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DON’T VOTE “#GREATRESET”

By Olly Connelly | Daily Chaos | May 5, 2022

It’s local election day in the UK and, as you’ll be aware, elections are underway also in France and in the US.

Local, constituency or national level, if you vote for someone who is not talking about defeating the #GreatReset, then you are voting for Klaus Schwab, you are voting “to own nothing”, for communism directed by fascists, you are voting for tyranny, for censorship, for more fake pandemics and more fraudulent war, you are voting for divide-rule on an epic scale that is destroying families, communities and societies from within despite the farcical topics such as “how to define a woman” for crying out loud, you are voting for the normalisation of Satanism and paedophilia as can increasingly be seen in Biden’s America, you are voting for genocidal war criminals like Tony Blair to never be brought to account while being BBC-platformed to lecture you on using experimental drugs on your innocent children, you are voting to condone yet more phony elections, for Martial law in Western societies as we saw in Ottawa, for the hundreds of thousands in death toll in places like Yemen while the globalists distract with Ukraine, you are voting for CCP-style oppression and their model social credit score to keep you in check, you are voting for the last of our liberty ie an end to cash, for Google’s bloodstream nanobots and Musk’s brain chip, for Gates’ quaxxines and the final cull of the Mama-Papas defeated by the Bezos drones.

DON’T VOTE FOR SLAVERY.

Don’t vote for the Great Reset. DON’T VOTE FOR ANYONE WHO IS NOT ACTIVELY WARNING AGAINST THE GREAT RESET, THEY ARE A FRAUD, A DECEIT…

… At this stage in the game, I tell you, ANYONE in politics or journalism who is not warning of the dangers of the Great Reset is somewhere between fraudulent and downright evil.

If in doubt, if in any doubt, do not vote. In most cases this is almost certainly the best option, to help de-power the them-us elitism, to deny a mandate and to create a window to be able to say, “WE DID NOT ELECT YOU.”

We should have seen, by now, the vile outcome by supporting cheats and liars. We should have seen that voting for the lesser of the evils DOES NOT HELP. Do not make things worse by voting yet again for PROVEN cheats and liars.

Do not mindlessly vote. And yes, at this stage in the game where practically everyone on the global stage is either bought or blackmailed, A VOTE “NOT TO VOTE”, an abstention from the Big Lie, is in no way dishonourable. A vote for more of what we have in power now, on the other hand, is downright moronic.

Here’s to us, and bugger plutocracy!

May 5, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception | France, Human rights, UK, United States | Leave a comment

With no missile host in Pacific, new US strategy seeks to arm Japan against China

Press TV – May 4, 2022

The United States is struggling to find allies in the Indo-Pacific region who would be willing to host its intermediate-range missiles (IRBM), a new report has found.

The report by US-based think tank RAND Corporation, close to the Pentagon, looks at the likelihood of Pacific countries agreeing to host US IRBMs, the benefits and drawbacks of potential alternatives, and the most feasible alternative.

The report finds that the US strategy that relies on an ally agreeing to permanently host these ground-based IRBMs is bound to fail because of its inability to find a willing partner in the Pacific region.

The author of the report concludes that in the absence of any willing hosts, Washington should encourage Japan to develop a missile arsenal of its own to threaten Chinese ships, thus using Japan as a pawn in its no-holds-barred war against China.

After the US pulled out from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, it sought to develop and deploy ground-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km.

That immediately sparked a debate on where the US will deploy those missiles. Since China was not a signatory of the INF and had developed missiles of its own, Americans eyed the Indo-Pacific region.

The author of the report looks at the likelihood of US allies in the Indo-Pacific region—Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, and Thailand—hosting its IRBMs to counter the Chinese threat, but finds all of them unwilling.

He also examines alternatives to permanently basing US missiles on allies’ territories, but finds drawbacks with each alternative and thus recommends Japan develop an arsenal of ground-based anti-ship standoff missile capabilities at the behest of the US.

In the report published on Monday, the author argues that “the likely receptivity to hosting such systems is very low as long as current domestic political conditions and regional security trends hold,” referring to Thailand, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, and Japan.

As long as Thailand “continues to have a military-backed government that pursues closer ties with China”, the US “would not want Thailand to host GBIRMs”, it notes.

In the Philippines, as long as a president “continues policies toward the United States and China similar to those of President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines is “extremely unlikely to accept US GBIRMs.”

The government of South Korea shares ties with China, so Seoul also is “highly unlikely” to agree to host US missiles amid “a general deterioration of US-ROK relations.”

Australia’s historical ties with the US mean that the possibility cannot be ruled out, but “its historical reluctance to host permanent foreign bases and its distance from continental Asia make this unlikely.”

Japan is willing to “bolster its own defense capabilities vis-à-vis China,” but is reluctant to accept any increase in the US military presence or “deploying weapons that are explicitly offensive in nature”, the report says.

The report suggests that to continue to pursue GBIRMs for the Indo-Pacific, the strategy most likely to succeed would be “helping Japan develop an arsenal of ground-based, anti-ship missile capabilities”.

“This would be the first step in a longer-term US strategy to encourage Japan to procure similar missiles with longer ranges,” it states.

Meanwhile, the foreign affairs chief of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) said on Tuesday that the country should deploy surface-launched intermediate-range missiles in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido to deter missile attacks from China, Russia and North Korea.

Masahisa Sato, the head of the LDP Foreign Affairs Division, made the remarks at an event in Washington organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think tank.

Washington has in recent years made strenuous efforts to make inroads into the strategic Indo-Pacific region, with singular aim of countering the rise of Chinese dragon. The attempts, however, have produced no results.

In a bid to ramp up its diplomatic engagement with Pacific countries, the Biden administration is set to host leaders from the region later this year, a senior US government official said on Monday.

Kurt Campbell, who serves as coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs on the US National Security Council, made the announcement at a US-New Zealand business summit, amid rising tensions with China.

May 5, 2022 Posted by aletho | Militarism | Australia, China, Japan, United States | Leave a comment

Former NATO Commander Disguises War Propaganda as Novel

By Patrick Macfarlane | The Libertarian Institute | April 26, 2022

On March 9, 2021, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, co-authored a fiction novel with Elliott Ackerman, another former U.S. military officer. The book, entitled 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, imagines a kinetic war between the United States and China.

Given the pedigree of its authorship, the novel provides a compelling window into the psychology of NATO’s military leadership and, correspondingly, the foreign policy establishment behind it. To those familiar with said psychology, the events of the novel will not be surprising.

It begins with a Chinese ambush of a U.S. vessel in the South China Sea; an Iranian capture of a U.S. pilot; a full scale naval battle between the U.S. and China (resulting in a total U.S. defeat); and a Russian invasion of Poland. The novel concludes with a limited nuclear exchange between the U.S. and China.

Given the last few decades’ hawkish hand wringing about Chinese and Russian cyber capabilities, the tactics employed in the novel are similarly unsurprising. A Chinese cyberattack disables U.S. hardware, allowing the naval rout. The Iranians, as allies of Russia and China, similarly disable U.S. aircraft. For their part, the Russians slice underwater communications cables leading to a complete internet blackout in the West.

To an uncritical reader, the novel appears to be a “cautionary tale” and a “warning” against global conflict. The novel’s dust jacket states:

Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors’ years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the reader a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid.

Mainstream outlets were as successful in their attempts to paint 2034 as a “warning” as their reviews were cringeworthy.

Wired, which ran a series of exclusive pre-print excerpts, had this to say:

WIRED HAS ALWAYS been a publication about the future—about the forces shaping it, and the shape we’d like it to take. Sometimes, for us, that means being wild-eyed optimists, envisioning the scenarios that excite us most. And sometimes that means taking pains to envision futures that we really, really want to avoid.

By giving clarity and definition to those nightmare trajectories, the hope is that we can give people the ability to recognize and divert from them. Almost, say, the way a vaccine teaches an immune system what to ward off. And that’s what this issue of WIRED is trying to do…

Consider this another vaccine against disaster. Fortunately, this dose won’t cause a temporary fever—and it happens to be a rippingly good read. Turns out that even cautionary tales can be exciting, when the future we’re most excited about is the one where they never come true.

The Washington Post’s review was almost worse.

This crisply written and well-paced book reads like an all-caps warning to a world shackled to the machines we carry in our pockets and place in our laps, while only vaguely understanding how the information stored in and shared by those devices can be exploited. We have grown numb to the latest data breach—was it a pollical campaign (Hillary Clinton’s), or one of the country’s biggest credit-rating firms (Equifax), or a hotel behemoth (Marriott), or a casual-sex hookup site (Adult Friend Finder), or government departments updating their networks with the SolarWinds system (U.S. Treasury and Commerce)?

In “2034,” it’s as if Ackerman and Stavridis want to grab us by our lapels, give us a slap or two, and scream: Pay attention! George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, “Nineteen Eighty-four: A Novel” was published 35 years before 1984. Ackerman’s and Stavridis’s book takes place in the not-so-distant future when today’s high school military recruits will just be turning 30.

Between Wired’s ham-handed COVID-19 vaccine analogy and the CIA Washington Post’s ironic Orwell reference, the mainstream marketing campaign clearly attempts to portray the novel as a cautionary tale.

It is impossible to gaze into the hearts of men, but we do have some clues. Those clues suggest that the co-authors really do seek to warn against war with China. However, in doing so, they advocate for it. Indeed, their warning is not against the folly of empire, but against a rising China.

