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding” to EcoHealth. “Begun efforts” – sounds like concrete results are imminent. Not just imminent but consequential. Like “future debarment” and “funding suspension.” (sarcasm intended)
But wait. Didn’t they already do that? Yes, they did.
2020 funding suspension
Quick reminder: On April 24, 2020, the NIH canceled funding for Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) gain-of-function research led by EcoHealth Alliance, because the Trump Administration suspected (or knew) such research may have had something to do with the Covid pandemic.
The scientific world was outraged. Seventy-seven U.S. Nobel Laureates and 31 scientific societies wrote to NIH leadership requesting review of the decision. Gain-of-function research must continue! In August 2020 the NIH reversed the cancellation and started funding EcoHealth and WIV again. [ref]
The Nobel Laureates and scientific societies won the day: Humanity-saving research to develop deadly pathogens not found in nature could continue unhindered by radical NIH funding cuts.
And yet: NIH grants are a mere fraction of EcoHealth Alliance’s overall government funding.
So which funds are being “suspended” this time around?
Actually, none.
The very threatening “notice of suspension and proposed debarment” sent to EcoHealth Alliance by HHS on May 15, 2024, reassures the organization (whose behavior has been abhorrent and indefensible) that “suspension and debarment actions are not punitive.”
We’re not trying to punish you for your bad behavior, the letter says. We just want to make sure there are non-punitive “consequences” for that behavior. For example:
Offers will not be solicited from, contracts will not be awarded to, existing contracts will not be renewed or otherwise extended for, and subcontracts requiring United States Federal Government approval will not be approved for EHA [EcoHealth Alliance] by any agency in the executive branch of the United States Federal Government, unless the head of the agency taking the contracting action determines that there is a compelling reason for such action.
[BOLDFACE ADDED]
In other words, if the head of the “agency taking the contracting action” determines there is “a compelling reason” to contract with Ecohealth, then this whole suspension and debarment thing is moot. So not punitive. And, pretty much, no consequences. And, also, no funds “suspended.”
Nevertheless, given the horrendous behavior of EcoHealth, as detailed in the announcement of the non-punitive consequences – how could any government agencies possibly have compelling reasons to engage in “contracting action” with “this corrupt organization”?
EcoHealth is mostly funded by the State Department and Pentagon
In an extensive expose on Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, The Intercept reported in December 2021:
EcoHealth Alliance’s funding from the U.S. government, which Daszak has said makes up some 80 percent of its budget, has also grown in recent years. Since 2002, according to an Intercept analysis of public records, the organization has received more than $118 million in grants and contracts from federal agencies, $42 million of which comes from the Department of Defense. Much of that money has been awarded through programs focused not on health or ecology, however, but on the prevention of biowarfare, bioterrorism, and other misuses of pathogens.
[BOLDFACE ADDED]
Here’s what nearly two decades of government funding for EcoHealth Alliance looks like (graph from Intercept article):
As RFK Jr. wrote, based on this information, in The Wuhan Cover-Up:
By far, Daszak’s largest funding pool was the CIA surrogate, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Through USAID, the CIA funneled nearly $65 million in PREDICT funding to EcoHealth between 2009 and 2020.
(p. 228, Kindle Edition)
Yet another article examining Daszak’s military/biodefense ties appeared in Independent Scientist News in December 2020, reporting that most of EcoHealth Alliance’s Pentagon funding “was from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which is a branch of the DOD which states it is tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.”
Furthermore,
The military links of the EcoHealth Alliance are not limited to money and mindset. One noteworthy ‘policy advisor’ to the EcoHealth Alliance is David Franz. Franz is former commander of Fort Detrick, which is the principal U.S. government biowarfare/biodefense facility.
The ISN article also provides a handy spreadsheet detailing EcoHealth funding.
So what is the Oversight Committee overlooking – and why?
There is no mention of DoD, DTRA or USAID funding in the Committee’s announcement or in the utterly performative, 100% toothless notice of suspension and debarment they sent to Peter Daszak. Does the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability not know who the major government funders of EcoHealth Alliance are?
If any agency can bypass the suspension and debarment by “determining that there is compelling reason” to fund EcoHealth, what is the point of those non-punitive consequences?
Why this charade of accountability when, in fact, the supposed overseers are willfully ignoring what’s actually going on?
Clearly, the Committee is not interested in investigating Daszak’s role in the biodefense industry that was responsible not just for the gain-of-function research that may have created SARS-CoV-2, but for the entire Covid pandemic response – which was most definitely not about public health and was, in fact, all about creating and administering the medical countermeasures which were the monomaniacal focus of the biodefense responders.
What to ask Peter Daszak if we had actual oversight
If the Committee were serious about investigating Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, here are some questions they would ask:
Non-public health funding sources and projects
- Most of the government funding for EcoHealth Alliance comes not from public health agencies but from USAID (State Department/CIA) and the Pentagon. What projects are these non-public health agencies funding? Are these projects related to biodefense/biowarfare research?
