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A ‘pro-Russian monster’ or a force for common sense? A new party is reshaping the German political landscape

By Tarik Cyril | RT | January 20, 2024

Germany is in severe crisis. Between a tanking economy and an increasingly unpopular government, the country has begun to show just how much stress it is under. Half a year ago, the head of German carmaker Volkswagen warned that “the roof is on fire,” while The Economist concluded that “disaster,” meaning not just the decline but collapse of the German car industry, is “no longer inconceivable.”

At this moment, the wintry beginning of 2024, German farmers are staging large-scale and escalating protests and forcing the ruling coalition into concessions, the trains are not running on time due to a strike, the country’s wholesale sector has dropped to pandemic-level pessimism, “dampening hopes of a rapid rebound in Europe’s largest economy,” as reported by Bloomberg, residential property prices are in record decline, and the office real estate market “has collapsed,” according to leading German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The Economist finds Germany to be “down” politically as well – in fact, self-relegated – from its status as leader of Europe (or, at least, the EU) to less than second fiddle (that would be France, perhaps): while “Angela Merkel was the continent’s undoubted leader, Olaf Scholz, has not taken on her mantle.”

That is a very British understatement. In reality, in the toxic yet key relationship with the US, Germany, with its hapless attempt to transfer the management concept of “servant leadership” to geopolitics, has now subordinated itself so thoroughly to American neocon-type interests that it has no leverage left at all. Because once you make your loyalty unconditional, you will be taken for granted: Selling oneself may be inevitable for any but the greatest powers. Selling oneself for free takes a special lack of foresight.

We could go on heaping up examples of malaise. But the gist is simple: Germans may love to lay it on thick when it comes to venting their misery and “angst” (I should know, being German), but, clearly, something has to – and will – give. The question is what.

One political force that stands to gain from the crisis has just been established. (Another fairly new party that is profiting is the AfD.) Long rumored and in the making, 8 January saw the official founding of a new party, the Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht – Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit (Alliance Sarah Wagenknecht – Reason and Justice), or BSW for short. Its leader Sarah Wagenknecht used to be the most popular top politician of the hard-Left party Die Linke, which she left with a bang.

As the name BSW suggests, the new party is, in part, a vehicle for Wagenknecht’s considerable personal political acumen and charisma. Opponents of “Red Sarah,” as the popular, generally right-leaning newspaper Bild still calls her, like to stereotype her as an “icon.” Yet, wiser from the failure of an earlier attempt to strike out on her own (under the label “Aufstehen,” roughly: “Stand Up”), this time, Wagenknecht has gone out of her way and made sure to do her homework, preparing a well-crafted organization, a set of junior leaders around her, and, last but not least, a solid program. This is politically significant: Unlike “Aufstehen,” the BSW will not fold quickly under the weight of its own problems.

On the contrary, the party’s chances of making a strong impact from the get-go are very good, as polls consistently indicate. The most recent one – commissioned by Bild and carried out just days after the party’s founding by a top pollster – shows that 14% of Germans would vote for the BSW in a federal election.

For comparison: the SPD, traditionally one of the core parties of Germany and the political home of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, reaches 14% as well. For the BSW this is an impressive figure, but for the SPD it is catastrophic. Meanwhile the Greens, the second partner in Berlin’s governing “Ampel” coalition, are at 12%. The FDP, the third “Ampel” component, would fail to get any seats at all (due to not crossing Germany’s electoral threshold of 5%). Sarah Wagenknecht’s own former party, Die Linke, would suffer the same fate. The only two parties that would do better than the BSW are the traditional center-right CDU (27%) and the populist-right/far-right AfD (18%).

In sum, with BSW, we are witnessing not the making of a fringe but a core movement in what seems to be emerging as Germany’s re-shaped party system, consisting of three traditional parties (SPD, CDU, and the Greens) and two new forces. The latter are coming from the right and left periphery but are likely to re-define the center, directly and by their pressure on the traditional players.

Representatives of the threatened traditional parties and their expert and mainstream media surrogates often denounce the challengers from the wings as extremists or, at least, irresponsible populists (just another way of saying “demagogue”). But they only have themselves to blame: The true cause of this tectonic movement is the failure of the traditionals. The challengers’ rise marks a reaction to it. Wagenknecht is right about this: Germany’s “democracy is imperiled most of all” by government policies that make ever more citizens feel left alone or alienated.