Ultimately the co-authors’ MacBethian premonition of conflict necessitates escalatory U.S. policy.

On March 18, 2021, the pair were interviewed by NPR. Stavridis had this to say:

… a subtext in all of this [the novel] is to strike a warning bell about the rise of China and the propensity in human history going back 2,500 years almost any time a [sic] established power is challenged by a rising power, it leads to war. It’s a dangerous moment. And 15 years from now, I think, will be a moment of maximum danger because China will have advanced in its military capability and technology. Therefore, our military deterrent will somewhat decline. We’re standing in the danger, as we say in the Navy.

Ackerman embraces this view:

…and we’re not only sounding the alarm bell, but the book is also trying to situate where America is in this moment of 2034.

Further, the pair assert they do not believe in the American decline.

Interviewer (to both): “…do you believe this, that America will be the author of its own destruction?”

Stavridis: “I believe there are many in the world who do believe that. I personally do not… there are many in the world who believe our best days are somehow behind us. They would be miscalculating, in my view, to believe that.”

Ackerman: “I would add I am by no way a believer in the decline of America. And I am very much committed to the idea of the American ideal. That being said, looking back throughout our entire history, the greatest threat is us turning inward and destroying that ideal. Lincoln himself said – I’m paraphrasing, but basically said that if America is going to destroy itself, we will be the author and the finisher. And I think he says, a nation of free men will live forever or die by suicide. And I don’t think that’s Lincoln being a declinist about the United States. But I think it’s him recognizing that our divisiveness can oftentimes be the greatest threat and what leaves us the most unable to respond to challenges from outside the country.”

Indeed, a reader would be hard pressed to find any point where the co-authors suggest any strategy short of increasing military confrontation with China.

Instead, they warn that America must be more united against an outside threat. It must, by implication, build up its military force, and, oddly enough, confront Chinese technological advances with less reliance on our own technology.

Stavridis expanded on his China policy prescriptions in a June 2021 interview:

The South China Sea is a vital entry point for the United States today. It’s a massive body of water full of oil and gas as well as fisheries, and about 40 percent of global trade passes through it.

So, there are strong strategic reasons, as the United States values its alliances in Asia, to push back against Chinese claims.

It is not just the South China Sea but also the East China Sea, where the Senkaku Islands lie, that are vital to American interests as long as our allies operate there and trade flows through there.

And above all we simply as an international community cannot acquiesce to China’s preposterous claims, which have been rejected by international law.

Indeed, a number one red line would be an attack against our allies.

For example, if China attacked and tried to forcibly take the Senkaku Islands, that would be a red line for the United States. Or an attack against the Philippines, another treaty ally of the United States. An attack against any treaty allies would be the number one red line.

A second red line would be trying to attack U.S. military personnel operating in the South China Sea.

We conduct what we call “freedom of navigation patrols.” These are our warships sailing through international waters such as the South China Sea.

If China were to attack a U.S. ship to attempt to demonstrate their view that they own the South China Sea, that would be a red line. In fact, the book “2034” opens with an attack involving U.S. military personnel being killed in the South China Sea.

Stavridis believes that the U.S. must continue to devote itself to entangling alliances, against which the founding fathers warned. The U.S. must also continue to press its presence in the South China Sea.

Despite resolutely warning against a war against China, Stavridis commits the U.S. to myriad tripwires that would ignite it.

These China policy positions parallel Stavridis’ positions on Ukraine. It’s always more, more, more.

More funding, arming, and training Ukrainians, more U.S. commitment to NATO, more U.S. weaponization of Big Tech, more money to the U.S. State Department, more interagency cooperation, and more silencing dissent. These positions are escalatory. At the very least, they flirt with making Washington a direct party to the War in Ukraine. They may give Russia reason to attack U.S. and NATO forces.

Given Russia’s nuclear footing, these policies pose an existential threat to humanity itself.

Indeed, it will always be a mystery how the hawks convinced the American public that the path to peace leads through war. Perhaps those of us who survive the inevitable result of this mantra can ponder the answer while painting on the cave walls.

Patrick MacFarlane is the Justin Raimondo Fellow at the Libertarian Institute where he advocates a noninterventionist foreign policy. He is a Wisconsin attorney in private practice. He is the host of the Liberty Weekly Podcast at www.libertyweekly.net, where he seeks to expose establishment narratives with well researched documentary-style content and insightful guest interviews. His work has appeared on antiwar.com and Zerohedge. He may be reached at patrick.macfarlane@libertyweekly.net

May 5, 2022 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | NPR, United States | Leave a comment

YouTube CEO announces “misinformation research and initiatives” partnership with Latino rights group

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | May 4, 2022

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has revealed that the platform will be partnering with the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, UnidosUS, on “misinformation research and initiatives.”

While Wojcicki didn’t reveal any further details of this partnership, she reiterated that YouTube is “working every day to fight misinformation.”

Wojcicki previously described tackling misinformation as one of her top priorities and YouTube has deleted more than a million videos for containing what it deems to be “COVID misinformation.”

UnidosUS President and CEO Janet Murguía echoed Wojcicki’s enthusiasm for targeting online misinformation in a tweet about the partnership.

“Eager as well to move forward on the key issue of addressing disinfo & misinformation in English & Spanish,” Murguía tweeted.

Murguía added that she’s united with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) on UnidosUS’s efforts.

Wojcicki met with members of the CHC last week to discuss Spanish-language misinformation. After the meeting, the CHC said that addressing Spanish-language “dis/misinformation” is an “urgent priority.”

Although the specifics of YouTube and UnidosUS’s partnership have yet to be disclosed, UnidosUS has previously pressured Big Tech platforms to “address” misinformation.

Last October, the group cut ties with Facebook after former employee Frances Haugen’s shared internal documents that suggested the tech giant was aware of the platform having a negative impact on some users.

“We have called attention repeatedly to concerns about the negative impact that the proliferation of hate and misinformation on the platform has had on the Latino community,” Murguía stated at the time. “We know now that Facebook’s failure to adequately address those concerns was deliberate and resulted in even greater levels of hate and misinformation on the site.”

Last December, Murguía lamented that Congress has never held a hearing dedicated to Facebook’s “failure to address Spanish-language misinformation” and demanded that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg “tell Congress why Facebook perpetuates Spanish-language misinformation.”

May 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | United States | Leave a comment

PBS agitates to have Tucker Carlson taken off the air

By Russell Cook | American Thinker | May 4, 2022

The taxpayer-funded national network PBS is pushing for less viewpoint diversity, no doubt intended to accelerate the growing push for Tucker and Fox News to be taken off the air. From the PBS Newshour, May 2, 2022: “Tucker Carlson’s influence and his increasingly extreme views” (Amna Nawaz interviews New York Times’ Nick Confessore, who wrote the 4/30 “How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable“).

Excerpts (emphases added):

Nick Confessore: … He’s the highest rated cable show host in history. And it’s also the most racist show in history. … Every night, that show teaches fear and loathing. He may claim to be a person who opposes racism and prejudice, but what the show tells you every night is to be afraid, to be afraid of people who are in the street asking for police officers to not shoot Black people, be afraid of Afghan refugees who helped us in the war who are coming over here now, to be afraid of Dr. Fauci, and to be afraid of immigration in general, which he posits is part of a cabal, a plot to destroy Western civilization … it’s not just the anti-white racism kind of rhetoric on the show. He’s literally taking ideas that began on the very far right, on arcane corners of the Internet, on neo-Nazi sites …

… Amna Nawaz: Nick, he’s also aggressively defended January 6 insurrectionists and played down how violent that day actually was. … he’s very much in line with the Republican Party and their message. What did your reporting find about that relationship between the GOP and Tucker Carlson?

Nick Confessore: Look, I would say he is the high priest of Trumpism.

“Amy Walter and Annie Linskey on primary election season, Tucker Carlson’s role in the GOP”

Excerpts:

Judy Woodruff: … Amy, let’s start with what we just heard Amna talking to Nick Confessore about … Clarify for us, what is Tucker Carlson’s role in the Republican Party, in American politics?

Amy Walter: … Nick Confessore put it really well when he said that he’s filling the void that had been left by Donald Trump‘s voice being off of social media … He’s also being talked about as a potential 2024 candidate for president. And that’s not idle discussion. I think his name will be very seriously floated, and we may see more to come of a Tucker Carlson trial balloon in 2024.

… Judy Woodruff: And, Annie, what — the darker side of this, which we heard in that conversation, about race… and about the role of the threat that many white Americans feel, what does that say about our politics right now?

Annie Linskey: … I think that was one of the most stunning takeaways, for me at least, from the New York Times reporting, which was just so incredible, is just the extent to which they really documented the ways in which Carlson is normalizing discussions of race that I think would not be considered — are not considered appropriate in many parts of the country. … But Carlson’s show is moving through the window to where they’re becoming more appropriate. And I think that’s what many groups on the left worry about. And I think that is what The Times is reporting is kind of showing us, really the danger that Tucker Carlson and his show presents, is making it more OK to have those kinds of grievances voiced out loud…

According to the PBS NewsHour and the NYT, neither of which seems to have people who’ve watched Tucker’s show at any depth, Tucker espouses Bull Connor–style racism and enables people like you and me to freely advocate talk that escalates toward genocide. His show should therefore be silenced, he should be jailed for insurrectionist incitement before he announces his presidential run, and you and I need to be leery of saying anything against… well, anything. Obey.