- Is the USAID and Pentagon-funded virus research conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners intended primarily to prepare for naturally occurring pandemics or for potential biowarfare/bioterrorism attacks?
- Do the USAID and Pentagon-funded projects conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners involve creating pandemic potential pathogens as part of biodefense/biowarfare research?
- Do you know or suspect that SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered virus created as part of a USAID and Pentagon-funded biowarfare/biodefense project?
- Do the USAID and Pentagon-funded projects conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners involve work on medical countermeasures against potential biowarfare/bioterrorism agents?
Disease X op-ed
- On February 27, 2020, before the Covid pandemic had been declared and before anyone in the U.S. had died of Covid-19, you wrote an op-ed for The New York Times stating that the novel coronavirus was “Disease X.” You explained that the term Disease X was coined by you and a bunch of experts at the World Health Organization in 2018. In your report from 2018, it says:
“Disease X represents the awareness that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently not recognized to cause human disease. Disease X may also be a known pathogen that has changed its epidemiological characteristics, for example by increasing its transmissibility or severity.”
Why were you so sure, so early on, even before we knew there was a pandemic, that this was Disease X? What was it about SARS-CoV-2 (which, after all, was named as a direct successor of the original SARS, to which it was said to be very similar) that made it seem so uniquely dangerous to you? Why did you feel you had to warn the whole world about it on the pages of the NYT?
- Did you think SARS-CoV-2 was a known pathogen that had “changed its epidemiological characteristics” by “increasing its transmissibility or severity”? If yes, what made you think that?
- Did you think SARS-CoV-2 was a potential bioweapon that had been developed using funds from USAID and DOD by EcoHealth Alliance and/or its research partners in China or elsewhere?
- The New York Times has subsequently erased your Disease X op-ed from their online 2/27/2020 issue. You can only find it through the direct link. Why do you think they have made it all but impossible for anyone who doesn’t already know about the article to find it? Do you regret having written it?
Linking Disease X to genetic vaccine platforms
- In the NYT op-ed, you provided a link from the term “Disease X” to a 2018 CNN article in which Dr. Anthony Fauci says that, in order to combat such dangerous as-yet-nonexistent pathogens, “the WHO recognizes that it must “nimbly move” and that this involves creating “platform technologies.”
Fauci goes on to say that “scientists develop customizable recipes for creating vaccines. Then, when an outbreak happens, they can sequence the unique genetics of the virus causing the disease, and plug the correct sequence into the already-developed platform to create a new vaccine.”
That sounds an awful lot like the mRNA platform used for the Covid countermeasures that came to be known as the “mRNA vaccines.”
Why did you link to that particular article from your op-ed about disease X? Were you suggesting that the solution to the pandemic that you appeared to be predicting would be a genetic platform in which the “correct sequence” could be plugged to create vaccines?
- Were you already aware of the Covid mRNA vaccines being developed at the time of your op-ed (February 27, 2020) by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer, long before the official launch of Operation Warp Speed (May 2020)?
- Is it true that the Pentagon considered the mRNA platforms to be the preferred countermeasures against Covid-19, and that these were always intended to reach full funding and development, starting all the way back in January 2020?
- Was the USAID and Pentagon-funded research conducted EcoHealth and/or its partners related to the development of such mRNA vaccines? If so, how?
The need for a crisis to justify funding and development of genetic vaccine platforms
- In 2016, you participated in an Institute of Medicine working group on Rapid Medical Countermeasure Response to Infectious Diseases. The report quotes you as saying:
“Until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.”
It sounds like you’re saying we need the media to hype up a crisis so that investors will want to fund the type of pan-coronavirus vaccine that is exactly the genetic platform you highlighted in your op-ed, and also exactly the platform that emerged into public awareness shortly after your op-ed, and became known as the Covid mRNA vaccines.
Can you explain this uncanny overlap between your description of what was needed to get such platforms developed in 2016 and what actually happened in 2020?
- Did the USAID and Pentagon-funded research on coronaviruses conducted by EcoHealth Alliance and/or its partners support the development of such platforms? If so, how?
- Were you aware of a plan to use the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 as a trigger for the media hype, public-private funding, and massive mRNA vaccine development and deployment in early 2020 – exactly as you described them in 2016?
- If you were aware of such a plan, who was involved in it, and what was your role?
CONCLUSION
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has made a big show of publicly chastising Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance for terrible behavior in the way they managed their funding from the NIH. The Committee has also highlighted very bad weaknesses in the grant making process of the NIH that need to be corrected.
As a result of the Committee’s recommendations, the HHS (parent agency of NIH) has issued a non-punitive notice to Peter Daszak, stating that EcoHealth cannot receive another penny of government funding… unless a government agency decides there is a compelling reason to provide such funding.
