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BBC HardTalk: Professor Marandi on the Gaza Genocide and its regional implications

January 16, 2024

Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi discusses the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Yemen and the conflict in the Red Sea, Hezbollah’s border war, and Iraq. He explains the regional implications as well as the possibility of escalation and regional war.

January 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Rounds Up Thousands of Palestinians Without Charge or Access to a Lawyer

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 18, 2024

The Israeli Knesset has approved legislation that allows holding Palestinians deemed security prisoners for up to 180 days without access to a lawyer. Since October 7, Israel has placed thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention.

On Monday, the Israeli Knesset approved a law that extends “the emergency regulations that have allowed Israeli authorities to deny security prisoners, detained since October 7, the option to meet with their lawyers,” Haaretz reports. “The regulation will be valid for an additional three months, and will allow the state to prevent prisoners from meeting with a lawyer for up to 180 days.”

Since October 7, Israel has rounded up thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The number of Palestinians held in administration detention has increased from around 1,200 to over 3,300 in just three months. A total of 8,600 Palestinians are now in Israeli prisons.

Israel has severely restricted all communications with those in detention. Family members often report even struggling to locate their loved ones after getting arrested by Israeli occupation forces.

Since October 7, Palestinians have been beaten, tortured, and killed in Israeli prisons. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a member of the extremist Jewish Power, has significant influence over the conditions of Palestinian prisoners.

Ben Gvir, who has called for disloyal Palestinians to be expelled from Israel, has already degraded the conditions detainees are subject to using over-crowding as an excuse. The Knesset is considering legislation that will give the minister further authority to erode the rights of Palestinian prisoners.

Conditions are horrible for those men indiscriminately rounded up by the Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The Tel Aviv-based +972 Magazine conducted an investigation into the treatment of detained Palestinians and concluded, “systematic abuse and torture by Israeli soldiers against all of the detainees, civilians and combatants alike.”

“According to these testimonies, Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian detainees to electric shocks, burned their skin with lighters, spat in their mouths, and deprived them of sleep, food, and access to bathrooms until they defecated on themselves.” The outlet added, “Many were tied to a fence for hours, handcuffed, and blindfolded for most of the day. Some testified to having been beaten all over their bodies and having cigarettes extinguished on their necks or backs. Several people are known to have died as a result of being held in these conditions.”

January 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Warns Congress Lack of Ukraine Aid Could Lead to US Troops on Ground

Sputnik – 18.01.2024

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden met with congressional leaders and warned them that not approving additional funding for Ukraine could possibly result in the deployment of US troops to that country, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Thursday.

“The president conveyed a sense of urgency about the stakes for our NATO partners in the region, what it would mean for our NATO partners in the region, and certainly we don’t want to see our own troops put in a position where we might need to put boots on the ground,” Jean-Pierre said.

On Wednesday, US House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the United States’ status quo on Ukraine is unacceptable.

Johnson also said Congress needs a clearer explanation from the Biden administration about its strategy in Ukraine, the endgame and accountability for US funds. The speaker also added that US border security must be the top priority.

Biden’s supplemental request includes more than $60 billion for Ukraine.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Jim Jordan Demands Answers After Biden Admin Caught Flagging “MAGA” And “Trump” To Track Political Opponents’ Financial Transactions

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 18, 2024

Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Wednesday, announced that it had obtained documents revealing that federal agencies have flagged financial transactions for financial institutions for people using politically sensitive words such as “MAGA” and Trump.”

In a letter to Noah Bishoff – who was a former FinCEN Director (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) – and now an Anti Money Laundering (AML) officer at fintech company Plaid, Inc. Jordan described situations in which Americans buying bibles or shopping at sporting good stores might find their transactions flagged.

New documents obtained by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government reveal that the federal government flagged terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP” for financial institutions if Americans used those phrases when completing transactions. Individuals who shopped at stores like Cabela’s or Dick’s Sporting Goods, or purchased religious texts like a bible, may also have had their transactions flagged. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious concerns about the FBI’s respect for fundamental civil liberties. – Judiciary.house.gov

“The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents indicating that following January 6, 2021, FinCEN distributed materials to financial institutions that, among other things, outline the ‘typologies’ of various persons of interest and provide financial institutions with suggested search terms and Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement,” reads the letter.

“These materials included a document recommending the use of generic terms like ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA’ to ‘search Zelle payment messages’ as well as a ‘prior FinCEN analysis’ of ‘Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators,” the letter continues. “According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.’ In other words, FinCEN urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”

The Committee announced that it’s seeking interviews with senior intelligence officials, including Bishoff.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The Case of Typhoid Mary

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | January 17, 2024

For four years now, any talk of allowing society to function in the event of a pandemic has called forth cliches about Typhoid Mary. It’s remarkable how this real event, a paradigmatic case of awesome and egregious powers of public health, in which a poor Irish immigrant was scapegoated for typhoid infections in New York, still survives – fully 100 years later.

Even otherwise scrupulous scholars I knew have tossed out her name expecting it to end all discussion of the necessity of lockdowns.

It’s time we examine the case. Typhoid Mary was a real person, Mary Mallon (1869-1938). By all accounts an excellent chef who had served many families and had outstanding skills. She was never symptomatic for typhoid. She was healthy and well. But when there was an outbreak at a home she served, she was hunted down, her stool tested positive, and then she was quarantined in New York as an asymptomatic carrier (1907-1910).

