UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder has just returned from Yemen with some tragic news about children living in what the United Nations calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Speaking at a press briefing in Geneva, he said: “The Yemen conflict has just hit another shameful milestone: 10,000 children have been killed or maimed since Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign started in March 2015. That’s the equivalent of four children every day.” Elder told reporters that the estimates provided by the international UN agency were likely an understatement of the actual number of children killed and injured, which is rarely recorded by anyone. “These are of course the cases the UN was able to verify. Many more child deaths and injuries go unrecorded, to all but those children’s families.”
International experts have identified four significant dangers that have brought the country to the brink of humanitarian collapse. First of all, it is a brutal and protracted military conflict, and the blame for unleashing it lies entirely with the US and Saudi Arabia. Secondly, the colossal economic devastation that struck all regions of the country resulted from the military conflict. Also, there is a lack of infrastructure and social services, i.e., health, nutrition, water and sanitation, social protection, and education. Finally, the UN is critically underfunded.
It may be recalled that the war with Yemen began in March 2015, when Saudi Arabia brazenly and cynically launched a bombing campaign to restore the former regime, which obeyed orders from Riyadh, essentially maintaining Yemen’s status as a parallel and subordinate state to the Saudis. This had been the case before the popular revolution in the country, which triggered powerful Saudi airstrikes. The United States sold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of arms to the Kingdom during this war, in addition to intelligence and logistical support for Saudi military aircraft. Evidence shows that the UK is the second-largest supplier of arms to Riyadh, which is being actively used in an undeclared war, mostly against civilians. Other Western countries, including “democratic” France and Canada, have also profited enormously from this war, supplying the Saudis with mountains of offensive weapons.
These are the words and deeds of the so-called democratic West. Calling for democracy and freedom in their words, Western countries in reality supply arms and military equipment at every opportunity, thus fomenting military conflicts in which hundreds of thousands of people die in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya. It makes one wonder where are the so-called international organizations which allegedly aim to prevent conflict and prosecute those who incite and encourage these bloody wars?
The United States, the skilled cheaters of double standards in politics and human rights, has once again manifested itself concerning Yemen. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has loudly reiterated that resolving the conflict in Yemen remains an alleged top priority of US foreign policy. These comments were made during a telephone conversation with the newly appointed United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg. And this was said at a time when the Pentagon was sending a new shipment of aerial bombs to Saudi Arabia, which the Saudis are actively using in their war against, as Riyadh says, “the fraternal Yemeni people.”
So far, only human rights groups have accused these countries of complicity in Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen. One investigation found that the bomb dropped from a Saudi warplane in August 2018, which hit a school bus and killed more than 40 children, came from the United States. But it was just one bomb, while Yemeni officials say most Saudi airstrikes have targeted residential areas, and all Saudi bombs and missiles are purchased abroad from “democratic” countries.
The head of the UN Children’s Agency also presented journalists with these grim figures on the suffering of Yemeni children, from malnutrition to education and sanitation. For example, he said: “Let me share a few more numbers: Four out of every five children need humanitarian assistance; that’s more than 11 million children, and 400,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition More than two million children are out of school. Another four million are at risk of dropping out. Two-thirds of teachers, more than 170,000, have not received a regular salary for more than four years. 1.7 million children are currently internally displaced because of violence. As the violence has intensified, especially in the Marib area, more and more families have fled their homes. A staggering 15 million people (more than half of them, about 8.5 million, are children) do not have access to safe water, sanitation or hygiene. With the current level of funding and without an end to the fighting, UNICEF will not be able to help all these children.” And he went on to predict a grim prognosis: “There is no other way to help them without a lot of international support, which will result in a large number of Yemeni children dying.”
But does it matter to the gentlemen in western capitals who make huge profits from the blood of Yemeni children and the supply of arms, which allows them to eat sweet and sleep well? It’s none of their business. As they usually say in the United States, it’s just business, nothing personal.
Despite the efforts of UNICEF and other international organizations, the severity of the humanitarian situation in Yemen cannot be overemphasized. The economy is in a critical state. GDP has fallen 40% since 2015 when neighboring Arab Saudi Arabia decided to punish Yemenis for their “disobedience.” Vast numbers of people lost their jobs, causing family incomes to plummet. About a quarter of people, including many health workers, teachers, engineers, and sanitation workers, rely on civil servants’ salaries that are paid irregularly, if at all. And while the displacement and destruction of schools have resulted in classrooms that can hold up to 200 children, teachers are showing up. Yes, unpaid teachers come in and teach on their enthusiasm to educate the next generation.
In addition to the Saudi-imposed war, with the US behind it, many Yemenis are starving not because there is no food but because there is not enough money to buy it. “But such people have no choice, which means they are forced to sell everything from jewelry to pots just to feed their own children,” writes Egypt’s Al-Ahram. “But their children continue to starve, as families end up selling off all their possessions and cannot buy simple food for themselves or their children.”
Economists believe that UNICEF alone urgently needs more than $235 million to continue its life-saving work in Yemen until mid-2022. Failure to do so will force the agency to reduce or terminate life-saving assistance to vulnerable children. “Funding is critical,” notes Al-Ahram. “We can draw a clear line between donor support and lives saved,” it adds. And perhaps the newspaper’s most emotional comment was the following: “Yemen is the most brutal place in the world to be a child. And, incredibly, it’s getting worse.”
Last month, the United Nations warned that 16 million Yemenis, more than half the population, are facing starvation. Unless the international community steps up support, food aid could soon dry up. Doctors warn that a staggering 99% of Yemenis have not been vaccinated against Covid-19. The country is now battling a third deadly wave of infections in which large numbers of people, especially children and the elderly, will die due to a lack of vaccines. How the West treats the suffering of Yemenis, who are direct co-conspirators in Saudi Arabia’s shameful war, was directly commented on by Yemen’s Al-Sahwa : “We need the promised vaccines, but it is also shameful that by buying up all the vaccines for themselves, rich countries like the UK and Germany are blocking all decisions to get the medicine we need into our country.”