May 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | New York Times, United States | Leave a comment

Our Digital Panopticon

The CDC has been using phone tracking data to monitor schools and churches. The CIA has also been spying on Americans, with no judicial oversight and without congressional approval.

By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | May 4, 2022

Yesterday, Vice broke the story that during the previous two years, as the headline announced, “The CDC tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders.” According to documents obtained by Motherboard, the CDC used phone location data to monitor schools and churches, and wanted to use the data for applications beyond covid: “The documents also show that although the CDC used COVID-19 as a reason to buy access to the data more quickly, it intended to use it for more-general CDC purposes.” The recovered CDC documents, dating from 2021, state that the data “has been critical for ongoing response efforts, such as hourly monitoring of activity in curfew zones or detailed counts of visits to participating pharmacies for vaccine monitoring.”

The documents contain a long list of what the CDC describes as 21 different “potential CDC use cases for data.” These include, among others, monitoring curfews, neighbor-to-neighbor visits, visits to churches and other places of worship, school visits, and “examination of the effectiveness of public policy on [the] Navajo Nation.” Other use cases mentioned in the documents include public health issues beyond covid, such as “research points of interest for physical activity and chronic disease prevention such as visits to parks, gyms, or weight management businesses” as well as “exposure to certain building types, urban areas, and violence.”

Although the data the CDC purchased from the controversial broker, SafeGraph, was aggregated and designed to show trends, “researchers have repeatedly raised concerns with how location data can be deanonymized and used to track specific people.” Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that that unmasking specific users from these aggregated human mobility datasets is possible. One research team studied fifteen months of human mobility data for one and a half million individuals and published their results in Nature: Scientific Reports: “In a dataset where the location of an individual is specified hourly and with a spatial resolution equal to that given by the [mobile phone] carrier’s antennas, four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals.” They coarsened the special and temporal data and still found “even coarse datasets provide little anonymity.”

“SafeGraph offers visitor data at the Census Block Group level that allows for extremely accurate insights related to age, gender, race, citizenship status, income, and more,” one of the CDC documents reads. Due to its questionable practices, SafeGraph was banned from the Google Play Store in June 2021, which meant that meant that any app developers using SafeGraph’s code had to remove it from their apps. The company includes among its investors the former head of Saudi intelligence. This is where the CDC went to get its tracking data, paying SafeGraph $420,000 for access to one year of data.

Evidence also emerged recently that the CIA, like Israel and Canada, has been similarly using unauthorized digital surveillance to spy on Americans. After supporting vaccine mandates in 2021, the ACLU finally took an interest again in civil liberties in 2022. They expressed alarm when newly declassified documents revealed that the CIA has been secretly conducting massive surveillance programs that capture Americans’ private information.

Like the Israeli spy agency Shin Bet, our federal intelligence agency was spying not on suspected terrorists but on ordinary Americans, with no judicial oversight and without congressional approval, as the ACLU noted: “This surveillance is done without any court approval, and with few, if any, safeguards imposed by Congress to protect our civil liberties.” They concluded: “These reports raise serious questions about what information of ours the CIA is vacuuming up in bulk and how the agency exploits that information to spy on Americans. This invasion of our privacy must stop.” Though ACLU arrived a bit late to the party, as the old saw has it, better late than never.

U.S. Senators Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, both Democrats and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for declassification of relevant CIA documents. In a letter of April 13, 2021 which they made public, the two senators expressed concern that the CIA program was “entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection [of data], and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes from [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—FISA] collection.” Despite Congress’s clear intent, with the support of the American people, to limit warrantless collection of Americans’ private records, the senators warn, “these documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans, the same issue that has generated bipartisan concern in the FISA context.”

There is a broader legal context for these extra-legal developments in mass surveillance of civilian populations. Since the war on terror began, Western nations have legislatively scaled up their increasingly intrusive networks of mass surveillance (often referred to with the euphemism “bulk collection”). The last decade has seen such measures passed in the U.K., France, Australia, India, Sweden, and other countries—not to mention the AI and facial- and gate-recognition enabled surveillance in China, technology that Xi is already exporting to eager rogue regimes around the globe.

May 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception | CDC, CIA, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

The Long, Lucrative, and Bloody Road to World War III

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | May 3, 2022

Well, this war in Ukraine will last “months and years.” At least, that is what the leaders of the D.C. foreign policy blob, the media, President Joe Biden’s men, Pentagon and NATO leadership have decided. Their plan is to pour oil on the flames and keep the fire raging. Also, Americans are going to have to cough up the dough for another massive aid package, with $20 billion worth of weapons to keep the blood flowing. In total, this next package will cost the taxpayer $33 billion. With Biden’s proposed $813 billion “defense” budget for 2023, the U.S. is spending more on the military and war now than ever before in the country’s history.

Now that we have our very own Ministry of Truth, it would appear any national debate over these polices, indeed if such a debate is ever allowed to take place, will likely have to be moderated by cockroaches and Keith Richards.

NATO is set to expand again, bringing in Finland and Sweden. This will extend the alliance’s border with Russia by greater than 800 miles and further stoke nuclear tensions, bringing the current brinksmanship to a whole new level. Moscow plans to respond including by increasing air and naval forces in the Baltic Sea and reinforcing its Kaliningrad exclave, which lies between NATO members Poland and Lithuania, with additional nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles. Until 2004, it was unthinkable that NATO would ever expand to Russia’s borders until that actually happened. Like most of our issues with Russia, this is all Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s fault.

Even as Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other leaders in Moscow repeatedly warn of nuclear conflict and World War III, even directly comparing the current situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis, senior Pentagon officials say they are not concerned.

Nor do our all-knowing rulers appear concerned with the fact that they have “almost zero” ability to keep track of the myriad sophisticated weapons systems they are sending to Ukraine. CNN quoted briefed sources saying intelligence shows American arms are falling into a “big black hole.” They say it’s worth it.

Nor do they seem to be concerned with the Russians’ warnings regarding how the West’s weapons flood in Ukraine threatens to expand the war into NATO territory and destabilize Europe.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss demands the West must “double down” on arms shipments, insisting particularly on “heavy weapons, tanks, airplanes—digging deep into our inventories, ramping up production. We need to do all of this.”

Our top diplomat Antony Blinken says the plan is regime change in Moscow, much like his boss did in March with his Polish “gaffe.” Ironically, the $47 billion in weapons and other U.S. aid pledged to Ukraine these last two months will soon surpass the State Department’s entire budget. Eat your heart out, Netanyahu!

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, former Raytheon board member, says the goal is to see Russia “weakened” to the point where it lacks even the capability to defend itself just outside its borders. As Pat Buchanan notes, this policy, whether its intended to or not, pressures the Kremlin to more seriously consider pulling its nuclear trigger.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said with a clear eye toward increasing Russian casualties and the long term destruction of Moscow’s conventional power.

Perhaps, Austin wants to cripple Russia so severely that his Pentagon can fight a war with China, the “most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department,” without having to worry so much about Moscow—deemed a second tier “acute” threat, albeit one armed with roughly 6,000 nukes—getting involved.

Austin’s Raytheon pals are making a killing on this proxy war as well as the ancillary effects such as European NATO states, at long last, increasing their military spending.

As Ron Paul has written,

One group of special interests profiting massively on the war is the US military-industrial complex. Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes recently told a meeting of shareholders that, “Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DOD or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business.”

He wasn’t lying. Raytheon, along with Lockheed Martin and countless other weapons manufacturers are enjoying a windfall they have not seen in years. The U.S. has committed more than three billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine. They call it aid, but it is actually corporate welfare: Washington sending billions to arms manufacturers for weapons sent overseas.

By many accounts these shipments of weapons like the Javelin anti-tank missile (jointly manufactured by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin) are getting blown up as soon as they arrive in Ukraine. This doesn’t bother Raytheon at all. The more weapons blown up by Russia in Ukraine, the more new orders come from the Pentagon.

Former Warsaw Pact countries now members of NATO are in on the scam as well. They’ve discovered how to dispose of their 30-year-old Soviet-made weapons and receive modern replacements from the U.S. and other western NATO countries.

There is scarcely a status quo to oppose. For weeks, escalations have continued apace. London has deployed SAS troops in Kiev to train Ukrainian troops on English anti-tank weapons. The U.S. is training Kiev’s troops in Germany and two other secret locations in Europe on heavy artillery, radar systems, and armored vehicles. Washington is expanding intelligence sharing with Kiev for its war with Russia in the Donbas, providing howitzers, vehicles to carry them, and an additional 144,000 artillery rounds. Poland is sending tanks to Ukraine, Slovenia has a plan to send large numbers of T-72 battle tanks as well. The Germans will be supplying anti-aircraft tanks to Kiev and the Pentagon says an unidentified European ally is providing Ukraine with warplanes.

London’s armed forces minister declared his government’s support for Kiev’s “completely legitimate” attacks inside Russia using British arms. This comes amid an uptick in reports of Ukrainian cross border drone and helicopter assaults including on Russian oil depots, residential areas, and villages. The U.S. and its European allies are implementing a long term policy that looks to exile Russia, looking toward a new world order where they no longer seek to “coexist” with Moscow.

London wants Europe to cut off all Russian energy “once and for all,” which would make war more likely, impoverish innocent people, and cause massive recessions.