Against that background, the BSW promises more generous social policies, such as on education, wages, and pensions (and higher taxes for the wealthy). As Germany is doing badly economically, this will resonate. And Wagenknecht, a political “natural,” knows how to signal: She has just taken the side of the protesting farmers – as do the majority (68%) of Germans, according to polls.

Mainstream media are making desperate attempts to frame the rebellious farmers as serving extremists and somehow playing into the hands of – guess which country! – Russia. The ever more besieged minister of the economy Robert Habeck has even detected financing by – guess who! – “Putin!” (without, of course, providing any evidence). This time, these tired scare tactics are failing to catch on. Wagenknecht’s public call for chancellor Olaf Scholz to apologize to the farmers will fare better.

Crucially, Wagenknecht and the BSW have combined socially left approaches with a set of traditionally conservative stances, challenging, for instance, the hypertrophic development of new gender categories or, in general, “symbolical struggles” over hyper-sensitive terminology, so fashionable with what Wagenknecht dismisses as the “lifestyle Left.”

While this push-back against political correctness is a largely symbolic, though effective, operation, migration is a more substantial field. There as well, Wagenknecht has adopted positions closer to the right and center than the liberal left, stressing the need for control and limits. The fact that she herself had a Persian father and that prominent BSW heads are also non-ethnic Germans gives her a strong starting position for this kind of debate, shielding her points from dismissal as racist or xenophobic.

Given how many Germans feel, left alone in an economic crisis and also alienated by especially Green attempts at re-education in the spirit of urban upper class multiculturalism and gender obsessions, it will be hard to counter the BSW’s brand of socially left but otherwise centrist and even conservative policies. No wonder then that opponents are trying to portray Wagenknecht as a monster, along with the new party. Their playbook is predictable and boring: namely to smear them as being pro-Russian or even working in the service of Russia.

In reality, Wagenknecht has positioned her new party to resist the push for ever more confrontation with Moscow, especially with regard to Ukraine. At this moment, for instance, she is speaking up against the delivery of German Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, which is the latest fad among the insatiable “miracle weapon” addicts. More generally, she is demanding to shift from a policy of military confrontation by proxy to one of negotiation and compromise, which makes, of course, perfect sense.

For her enemies, there is an irony waiting to catch them: They may hope that accusing Wagenknecht of being too friendly toward Russia will weaken her appeal. Yet that ship has sailed. The days of making hay with unbridled neo-McCarthyism are ending. It is more likely, fortunately, that the BSW’s reasonable approach to foreign policy will only get it more sympathy and voters. As it should. Because remember: At this point, Germany is so dependent on the US that it is treated not only like a vassal, but like a vassal whose wishes and interests do not count. Even Germans who distrust Russia will come to understand that this is fundamentally unsound. In its own national interest, Germany must re-establish some balance by rebuilding its relationship with Russia.

Tarik Cyril Amar is an historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul.

January 20, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

An Epoch of Great Changes Is upon Us

Russian Avangard Hypersonic Missile
By William Schryver | imetatronink | January 19, 2024

One of my current X followers posted earlier today:

“I am against the Ukraine war from the very beginning (mainly because for the first time a foreign war can actually get ME killed with Russia’s missiles), but at this point I also think we can’t just let Russia win which means we lose and that would mean a lot of negative things.”

I will not speak to his fears of “Russia’s missiles”, except to say I am convinced Russia will not strike anyone that hasn’t done something to provoke it in a manner that warrants such a response — at least not so long as the Putin regime remains in charge.

In any case, Russia WILL win this war. Decisively. She will dictate the terms of its cessation. Russia will emerge from this war significantly more powerful than she was just two years ago, and on a trajectory to become even more powerful in coming years.

As I wrote in a recent article:

“… the Russian armed forces, fighting on their own ground, on and under their adjacent seas, and in the air above their spheres of control, constitute the most potent and battle-hardened military force on the planet.”

As for the US empire’s European vassals: at no point in the last 500 years has Europe been more militarily, politically, socially, and spiritually debilitated. If the entire current military capacity of Europe were combined, it would not stand a chance of defeating Russia in a war. Rather, it would be systematically and comprehensively slaughtered.

And, as I have argued in crescendo over the past several years, the long-pervasive belief in American military supremacy is a myth; a mirage; a fallacious narrative fashioned from fables and Hollywood films.