Many countries worldwide are well aware of the plight of the Yemeni people, especially the children and elderly, and deplore the fact that Saudi Arabia still seeks a military solution to the Yemeni crisis, stating that this approach will lead to nothing but death and destruction. They have repeatedly called on Riyadh to abandon a military solution and instead seek political ways to end the devastating war in Yemen. Speaking at a briefing for journalists, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said: “Unfortunately, the Saudi government is still looking for a military solution for Yemen, even though it knows and has understood after a long time that war has no other result than killing innocents and civilians, damaging the peoples of the region and security.” The sooner the Government of Saudi Arabia shows its commitment to political solutions and ends this destructive war, the better for the country and the region, as well as for the peace and security in the entire region.
Despite the prior stated intent by the Biden White House to see an immediate end to the war in Yemen, the administration on Thursday announced that it’s approving a new $650 million sale of air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM) and related equipment to Saudi Arabia.
“The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of AIM-120C Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and related equipment for an estimated cost of $650 million,” a Pentagon statement announced. Specifically it includes up to 280 air-to-air missiles.
What’s been described as the “forgotten war” in Yemen has raged since 2015, with for much of that period the Pentagon providing direct assistance to Saudi-UAE coalition airstrikes against Yemeni Houthi rebels backed by Iran. Prior US involvement in the Saudi-waged war grew increasingly controversial, given the high civilian death toll – amid a total estimated death toll of over 130,000 Yemenis killed.
Further the United Nations within the past two years has designated the conflict “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” Recall that back in February Biden earned bipartisan praise for the following foreign policy “promises”:
In his first major foreign policy address, President Joe Biden on Feb. 4 declared his commitment to “end the war in Yemen,” which he called a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.” The president announced that the US would stop assisting all “offensive operations” in that impoverished country and halt all “relevant arms sales” to the Saudi Arabia/UAE-led coalition that is waging war there.
In describing the rationale for the new massive weapons sale to the kingdom, the Thursday Biden administration statement characterized the ‘defensive’ nature of the systems:
We’ve seen an increase in cross-border attacks against Saudi Arabia over the past year. Saudi AIM-120C missiles, deployed from Saudi aircraft, have been instrumental in intercepting these attacks that also US forces at risk and over 70,000 US citizens in the Kingdom at risk.
There have been multiple missile and drone attacks launched out of Yemen over the past year, with the Iran-backed Houthis showing increased sophistication and reach.
Astoundingly, Pentagon also claimed that the Saudi kingdom is a “force for progress” in the Middle East: “This proposed sale will support US foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political and economic progress in the Middle East,” it said.
Notably the weapons transfer will include medium-range missiles for Saudi fighter jets, which will likely directly aid in the continued Saudi bombing of Yemen as it continues to lay siege the country – further contributing to the humanitarian crisis of famine, disease, and lack of basic medicines.
Prior analysis we featured days ago described described that there’s currently a diplomatic push to get a ceasefire in place, and ultimately end the war. While this would get the Saudis out of the negative coverage of the war, the kingdom seems to be focused on what they can get out of the US for heading down this path.
So it appears the US administration is now seeking to justify its freshly approving the new missile deal by attempting it to link it to conditions that would end the war in Yemen. Though there doesn’t seem to be anything Riyadh has firmly or definitively agreed to just yet.
Soon after the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist and Deep State insider, remarked “The reversals in Afghanistan are confounding for a Biden national security team that has rarely known personal failure (…) These are America’s best and brightest, who came to the messy endgame of the Afghanistan war with spotless résumés.”
Though his criticism of the national security team is understandably guarded, anyone taking a dispassionate look at the establishment liberals who are deemed America’s “best and brightest” in Washington circles would reach the conclusion that they are stronger on slogans than substance, which leads to a disconnect between ideas and implementation, and lack overseas experience: there is only one career diplomat in a senior position on the National Security Council, the director for Africa.
Their ability to display ideological cohesion at the expense of a reflexive process of dialogical thinking is remarkable but not surprising: establishment liberals do see themselves as the centre of political enlightenment. If they appear vainglorious and self-righteous it is because they are part of a power structure that produces and perpetuates these character traits. Those who entertain the possibility of failure are side-lined as bearers of bad news, the centre-stage is reserved for those who project confidence and a sense of moral superiority. As to considering opposing viewpoints, that is entirely optional.
In the same Washington Post article Ignatius observed “Failure can shatter the trust and consensus of any team, and that’s a danger now for the Biden White House. This group has been extraordinarily close and congenial during Biden’s first seven months. But you can already see the first cracks in Fortress Biden.”
Are these the kind of cracks that appear when reality hits delusions, when ‘what is’ collides with ‘what ought to be’, when military logic makes a dent in the fairy tale of a benign power successfully exporting “freedom, democracy and human rights”?
Trained for hybrid warfare, Biden’s aides were suddenly dealing with a conventional military crisis and looked out of their depth. As we have seen, managing a retreat and putting a spin on it require a completely different set of skills.
There is no doubt that the optics of one of the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history damaged the reputation of the U.S. both at home and overseas and that’s why we should expect new and more aggressive initiatives to harden American soft power and tighten control of the narrative through underhand methods.