The U.S., NATO, and Russian presence in the Mediterranean Sea has reached Cold War levels, as NATO builds new Eastern European battlegroups.

In March, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that any “use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict, it would be a blatant violation of international law and would have far-reaching consequences.” This weekend, legislation for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) has been introduced by Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). Kinzinger’s announcement calls the would be AUMF a “clear red line,” which would authorize Biden to deploy troops to Ukraine to fight Russians if Moscow should “use chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons.”

With the almost complete bipartisan Congressional support for the renewal of Lend-Lease and other anti-Russia, pro-war legislation, it is not outside the realm of possibility that this bill and its cynical redline trap becomes law.

For nearly two decades, Washington has funded “biological research” and other laboratories inside Ukraine. According to the head of the DoD’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, some of these labs may contain Soviet-era bioweapons.

As Dave DeCamp, news editor at Antiwar.com, has reported,

The Pentagon funds labs in Ukraine through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). According to a Pentagon fact sheet released last month, since 2005, the U.S. has “invested” $200 million in “supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites.”

Moscow has accused Ukraine of conducting an emergency clean-up of a secret Pentagon-funded biological weapons program when Russia invaded. The World Health Organization said it advised Ukraine to destroy “high-threat pathogens” around the time of the invasion.

For their part, the U.S. maintains that the program in Ukraine and other former Soviet states is meant to reduce the threat of biological weapons left over from the Soviet Union. While downplaying the threat of the labs, Pentagon officials have also warned that they could still contain Soviet-era bioweapons.

Robert Pope, the director of the DTRA’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, told the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in February that the labs might contain Soviet bioweapons and warned that the fighting in Ukraine could lead to the release of a dangerous pathogen.

Much like previous Syrian redlines, this is practically the hawks’ invitation to bad actors seeking U.S. intervention to go ahead and launch an attack that could be plausibly blamed on our Hitler du jour to manufacture their desired casus belli.

It seems there may be ample sites somebody could hit that would cross Kinzinger’s cleverly drawn line in the sand. And much like the CIA, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia’s al Qaeda allies in Syria, the Azov Battalion and other Nazi groups, who have taken a humiliating beating thus far in the war, are prime candidates to launch a false flag.

If the American people do not wake up and demand an end to our government’s intervention in Ukraine, the U.S. may be directly entering this war soon.

If Russia was doing what the U.S. and its allies are doing in Ukraine, in Mexico or Canada, in addition to the unprecedented economic war being waged, these hawks in D.C. would have pulled the aforementioned nuclear trigger months ago.

May 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Militarism | NATO, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

“Global NATO” to have disastrous effect on world security

By Drago Bosnic | May 4, 2022

In late April, when the UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called for the creation of a “Global NATO” as part of “a shift in world order”, few seem to have noticed the magnitude of such an announcement. The statement followed calls by US President Joe Biden for a ‘New World Order to be established’ just four weeks prior during his Warsaw speech. The UK Foreign Secretary claimed that the world order established after the Second World War was failing and that the formation of “a global NATO” was necessary to “restore Western and allied ascent” in global affairs.

“My vision is a world where free nations are assertive and in the ascendant. Where freedom and democracy are strengthened through a network of economic and security partnerships.”

She stressed that the UN Security Council and other post-WWII security structures “have been bent out of shape so far, they have enabled rather than contained aggression.” The bending (or outright ignoring) of UN rules to enable aggression on various countries is most certainly true, just not in the way Liz Truss thinks.

The statement comes amid repeated expressions of frustration among many Western leaders that of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, the only two non-Western members (China and Russia) blocked resolutions targeting other non-Western countries such as Syria, Zimbabwe, Iran, Sudan, and most recently Russia itself. It follows longstanding calls for a new global governance superstructure, most likely based on NATO, which would allow the West and Western-aligned countries to “assert and coordinate greater power” in global affairs. In other words, a more “optimized” use of the dwindling power of the political West and its vassals while attempting to take control of other countries’ resources.

Truss stressed that under this new form of globalization, access to international security and trade should be made conditional on countries’ political positions. The UK Foreign Secretary stated that “economic access is no longer a given” and that it “has to be earned.” She added that countries who wish to earn it “must play by the rules” and that “this also includes China.” These statements come as Western powers openly threatened they would target Russian shipping in international waters, a move similar to targeting Iran and North Korea. The possibility of targeting Chinese shipping was notably also raised in a US Naval Institute paper two years prior. This effectively amounts to piracy, ever so euphemistically called “enforcement of freedom of navigation”.

In regards to the “Global NATO” and the future targeting of China, Truss emphasized plans to further arm the government in Taipei, in what would be yet another direct move against the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan is universally recognized as a part of China by the United Nations, all UN member states, as well as the constitution of the island itself. However, maintaining state-like institutions and Western-aligned administration there has increasingly been raised as a priority for Western security architecture.

Combined with attempts of a crawling reformation of the UN, the creation of a “Global NATO”, whatever it may be called, would spell a disaster for the security of the world. The North Atlantic Alliance has a dubious security track record, to say the least. Despite being formed as a supposedly “defensive” security pact, the alliance is anything but. It has so far attacked numerous countries, starting with the destruction of former Yugoslavia to invasions and bombings all across the Middle East, stretching from Libya to Afghanistan.

Concurrently, the belligerent alliance is continuing its expansion in Europe, getting ever closer to Russian borders. Despite decades of Russia’s repeated pleas and warnings, NATO refuses to honor the promise given to Mikhail Gorbachev that it would not be expanding “an inch to the east”. The result of such a policy are the tragic events now taking place in Ukraine. Worse yet, the US, as NATO’s leading member, has withdrawn from all arms control agreements, with the exception of the New START, which is set to expire in less than 4 years.

NATO’s aggressive posturing in Europe and the Middle East has pushed the world into another arms race, with Russia being forced to develop a plethora of new types of weapons, most notably hypersonic weapons and new advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles to restore the delicate strategic balance of power. Middle Eastern powers, such as Iran, are forced to spend a large portion of their GDP on the military since the US (and by extension NATO) has been threatening the country for decades. Conflicts in both Ukraine and Syria primarily stem from NATO policies toward Russia and Iran.

This new “Global NATO” is set to spill this instability into the Asia-Pacific region, which has so far enjoyed a decades-long period of unprecedented peace and prosperity. The crucial part of this growth has been the blistering economic development of China. In order to curb China’s growth, the US first engaged in a massive trade war with the Asian giant. However, with the realization this would only have a very limited effect on China’s growing power, the US and NATO are determined to challenge China militarily, forcing it to spend more on defense, while also fragmenting the Asia-Pacific region along geopolitical lines. Western planners believe this would inevitably lead to economic decoupling, which would negatively affect China’s export-oriented economy and long-term development.

It’s a certainty that countries such as Japan and Australia would be involved in these efforts. However, getting other powers in the region to come on board will be much more problematic. South Korea is too focused on Pyongyang and China’s influence there is still appreciated in Seoul, in addition to extensive economic cooperation. India, for its part, is deemed as “too independent” for the taste of the political West, which now effectively operates under a “you’re either with us or against us” foreign policy framework.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Wars for Israel | NATO, United States | Leave a comment

By redefining UNRWA, Washington destroys the foundation for a Just peace in Palestine

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 3, 2022

Palestinians are justifiably worried that the mandate granted to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, might be coming to an end. UNRWA’s mission, which has been in effect since 1949, has done more than provide urgent aid and support to millions of refugees. It was also a political platform that protected and preserved the rights of several generations of Palestinians.

Though UNRWA was not established as a political or legal platform per se, the context of its mandate was largely political, since Palestinians became refugees as a result of military and political events – the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by Israel and the latter’s refusal to respect the Right of Return for Palestinians as enshrined in UN resolution 194 (III) of 11 December, 1948.

“UNRWA has a humanitarian and development mandate to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight,” the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December, 1949 read. Alas, neither a ‘lasting solution’ to the plight of the refugees, nor even a political horizon has been achieved. Instead of using this realization as a way to revisit the international community’s failure to bring justice to Palestine and to hold Israel and its US benefactors accountable, it is UNRWA and, by extension, the refugees that are being punished.

In a stern warning on 24 April, the head of the political committee at the Palestinian National Council (PNC), Saleh Nasser said that UNRWA’s mandate might be coming to an end. Nasser referenced a recent statement by the UN body’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, about the future of the organization.

Lazzarini’s statement, published a day earlier, left room for some interpretation, though it was clear that something fundamental regarding the status, mandate and work of UNRWA is about to change. “We can admit that the current situation is untenable and will inevitably result in the erosion of the quality of the UNRWA services or, worse, to their interruption,” Lazzarini said.

Commenting on the statement, Nasser said that this “is a prelude to donors stopping their funding for UNRWA.”

The subject of UNRWA’s future is now a priority within the Palestinian, but also Arab political discourse. Any attempts at canceling or redefining UNRWA’s mission will pose a serious, if not an unprecedented challenge for Palestinians. UNRWA provides educational, health and other support for 5.6 million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. With an annual budget of $1.6 billion, this support, and the massive network that has been created by the organization, cannot be easily replaced.

Equally important is the political nature of the organization. The very existence of UNRWA means that there is a political issue that must be addressed regarding the plight and future of Palestinian refugees. In fact, it is not the mere lack of enthusiasm to finance the organisation that has caused the current crisis. It is something bigger, and far more sinister.