Legal pushback led her to be released three years later on the condition that she check in and never cook again. She defied both conditions and so was hunted down yet again. This time medical authorities demanded to remove her gallbladder which she refused to permit. She ended up spending a total of 26 years in solitary confinement before she died (1915-1938).

There is in fact a large literature on the case. The best are Famous and Difficult Patients: Amusing Medical Anecdotes from Typhoid Mary to FDR, by Richard Gordon (St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Typhoid Mary: Captive To The Public’s Health, by, Judith Walzer Leavitt (Beacon Press, 1996); Typhoid Mary: The Notorious Life and Legacy of the Cook Who Caused a Typhoid Outbreak in New York, by Charles Editors (2020) and many more but above all, Typhoid Mary, by Anthony Bourdain (Bloomsberry, 2005), which is a brilliant, engaging, and deeply sympathetic book. For a quick overview, there are many articles online.

All are fascinating and in agreement that Mary likely (probably) spread typhoid, along with many hundreds of others in New York who were never hunted and jailed. She never felt sick. She frequently tested negative and deeply distrusted the authorities that hunted her down. The man who started the whole bit was a lawyer/investigator named George Soper who ended up writing an article and book that caused her to forever live with the moniker. This book became a bestseller and Soper himself became a famous and beloved disease sleuth.

The public was so enthralled with the case that New York kids would skip rope to the line: “Mary Mary, what do you carry?” She tried to sue but her case was rejected by the New York Supreme Court. She was not allowed to see an eye doctor even though her eyelid was paralyzed. She was forced to take unproven treatments that threatened to destroy her kidneys.

No question that tagging her as public enemy number one was a reflection of prevailing bias against Irish immigrants who were seen as dirty and lower class. She was lower class but she wasn’t dirty. I’ve read much about her and find myself not entirely convinced that she was a source of sickness in every case in which she was blamed. The germ in question was spread primarily through water mixed with fecal matter so fixing that problem causes the issue to go away, as people later learned. In addition, the regime of test, track, and trace is notoriously error-prone and plays very much into the hands of the public’s desire to stigmatize the diseased and otherize infection no matter what.

Due to public hatred and unrelenting attacks, Mary very likely eventually came to believe that she was a source but, at some point, she didn’t care much, which is what happens when a whole country blames you alone for disease and the authorities jail you and threaten to cut you open.

In other words, she was treated like an animal, not a patient, and then later experimented upon with random untested treatments. Meanwhile hundreds of carriers of the said bug were out and about, while the water supply remained the main culprit.

Typhoid was ultimately conquered not by jails but by sanitation, hygiene, and antibiotics. Mary was blamed for infecting hundreds but only 3-5 died from cases she was accused of spreading (however inadvertently). Again, maybe.

The point was that she was declared guilty regardless, largely because of her class, her national origin, and ethnicity. She was an easy target, even though typhoid carriers were everywhere. Meanwhile, Salmonella typhi (the source of Typhoid) continued to be a problem until later fixed. Much later typhoid victims were easily treated with antibiotics and the disease prevented with vaccination and, even more importantly, hygiene.

What’s striking is how the case, which is so clearly an instance of public frenzy together with public health authoritarianism and brazen brutality, is so frequently cited as an example of how, of course, we must lock people down when there is a virus out and about. In reality, her case has aroused a century of questions about the power of the state to grab people out of their daily lives and imprison them without trial on the claim that they are disease spreaders.

To say that such powers can be abused is an understatement, as we well know in these post-lockdown times. People who have studied the case of Mary Mallon nearly always come around to having great sympathy for her. These were times when modern medical knowledge was advancing but so was the expectation that the rich whom she served would not be subject to the usual sicknesses that snagged the poor.

She alone among hundreds and thousands of likely carriers in the region was shamed and ruined for a disease she didn’t believe she had and did not intentionally spread. Meanwhile, there were no similar efforts undertaken to hunt down and capture other spreaders of Salmonella typhi.

Again, what did this actually achieve in terms of public health? Did the 30 years of involuntary captivity of this woman save lives? There is no way to know, but certainly people continued to die from the disease after her imprisonment, until good treatments came along. Meanwhile, public health authorities had their archetype of a disease carrier to justify their enormous power.

Eventually, Mary came to accept her plight and became a strong adherent of her Catholic faith, and died a peaceful death. Anthony Bourdain offers a deeply touching account of visiting her grave at St. Raymond’s Cemetery, Bronx, New York.

In 1973, I bought my first chef’s knife, a high-carbon Sabatier with a polished wooden handle. I was so proud of it – and I’ve held onto it all these years, remembering how it felt in my hand when I first unwrapped it, the way the handle rested against my palm, the feel of the blade, the sharpness of the edge. It’s old now, and stained, and the handle is cracked slightly in spots. I long ago gave up using it or trying to maintain it. But it is a beloved object. Something a fellow cook would appreciate, I hoped – a once fine hunk of quality French steel – a magical fetish, a beloved piece of my personal history. And a sign of respect, I hoped, an indicator that somebody, somewhere, even long after her troubles and her dying, took her seriously, understood, if only a little bit, the difficulty of her life as a cook. It’s the kind of gift I would like to receive, one that I would understand.

I looked around the graveyard, making sure that no one else was watching, leaned over and with my hands, pulled back the grass at the base of her stone. I slipped my knife down there, covered it up the way it had looked before and left it for her. It was the least I could do.