Carefully crafted narratives are crucial for the U.S. because it is selling the world a failed model of development. Trumpeting it as inclusive, gender equal, green and sustainable is like putting lipstick on a pig, it looks grotesque. Managing perceptions, denigrating alternative civilizational and economic models, and demonizing the competition is no longer working, an increasingly large segment of the world population is developing stronger antibodies to the virus of American propaganda. That’s why traditional soft-power tools — trade, legal standards, technology — are increasingly being used to coerce rather than convince.
After the Afghanistan disaster former French ambassador to Israel, UN and U.S. Gérard Araud shared his dismay on Twitter: “The absence of self-examination in the West is seen elsewhere with disbelief. Wars waged by the West have recently cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians for no result and we still lecture the world about values. Do you have any idea about how we are seen abroad?”
If even allies are growing tired of America’s preaching, guess how it is going down in the rest of the world.
At the end of August, when U.S. allies were weighing what the shambolic, badly-coordinated retreat means for Western power and influence, Biden delivered a speech in which he explained “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It is about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”
His statement signalled the intention to extricate the U.S. army from a war that had exhausted itself, politically, militarily and epistemically, but didn’t suggest that the U.S. will renounce its imperialistic ambitions. In the last twenty years there have been tectonic shifts: cyber, biological, information, cognitive and economic warfare are changing the way wars are being fought. Putting boots on the ground is no longer the best nor the only option to subjugate an adversary.
The reconfiguration of the geopolitical landscape and rapidly changing power relations also required a reassessment of priorities. Now that all eyes are on the Asia-Pacific region the question is whether Biden’s team is the best fit for the challenges U.S. power is facing.
Biden’s closest aides never learned the fundamentals of realpolitik, they hold the belief that liberal values are universally valid and the use of force (rebranded “humanitarian interventionism”) morally motivated. They never doubted that the Western model would conquer the world because they grew up at the end of the Cold War, a time that was indeed characterized by a “unipolar moment”. This period is well and truly over and the Western liberal order in its present form is a fraying system.
While the U.S. allocated resources to the destruction and destabilization of sovereign countries, and ignored the widening income gap at home, their main competitor, China, lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty and kept building state-of-the-art infrastructure at home and abroad, that is projects that make a tangible difference in people’s livelihoods. No wonder concealing the truth has become a matter of national security.
Democrats openly admit their intent to co-opt Silicon Valley to police political discourse and silence the bearers of inconvenient truths. They effectively sowed the seeds for a future where everything and everyone can be(come) a national-security threat. Glenn Greenwald revealed that Congressional Democrats have summoned the CEO’s of Google, Facebook and Twitter four times in the last year to demand they censor more political speech. They explicitly threatened the companies with legal and regulatory reprisals if they did not start censoring more. Pulling the plug on dissenting opinions and de-platforming people who challenge the dominant discourse makes a mockery of free speech, one of the rights that the U.S. claims to be defending when it selectively condemns alleged violations of human rights in other countries. Increasing censorship is also an indication that control of the narrative both at home and overseas has become vital for the U.S.
The conviction that “for America, our interests are our values and our values are our interests’’, one of the tenets of NeoCons, has been revamped by the liberal Left to aggressively promote a different kind of values and causes. A sort of symbolic capital that would allow the U.S. to maintain dominance as rights defender while its own constitutional rights are being eroded at home. Moral grandstanding can only compound the hypocrisy, but that is not stopping liberal totalitarians who are trading off freedom of speech for a child’s right to gender self-identification or for a binding gender or race quota on corporate boards.
History shows that declining empires tend to produce incompetent, self-delusional and divisive leaders who unwittingly accelerate the inevitable fall. That’s exactly what seems to be happening now. Not only the radical liberalism embraced by the Biden administration and Western elite has already antagonized millions of Americans leading to social and political polarization, it is also antagonizing foreign leaders, including the leaders of allied countries such as Hungary and Turkey who are being labelled as ‘authoritarian’. As the U.S. system of alliances is becoming increasingly fragile, dogmatic progressives in the current administration look more and more like Aesop’s donkey in a pottery shop, or a bull in a China shop, if you prefer.
The current National Security Council (NSC) is staffed with advisers who are the product of the kind of groupthink that has long been dominant in Anglo-American universities, those madrassas of the liberal Left where debate is stifled by ideological purges. The opinions and worldviews that are shaped and reinforced in these echo chambers are disseminated and amplified by the media and other industries. Countless careers depend on exporting simulacra of freedom, democracy and human rights, not only because these “experts” have internalized a conviction that these immaterial goods possess an intrinsic moral value, but also because the U.S. has little else to offer the world and leverage on, unless you count assured mutual destruction as leverage.
A case in point is The Summit for Democracy that Biden will convene in virtual mode on December 9–10, 2021, while a second meeting will take place a year later. The plan is to bring together over 100 leaders from selected governments (some of the choices have already stirred controversy among democracy advocates) plus various NGOs, activists (regime change actors) and corporations to “rally the nations of the world in defence of democracy globally” and “push back authoritarianism’s advance”, “address and fight corruption”, “advance respect for human rights”.
Though this initiative is mainly a way to strengthen ideological cohesion among allies by appealing to “common values” and conjuring up yet another global threat, namely “authoritarianism”, it effectively divides the international community into two Cold War-style blocks, friends and foes. On one side countries that earned a seal of approval for toeing the line and therefore deserve to be labelled “democratic”; on the other side a basket of deplorables that refuse to recognize the superiority of the U.S. model of governance and civilizing mission. Basically, the politically correct version of neocolonialism.
The Summit for Democracy will take place against the backdrop of AUKUS, the new Anglo-Saxon alliance that effectively joins NATO to the Asia-Pacific through Britain. What is clearly intended as an alliance against China severely damages regional peace and stability, intensifies the arms race, and jeopardizes international efforts against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
On one hand the U.S. is flexing its military muscle, on the other hand it is flexing the ideological muscle that, in the intentions of the Summit organizers, will provide the impetus to renew and strengthen the liberal international order that has served U.S. interests since the end of WW2.