In June 2018, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to former US President Donald Trump, visited Amman, Jordan, where he, according to the US Foreign Policy magazine, tried to persuade Jordan’s King Abdullah to remove the refugee status from 2 million Palestinians currently living in the country.

This and other attempts have failed. In September 2018, Washington, under the Trump administration, decided to cease its financial support of UNRWA. As the organization’s main funder, the American decision was devastating, because about 30 per cent of UNRWA’s money comes from the US alone. Yet, UNRWA hobbled along by increasing its reliance on the private sector and individual donations.

Though the Palestinian leadership celebrated the Biden Administration’s decision to resume UNRWA’s funding on April 7, 2021, a little caveat in Washington’s move was largely kept secret. Washington only agreed to fund UNRWA after the latter agreed to sign a two-year plan, known as Framework for Cooperation. In essence, the plan effectively turned UNRWA into a platform for Israel and American policies in Palestine, whereby the UN body consented to US – thus Israeli – demands to ensure that no aid would reach any Palestinian refugee who has received military training “as a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Army”, other organizations or “has engaged in any act of terrorism”. Moreover, the Framework expects UNRWA to monitor “Palestinian curriculum content”.

By entering into an agreement with the US Department of State, “UNRWA has effectively transformed itself from a humanitarian agency that provides assistance and relief to Palestinian refugees, to a security agency furthering the security and political agenda of the US, and ultimately Israel,” BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights noted.

Palestinian protests, however, did not change the new reality, which effectively altered the entire mandate granted to UNRWA by the international community nearly 73 years ago. Worse, European countries followed suit when, last September, the European parliament advanced an amendment that would condition EU support of UNRWA on the editing and rewriting of Palestinian school text books that, supposedly, ‘incite violence’ against Israel.

Instead of focusing solely on shutting down UNRWA immediately, the US, Israel and their supporters are working to change the nature of the organization’s mission and to entirely rewrite its original mandate. The agency that was established to protect the rights of the refugees, is now expected to protect Israeli, American and western interests in Palestine.

Though UNRWA was never an ideal organization, it has indeed succeeded in helping millions of Palestinians throughout the years, while preserving the political nature of their plight.

Though the Palestinian Authority, various poltical factions, Arab governments and others have protested the Israeli-American designs against UNRWA, such protestations are unlikely to make much difference, considering that UNRWA itself is surrendering to outside pressures. While Palestinians, Arabs and their allies must continue to fight for UNRWA’s original mission, they must urgently develop alternative plans and platforms that would shield Palestinian refugees and their Right of Return from becoming marginal and, eventually, forgotten.

If Palestinian refugees are removed from the list of political priorities concerning the future of a just peace in Palestine, neither justice nor peace can possibly be attained.

May 3, 2022 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | European Union, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Does Israel Permit Freedom of Worship?

Palestinian Christians will soon be extinct

By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | May 3, 2022

A week ago I wrote a piece describing how Israel’s power over the US government is such that no American official will confirm that the Israelis have, and have had for years, a secret nuclear arsenal consisting of as many as 200 nukes. The situation is particularly odd in that the United States is on record as being strongly opposed to nuclear proliferation, except for Israel, and the enriched uranium that was used to create Israel’s bombs as well as the nuclear triggers were stolen and exported illegally from the US. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself was reportedly involved in the thefts. One lawyer friend has suggested that the reason for the reticence is that under US law by way of the Symington Amendment, no assistance or aid can be given to any country that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel has not signed and also has a widely acknowledged nuclear arsenal. To preserve Israel’s billions of dollars in annual largesse from the US taxpayer, silence over what goes on when the government breaks its own laws must be maintained. Some might consider that a case of pandering to Israel rather than taking steps to enhance United States security, but when it comes to the Jewish state that argument is a non-starter in Washington as Israel always comes first.

This week I am going to describe another aspect of the Zionist state’s policy that has been invisible if one relies on the mainstream media or the chattering magpies that occupy Capitol Hill and the White House. That is the ongoing elimination of Christianity in the region where it was born being carried out by Israel and its friends. The United States has been the enabler of much of the change in spite of the prevalence of self-described devout Christians in Congress, many of whom ironically are vocal and even enthusiastic supporters of Israeli “security” policies. Killing Palestinians is all too often justified in Congress and the White House with the meaningless expression “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

American power wielded on behalf of Israel has already destroyed a thriving Christian community in Iraq while still laboring to do the same in Syria and possibly even Lebanon. At Christianity’s very birthplace, in what was once Palestine, Israel has been engaged in making the lives of Palestinian so miserable that they frequently choose to emigrate. Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion famously declared in a letter to his son that “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…” and he exploited massacres of unarmed civilians carried out by the Haganah to create terror to accomplish that end. Since that time, Israel has refused to allow Palestinians driven from their homes by the 1948 fighting to return, has destroyed more than 400 Arab villages and confiscated other Palestinian properties, has appropriated additional land and water resources for its illegal settlements, has allowed armed settlers to destroy Palestinians crops and other forms of livelihood, and controlled Palestinian movements through a network of Jews only roads and numerous checkpoints. Even Palestinians who happen to be Israeli citizens are legally and in practice treated like second-class citizens with limited rights. There are more than 60 laws in Israel that discriminate against non-Jews while Israel now legally defines itself as a Jewish state. Israel has also imprisoned without any trial thousands of West Bank and Jerusalem Palestinians, including children, and shot dead hundreds more.

I could go on, but the point is that Israel wants Palestinians gone, a process that has particularly impacted on the Christian community. It has not been done by ethnic cleansing in the classic sense after the initial Nakba massacres and appropriations in 1948, but rather accomplished by creating incentives to leave. And it has been successful. At the end of the Second World War, an estimated one third of the Palestinian population identified as Christian, but the percentage is currently closer to 9% and continuing to decline. The numbers suggest that Christians in the former Palestine are verging on extinction. In fact, Christians have been able to become disproportionately emigrants from their homeland because they more frequently than Muslims have family already established in Europe and the US and have also been able to rely on networking through their churches for resettlement assistance in a new country.

Even by the wretched standards of the past 70 years, Israel’s seeking a “final solution” with the Palestinians recently has become particularly outrageous, focusing as it does on loosening their ties to their religious and cultural institutions while also destroying their livelihoods and appropriating their properties.

Hardly reported in the US media was the use of new Israeli imposed security restrictions to disrupt this year’s Palestinian Christian Orthodox Easter celebrations of Christ’s Resurrection at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. This comes on top of similar police action to support the usual crowd of rampaging settlers and other Jewish extremists at the most recent Ramadan services held by Palestinian Muslims at the al-Aqsa Mosque, which included using a drone to fire tear gas at worshipers.

What took place during Holy Week and more particularly on Easter Sunday has been described by Rod Dreher, who writes for The American Conservative. I will confess that I do not much like Dreher as he is fond of celebrating himself in everything he writes, full of navel gazing and smug sanctimonious twaddle, but as he was a participant and eye witness to what occurred his account is of necessity extremely valuable. To be sure, he makes it clear that readers understand that he is not criticizing Israelis in general, nor is he engaging in anything objectionable to Jewish sensitivities when he includes himself in how “we American Christians, especially those who support Israel,” also as “an American who cares about Israel,” and who refers to “my Israeli Jewish friends” and then goes on to assert “I condemn anti-Semitism unreservedly. Criticizing the Jewish settlers and official Israeli policy does not constitute anti-Semitism” before concluding that “most Israeli Jews wouldn’t support these hate-filled radical settlers.”

Actually, the US and other governments as well as many states do believe that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. And, depending on how the question is phrased many, possibly most Jews worldwide, support firm action against Muslims in particular, who are routinely described in the media and by the Israeli government as “terrorists.” Rod clearly understands that it is a bad idea to veer into areas that Jews are uncomfortable with as they can be surprisingly sensitive and unreasonably reactive to perceived slights. No need to bite the hand that feeds you, as one might put it, particularly if one wants to stay employed.

Dreher reports how he was “staying at a hotel inside the Old City, where I was advised to book a room out of fear that the Jerusalem police would not let Christians into the Old City on Holy Saturday. This turns out to have been very good advice.” Holy Saturday for Orthodox Christians features a “miracle” of the Holy Fire, which is believed to be the first sign of the Resurrection of Jesus. Normally, at 11 am, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher opens and is quickly packed with believers. After noon, the Greek Patriarch the “little house” built directly over the tomb of Christ, prays, and what is referred to as “divine energy” descends from heaven to light the Patriarch’s candles, the flames from which are shared with everyone present. He then emerges and passes the flame to everyone there.

Dreher and a friend reportedly left their hotel early to pray but when they arrived at the end of the street at the Jaffa Gate, two Jewish police officers refused to allow them to pass out of the Old City, warning that if they left they might not be able to come back in. They then walked over to an access point to the Jaffa Gate, and witnessed a large group of Christians behind a barrier on the other side, blocked from entering into the Old City where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is situated. Dreher observed that at the same time Orthodox Jews wearing white prayer shawls, entered freely into the Old City on their way to the Western Wall to pray on the Jewish Sabbath. Later that morning, Dreher was only allowed to pass into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because he had obtained a ticket to the “fire” service. The tickets, to control and limit attendance at the church was an innovation by the Israeli police. The Patriarch objected, observing that tickets had never before been required. The tickets allowed entry of only 1,800 worshipers in the church, which normally accommodates 10,000, a reduction of 82% of the faithful permitted to be in attendance on the highest of all holy days.