A gift. Cook to cook.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Billionaires Melinda Gates and MacKenzie Scott Invest $23 Million to Promote School-Based Health Centers

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 16, 2024

Billionaires Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott this month invested a total of $23 million in the School-Based Health Alliance (SBHA), the leading Washington, D.C.-based, national nonprofit that promotes the expansion of school-based health centers (SBHCs).

Gates’ contribution ($16 million), made through her Pivotal Ventures company, will launch SBHC “care coordination initiatives” in Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Miami. Scott’s funding ($7 million) will support general operations for the alliance.

The funding substantially increases the alliance’s revenue, which was less than $4 million in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. Before the new $23 million investment, most of the nonprofit’s funding came from federal grants.

SBHA tweeted the grant announcement:

The organization’s mission is to increase the number of SBHCs nationally among schools that receive federal funding through policy advocacy, technical support to existing centers and support securing funding for new and existing centers. There are approximately 3,900 SBHCs in the U.S.

SBHCs are intended to provide healthcare to kids by offering “primary care, mental healthcare, and other health services in schools,” particularly in underserved communities.

This includes services “to prevent disease, disability, and other health conditions or their progression” such as “immunizations” and “well-child care,” typically with a focus on advancing equity.

Promoting equity is also a key platform for Pivotal Ventures, which Gates founded in 2015 to “accelerate social progress in the United States by removing barriers that hold people back.” It is a venture capital fund that primarily makes return-seeking investments rather than providing philanthropic donations, but it also has grantees like the alliance.

SBHCs ‘completely unregulated’

Justine Tanguay, an attorney and director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Reform Pharma initiative, told The Defender there is a long history of private equity firms investing in healthcare in pursuit of their own interests.

“Many philanthropists and donors claim that funding SBHCs provides underserved and low-income families with equity and access to affordable healthcare,” Tanguay said. “But it’s not about improving children’s health, it’s about making money.”

The Pivotal Ventures-backed care coordination initiatives will fund staff positions for SBHC “care coordinators” in schools serving low-income families. Coordinators will set up information-sharing “among all those concerned with a student’s health needs and care,” including students, parents or guardians, school staff and/or healthcare professionals.

They will also address issues such as housing, food security and transportation as part of student care.

Workgroups comprised of staff from SBHCs and “community members” in each city will select the coordinators. The initiative also will lobby for policies to take over payment for the care coordinators through Medicaid.

Tanguay said these kinds of models for SBHCs have the potential to circumvent parents’ rights to make healthcare decisions for their children by allowing care providers direct access to minors, potentially without parental consent.

“Here, the opportunity to circumvent both parental rights and informed consent is ripe for abuse since SBHCs are completely unregulated and therefore, have no oversight,” she said.

Georgia attorney Nicole Johnson, co-director of Georgia Coalition for Vaccine Choice and a consultant to the CHD legal team, also told The Defender the $23 million investment raised concerns about who was making decisions and what kind of regulations might be in place to protect children and families.

“The large federal grants combined with this Gates/Scott funding seem to be putting SBHCs on a fast track across the nation,” Johnson said.

“As beneficial as some of these services may be, shouldn’t we slow down and consider who is leading the charge for these SBHCs and what their motives may be? Shouldn’t we make sure there are proper regulatory frameworks in place to protect children and parents?” she asked.

Scott’s award is the largest “unrestricted” gift in the alliance’s 28-year history, meaning that it is not earmarked for any particular project and will be used to support general organizational costs for the nonprofit, to use as its leadership sees fit.

“I believe that SBHCs could be of benefit and service to many families, of any income,” Johnson said. “But as they are being rolled out, there are few guardrails in place to safeguard children’s medical data/privacy, ensure continuity of care and protect parental rights,” she added.

Philanthropic funding key to SBHC expansion for decades

SBHCs are typically full-service health clinics physically situated within school buildings, although a small percentage of them are mobile units or, increasingly, telehealth clinics.

The Association of American Pediatrics (AAP) began to establish the first SBHCs in the 1960s in Massachusetts, Texas and Minnesota. Since their inception, they have focused on providing services to low-income children who lack access to regular healthcare.

Until the late 1980s, there were just a handful of SBHCs, primarily located in “urban communities” across the country. Their work focused on family planning, along with general youth health and well-being.

Early controversies over SBHCs focused on issues of reproductive healthcare and parental rights, but efforts to establish new SBHCs expanded rapidly in the 1990s.

The Center for Population Options, which was dedicated to reducing unintended teenage pregnancy, was the first organization to offer technical support and conduct periodic qualitative studies of existing SBHCs and their services. By 1998, the School-Based Health Alliance took over those roles.

SBHCs numbered 1,135 in 45 states by 1998-99, with the expansion largely funded through more than $40 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and allocations by state governments.

Medicaid expansion in the 1990s also helped to shore up funding for SBHCs through coverage to low-income patients, along with congressional funding earmarked for SBHCs beginning in 1995 through the Healthy Schools, Healthy Communities program, which ended by 2005.

After that, funding for SBHCs was available from the Health Resources and Services Administration, as long as the grantees were federally qualified health centers. SBHCs also receive funding from third-party insurers and patient fees.

Through the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Congress appropriated $200 million over four years toward construction, renovation and equipment for SBHCs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) distributed that money in 520 awards across the country.

By 2017, there were at least 2,317 SBHCs.

The Biden administration’s HHS in 2021 awarded $5 million in grants to expand school-based healthcare in the U.S. It continued this grant program the next year in May 2022, awarding $25 million in grants to 125 SBHCs. In 2023, HHS awarded another $25 million to 77 health centers for school-based service expansion.