The Summit for Democracy may have a higher profile convener than similar events held in the past but its premise sounds just as tone-deaf and over-ambitious. Take for example The Copenhagen Summit for Democracy that was organized in May by the “Alliance of Democracies”, a foundation set up by former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2017. Its objective was to create a Copenhagen Charter, modelled on the Atlantic Charter, having a Clause 5 similar to NATO’s Article 5, whereby “a state coming under economic attack or facing arbitrary detentions of its citizens due to its democratic or human rights stance could ask for unified support including retaliatory measures of fellow democracies.” This and other creative proposals included in the Copenhagen Charter will likely be rehashed at the Summit to be opened by Biden in December.
Rasmussen too can boast a spotless resume as cheerleader for U.S. global leadership, and that might explain why he seems trapped in a time warp and blind to the actual state of that leadership. If the reader needs further confirmation of Rasmussen’s complicated relationship with reality, here is an excerpt from an article titled ‘The Right Lessons From Afghanistan’ that he wrote for Foreign Affairs a few weeks after the Afghanistan fiasco, “The world should not draw the wrong lessons from Afghanistan. This fiasco was far from inevitable. It would also compound the folly if the world’s developed democracies stopped supporting the quest for freedom and democracy in authoritarian states and war-torn countries. That includes Afghanistan, where the United States and its partners should lend their support to the ongoing resistance efforts to oppose the Taliban.” We all know what happened to those “resistance efforts”, but Rasmussen won’t let reality get in the way of his illusions.
It is unlikely the Summit for Democracy will achieve the unspoken objective of creating an Alliance of Democracies that could bypass the UN Security Council. But it is undeniable that international law has long been under attack and is incrementally replaced with the Atlanticist concept of a “rules-based international system”, which does not have any specific rules but allows the West to violate international law under the pretext of advancing liberal ideals and exporting democracy.
It’s expected that USAID will be called to play a major role at the summit. USAID under Samantha Powers has a seat in the NSC and has been tasked with the mission to “modernize democracy assistance across the board”. This includes “supporting governments to strengthen their cybersecurity, counter disinformation and helping democratic actors defend themselves against digital surveillance, censorship, and repression.” In typical Orwellian doublespeak the U.S. is seeking help by claiming to help. With a military budget already stretched over the limit, enlisting foreign actors (both state and non-state) to do its bidding in the information and cognitive warfare becomes imperative.
NED, USAID, USAGM, “philanthropic” organizations like Open Society Foundations and the Omidyar Network have long been grooming and bankrolling journalists, activists, politicians, various types of influencers and community leaders. Their job is to paint a negative picture of China, Russia and any country resisting U.S. diktats. In Africa, just to mention one of many examples, “independent” journalists are paid to investigate Chinese companies that are involved in mining, construction, energy, infrastructure, loans and environment and portray them as causing harm to communities, environment and workers.
At the beginning of October, Secretary of State Antony Blinken unveiled a new partnership with the OECD in Paris: the overt goal was to combat corruption and promote “high-quality” infrastructure. But the partnership is part of a broader effort to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The U.S. has also appealed to the G7 and QUAD to provide the financial muscle for its Build Back Better World initiative (BW3), a rehash of Trump’s Blue Dot Network. Since the U.S. and its partners cannot respond to BRI symmetrically — they are unable to match China dollar for dollar, project for project — they are relying on virtue-signalling both as a marketing and bullying tactic. According to this initiative, infrastructure building in developing countries should comply with a certification scheme and lending rules set by the U.S. and its partners, rules that are cloaked in the familiar jargon of social and environmental sustainability, gender equality, and anti-corruption.
In case the competition with China in Asia, Europe and Africa does turn into open confrontation, the U.S. could use the BW3 to increase pressure on investment funds, global financial institutions and insurance companies to discriminate against projects that don’t meet standards set by the U.S. in return for concessions and sweeteners. When Western companies cannot compete fairly with Chinese ones, they can always rely on friendly officials in Washington to rewrite the rules of the game in their favour.
American policymakers seem unable to abandon a Cold War mentality that is essentially utopian in expectations, legalistic in concept, moralistic in the demands it places on others, and self-righteous. Some analysts believe that the source of the problem might be the force of public opinion, deemed emotional, moralistic and binary, the old “Us vs Them.”
Classical international relations theorists have long held the assumption that American public opinion has moralistic tendencies: for liberal idealists the moral foundation of public opinion, mobilized by norm entrepreneurs, opens up the possibility of positive moral action, whereas for realists, the public’s moralism is one of the main reasons why foreign policymaking should be insulated from the pressures of public opinion.
However it is myopic to conceive of public opinion and policymaking as separate entities when in fact they are both shaped by the interests of powerful elites. Public opinion doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it is swayed by new and old media that are often controlled by the same interest groups and corporations that fund the think tanks and foundations influencing U.S. foreign policy.
For instance, not only was the collusion and revolving door between government and the tech industry a feature of the Obama administration, it characterizes the Biden administration as well. The transnational interests of these elite groups are usually cloaked in a progressive, inclusive, democratic rhetoric to make their narrow agenda appear big enough so that unsuspecting ordinary people may want to claim ownership and subscribe to it. Corporate interests and national interest are a tangled web no longer subjected to public scrutiny since national level democracy has been hollowed out. When the trilemma of democracy, state, and market becomes irreconcilable, global market players call the shots without democracy or state being able to control them, oversee unceasing technological innovation (including artificial intelligence) or curb the excessive financialization of the economy.