An Anglican priest from Virginia who spoke to Dreher at the service described that morning’s experience this way: “Police checkpoints were at every corner. Even when we reached the private property of the Greek Patriarchate, police had taken over there as well. They actually turned back nearly a dozen Consuls General and other diplomatic representatives, including ones from the United States. We had to take an alternative route to get inside. If that was the way it worked for VIPs, imagine you’re a local Palestinian Christian simply trying to worship on the holiest of Christian holidays inside the church built over the very Tomb of Christ.”

At issue are demands by radical Jewish groups, most notably the extremist Jewish settlers’ organization Ateret Cohanim, a type of Jewish Taliban, to “cleanse” Jerusalem of all non-Jews. They have been aggressively buying or otherwise occupying properties in and around the traditional Christian and Muslim quarters of the city and often use violence when they are resisted by local residents. Christians, unlike the Muslim community, notably do not tend to resort to violence in support of their property or civic rights even though recourse to the Israeli courts is useless as the judges have consistently sided with the settlers and police.

In Jerusalem there have been regular instances of verbal abuse, vandalism and spitting on Christian clergy, as well as sporadic violent assaults. In the Armenian Christian quarter a monk reports how “[The settlers] destroy the tires of our cars, graffiti ‘death to Christians’, break windows, they desecrate our cemetery, you know… ugly things, and it’s really invasive.” Some Christians have pointed to what happened to the former St John’s Hospice near the Jaffa Gate as a prime example of what the Christian churches fear could happen across the quarter. The building’s lintel still shows the tau-phi monogram of the Greek Patriarchate but in 1990, this pilgrims’ hostel was illegally occupied by Ateret Cohanim, and now the vast building is covered with multiple Israeli flags and houses violent armed Israeli settlers. The local Christians Dreher talked to “believe that this is part of a settler plot to choke off access to Christian holy sites within the city, and force Christians out.”

The Israeli authorities tend to ignore the settler activity as they have powerful supporters, including from the diaspora community in the US and some Evangelicals who help to fund them. Ateret Cohanim’s 2010 annual gathering featured as guest speaker no less than John Bolton and the Kushner Family Foundation has reportedly helped finance its activities. In addition, Israel’s religious conservative parties are a necessary component in the coalition government and their extreme behavior is tolerated and even aided and abetted on the sly. Nor will secular Jews stand up for their Christian brothers in Israel in enough numbers to matter. Also, many Israelis believe that increasingly hardline radical Jewish groups are actually the future of Israel based on demographic trends. All excuses aside, clearly enough of the ruling elite in America, and in Israel, support the radical settlers, or none of this would be happening.

And the situation is little better for Christians in Palestine outside Jerusalem. A Franciscan monk visitor to a monastery outside of the city reported how the Israeli authorities had cut off water to the building while the missionaries themselves were verbally abused and had rocks and other debris hurled at them by settlers. In Bethlehem, a Christian gift shop was deliberately put out of business after nearby Jewish settlements were allowed to erect walls blocking access to it. Other attacks on Christians have included a June 2015 arson incident at the Church of the Multiplication and a nearby Benedictine monastery in Tabgha, located 120 miles north of Jerusalem. The church is built on the site where Christ fed the 5,000 through the multiplication of loaves and fishes. The attackers left Hebrew graffiti on the walls, reading “all idols will be smashed.” In 2014 occurred vandalization of a Romanian Orthodox church, the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition, and Catholic offices in Jerusalem, as well as a monastery in Beit Shemesh. The year before, more than 20 Christian sites of the Latin Patriarchate were attacked by vandals. And in 2012, a Trappist monastery in Latroun was subject to arson and graffiti, while the Convent of St. Francis on Mt. Zion was vandalized. Non-Jews in Bethlehem and on the West Bank meanwhile live under a system of Israeli military laws and check points established by government order number 101. In Hebron, non-Jews living on Jewish-only streets cannot even walk out their front doors and they are regularly bombarded by feces and other waste hurled down upon them by the settlers.

Israel’s anti-Christian policies are international and includes support of groups the US has called terrorists. Israel has given money and weapons to the jihadists fighting against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, which includes al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Wounded jihadists even have crossed into Israel to received hospital treatment. Once, ISIS accidentally fired into Israel and then publicly apologized. Israel is intent on removing al-Assad, which will lead to an exodus of Christians from Syria, similar to what took place in neighboring Iraq after US forces deposed Saddam Hussein.

There is a certain irony in how the United States doggedly pursues China over its alleged maltreatment of the Uighurs while at the same time rewarding and protecting Israel even though it spies relentlessly on the US and very clearly persecutes Palestinians. Dreher asks the question why the US government, which gives Israel multiple billions of dollars a year, cannot stop Israel’s de facto official punishment of its Christians. The answer is at least in part simple, that most American Christians do not care about the plight of their co-religionists in the Middle East. Millions of true-blue Christians not unlike Dreher, many weaned on the Scofield Bible and its dispensationalism, and many of whom wind up in government or other positions of power, choose to disengage from the problem, accepting that Jews are the “chosen people” of God and, for some, part of End Time prophecy. They are therefore to be given a pass by both the media and government on all their exclusivism and bad behavior even as they meddle in US politics and work to hobble freedom of speech by criminalizing anyone who criticizes Israel or supports Palestinians by urging a boycott against it. Until all that changes, if it even can happen, Christians in the so-called Holy Land will be on the chopping block and when the churches and monasteries no longer have a community to sustain them, it will be the end of Christianity in the place where it was born. And more’s the pity, the United States will have played a major role in enabling that to happen.

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

May 3, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States | Leave a comment

Biden’s ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ is another propaganda tool

By Ian Miles Cheong | Samizdat | May 3, 2022

US President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security announced last week that it had formed a “Disinformation Governance Board” to fight the spread of so-called disinformation on the Internet. While White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki didn’t elaborate on how the bureau would operate, she suggested that it would monitor disinformation on topics like COVID-19 and elections.

Conservatives have often half-joked about George Orwell’s “1984” becoming a reality, but it appears that the Biden administration has decided to literally take a page from the book and create a “Ministry of Truth”.

The board’s aim is to target “disinformation,” but what constitutes disinformation? Many times over the years we have seen complete censorship from government officials and Big Tech social media companies, most infamously during the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which saw major tech platforms and politicians painting it as “Russian propaganda.”

Allowing the government to dictate what “the truth” is sets a dangerous precedent, as it instead promotes desired narratives to bolster poll numbers, ratings, or nudging the citizenry into following government edicts – all on the basis of “trust us, we know what’s best for you.”

Facts be damned. Just do as you’re told. This was seen multiple times during the pandemic era, when both Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams hummed and harred over mask-wearing and social distancing – first instructing the public not to wear masks, and then much later calling it a necessity.

Gatekeeping discourse is a surefire way to control the narrative, controlling what people see, what they say, and ultimately – what they believe. It’s also an effective means to silence dissent, and quash those who might speak out against the regime’s approved narrative – or even the regime itself.

The new Ministry of Truth is a tool, and there is no reality in which this tool will not be used for bad intent – and it’ll claim to be doing it all in the name of the greater good.

Unsurprisingly, the Ministry of Truth was rushed into creation seemingly as a reaction to “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform, Twitter, the de facto town square of political discourse and public narratives.

With the relinquishment of Twitter to Musk, those who control mainstream narratives fear they will lose out on an important resource, and will no longer be able to promote narratives and fix algorithms to sway public opinion – at least not with ease. There will be pushback, and their positions are not ones they are willing to defend, hence why the creation of this new tool is necessary. It keeps the plebeians in check.

Free speech, which in Musk’s belief is “essential to a functioning democracy,” flies directly in the face of the Biden administration’s attempts to crack down on viewpoints that contradict the regime’s official narrative. And who better to head the Disinformation Governance Board than Nina Jankowicz, who herself perpetuated several regime-approved falsehoods?

Jankowicz, who previously advised the Ukrainian government on disinformation and strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship, voiced her support for Christopher Steele, whose infamous “Steele dossier” on Russian election interference during Donald Trump’s 2016 election dogged the presidency for years. Despite Steele’s loss of credibility, Jankowicz hyped up the former spy in August 2020 as being able to offer “some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo” when he spoke on a podcast about the topic.

It’s worth noting that the infamous dossier, which included the unverifiable claim that Russia had “kompromat” on Trump in the form of a sex tape, has since been entirely discredited. Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, was later charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI. Jankowicz also repeated the unproven theory that Hunter Biden’s laptop was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign, spread by members of the Trump campaign.

“Back on the ‘laptop from hell,’ apparently—Biden notes 50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op,” Jankowicz said on Twitter. “Trump says ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’”

She attempted to distance herself from her remarks with the claim that she was simply livetweeting Trump’s first presidential debate with Biden. However, when solicited by the Associated Press in October 2020 for her thoughts on the laptop, Jankowicz told the publication that “We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” dismissing the fact that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden.

As detailed by Newsweek, Jankowicz continued to perpetuate doubt against the story, tweeting on October 22, 2020 that “The emails don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign. Voters deserve that context, not a [fairy] tale about a laptop repair shop.”