Congress and President Joe Biden in June 2022 also passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which allowed HHS to award $50 million in grants to states “for the purpose of implementing, enhancing, or expanding the provision” of healthcare assistance through SBHCs using Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The legislation charged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services with expanding access to Medicaid healthcare services — including behavioral health services — in schools, and reducing the administrative burden for states and schools.

Since 2008, the number of telehealth SBHCs has also grown substantially, increasing from 7% of SBHCs to 19% from 2016-17.

Concerns over parental rights remain central to the debate over SBHCs today. Tanguay said that SBHCs can provide adolescents with confidential health services without parental consent, based on the assumption that some services, like family planning, could have negative consequences for the child if the parents were involved.

This often means that parents are denied access to their children’s health information due to confidentiality rules, but that information can be shared with providers including school nurses and other interested parties on the care team.

“It’s a very slippery slope that appears to eliminate barriers to sharing a student’s private health information, rather than protecting them,” she said.

While the early focus of SBHCs was on family planning and reproductive health, today the literature focuses more on their potential “to address lagging immunization rates” and to provide mental health services to children and teens facing a reported mental health crisis.

Groups like the AAP, a strong supporter of SBHCs, have used the mental health crisis to call on the Biden administration to fund expanded access to screening, diagnosing and treatment for children, arguing access to “school-based mental health care” should be a priority.

The administration responded with new policy measures, including the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — which made $1 billion available for mental health services — and the American Rescue Plan Act. Both offer funding explicitly for school-based mental health services for students, KFF Health News reported.

Many of these resources have funded the expansion of SBHCs.

Pivotal Ventures Senior Manager of the Adolescent Mental Health strategy Sara Bathum indicated the corporation’s interest in mental health was a key motivation for its funding to the alliance.

“School-Based Health Alliance’s unique approach embeds mental health resources for youth and families within existing centers of care, making it easier to access trusted, culturally responsive support. We are proud to partner with them in this important effort in these communities and look forward to seeing their impact,” she said.

“Mental health is clearly a significant focus of these centers,” Johnson said. “But Parents should be very concerned about how these centers treat mental health issues.”

Johnson gave the example of a case in Maine where a federally funded school-based health center reportedly gave prescription anti-depressant pills in a plastic baggie to a 17-year-old girl without her parents’ knowledge or consent.

Pharma vs. parents in the SBHC rollout

The School-Based Health Alliance calls itself the “national voice for school-based healthcare.” It consults for organizations seeking to start SBHCs — helping them secure funding, providing technical support and even providing direct funding. It also tracks and lobbies for SBHC-friendly policies on the local, state and federal levels.

In addition to Gates and Scott, SBHA funders include Merck, maker of the Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. Merck funded SBHA’s “vaccine toolkit” along with a 2023 SBHA program to increase vaccinations through child wellness visits.

Military think tank Rand Corporation also is a funder. Previous funders include Gilead and insurance giants Kaiser Permanente and Aetna.

Tanguay said the alliance’s ties to Big Pharma are concerning, given that SBHCs are such a“ windfall” for Pharma, particularly if they provide a way around parental consent.

She said:

“Big Pharma is a trojan horse that if given the opportunity, will have direct access to our children at school without the need for parental involvement.

“It’s no surprise that Big Pharma is supporting SBHCs because the goal is to diagnose and medicate as many students as possible for the sake of ‘improving’ the health of the child. Big Pharma’s business model anticipates that the more prescriptions written the more money they will make.”

The alliance’s board members also have ties to major healthcare conglomerates, and their resumes often highlight their success in vaccinating low-income people of color against COVID-19.

Board member Mark Masselli is CEO of the Moses Weitzman Health System, formerly Community Health Center, in Connecticut, which boasts of having administered over 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines and winning “national acclaim for its educational messages addressing vaccine hesitancy among people of color.”

Board member Alexandra Quinn, former Kellogg Foundation fellow, co-founded the Vaccine Equity Cooperative during the COVID-19 pandemic, to vaccinate people of color, largely by training “trusted messengers” to promote the idea that the vaccines are “safe and effective” — a strategy advocated and funded by federal public health institutions.

Another board member, Dr. Gillian Barclay, is the vice president of Global Public Health & Scientific Affairs at Big Pharma’s Colgate Palmolive, and previously worked at the Kellogg Foundation and World Health Organization.

Board member Cecilia Oregón works at healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, where she is an advocate for universal internet access (digital equity) to get people telehealth access.

Robert Boyd, the alliance’s president and CEO, has been instrumental in getting federal appropriations for new and expanded SBHCs. In the meantime, Johnson said, the onus is on parents to advocate for state laws that ensure that SBHC expansion happens in a way that is regulated and offers protection for parents and children.

“In New Hampshire, for instance, a proposed bill regarding the establishment of SBHCs includes a provision that would require parents to be present when services are provided,” she said.

“I believe that requiring a parent’s presence is a win-win — the parent can share information about the child’s health history and any current treatments/medications and can also participate in and consent to any additional treatments.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | | Leave a comment

US health agency hushed Covid vax myocarditis warning – media

RT | January 17, 2024

The US Centers for Disease Control never sent an urgent health alert it had drafted in May 2021 regarding a potentially fatal side-effect linked to the Covid-19 vaccinations it was promoting, and continued to push the shots without warning the public, according to a document obtained by Epoch Times on Wednesday.

In an inter-agency email titled “draft alert on myocarditis and mRNA vaccines” obtained by the Times, CDC official Dr. Demetre Daskalakis informed two high-ranking colleagues that he had attached “the most recent draft of an alert as discussed.”