Though U.S. attempts at nation-building result in chaos and misery for local populations, Americans haven’t given up on trying to remake the world in their own distorted image by aggressively promoting their worldviews, exporting a simulacrum of democracy and politicizing human rights issues.
They reject true multilateralism by trying to dominate the international organizations that were created to further cooperation and harmonize national interests. For the corporate donors of both the Democratic and Republican Party other countries’ national interests are a relic of the past that should be done away with. And indeed national interests would hardly be compatible with a world order led by the U.S. in partnership with global stakeholders (global corporations, NGOs, think-tanks, governments, academic institutions, charities, etc.)
These global stakeholders and their political representatives effectively want to replace the modern international system of sovereign states that is enshrined in the United Nations Charter. Under this system, commonly referred to as Westphalian system, states exist within recognised borders, their sovereignty is recognised by others and principles of non-interference are clearly spelled out. Since this model doesn’t allow the government of one nation to impose legislation in another, the U.S. loudly promotes the idea of global governance, under which a global public-private partnership is allowed to create policy initiatives that affect people in every country as national governments implement the recommended policies. Typically this occurs via an intermediary policy distributor, such as the IMF, World Bank, WHO, but many international organizations now play a similar role.
In the Biden administration we see a dangerous convergence of the national security establishment and Silicon Valley tech giants. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines both worked for WestExec, the consulting firm that Blinken cofounded with Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defence under President Obama. Google hired WestExec to help them land Department of Defense contracts. Google’s former Chief Executive Eric Schmidt made personnel recommendations for appointments to the Department of Defense. Schmidt himself was appointed to lead a government panel on artificial intelligence. At least 16 foreign policy positions are occupied by CNAS alumni. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a bipartisan think tank that receives large contributions directly from defence contractors, Big Tech, U.S. finance giants.
These donors spend considerable resources shaping the intellectual environment, academic research and symposia in order to build consensus around their agenda. The Biden administration also features dozens of officials hailing from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank set up by John Podesta, a longtime Clintonworld staple, with George Soros’ generous contribution. The ties between Open Society Foundations (OSF) and CAP are so strong that Patrick Gaspard, the former head of OSF, was nominated president and CEO of CAP.
When government becomes the expression of global corporate interests and channels the belief system of a small, privileged elite it can be hard to tell who is leading who, who is really making policy and setting national security strategies and goals.
Biden’s national security team is the product of this corrupt system. Its members may tone down the “freedom, democracy and human rights” rhetoric if it gets in the way of achieving a particular strategic goal, but they won’t abandon it because it has proven to be effective in providing a legitimating frame and moral justification to U.S. hegemony.
If we look at the Roman empire we see how one constant theme was “expand or die”. Expansion isn’t only to be intended as territorial or military. Expanding influence, alliances, the use of Latin, the spread of Roman laws, currency, standards, culture and religion all contributed to the cohesion of the Empire. Given the current constraints to U.S. ambitions — namely the strategic partnership between China and Russia, BRI, the more assertive role played by regional powers, nervousness and conflicting interests among U.S. allies and a large budget deficit — the room for expansion has been considerably reduced. Thus the U.S. is doubling its efforts in areas where it still has room for maneuver.
Biden’s slogan “America is Back” sought to reassure allies but cannot hide the fact that the emperor is naked. Advertisers, politicians and psyops planners are continuously manipulating people into changing their perceptions of reality and making choices that ultimately do not benefit them. But no matter how hard the power-knowledge regimes of Western intellectual production work to conceal the decline, the West no longer dominates the world and the values it advocates are not unanimous, far from it. Labelling governments that don’t embrace liberal values and U.S. standards as “autocratic regimes” is just foolish sloganeering and doesn’t take into account the changing balance of power on the ground. The world is evolving toward a multipolar system and the U.S. had better take notice of it. Those serving in the NSC are still imagining a world that no longer exists, one where America has the power to force other countries into doing its bidding. The current ideological approach blinds pragmatic thinking, thus impeding discussions and negotiations.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Someone should tell the Biden team.
When it comes to COVID, public health officials have consistently downplayed and/or ignored natural immunity.
Yet these public health experts and many doctors and scientists know that no vaccine can confer the type of robust, full, sterilizing and life-long immunity to COVID that natural-exposure immunity confers.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) know anyone exposed, infected and recovered from SARS-CoV-2 has acquired cellular immunity.
They know how natural immunity works, yet they continue to deceive the public on this issue by falsely insisting vaccines are the only answer to “ending the pandemic.”
The authors of a 2008 study on the 1918 pandemic virus showed how potent and long-lived natural immunity is, and how the immune system generates new antibodies if and when needed (re-exposed).
The researchers wrote:
“A study of the blood of older people who survived the 1918 influenza pandemic reveals that antibodies to the strain have lasted a lifetime and can perhaps be engineered to protect future generations against similar strains … the group collected blood samples from 32 pandemic survivors aged 91 to 101 … the people recruited for the study were 2 to 12 years old in 1918 and many recalled sick family members in their households, which suggests they were directly exposed to the virus … The group found that 100% of the subjects had serum-neutralizing activity against the 1918 virus and 94% showed serologic reactivity to the 1918 hemagglutinin.
“The investigators generated B lymphoblastic cell lines from the peripheral blood mononuclear cells of eight subjects. Transformed cells from the blood of 7 of the 8 donors yielded secreting antibodies that bound the 1918 hemagglutinin.
“ … here we show that of the 32 individuals tested that were born in or before 1915, each showed sero-reactivity with the 1918 virus, nearly 90 years after the pandemic. Seven of the eight donor samples tested had circulating B cells that secreted antibodies that bound the 1918 HA. We isolated B cells from subjects and generated five monoclonal antibodies that showed potent neutralizing activity against 1918 virus from three separate donors. These antibodies also cross-reacted with the genetically similar HA of a 1930 swine H1N1 influenza strain.”