In a consolidated effort to disqualify the New York Post’s original report on Hunter Biden’s laptop as “disinformation”, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms banned the New York Post and prevented its users from sharing the story weeks ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. The original report on the laptop has since been validated by a comprehensive report about the ongoing federal probe into Hunter Biden’s tax filings, published by the New York Times.

Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that censoring the report was a “total mistake,” and chalked up the decision to a “process error.”

Both Twitter and Facebook heads were grilled over their companies’ perceived anti-conservative bias and penchant for censoring so-called “disinformation,” with the censorship usually aimed at conservatives. It’s worth pointing out again that the now-discredited “Steele dossier” had no problem gaining traction when it first ran on BuzzFeed.

Nina Jankowicz had no problem spreading actual disinformation while helping to silence the truth under the auspices of “combating disinformation.” Given her predilection towards perpetuating anti-Russian narratives, one might ask if contradictory evidence to the “Snake Island” and “Ghost of Kiev” hoaxes constitute forms of “disinformation” in her book. After all, the mainstream media is chiefly responsible for promoting these heroic war stories, both of which were almost immediately discredited by the Russian media – and later by western experts. Even Ukraine’s own propagandists were forced to instruct the public to stop promoting disinformation about the conflict. Would the Ministry of Truth move to silence such attacks on its credibility?

Those concerned with the truth must do everything in their power to resist the Biden administration’s efforts to police the truth. To that end, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is one of the few American leaders who has stepped up and vowed to fight back against the Orwellian disinformation bureau.

“They want to be able to put out false narratives without people being able to speak out and fight back,” DeSantis said. “But we’re not going to let Biden get away with this one, so we will be fighting back.” Referring to the regime as a “decaying and discredited ruling elite in this country,” DeSantis said: “We believe it’s essential that individual Floridians and Americans are able to speak out against the false narratives trying to be jammed down our throats by this regime.”

May 3, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | United States | Leave a comment

People Die Faster After Eating These Foods

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | February 27, 2019*

The struggle with weight gain and obesity is a common and costly health issue, leading to an increase in risk for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and cancer, just to name a few.

According to CDC figures for 2017-18, 19.3% of American children¹ and 42.4% of adults² are now obese, not just overweight. That’s a significant increase over the 1999/2000 rates, when just under 16% of children ages 6 to 19³ and 30.5% of adults were obese.

Research has linked growing waistlines to a number of different sources, including processed foods, sodas and high-carbohydrate diets. Risks associated with belly fat in aging adults includes an elevated risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.⁴

Researchers have actually predicted obesity will overtake smoking as a leading cause of cancer deaths,⁵ and recent statistics suggest we’re well on our way to seeing that prediction come true as obesity among our youth is triggering a steep rise in obesity-related cancers at ever-younger ages.

Millennials More Prone to Obesity-Related Cancers

As obesity rates rise, so do related health problems, including cancer. According to a report⁶ published in 2014 on the global cancer burden, obesity is already responsible for an estimated 500,000 cancer cases worldwide each year, and that number is likely to rise further in coming decades.

As reported in a Lancet study⁷ by the American Cancer Society, rates of obesity-related cancers are rising at a far steeper rate among millennials than among baby boomers. According to the authors,⁸ this is the first study to systematically examine obesity-related cancer trends among young Americans.

What’s more, while six of 12 obesity-related cancers (endometrial, gallbladder, kidney, multiple myeloma and pancreatic cancer) are on the rise, only two of 18 cancers unrelated to obesity are increasing. As noted in the press release:⁹

“The obesity epidemic over the past 40 years has led to younger generations experiencing an earlier and longer lasting exposure to excess adiposity over their lifetime than previous generations.

Excess body weight is a known carcinogen, associated with more than a dozen cancers and suspected in several more … Investigators led by Hyuna Sung, Ph.D., analyzed 20 years of incidence data (1995-2014) for 30 cancers … covering 67 percent of the population of the U.S. …

Incidence increased for 6 of the 12 obesity-related cancers … in young adults and in successively younger birth cohorts in a stepwise manner. For example, the risk of colorectal, uterine corpus [endometrial], pancreas and gallbladder cancers in millennials is about double the rate baby boomers had at the same age …

‘Although the absolute risk of these cancers is small in younger adults, these findings have important public health implications,’ said Ahmedin Jemal, D.V.M., Ph.D., scientific vice president of surveillance [and] health services research and senior/corresponding author of the paper.

‘Given the large increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among young people and increasing risks of obesity-related cancers in contemporary birth cohorts, the future burden of these cancers could worsen as younger cohorts age, potentially halting or reversing the progress achieved in reducing cancer mortality over the past several decades.

Cancer trends in young adults often serve as a sentinel for the future disease burden in older adults, among whom most cancer occurs.'”

Changes in Diet Are Driving the Obesity Epidemic

Studies^10,^11,¹² have repeatedly demonstrated that when people switch from a traditional whole food diet to processed foods (which are high in refined flour, processed sugar and harmful vegetable oils), disease inevitably follows.

Below are just a few telling statistics. For more, see nutrition researcher Kris Gunnars’ 11 graphs published in Business Insider showing “what’s wrong with the modern diet.”¹³

Over the past 200 years, our sugar intake has risen from 2 pounds to 152 pounds per year.¹⁴ While Americans are advised to get only 10% of their calories from sugar,¹⁵ equating to about 13 teaspoons a day for a 2,000-calorie diet, the average intake is 42.5 teaspoons per day.¹⁶ It’s important to realize that it’s nearly impossible to achieve that on a processed food diet.
Not only that, you can’t exercise off the excess calories. For example, to burn off the calories in a single 12-ounce soda, you’d have to walk briskly for 35 minutes. To burn off a piece of apple pie, you’d be looking at a 75-minute walk.¹⁷
Soda and fruit juice consumption is particularly harmful, studies^18,¹⁹ show, raising a child’s risk of obesity by 60% per daily serving.²⁰ Research has also shown refined high-carb diets in general are as risky as smoking, increasing your risk for lung cancer by as much as 49%.²¹
Between 1970 and 2009, daily calorie intake rose by an average of 425 calories, a 20% increase, according to Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D.,²² who studies the neuroscience of obesity. This rise is largely driven by increased sugar and processed food consumption, and the routine advertising of junk food to children.²³
To attract customers and compete with other restaurants, companies often add salt, sugar, fat and flavor chemicals to trigger your appetite. Unfortunately, it turns out additives and chemicals supplemented in processing kill off beneficial gut bacteria, which further exacerbates the problems created by a processed food diet.²⁴
According to epidemiology professor Tim Spector, even eating a relatively small number of highly processed ingredients is toxic to your gut microbiome, which start to die off just days after eating a fast food heavy diet, suggesting excess calories from fast food may not be the only factor to blame for rising weight.
Processed vegetable oils, which are high in damaged omega-6 fats, are another important factor in chronic ill health. Aside from sugar, vegetable oils are a staple in processed foods, which is yet another reason why processed food diets are associated with higher rates of heart disease and other diseases.
Soybean oil, which is the most commonly consumed fat in the U.S.,²⁵ has also been sh
“Ultraprocessed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain,” research²⁶ concludes, showing that when people are allowed to eat as much as they want of either ultraprocessed foods or unprocessed food, their energy intake is far greater when eating processed fare.
In just two weeks, participants gained between 0.3 and 0.8 kilos (0.166 and 1.76 pounds) on the ultraprocessed diet, and lost 0.3 to 1.1 kilos (0.66 to 2.42 pounds) when eating unprocessed food.

As These Foods Became the Norm, so Did Chronic Illness

Unfortunately, Americans not only eat a preponderance of processed food, but 60% of it is ultraprocessed²⁷ — products at the far end of the “significantly altered” spectrum, or what you could typically purchase at a gas station.

The developed world in general eats significant amounts of processed food, and disease statistics reveal the inherent folly of this trend. There’s really no doubt that decreasing your sugar consumption is at the top of the list if you’re overweight, insulin resistant, or struggle with any chronic disease.

It’s been estimated that as much as 40% of American health care expenditures are for diseases directly related to the overconsumption of sugar.²⁸ In the U.S., more than $1 trillion is spent on treating sugar and junk food-related diseases each year.²⁹

Any foods that aren’t whole foods directly from the vine, ground, bush or tree are considered processed. Depending on the amount of change the food undergoes, processing may be minimal or significant. For instance, frozen fruit is usually minimally processed, while pizza, soda, chips and microwave meals are ultraprocessed foods.

The difference in the amount of sugar between foods that are ultraprocessed and minimally processed is dramatic. Research³⁰ has demonstrated that over 21% of calories in ultraprocessed foods comes from sugar, while unprocessed foods contain no refined or added sugar.

In a cross-sectional study³¹ using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of over 9,000 participants, researchers concluded that “decreasing the consumption of ultraprocessed foods could be an effective way of reducing the excessive intake of added sugars in the USA.”

Definition of Ultraprocessed Food

As a general rule, ultraprocessed foods can be defined as food products containing one or more of the following:

Ingredients that are not traditionally used in cooking.
Unnaturally high amounts of sugar, salt, processed industrial oils and unhealthy fats.
Artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners and other additives that imitate sensorial qualities of unprocessed or minimally processed foods (examples include additives that create textures and pleasing mouth-feel).
Processing aids such as carbonating, firming, bulking, antibulking, defoaming, anticaking, glazing agents, emulsifiers, sequestrants and humectants.
Preservatives and chemicals that impart an unnaturally long shelf-life.
Genetically engineered ingredients, which in addition to carrying potential health risks also tend to be heavily contaminated with toxic herbicides such as glyphosate, 2,4-D and dicamba.