Clearly, all of the Committee’s investigations, reports, recommendations and notices in this matter are purely performative, considering 1) they actually impose no consequences, and 2) they ignore the fact that most of Daszak and EcoHealth’s funding come from military and state department sources for work on biodefense/biowarfare-related projects.
Is the Committee’s work just another example of bureaucratic incompetence and “waste, fraud and abuse” of our precious taxpayer dollars?
Or is it an intentional diversion, to distract us from the work the U.S. government was/is actually funding at bioweapons labs like the one in Wuhan, engineering pandemic potential pathogens and then deploying global public-private partnerships to develop medical countermeasures against those pathogens – all of which came together to create the catastrophe known as the Covid pandemic?
Israeli soldier confesses to killing US elderly man in West Bank
Al Mayadeen | May 22, 2024
A self-proclaimed soldier from “Israel’s” infamous Netzah Yehuda battalion has admitted that his unit killed 78-year-old Palestinian-American, Omar Asad, in January 2022, according to recordings obtained by The Grayzone.
However, after announcing plans to sanction the battalion, the Biden administration withdrew the decision without offering further explanation.
“Four of these units [Israeli units] have effectively remediated these violations, which is what we expect partners to do,” the US State Department claimed.
The fifth unit appears to be Netzah Yehuda, an all-male unit of Orthodox Jewish nationalists that operates exclusively in Ramallah of the occupied West Bank and is accused of crimes, including sexual assault and beating at least three older men to death while they were lying on the ground while in custody.
Netzah Yehuda soldiers detained Asad and left him outdoors in harsh conditions, bound and blindfolded until he died. Instead of punishment, all the soldiers got was a slap on the wrist, and compensation was paid to Asad’s family.
A report by Washington DC-based human rights organization, DAWN, found that at the time of the killing, the commander of the unit, Lt. Col. Mati Shevach, was promoted to Deputy Commander of the Kfir Brigade, which oversees the Netzah Yehuda formation.
Spokesperson Vedant Patel responded during an April 29 State Department press briefing to questions regarding why the administration had hesitated to sanction the battalion.
“This is an ongoing process,” Patel said, further claiming, “I’m not going to speak to it more specifically, but consistent with the memorandum of understanding that we have with the government of Israel, we are engaging with them, consulting with them as it relates to not just this broader process but additional information that they’ve shared.”
The Grayzone obtained the glorified account of the killing of Asad, which according to the self-described soldier’s account, the unit brutalized Asad as punishment for supposedly interfering with a raid.
“This geezer who’s like trying to interfere with our operation, we’re going to like, f*** with him for a night,” the soldier said, as he called Arabs “murders, criminal animals” and boasted about killing and torturing Palestinians, likening himself to Americans who photographed themselves with dead Japanese soldiers during World War II, “doing funny things with their bodies.”
“Yeah, I enjoy it because they’re our enemy,” he expressed.
Read also: IOF units ‘remediated’ after rights violations, no Leahy sanctions
The latest Democracy Perception Index reveals shifts in global perceptions
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 21, 2024
The Democracy Perception Index (DPI) issued its 2024 report on 8 May, revealing important and interesting shifts in global perceptions about democracy, geopolitics and international relations. The conclusions in the report were based on the views of over 62,000 respondents from 53 countries, representing roughly 75 per cent of the world’s total population.
The survey was conducted between 20 February and 15 April this year, when the world was largely transfixed by the Israeli war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
It is important to note that the DPI, although informative, is itself conceived in a biased context as it is the product of a global survey conducted by western-based companies and organisations.
The DPI results were published ahead of a scheduled 2024 Copenhagen Democracy Summit, whose speakers will include Hillary Clinton, US Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and President of the European Council Charles Michel. The first speaker listed on the conference website is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Founder and Chairman of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, which commissioned the DPI.
All of this is reflected in the kind of questions which are being asked in the survey, placing greater emphasis on whether, for example, ties should be cut with Russia over Ukraine, and China over a war that is yet to take place in Taiwan. Such major shortcomings notwithstanding, the outcome of the research remains interesting and worthy of reflection.
There are some major takeaways from the report. For a start, there is growing dissatisfaction with the state of democracy, and such discontent is not limited to people living in countries perceived as non-democratic; it also includes people in the US and Europe.
What’s more, democracy, in the collective awareness of ordinary people, is not a political term often infused as part of official propaganda. When seen from the viewpoint of the people, democracy is a practical notion, whose absence leads to dire implications. For example, 68 per cent of people worldwide believe that economic inequality at home is the greatest threat to democracy.