The agency disseminates what it describes as “vital health information” to doctors and public health officials at federal, state and local levels through a system called the Health Alert Network. The warning was reportedly prepared for release via this network; Daskalakis’ email was dated May 21, 2021, but never saw publication.

While the exact text of the warning has not been made public, the CDC had been tracking cases of myocarditis – a potentially deadly heart condition – in individuals vaccinated with Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines for months, witnessing what it internally acknowledged was an alarming spike in cases, even as it continued to urge all Americans to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.

Two days before the email was sent, the CDC told state officials it was “closely monitoring” post-vaccination cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, a similar condition, and acknowledged that such cases “can be serious.” However, the public was not notified until weeks later – and the CDC continued to promote the jabs to all Americans, even after the risk was made public.

Instead of the never-released draft alert, the CDC later chose to inform healthcare providers about the danger in a document headed “clinical considerations” that lacked the forceful language or widespread distribution a Health Alert Network bulletin would have received. While it acknowledged the increased risk of myocarditis, it placed equivalent emphasis on the need to vaccinate everyone over age 11.

Last year, it emerged that both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration had been made aware of a myocarditis “safety signal” triggered by an unusually large number of adverse event reports as far back as February 2021 – just two months after the mRNA-based vaccines received regulatory approval [emergency use authorizion].

Despite international news reports that vaccination with Pfizer and Moderna’s shots was associated with an elevated risk of myocarditis, the US regulatory agencies did not inform the public about the risk until after the jabs had been approved for patients between 12 and 15 years old – one of the age groups most susceptible to their deadly side effects.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Republicans threaten to fire US federal workers if they oppose Israel genocide

MEMO | January 17, 2024

Republican leaders this week threatened disciplinary action and termination of their job against federal workers participating in a mass walkout protesting President Joe Biden’s backing of Israel’s bloody military campaign in Gaza. More 85,000 Palestinians have either been killed or injured in what has been labelled Israel’s war of genocide against Palestinians.

The protest, led by an anonymous group dubbed “Feds United for Peace”, aims to observe a “Day of Mourning” as Israel continues its bombing campaign for over 100 days.

Hundreds across agencies including the White House and Pentagon plan to simultaneously take leave to demonstrate against Washington’s support of the apartheid state as the Gaza death toll passes 24,000. Israel enjoys staunch bipartisan political backing in the US.

But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and oversight Chairman James Comer promised to pressure agencies into prosecuting employees over the action. Stating the workers “deserve to be fired”, legislators argue the demonstration illegally constitutes an organised “strike” against government policy, violating statutes.

There is said to be unprecedented internal dissent within federal ranks over the Biden administration’s decision to continue backing its major ally despite allegations of genocide. Biden himself marked the 100-day anniversary with a controversial statement showing solidarity with Israel but failed to mention even once the mass slaughter of Palestinians.

“When your kids ask you, ‘What did you do?’, we don’t want to say that we just watched from the sidelines. And we hope that everyone who has a conscience looks at this situation and takes it upon themselves to not watch from the sidelines,” one of the organisers of the walkout is reported saying in Al Jazeera. She wanted to remain anonymous.

“We are really not activists,” said a second organiser. “There may be, among our group, people who are political appointees, but we’re not political in any way,” said the second organiser. “This group really grows out of this immense frustration and sadness at seeing the war continue for so long — the massive death and destruction unfolding in Gaza over the last 100 days,” said an organiser who also wanted to remain anonymous.

Following a report on Feds United for Peace’s planned action last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, tweeted: “Any government worker who walks off the job to protest US support for our ally Israel is ignoring their responsibility and abusing the trust of taxpayers.”

“They deserve to be fired,” he wrote, adding he would “work to ensure that each federal agency initiates appropriate disciplinary proceedings against any person who walks out on their job.”

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Troops Flee Syria After Attacks on Bases

Sputnik – 16.01.2024

The US is evacuating its Hemo military base near the airport in the northeastern Syrian city of Kamishli (al-Qamishli) after repeated attacks by “Iraqi resistance” forces, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reports.

“Tasnim’s sources in Syria report the evacuation of the US military base Hemo… in the northern Syrian province of al-Hasakeh due to repeated attacks by Iraqi Islamic resistance groups,” the report said. The agency specifies that the Hemo base, located 4 kilometres west of the Kamishla airport, is considered one of the most important US bases in the Arab republic with at least 350 US military personnel. According to the agency, the base is a training center where the US military trains fighters of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF).

Last week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called on Shiite “resistance fronts” in various Arab countries to “strike the enemy” wherever it is. Shiite movements within the so-called “Islamic resistance in Iraq” announced the first attack on the US military base Hemo near Kamishla airport.

Earlier, Iraqi armed groups said they attacked another US base near the Conico gas field in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria. Additionally, several drones were shot down near Erbil International Airport in northern Iraq, where a base of international counter-terrorism forces is located.

January 16, 2024 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

US seeks funds for new bioweapons projects from Clinton, Soros, Rockefeller Foundations: Russian MoD

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 15.01.2024

Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense (RCBD) Troops began extensive reporting on Pentagon funding for military-related biological research in Eastern Europe and around the world in early 2022, with much of their findings based on the tens of thousands of documents seized over the course of the special military operation in Ukraine.

The United States government is actively searching for new sources of funding for military biological research from leading American ‘philanthropic’ institutions, including the Clinton, Soros, Rockefeller and Biden Foundations, RCBD Troops chief Igor Kirillov has announced.