As described in the NOVA classification of food processing,³² “A multitude of sequences of processes is used to combine the usually many ingredients and to create the final product (hence ‘ultraprocessed’).” Examples include hydrogenation, hydrolysation, extrusion, molding and preprocessing for frying.

Ultraprocessed foods also tend to be far more addictive than other foods, thanks to high amounts of sugar (a substance shown to be more addictive than cocaine³³), salt and fat. The processed food industry has also developed “craveabilty” into an art form. Nothing is left to chance, and by making their foods addictive, manufacturers ensure repeat sales.

Processed Food Diet Linked to Early Death

In related news, recent research³⁴ involving more than 44,000 people followed for seven years warns that ultraprocessed foods raise your risk of early death. The French team looked at how much of each person’s diet was made up of ultraprocessed foods, and found that for each 10% increase in the amount of ultraprocessed food consumed, the risk of death rose by 14%.

This link remained even after taking confounding factors such as smoking, obesity and low educational background into account. As you’d expect, the primary factors driving the increased death rate was chronic diseases such as heart disease and cancer.

Nita Forouhi, a professor at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, who was not part of the study, told The Guardian :³⁵

“The case against highly processed foods is mounting up, with this study adding importantly to a growing body of evidence on the health harms of ultraprocessed foods … [W]e would ignore these findings at public health’s peril.

A vital takeaway message is that consumption of highly processed foods reflects social inequalities — they are consumed disproportionately more by individuals with lower incomes or education levels, or those living alone.

Such foods are attractive because they tend to be cheaper, are highly palatable due to high sugar, salt and saturated fat content, are widely available, highly marketed, ready to eat, and their use-by dates are lengthy, so they last longer. More needs to be done to address these inequalities.”

Ultraprocessed Foods Linked to Cancer

Another French study^36,³⁷ published last year also found that those who eat more ultraprocessed food have higher rates of obesity, heart problems, diabetes and cancer. Nearly 105,000 study participants, a majority of whom were middle-aged women, were followed for an average of five years.

On average, 18% of their diet was ultraprocessed, and the results showed that each 10% increase in ultraprocessed food raised the cancer rate by 12%, which worked out to nine additional cancer cases per 10,000 people per year.

The risk of breast cancer specifically went up by 11% for every 10% increase in ultraprocessed food. Sugary drinks, fatty foods and sauces were most strongly associated with cancer in general, while sugary foods had the strongest correlation to breast cancer.

According to the authors, “These results suggest that the rapidly increasing consumption of ultraprocessed foods may drive an increasing burden of cancer in the next decades.” Study co-author Mathilde Touvier told CNN:³⁸

“It was quite surprising, the strength of the results. They were really strongly associated, and we did many sensitive analysis and adjusted the findings for many cofactors, and still, the results here were quite concerning.”

Diet Is a Key Factor Determining Your Health and Longevity

Research³⁹ published in 2017 linked poor diet to an increased risk of cardiometabolic mortality (death resulting from Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke).

According to the authors, suboptimal intake of key foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, and animal-based omega-3, along with excessive consumption of processed foods such as meats and sugar-sweetened beverages accounted for more than 45% of all cardiometabolic deaths in 2012. In other words, the more processed foods you eat, and the less whole foods you consume, the greater your risk of chronic disease and death.

Other research published that same year found that eating fried potatoes (such as french fries, hash browns and potato chips) two or more times per week may double your risk of death from all causes.⁴⁰ Eating potatoes that were not fried was not linked to an increase in mortality risk, suggesting frying — and most likely the choice of oil — is the main problem.

In a 2013 presentation⁴¹ at the European Ministerial Conference on Nutrition and Noncommunicable Diseases by Dr. Carlos Monteiro,⁴² professor of nutrition and public health at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Monteiro stresses the importance of creating “policies aiming the reformulation of processed foods,” and limiting children’s exposure to junk food marketing, in order to tackle the rise in diet-related noncommunicable diseases.

In my view, eating a diet consisting of 90% real food and only 10% or less processed foods is an achievable goal for most that could make a significant difference in your weight and overall health. You simply need to make the commitment and place a high priority on it. To get started, consider the following guidelines:

Focus on raw, fresh foods, and avoid as many processed foods as possible (if it comes in a can, bottle or package, and has a list of ingredients, it’s processed).
Severely restrict carbohydrates from refined sugars, fructose and processed grains.
Increase healthy fat consumption. (Eating dietary fat isn’t what’s making you pack on pounds. It’s the sugar/fructose and grains that add the padding.)
You may eat an unlimited amount of nonstarchy vegetables. Because they are so low in calories, the majority of the food on your plate should be vegetables.
Limit protein to less than 0.5 gram per pound of lean body weight.
Replace sodas and other sweetened beverages with pure, filtered water.
Shop around the perimeter of the grocery store where most of the whole foods reside, such as meat, fruits, vegetables, eggs and cheese. Not everything around the perimeter is healthy, but you’ll avoid many of the ultraprocessed foods this way.
Vary the whole foods you purchase and the way you eat them. For instance, carrots and peppers are tasty dipped in hummus. You get the crunch of the vegetable and smooth texture of the hummus to satisfy your taste, your brain and your physical health.
Stress creates a physical craving for fats and sugar that may drive your addictive, stress-eating behavior. If you can recognize when you’re getting stressed and find another means of relieving the emotion, your eating habits will likely improve.
The Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) can help reduce your perceived stress, change your eating habits around stress and help you create new, healthier eating habits that support your long-term health. To discover more about EFT, watch the video at this referenced link on substack.⁴³

* This article has been updated with new information.

Sources and References

¹ CDC Childhood Obesity Facts April 5, 2021
² CDC Adult Obesity Facts September 30, 2021
³ CDC Prevalence of Overweight Among Children and Adolescents 1999-2002
⁴ Scientific American May 1, 2018
⁵ USA Today June 9, 2017
⁶ Lancet Oncology January 2015; 16(1): 36-46
⁷ The Lancet February 3, 2019
^8, ⁹ Pressroom.cancer.org February 4, 2019
¹⁰ Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Feb;81(2):341-54
¹¹ Nutrition in Clinical Practice December 7, 2010; 25(6)
¹² NZ Medical Journal 1980 Dec 10;92(673):417-21
¹³ Business Insider February 11, 2014
¹⁴ PLOS One July 22, 2015
¹⁵ NBC News January 7, 2016
^16, ¹⁷ DHHS.NH.gov How Much Sugar Do You Eat? (PDF)
¹⁸ Appetite. 1998 Aug;31(1):67-81
¹⁹ Clinical Diabetes 2005 Oct; 23(4): 150-152
²⁰ The Lancet February 17, 2001; 357(9255): 505-508
²¹ Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention March 2016, DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-15-0765
²² TEDx Talk, Stephan Guyenet, The American Diet
²³ Physiology and Behavior December 15, 2005; 86(5): 603-613
²⁴ Eat This Not That, May 11, 2015
²⁵ Statista Consumption of Edible Oils in the US in 2021
²⁶ Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain, February 12, 2019
²⁷ BMJ Open 2016; 6:e009892
²⁸ Credit-Suisse October 22, 2013, Sugar Consumption at a Crossroads (PDF)
²⁹ Clinical Chemistry 2018 Jan;64(1):108-117
^30, ³¹ BMJ Open, 2016;6(3):e009892
^32, ³⁷ World.openfoodfacts.org
³³ Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2013 Jul;16(4):434-9
³⁴ JAMA Internal Medicine February 11, 2019 [Epub ahead of print]
³⁵ The Guardian February 11, 2019
³⁶ BMJ February 14, 2018; 360
³⁸ CNN February 28, 2018
³⁹ JAMA 2017;317(9):912-924
⁴⁰ CNN, June 15, 2017
⁴¹ European Ministerial Conference on Nutrition and Noncommunicable Diseases, Specific Policies to Tackle Diet-Related NCD in Europe, July 4-5, 2013
⁴² WHO, Dr. Carlos Monteiro
⁴³ Mercola Substack Julie Schiffman Demonstrates EFT

May 3, 2022 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States | Leave a comment

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On June 10, 1975, Dr. Chester Stock, a vice president at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, wrote to a Canadian nurse named Rene Caisse: “Enclosed are test data in two experiments indicating some regressions in sarcoma 180 of mice treated with Essiac.” The sentence sat in a letter from one of the world’s largest private cancer research centers, concerning an herbal tea an elderly English woman had learned from an Ojibwa medicine man at a northern Ontario mining camp in the 1890s. The tests were terminated the following year after Sloan-Kettering admitted, in sworn affidavit three years later, that they had prepared the injectable solution improperly from the dried material supplied — freezing and thawing the herb rather than boiling it as Rene had instructed. By the time Calling of an Angel was published in 1988, Rene Caisse had been dead for a decade, having treated thousands of cancer patients across fifty-six years in her Bracebridge, Ontario kitchen, never charging a fee, and refusing every offer — from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the National Cancer Institute, Merck, Parke Davis, and private corporations dangling contracts up to $1 million — to release her formula before the medical establishment admitted her remedy had merit. … continue

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