The US military has not won a war since WW2. They have mercilessly bombed the crap out of many smaller, weaker countries, killed millions of people, and yet never once achieved strategic victory.

Not since WW2 have they faced anything even faintly approximating high-intensity warfare.

Indeed, never at any time in history has the US military fought against a great power adversary at the height of its strength.

And now, here in 2024, the US military has never been in a more weakened state relative to any of its potential great power adversaries — namely, Russia, China, and Iran.

Iranian Shahed-238 loitering cruise missiles, three variants.

As I repeat often, I am convinced the failed US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine will produce the following results:

— It will greatly accelerate the decline of the American Empire.

— NATO will cease to be a credible military/political alliance.

— The EU will cease to be a credible monetary/political alliance.

And, as the broken hegemon rapidly recedes, political, economic, and social chaos is certain to engulf much of the world as the major and minor players on the planet scramble to secure their respective spheres of influence and establish new centers of global and regional power.

An epoch of great changes is upon us.

January 20, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

No More Research on Cellphone Radiation and Human Health, Government Says

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 18, 2024

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has no plans to further study the effects of cellphone radiofrequency radiation (RFR) on human health — even though the program’s own $30 million study that took about 10 years to complete in 2018 reported evidence of cancer and DNA damage.

The NTP said in an updated January 2024 fact sheet that it was abandoning further investigation because “the research was technically challenging and more resource-intensive than expected.”

For decades, the NTP has been the premier governmental testing program for pharmaceuticals, chemicals and radiation, according to Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, a toxicologist and epidemiologist who served on the board of scientific counselors for the NTP when it was launched in the 1980s.

Commenting on the news, Davis said, “It is the ultimate arrogance and folly to stop doing research on this major growing environmental pollutant, precisely when we have ample evidence of harm.”

Davis has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications in books and journals, ranging from The Lancet to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In February 2023, she and her colleagues published a review of more than 200 studies that linked wireless radiation to negative biological effects including oxidative stress and DNA damage, cardiomyopathy, carcinogenicity, sperm damage, memory damage and other neurological effects.

They will soon publish a “major new article” in Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development journal about “new science” on RFR and call for precaution, she said.

Davis — who also is the founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences and the founder and president of Environmental Health Trust — called out the U.S. government for failing to ensure that wireless radiation is safe:

“The government’s decision to stop funding research on cellphone radiation is consistent with the Chinese proverb ‘If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.’

“The US government has a variation of that in the policy of, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ If you don’t want to know whether cell tower radiation is having a biological impact, stop doing the research!”

Miriam Eckenfels-Garcia, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) and Wireless program, told The Defender :

“Discontinuing government-funded research because it is ‘technically challenging’ and ‘resource-intensive’ is not what we expect from government agencies that are supposed to protect people from the harms of big industry.

“This research is important so that people can make informed decisions when it comes to the use of technology.”

W. Scott McCollough, lead litigator for CHD’s EMR cases, agreed. “I am concerned that the absence of evidence will be contorted into a claim of evidence of absence.”

As of early last year, the NTP was still conducting RFR research. A February 2023 fact sheet said scientists had “overcome several technical issues” and developed a better system for exposing animals to RFR for their studies.

NTP said researchers were “now making progress” on four research goals:

  • Determining the impact of RFR exposure on behavior and stress.
  • Conducting physiological monitoring, including evaluation of heart rate.
  • Investigating whether RFR induces heating.
  • Further evaluating whether RFR exposure causes DNA damage.

In its January 2024 fact sheet, the NTP reported the researchers had “tested the new exposure system using in vivo rodent studies” and that their research was “complete.”

The NTP did not say whether the researchers had achieved those four research goals and, if so, what the results were. It did, however, make clear that its previous studies — which used 2G and 3G cellphones — “do not apply” to 4G or 5G technologies.

The Defender reached out to NTP’s press office for clarification about why the new fact sheet appears to contradict the NTP website (updated Jan. 8, 2024) on cellphone radiation research which says NTP still has “current research efforts,” however NTP did not respond by our publication deadline.

The NTP’s discontinuation of its RFR research suggests the U.S. government has no intention of studying the possible biological effects of 5G.

Meanwhile, researchers such as Davis continue to say there is reason for concern. Davis pointed out that infertility clinics ask men about their wireless devices and cellphone habits:

“They tell them to take these phones off their bodies and out of their pockets because there is evidence … where the greater the exposure, the lower the sperm count, and the poorer the sperm quality.