The very same CDC that fights against COVID natural immunity, argues just the opposite when it comes to chickenpox.
Guidance on the CDC website, “Chickenpox Vaccination: What Everyone Should Know,” states: “People 13 years of age and older who have never had chickenpox or received chickenpox vaccine should get two doses, at least 28 days apart.”
In this reasonable guidance, the CDC says you need the chickenpox jab if you “have never had chickenpox.” If you have had it, then you do not need the vaccine.
The CDC goes even further, stating: “You do not need to get the chickenpox vaccine if you have evidence of immunity against the disease.” So if someone has had chickenpox and recovered, and can demonstrate that via a laboratory test, they don’t need the vaccine.
Again, this makes sense. All parents know this, and have for generations. You do not need a vaccine for measles, if you already had measles and cleared the rash and recovered. Natural, beautiful robust immunity, typically lasts for the rest of a person’s life.
The same goes for the CDC’s guidance for the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR). The CDC clearly states no MMR vaccine is needed if “You have laboratory confirmation of past infection or had blood tests that show you are immune to measles, mumps, and rubella.”
So, what is different for COVID-19? Is something other than science at play here?
We now have a major crisis as the race is on to vaccinate our 5- to 11-year-old children who bring no risk to the table, with a vaccine that has been shown to be sub-optimal and carrying risks.
We even have one of the FDA advisory committee members, Dr. Eric Rubin, who is also lead editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, stating: “We’re never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it.”
This is a shocking statement by someone who played a role in the decision-making, and should lead us to examine if Rubin and others on that committee were conflicted in terms of relationships to the vaccine developers.
Rubin further stated: “The data show that the vaccine works and it’s pretty safe … we’re worried about a side effect that we can’t measure yet,” he said, referring to a heart condition called myocarditis.
So then why would Rubin and others agree to expose our children to potential harm from a vaccine for an illness that poses little risk to children, if they have serious concerns and admit they have not and cannot yet measure the safety?
This depth of uncertainty should never exist in any drug or vaccine that the FDA regulates, much less a drug officials propose to administer to 28 million children. Something is very wrong here.
An April 2021 study in the Journal of Infection (April 2021) examined household transmission rates in children and adults. The authors reported there was “no transmission from an index-person < 18 years (child) to a household contact < 18 years (child) (0/7), but 26 transmissions from adult index-cases to household contacts < 18 years (child) (26/71, SAR 0=37).”
These findings add to the stable existing evidence that children are not spreading the virus to children but rather that adults are spreading it to children.
Why vaccinate our children for this mild and typically non-consequential virus when they bring protective innate immunity towards this SARS-VoV-2, other coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses?
Why push to vaccinate our children who may well be immune due to prior exposure (asymptomatic or mild illness) and cross-reactivity/cross-protection? Why not consider assessing their immune status?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche writes that children’s innate immunity:
“… normally/ naturally largely protects them and provides a kind of herd immunity in that it dilutes infectious CoV pressure at the level of the population, whereas mass vaccination turns them into shedders of more infectious variants. Children/ youngsters who get the disease mostly develop mild to moderate disease and as a result continue to contribute to herd immunity by developing broad and long-lived immunity.”
Here are six studies that make the case for not vaccinating children:
1. A 2020 Yale University report indicates children and adults display very diverse and different immune system responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection which explains why they have far less illness or mortality from COVID.
According to the study:
“Since the earliest days of the COVID-19 outbreak, scientists have observed that children infected with the virus tend to fare much better than adults … researchers reported that levels of two immune system molecules — interleukin 17A (IL-17A), which helps mobilize immune system response during early infection, and interferon gamma (INF-g), which combats viral replication — were strongly linked to the age of the patients. The younger the patient, the higher the levels of IL-17A and INF-g, the analysis showed… these two molecules are part of the innate immune system, a more primitive, non-specific type of response activated early after infection.”
2. Studies by Ankit B. Patel and Dr. Supinda Bunyavanich show the virus uses the ACE 2 receptor to gain entry to the host cell, and the ACE 2 receptor has limited (less) expression and presence in the nasal epithelium in young children (potentially in upper respiratory airways).
This partly explains why children are less likely to be infected in the first place, or spread it to other children or adults, or even get severely ill. The biological molecular apparatus is simply not there in the nasopharynx of children. By bypassing this natural protection (limited nasal ACE 2 receptors in young children) and entering the shoulder deltoid, this could release vaccine, its mRNA and LNP content (e.g. PEG), and generated spike into the circulation that could then damage the endothelial lining of the blood vessels (vasculature) and cause severe allergic reactions (e.g., here, here, here, here, here).
3. William Briggs reported on the n=542 children who died (0-17 years (crude rate of 0.00007 per 100 and under 1 year old n=132, CDC data) since January 2020 with a diagnosis of COVID linked to their death. This does not indicate whether, as Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Marty Makaryhas been clamoring, the death was “causal or incidental.” That said, from January 2020, 1,043 children 0-17 have died of pneumonia.
Briggs reported:
“There is no good vaccine for pneumonia. But it could be avoided by keeping kids socially distanced from each other — permanently. If one death is “too many,” then you must not allow kids to be within contact of any human being who has a disease that may be passed to them, from which they may acquire pneumonia. They must also not be allowed in any car … in one year, just about 3,091 kids 0-17 died in car crashes (435 from 0-4, 847 from 5-14, and 30% of 6,031 from 15-24). Multiply these 3,000 deaths in cars by about 1.75, since the COVID deaths are over a 21-month period. That makes about 5,250 kids dying in car crashes in the same period — 10 times as many as Covid.”
Briggs concluded: “there exists no justification based on any available evidence for mandatory vaccines for kids.”