“Based on an analysis of documents received in the course of the special military operation, the structure of the system created by the US administration for the global management of biological risks has become clear,” Kirillov said in a briefing Monday, summarizing an analysis of US military-biological activities in Ukraine and globally over the course of 2023.

“It consists of government agencies and private contractors, including representatives of Big Pharma. Through the organs of the executive branch, a legislative framework is being created to finance military-biological research directly from the federal budget. Guarantees provided by the state attract funds from non-governmental organizations controlled by the Democratic Party leadership, including the Clinton, Rockefeller, Soros and Biden Foundations,” Kirillov said.

According to the RCBD Troops’ chief’s information, the main private contractors involved in the Pentagon’s military-biological program include Metabiota, Black & Veatch and CH2M, with the companies tasked with the construction of facilities and the supply of equipment to labs around the globe. Their work is coordinated by the DoD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency. On the Big Pharma front, Pfizer, Moderna, Gilead, Dynport Vaccine, AbbVie, Parexel, Eli Lilly & Co, Merck and Battelle are identified as key partners.

Washington’s goals are multifold, Kirillov said, and include the study of the causative agents of “particularly dangerous infections in regions of the world that are strategically important for the United States,” and achieving “superiority” in biomanufacturing, including by using biological espionage against potential geopolitical adversaries.

“Materials received have confirmed that the US military was set the task of monitoring the biological situation in the Middle East and Central Asia, territories bordering China, Turkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,” Kirillov said. “Over the past year, the Pentagon developed and adopted a number of conceptual documents involving the expansion of the foreign network of US-controlled biological laboratories, and continuing military biological research beyond America’s national jurisdiction.”

Furthermore, the RCBD Troops chief said, 2023 saw the creation of new administrative and technical structures, including the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, and the State Department’s new Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, with their main aims assumed to be centered on securing the further expansion of America’s military-biological activities worldwide.

“While the stated goals include ‘monitoring infectious diseases’ and providing assistance to developing countries, the example of Ukraine makes clear how the military-biological potential of the United States is being built up,” using such otherwise seemingly benign institutions, Kirillov said.

The RCBD Troops chief pointed out, for instance, that by the time Russia kicked off its military operation in Ukraine, the Pentagon was already deeply engaged in a series of dangerous experiments studying the causative agents of dangerous diseases, including tularemia, anthrax and hantavirus, monitoring the local biological environment, collecting virus strains and studying the susceptibility of the local population to various diseases (including via unethical and potentially illegal experiments against an unwitting civilian population, ed.).

Washington’s European allies engaged in similar projects throughout 2023, promoting a network of ‘Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Risk Mitigation Centers of Excellence’, which Kirillov said are factually aimed at placing biolabs in former Soviet republic countries. The Ukrainian case has shed light on how such institutions are financed via a series of grants to the country’s Science and Technology Center, with similar projects popping up in Central Asia and countries of the Southern Caucasus.

Listing examples of military-biological activities by NATO countries in the former Soviet space, Kirillov pointed to ‘Project 2410’ – conducted with the participation of researchers from the University of Florida, studying natural resistance of the causative agent of the brucellosis virus in domesticated and wild animals, including its possible transmission to human beings.

Another initiative, ‘Project 2513′ deals with risk factors and resistance of virulent enterobacteriaceae, including “isolating strains which are resistant to all known classes of antibiotics.”

“Project 2545 involves modeling the evolutionary changes of individual viruses which are highly pathogenic to humans. The research was supported by the UK Research and Innovation agency,” Kirillov said.

As before, the RCBD Troops chief said, US military-biological research abroad in 2023 was designed to take advantage of gaps in international legislation, allowing scientists to engage in highly risky research abroad which they would be prohibited from doing at home.

“The fact that the United States is blocking any and all international initiatives to verify [its adherence to] the Biological Weapons Convention is of particular concern. This excludes the possibility of checking the activities of laboratories both in the United States and abroad,” Kirillov said, pointing to US efforts to block or ignore Russian questions about the potential violations of the Convention by Kiev and Washington, including as relates to “research carried out on Ukrainian military personnel and the mentally ill, and the concealment by Ukraine and the United States of evidence of cooperation in the military-biological field in international reporting.”

Throughout 2023, Russia continued its efforts to identify individuals engaged in US military-biological activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, from DTRA and Eco-Health Alliance officials to various other government officials and private contractors, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The RCBD Troops’ efforts also included uncovering training for potential false flag scenarios to accuse Russia of using bioweapons – including one such training session in Lvov, western Ukraine, in August 2023, involving Ukraine’s Security Service and National Police.

“We have said repeatedly that the work of American military biologists is aimed at the creation of ‘artificially controlled epidemics’, and that it is not controlled within the framework of the Biological Weapons Convention nor the UN Secretary-General’s mechanism for investigating the use of biological weapons,” Kirillov said.

In light of these activities, the RCBD Troops chief expressed concerns about the potential for the “further deterioration” of the global epidemiological situation, including via the creation of new “artificial foci of diseases and an uncontrolled expansion” of disease carriers. The identification of Asian and African disease-carrying mosquitos in European countries, and the increase in the incidence of atypical infections across the region, from dengue to West Nile virus, are all evidence of this deteriorating situation, Kirillov said.