“This has been repeatedly shown in studies with human sperm done under controlled conditions, as well as cross-sectional studies.”

“In fact,” she added, “whether the government stops doing the research or not, there is a massive study underway because we have billions of people being exposed to ever-increasing levels of wireless radiation throughout the world. Millions of American children are exposed every day in classrooms.”

“The only problem is there is no control group anymore, which will make it difficult, but not impossible, to discern the impacts of wireless radiation,” Davis said.

What NTP’s 2018 study found 

As The Defender previously reported, NTP researchers in 2018 concluded there was “clear evidence” that male rats exposed to high levels of RF similar to those emitted by 2G and 3G cellphones developed cancerous heart tumors, and “some evidence” of tumors in the brain and adrenal gland of exposed male rats.

Davis said NTP’s conclusions were consistent with and corroborated dozens of other studies. “It wasn’t like it [the NTP study] was a one-off study,” she said.

Once the word got out that the findings of the NTP study were positive — meaning the government researchers had found an association between cellphone radiation and the growth of cancerous tumors — the telecommunication industry “started its tactics” to suppress the findings, Davis said.

Davis has been researching those tactics for more than a decade. She is the author of “Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Is Doing to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family.”

Instead of the NTP study report being released in 2016, when it was first ready, she said, the telecom industry exerted pressure to subject the study’s conclusions to an unprecedented level of scrutiny.

“When the first drafts began to circulate internally, it was elevated for a peer review unlike any that has ever been conducted in the history of the entire program — and I can say that with great certainty. No other compound or substance [studied by the NTP] has ever been subject to this level of peer review,” Davis said.

A panel of external scientific experts convened for a three-day review of the study and its conclusions in March 2018.

However, rather than downplaying the study’s conclusions, the experts concluded that the scientific evidence in the study was so strong they recommended the NTP reclassify some of its conclusions from “some evidence” to “clear evidence” of carcinogenic activity.

To date, more than 250 scientists — who together have published more than 2,000 papers and letters on the biologic and health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMFs) produced by wireless devices, including cellphones — signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for health warnings and stronger exposure limits.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.

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 19, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

US attacks on Yemen aimed at guarding Israel, not world: Ansarullah

Press TV – January 19, 2024

Yemen’s Ansarullah movement has condemned in the strongest terms the “unjustified” US airstrikes on the Yemeni territory, saying they’re aimed at “guarding Israel, not the world.”

Mohammed Abdulsalam, the Ansarullah spokesman, made the comment in an interview with Reuters.

The United States and Britain launched airstrikes on Yemen on January 12 in what they called an intervention to protect international shipping in the Red Sea.

“What the Yemeni people did, in the beginning, was to target Israeli ships heading to Israel without causing any human or even significant material losses, just preventing ships from passing as a natural right,” Abdulsalam said.

“We imposed rules of engagement in which not a single drop of blood was shed or major material losses.”

“It represented pressure on Israel only, it did not represent pressure on any country in the world.”

The Yemeni official said the US intervention has further escalated the situation and that the movement will continue to respond to the US attacks.

“Now, when America joined in and escalated the situation further, there is no doubt that Yemen will respond.”

“The strikes on Yemen, from our perspective, are a blatant violation of Yemen’s sovereignty and a serious aggression against the Yemeni people,” Abdulsalam said.

Yemen, he added, does not intend to expand the attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea beyond their stated aim of blockading Israel and retaliating against the United States and Britain for airstrikes.

“We do not want the conflict to expand in the region, and we are still working on non-escalation, but the decision is up to the Americans, as long as they continue to attack.”

The Yemeni official said the decision to target Israeli-linked ships was a response to popular demands. “It came after great popular pressure not only in Yemen but in the region, demanding that the governments of the region and their leaders take a position towards the Palestinians facing a genocidal campaign.”

Referring to the Persian Gulf’s Arab countries, the Yemeni official said Ansarullah calls on them “to reject the militarization of the Red Sea or the presence of military forces inside the region.”

Abdulsalam said the Yemenis have made their own decisions in the conflict and do not take orders from Tehran, though they maintain a close relationship.

January 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dennis Kucinich Files to Run for the US House

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | January 19, 2024

Dennis Kucinich earned a reputation for independence during his time as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1997 to 2013. Repeatedly, he would, with commentary and legislative action, advance peace and respect for liberty in the national legislative body in the face of opposition from his Democratic House leadership, and the Republican House leadership as well.