4. Weisberg and Farber et al. suggest (and building on research work by Kumar and Faber) that the reason children can more easily neutralize the virus is that their T cells are relatively naïve. They argue that since children’s T cells are mostly untrained, they can thus immunologically respond (optimally differentiate) more rapidly and nimbly to novel viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 for an effective robust response.
5. Research published in August 2021 by J. Loske deepens our understanding of this natural type biological/molecular protection even further by showing that “pre-activated (primed) antiviral innate immunity in the upper airways of children work to control early SARS-CoV-2 infection … the airway immune cells in children are primed for virus sensing…resulting in a stronger early innate antiviral response to SARS-CoV-2 infection than in adults.”
6. When one is vaccinated or becomes infected naturally, this drives the formation, tissue distribution and clonal evolution of B cells, which is key to encoding humoral immune memory.
Research published in May 2021 showed that blood examined from children retrieved prior to COVID-19 pandemic have memory B cells that can bind to SARS-CoV-2, suggestive of the potent role of early childhood exposure to common cold coronaviruses (coronaviruses). This is supported by Mateus et al. who reported on T cell memory to prior coronaviruses that cause the common cold (cross-reactivity/cross-protection).
There is no data or evidence or science to justify any of the COVID-19 injections in children. Can the content of these vaccines cross the blood-brain barrier in children? We don’t know because it wasn’t studied.
There is no proper safety data. The focus rather has to be on early treatment and testing (sero antibody or T-cell) to establish who is a credible candidate for these injections, as it is dangerous to layer inoculation on top of existing COVID-recovered, naturally acquired immunity.
There is no benefit and only potential harm/adverse effects (here, here, here).
Dr. Alexander is considered a global expert on COVID-19 generally and in some areas highly expertised. Dr. Alexander holds masters level study at York University Canada, a masters in epidemiology at University of Toronto, a masters in evidence-based medicine at Oxford and a doctorate in evidence-based medicine and research methods from McMaster University in Canada.
As reported by Kim Iversen above, around the world people are gathering for massive protests against COVID shot mandates. In mid-September 2021, Italy became the first European country to announce the implementation of mandatory COVID-19 health passes (so-called “Green Pass”) for all workers, both public and private.
The Italian mandate took effect October 15, 2021. Residents have been protesting in the streets for months on end and there’s no sign of them letting up. Demonstrations are also taking place in The Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Greece, Romania, Slovenia, Australia and France.
Even in Israel, mass protests are now taking place as it was announced Israeli’s will lose their health pass privileges unless they get a third booster shot six months after their second dose. New York City has also seen large protests in the wake of its vaccine requirement for restaurants and other public venues.
Leaders Turn a Blind Eye
Yet, despite massive protests, the push for vaccine mandates and vaccine passports that will create a two-tier society continue unabated. With few exceptions, world leaders are simply turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the fact that their residents want nothing to do with their new world order.
At the same time, government agencies charged with keeping us safe are doing the complete opposite. That includes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which President Biden has placed in charge of enforcing his unconstitutional edict that private companies with 100 employees or more must make COVID “vaccination” a requirement for employment or face fines of as much as $700,000 per incidence.1
OSHA will issue the mandate for employers as an emergency temporary standard (ETS), but as of this writing, no official mandate has actually been issued.
According to an October 18, 2021, report by PJ Media,2 OSHA has sent a draft to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. Since it’s being issued as an ETS, there will be no public comment period.
Once the OMB review is finalized, the vaccination rule will be published. Only then will the mandate actually go into effect. That said, OSHA has already amended an already existing rule in a way that will hide the true extent of the damage that this mandate will have on the American workforce.
OSHA Rule Change Covers Up Vaccine Injuries
According to OSHA rules (29 CFR 19043), employers must record and report work-related illnesses, injuries and fatalities, whether the employer was at fault or not. As reported on May 26, 2021, by employment law firm Ogletree Deakins,4 this recording requirement initially also applied to adverse reactions suffered by employees who had to get the COVID shot as a requirement for employment.
The original guidance stated that employers were required to record an employee’s adverse reaction to the COVID jab if the shot was a) work-related, 2) a new case under 29 C.F.R. 1904.6 and 3) met one or more OSHA general recording criteria set out in 29 C.F.R. 1904.7. OSHA specified that an adverse reaction to the jab would be considered “work-related” if the shot was required for employment.
Then, in late May 2021, OSHA suddenly revoked this guidance, saying it will not enforce the recording requirement if the injury or fatality involves the COVID jab, even if required for employment. The nonenforcement will remain in place through May 2022, at which time the agency will reevaluate its position.
Why would they remove the requirement to record and report vaccine injuries incurred as a result of a vaccine mandate? According to OSHA, the agency is “working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations,” “does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts.”5,6 As reported by Ogletree Deakins:7
“There is no doubt that OSHA’s guidance created a disincentive for employers to mandate that their employees get vaccinated. With a mandatory vaccination policy, the guidance ensured that employees’ adverse reactions (with arguably little correlation to actual work-related injuries) could end up on a company’s OSHA recordkeeping logs — which could, in turn, negatively affect its insurance rates and, in some industries, its ability to bid for work.”
What Ogletree fails to address is that by not enforcing this recording requirement for COVID jab injuries, OSHA is intentionally covering up the ramifications these vaccine mandates might have on employees’ health. Meanwhile, employers are still required to record and report COVID-19 infections and COVID-19 deaths among their employees.