“Of particular concern is the growing number of studies of smallpox and other human-pathogenic orthopoxviruses conducted by US military specialists, [including] assessments of the monkeypox virus as a potential damaging biological agent and searching for agent-based imitators of smallpox viruses,” the senior Russian officer said. “Furthermore, despite the World Health Assembly ban, members of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases has conducted aerobiological experiments using two strains of the variola virus.”

Such efforts could easily spark a global smallpox pandemic, Kirillov warned, citing the examples of the recent monkeypox pandemic and the increased incidence of cowpox observed over the past decade.

“I will remind you that American researchers are showing keen interest in the synthesis of orthopoxviruses. In 2017, they synthesized the functional genome of the horsepox virus. At the same time, the potential for artificially produced Lassa, Ebola, and Marburg viruses, as well as coronaviruses which are pathogenic to humans, has been demonstrated,” Kirillov said, pointing, for example, to the 2022 research at Boston University to create a new type of SARS-CoV-2 that’s far deadlier than any previously discovered strain.

“The risks of such dual-use research increase significantly when artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are incorporated. This was clearly demonstrated by one US firm which used an AI-based theraputic compound generator to create potential chemical warfare agents,” the RCBD Troops commander stressed.

Ultimately, Kirillov said, the continued “systematic expansion” of the US’s military-biological programs poses a clear “threat to the security of the Russian Federation and other states considered by the United States as strategic adversaries.”

“The scale of dual-use research conducted in the United States and the global biological risks it creates raise questions on the need for an independent international investigation,” Kirillov said, noting that Russian revelations uncovered over the course of the special military operation in Ukraine have forced even staunch US allies to reconsider their position regarding potential US violations of the Biological Weapons Convention.

January 16, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

US elections falsified – Putin

RT | January 16, 2024

Elections in Russia’s new regions were honest and transparent because people showed up to vote in person, unlike the voting by mail in the US, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a meeting with municipal educators in Moscow, the Russian president brought up the 2020 American presidential election as an example of what democracy should not look like.

“It’s probably possible to falsify anything. Just like the previous elections in the US were falsified through voting by mail. Well, it’s clear what voting by mail is. They bought ballots for $10, wrote them in, and without any supervision from observers, tossed them into mailboxes. And there you go,” Putin said.

His observation came in response to a question about the voting in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, four formerly Ukrainian territories that joined Russia in 2022. No one forced people there to show up at the polls, or barred them from doing so – they simply voted with their feet, Putin said.

“What is this, if not democracy? Democracy is when people express their will,” the Russian president said.

Multiple US states changed their election rules in 2020 to allow voting via mail-in ballots, citing the Covid-19 pandemic. The final official results showed Democrat Joe Biden winning 81 million votes, the most ever in US history, over the incumbent, Republican Donald Trump.

Trump has challenged the election as “rigged,” pointing to various irregularities in half a dozen states as well as the mail-in ballots that were impossible to audit. The Democrats and most US media have denounced anyone questioning the 2020 vote as an “election denier” and insisted that everything was perfectly legitimate.

According to a February 2021 account in Time magazine, Biden became president because of a “well-funded cabal of powerful people” who were “fortifying” the election by “working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”

January 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Reviving ISIS: A US weapon against the Resistance Axis

The Cradle | January 16, 2024

Iraqi security sources are warning of an ISIS revival in the country, which coincides all too neatly with the spike in Iraqi resistance operations against US bases in Iraq and Syria, and with widening regional instability caused by Israel’s military assault on Gaza.

More than six years after declaring victory over the terrorist organization, Iraqi intelligence reports now indicate that thousands of ISIS fighters are emerging unscathed, under the protection of US forces in two regions of western Iraq.

The missing piece of the puzzle

According to intelligence reports reviewed by The Cradle, at its height, ISIS consisted of more than 35,000 fighters in Iraq – 25,000 of these were killed, while more than 10,000 simply “disappeared.”

As an officer of one Iraqi intelligence agency recounts to The Cradle :

“Hundreds of ISIS fighters fled to Turkey and Syria at the end of 2017. After the appointment of Abdullah Qardash as the leader of ISIS in 2019, following the death of Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new Caliph began to restructure the organization, and ordered his followers to return to Iraq. The organization exploited the long border with Syria, the security disturbances, and the diversity of forces on both sides of the border to infiltrate the Iraqi territory again.”

Imprisoned ISIS officials admit that infiltrating that border is not an easy task, because of the strict control imposed by the Iraqi Border Guards and the use of modern technologies, such as thermal cameras.

It therefore became necessary for the terror group to identify intermediaries capable of breaking through or bypassing these fortifications to transport its fighters across borders. 

An Iraqi security source, insisting on anonymity, tells The Cradle that the US plays a vital role in enabling these border violations:

“[There are] several incidents that confirm the American assistance in securing the crossing route for ISIS members – mainly, by shelling Iraqi units on the border, especially the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), to create gaps that allow ISIS fighters to cross the border.”

The Iraqi security source adds that there are confirmed reports of US Chinook helicopters transporting fighters from eastern Syria to the Anbar desert in western Iraq and Jebel Hamreen, in the country’s east.

Munir Adib, a researcher specializing in Islamist movements, extremist organizations, and international terrorism, confirms the possibility of the return of ISIS after the organization’s “dozens of attacks in Syria and Iraq in the past few weeks,” which led to the death of tens of civilians and soldiers.

According to Adib, “the international community’s preoccupation with the Gaza and Russia-Ukraine wars gave ISIS an opportunity to reorganize its ranks, while continuing to receive internal and external logistical support.”