On the question of “threats to democracy”, there is growing mistrust of Global Corporations (60 per cent), Big Tech (49 per cent) and their resulting Economic Inequality (68 per cent), and Corruption (67 per cent). This leads to the unmistakable conclusion that western globalisation has failed to create the proper environment for social equality, empower civil society or build democratic institutions. The opposite, based on people’s own perceptions, seems to be true.
Then we have global priorities which, as seen by many nations around the world, remain committed to ending wars, poverty, hunger, combating climate change, etc. However, this year’s top priority among European countries, 44 per cent, is also centred on reducing immigration, a significant number compared with the 24 per cent who prioritise fighting climate change.
Although the world appears to be divided about cutting ties with Russia and China, the selection of the question again reeks with bias.
The respondents in western countries, who are subjected to relentless media propaganda, prefer cutting such ties, while most people in the rest of the world prefer keeping them. Consequently, due to China’s positive perception in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, the DPI gave Beijing a “net positive”. Russia, on the other hand, is on the “path of image rehabilitation in most countries surveyed with the exception of Europe,” reported Politico.
The greatest decline was suffered by the United States, largely due to Washington’s support for Israel in its ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. “Over the past four years… perceptions of the US’s global influence became more positive – peaking in 2022 or 2023 – and then declined sharply in 2024,” the report concluded.
The large drop took place in the Muslim countries that were surveyed: Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkiye, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria. Some western European countries are also becoming more critical of the US, including Switzerland, Ireland and Germany.
Most people (55 per cent compared with 29 per cent) believe that social media has a positive effect on democracy. Despite growing social media censorship, many in the Global South still find margins in these platforms which allow them to escape official or corporate media censorship. Growing criticism of social media companies, however, is taking place in western countries, according to the survey.
Despite official propaganda emanating from many governments, especially in the west, regarding the greatest threats to world peace, the majority of people want their governments to focus on poverty reduction, fight corruption, promote economic growth, and improve healthcare and education, while working to reduce income inequality. “Investing in security and defence,” came seventh on the list.
Finally, people in countries which have an overall negative perception of the United States include some of the most influential global and regional powers, such as China, Russia, Indonesia, Austria, Turkiye, Australia and Belgium.
Despite massive media propaganda, censorship and scaremongering, people around the world remain clear on their collective priorities, expectations and aspirations, which are real democracy, social equality and justice. If these collective yearnings continue to be denigrated and ignored, we should expect more social upheaval, if not outright insurrections and military coups in coming years.
Deadly Chemicals Found at US ICBM Bases Threaten to Send Personnel to Early Grave
Phalus © Photo : US National Park Service
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 22.05.2024
Introduced into service in the 1970s, America’s Minuteman III ICBM arsenal has been plagued by notoriously outdated tech, including computers using eight-inch floppies until the late 2010s. Efforts to modernize the missiles have been problematic, with the Air Force forced to ‘safely terminate’ a test launch in November after detecting an ‘anomaly’.
Personnel operating current and former US ICBM bases have been exposed to cancer-causing agents known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the Air Force has acknowledged.
“PCBs are likely present in decommissioned Titan and Peacekeeper missile facilities that the Air Force no longer has the ability to conduct sampling in,” Air Force Global Strike Command chief General Thomas A. Bussiere said in a release put out earlier this week.
But the pale yellow-colored, viscous substances have also been found at active Minuteman III sites. Bussiere said sampling “identified the continued presence of PCBs” at Minuteman bases “despite a comprehensive removal effort in the 1990s.”
“One of the consistent concerns we’ve heard throughout the Missile Community Cancer Study is that service members, retirees, and veterans have trouble explaining their concerns over potential exposure to toxic chemicals with their healthcare providers, especially civilian providers who don’t have access to military medical database,” Air Force Global Strike Command Surgeon General Gregory Coleman said.
“While this memorandum from Global Strike Command cannot capture the specifics of any individual Airman or Guardian’s service in the missile fields, it can serve as a starting point for discussions and documentation of potential exposure,” Coleman added.
PCBs are chemical compounds used in an array of old equipment, including electronics. They were banned in the US in the late 1970s, and worldwide in the early 2000s. They share characteristics with other persistent organic pollutants, easily contaminating the local environment, including rivers, soil, and farms.
They are extremely hard to break down or degrade, with elimination difficult and costly (incineration, for example, requires heating to temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius or above).
The substances are linked to diseases impacting the central nervous system, and endocrine disruption. PCBs can also cause aggressive skin and liver cancers, and have a suspected role in the development of other ailments by weakening the immune system. They easily penetrate skin and even protective equipment, including synthetic polymers and latex.
The US is expected to spend over $131 billion to replace its Minuteman III missiles with the new Sentinel missile program. The program has faced a string of delays and cost overruns, with the first test flight expected to take place in 2026 at the earliest.
The Pentagon is expected to spend a staggering $1.5 trillion (and rising) on its multi-decade nuclear rearmament program – which was begun by the Obama administration in 2016.
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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