Thus, it seems fitting that when Kucinich filed on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) his paperwork for running again for the House he did so as an independent.

Kucinich, whose formal campaign announcement is reported to be scheduled for Wednesday, is expected to compete in the 2024 general election against both a Republican and a Democrat in the seventh Ohio district. The district extends from Cleveland southward. Kucinich served in the House before from Cleveland and, in the late 1970s, was the city’s mayor.

Kucinich is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

January 19, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Trump is the Republican’s candidate but the “deep state” has its own plan, says Chronicles editor

By Ahmed Adel | January 19, 2024

It is certain that Donald Trump will be the candidate of the Republican Party, but it is also certain that the establishment, known as the American “deep state,” will not allow him to be the next president of the USA, according to Dr. Srđa Trifković, foreign policy editor of the American magazine Chronicles.

Former American President Donald Trump won the Republican internal party elections in Iowa, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis won second place. More than 60% of voters turned out for the elections, and Trump received 50.6% of the votes, while Desantis won 21.4% of the votes. Behind them was the former US ambassador to the United Nations and avid war hawk Nikki Haley.

The intra-party election in Iowa officially started the 2024 US presidential election race, and Trump is clearly popular with the voters but is hated by the top of the party.

“The popularity of numerous challengers in the form of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley cannot be compared to the popularity that Trump enjoys among pro-Republican voters and party members on the ground,” said Trifković.

“This, of course, does not mean that the Republican establishment, that is, the leadership of the Republican Party in the Senate and the House of Representatives of Congress, as well as in the apparatus of the top of the party, is enthusiastic about Trump – on the contrary,” he stressed.

The editor highlighted, as an example, how the late Senator John McCain belonged to the wing of the Republican Party that had the slogan – ‘Never Trump.’ McCain’s legacy is still present today, but it is evident that among registered Republicans, Trump’s popularity remains indisputable.

Nonetheless, this will not exempt Trump from facing immense opposition, in his run to become president again, from the Democratic Party, the FBI, the military-industrial-complex, and the media. According to Trifković, these are different branches of the “deep state,” and they are conspiring to prevent Trump from running in key states, with “an experiment” already made in Colorado after the Supreme Court of that state, which Democrats control, disqualified Trump from the race for president.

“[The court] used an obscure amendment to the Constitution of 1866 that was expressly intended to prevent Confederate officials from running for public office after the North’s victory in the American Civil War,” the editor said, adding that holding Trump accountable for the attack on the Capitol in 2021 was “absurd, but in the politicised world of the American judiciary, anything is possible.”

It cannot be ruled out that since Trump is currently accused of 92 misdemeanours, the former president’s opponents will time some of the court decisions right before the election so that he is disqualified at the last minute by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania or Georgia, which Democrats control. This would mean that he cannot appear on the ballots in those states.

According to a poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the University of Georgia, Trump (45%) leads President Joe Biden (37%) in the swing state of Georgia. Biden narrowly won Georgia in 2020, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate won the state since 1992, but it is almost certain that a Republican will win in this year’s election. For this reason, the “deep state” is attempting to disqualify Trump from such key states.

If Trump cannot be prevented from becoming president again by disqualifying him from key states, Trifković said there is a “Plan B,” which is to repeat “the theft from November 2020, when we witnessed the bizarre spectacle that in the key cities of the key counties, the counting stopped around three in the morning, and then at six in the morning continued with additional tens of thousands of votes for Biden that were mysteriously created from a pool of postal votes.”

“It was a blatant theft that is statistically absolutely inexplicable, but you can’t say that publicly in America today because the very claim that the election was stolen is criminalised and demonised,” he added.

It is telling that more than 70% of Republicans would be satisfied with Trump as a nominee in comparison to the 57% of Democrats who would feel the same about Biden being the Democratic Party’s choice. Biden is barely the Democrat’s first choice, which makes it easy to see why he is not Americans overall first choice as president.

Every recent poll finds that most respondents would vote for Trump in a match-up with Biden. As Trump would quickly wind down the war in Ukraine and slowly de-escalate tensions with Moscow, the “deep state” is desperate to ensure he does not come to power.

In conclusion, Trifković said: “The paranoia with which the establishment deals with those who doubt the legitimacy of the election already indicates the extent to which they were dubious.”

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

January 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Militarism | | Leave a comment

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

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