Manufacturing and harboring terrorism

Houran Valley is the largest of its kind in Iraq, extending 369 kilometers from the Iraqi-Saudi border to the Euphrates River near the city of Haditha in Anbar Governorate. Its topography is marked by soaring cliffs ranging in height between 150 to 200 meters, and includes the hills surrounding the valley and the sub-valleys that extend into its surroundings.

The valley was and still is one of the most dangerous security environments in the state. Terrorist groups use it as a safe haven because of its desert terrain, and distance from congested urban areas. The valley and its environs have witnessed numerous security incidents, most notably in December 2013, when ISIS killed the commander of the Iraqi army’s Seventh Division, his assistant, the director of intelligence in Anbar Governorate, eight officers, and thirteen soldiers.

Iraqi MP Hassan Salem has called for launching a military operation to clear Houran Valley of terrorist fighters. He confirmed to The Cradle that “there are thousands of ISIS members in the valley receiving training in private camps, under American protection,” noting that US forces have “transferred to this area hundreds of ISIS members of different nationalities.”

US foreign policy, of course, is rife with historical evidence of the creation of proxy armed militias in West Asia and Latin America, often utilizing these organizations to overthrow governments in target countries. We know Washington has no aversion to allying with Islamist extremists largely because of its direct involvement with arming and financing the Afghan Mujahideen, from which the Taliban and Al Qaeda emerged.

An early US-ISIS connection exists quite clearly: the terrorist group’s founding and second rank leaders were among the inmates of Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq, an internment facility run by the US military. The roster of high-value terrorists captured, then set free by the Americans is quite extraordinary: ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, Haji Bakr, Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, Abu Ayman al-Iraqi, among others.

Camp Bucca, known for abuses against its detainees, brought together extremist elements, slow-boiled this combustive formula for six years (2003-2009), then let the now well-networked extremists go free.

The religious officials of ISIS even say they used their time at the prison to obtain vows from prisoners to join the terrorist group after their release.

US intelligence also protected the terrorist organization indirectly, by allowing ISIS convoys to move between the cities that were under its control. Other forms of protection, according to Iraqi security experts, include refusing to implement death sentences issued by Iraqi courts against detained ISIS members, and establishing safe havens for the organization’s members in western and eastern Iraq.

ISIS: US foot soldiers in the regional war

In a speech on 5 January, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah warned that the US was supporting an ISIS revival in the region.

The Cradle obtained security information monitoring the new activity of extremists in Lebanon, communications between these elements and their counterparts in Iraq and Syria, and suspicious money transfer activities among them.

Lebanese Army Intelligence also recently arrested a group of Lebanese and Syrians who were preparing to carry out security operations.

Importantly, this surge in terror activities comes at a time when the Lebanese resistance is engaged in a security and military battle with Israel, which may expand at any moment into open war. It is also notable that renewed ISIS activity is concentrated in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran; that is, in the countries that support the Palestinian resistance politically, militarily, and logistically.

On 4 January, ISIS officially claimed responsibility for two bombings in the Iranian city of Kerman that targeted memorial processions on the anniversary of the assassination of Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani by US forces. The dual explosions killed around 90 people and injured dozens, in an unprecedented attack targeting the biggest US-Israeli adversary in West Asia – just one day after Tel Aviv killed top Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut.

Before that, on 5 October 2023, ISIS drone-attacked an officers graduation ceremony at the Military College in the Syrian city of Homs, killing about 100 people. These attacks, and others in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Africa, indicate that fresh blood, money, and weapons are being pumped into the ISIS organization’s arteries again.

A high-ranking PMU officer, who asked to remain unnamed, tells The Cradle that US forces are preventing Iraqi forces from approaching Houran Valley by attacking any security forces approaching the area. “This happened when American aircraft targeted units of the PMU that were attacking ISIS in the region,” he reveals, citing intelligence reports confirming the presence of dozens of ISIS members and other extremist organizations in the valley, where they receive training and equipment from US forces.

Security sources in the Anbar Operations Command confirm this information:

“Noticeable activity by the organization had been recorded a few weeks ago in the west of the country. Near the Rutba desert, ISIS fighters were spotted digging underground hideouts. Information indicates that the organization is in the process of carrying out terrorist operations in many locations,” they tell The Cradle.

Concurrently, ISIS is expanding its operations in the east of Iraq, within the geographical triangle that includes eastern Salah al-Din Governorate, north-eastern Diyala, and southern Kirkuk, particularly in the geographically challenging Makhoul, Hamrin, Ghurra, Wadi al-Shay, and Zaghitoun areas.

It should be noted that US forces are deployed in Iraq under the umbrella of the International Coalition to Combat ISIS. Last week, four years after the Iraqi parliament first voted to expel foreign forces, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani weighed in on the “destabilizing” impact of US troops and demanded a “quick and orderly” exit of those combat units.

Washington not only countered by saying it has “no plans” to withdraw from Iraq, but announced on 14 January that it would be sending an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq and Syria illegally, and without the consent of either nation.

One irony here is that ISIS appears to regain momentum each and every time Baghdad raises the issue of US military withdrawal from Iraq.

It can also no longer be seen as a coincidence that the terror group is now re-assembling its forces to target Washington and Tel Aviv’s most capable regional foes – the Axis of Resistance – just when the US and Israel are struggling to handle a region-wide, multi-front assault from the Axis.

The extraordinary synergies between the Americans and the world’s foremost terror group can no longer be ignored: their targets are one and the same, and ISIS is only now entering the fray, just as Washington begins to lose its hold on West Asia.

January 16, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

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