Federal Employees Get Special Treatment
In related news, federal employees must be fully “vaccinated” by November 22, 2021, or face the unemployment line. While coercion of this nature is abhorrent under any circumstance, federal employees at least get special treatment if they’re injured by the required jab. As reported by Stacey Lennox for PJ Media:8
“… October 1, 2021, the Federal Employee’s Compensation Act (FECA) issued a bulletin regarding coverage for vaccine injuries.9 FECA did not traditionally cover preventative measures and any resulting illness or injury. As of September 9, 2021, when President Biden announced the federal mandate, adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccination are covered.”
As indicated in FECA Bulletin No. 22-01, dated October 1, 2021:10
“… this executive order now makes COVID-19 vaccination a requirement of most Federal employment. As such, employees impacted by this mandate who receive required COVID-19 vaccinations on or after the date of the executive order may be afforded coverage under the FECA for any adverse reactions to the vaccine itself, and for any injuries sustained while obtaining the vaccination.”
“This bulletin is an interesting turn of events given previous OSHA guidance to private employers,” Lennox writes.11 Indeed, while OSHA is selectively choosing to hide the vaccine injuries of private employees, federal employees will have access to financial compensation for their vaccine injuries, over and above the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Act (CICP).12
Who Will Pay for Private Employees Injured by the Jabs?
On the whole, it’s clear that private employees will be at a distinct disadvantage in terms of compensation. If their employer requires them to get the jab to keep their job, and they get injured by it, the only recourse they have is to file a CICP claim, which is near-impossible to get. By not requiring companies to record vaccine injuries, it effectively shuts down the path for an employee to seek worker’s compensation if they’re injured by a mandated COVID jab.
“While OSHA recordability does not govern worker’s compensation, after managing both for several employers, I have never seen a compensable injury that is not OSHA recordable,” Lennox writes.13
As for CICP, in its 15-year history, it has paid out fewer than 1 in 10 claims.14,15,16 It also offers rather limited help, as you first have to exhaust your personal insurance before it kicks in to pay the difference.
Even if they can get it, CICP awards are likely to be a drop in the bucket for most people. The average award is $200,000, and compensation for fatalities are capped at $370,376.17 Meanwhile, you can easily rack up a $1 million hospital bill if you suffer a serious thrombotic event.18
Perhaps most egregious of all, it’s your responsibility to prove your injury was the “direct result of the countermeasure’s administration based on compelling, reliable, valid, medical and scientific evidence beyond mere temporal association.”
In other words, you basically have to prove what the vaccine developer itself has yet to ascertain, seeing how you are part of their still-ongoing study. You must also pay for your own legal help and any professional witnesses you may need to support your claim.
The fact that federal workers who are injured by the mandated COVID jabs will be covered by FICA now gives unionized employees a new bargaining chip though. As noted by Lennox:19
“Without the OSHA ETS, unions would have bargained about having a vaccine mandate as a term or condition of employment at all. Now, unions should still have an opportunity for effects bargaining to ensure their members are covered if they sustain a vaccine injury.”
Recordability Guidance Must Be Changed Back
As mentioned earlier, the OSHA requirement to record vaccine injuries was scrapped because it disincentivized employers to mandate the shot. Having large numbers of injury reports can raise a company’s insurance costs. However, if OSHA is now going to require all employers with 100 or more employees to implement vaccine mandates, then most companies will be in the same boat.
Since no employer will be at a particular disadvantage, OSHA really needs to change its recordability guidance back, Lennox says, adding:20
“Private sector employees deserve the same protection as federal employees in the face of mandatory vaccines. The mandates will put a severe risk between them and their ability to earn a living for some people.
If they [employers] cave, they should be liable just as every taxpayer is now liable for a vaccine injury to a federal employee. If employers don’t want the liability, they should fight the mandate.”
The White House has just released new policies requiring all companies – big and small – to coerce their workers into accepting the vaccine, or face termination, as the Biden Administration continues to up the pressure on all working Americans to get vaccinated before Jan. 4.
According to Axios,President Biden is planning to announce Thursday that employers with more than 100 workers on their payroll must guarantee that their workers are fully vaccinated, or tested weekly, by Jan. 4, 2022. If not, they could face federal fines starting at tens of thousands of dollars per offense.
What’s more, health-care workers will face even tougher restrictions which will effectively require every health-care worker in the country to be vaccinated, or lose their job, despite the fact that millions of health-care workers have already been infected with the virus by natural means.
To be sure, managing weekly testing programs for a minority of corporate employees will be extremely costly, and the ramifications of this new policy will essentially force employees for the biggest companies in the US to accept the vaccine.
Per Axios, the new rules – formally known as the COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard – will be enforced by OSHA. They will affect roughly two-thirds of America’s workforce, or roughly 80MM people. Many businesses and hospitals have already started to enforce vaccine mandates, and while Axios reports that they have seen “minimal” noncompliance, that doesn’t exactly square with the fact that less than 60% of the American population is fully vaccinated.
While corporations might be able to absorb some of these costs, small businesses will likely be left with some difficult decisions to make. However, there’s one important catch: OSHA will mostly rely on “complaints” to enforce the rule, meaning it will be up to American workers whether or not they want to hold their fellow workers accountable for defying the policy. This incentive to snitch out co-workers and neighbors has already elicited criticism from some, including Conservative Radio host Dan Bongino, who has pushed back against vaccine mandates in favor of bodily autonomy.
The strict mandate for health-care workers is already creating some problems because, while 40% of health-care businesses have purportedly already enforced the policy, the supposedly “minimal” level of noncompliance is reportedly exacerbating worker shortages at hospitals and other critical service providers.
In another indication of how companies are struggling with the mandate, some federal contractors had been expected to enforce the Biden Admin’s vaccine mandate by Dec. 8, but those expectations have now been pushed back to Jan. 4. When asked whether the pushback was due to worker shortages, or the timing of the holiday season, they refused to comment, saying only that the delay is meant to “align” with health-care facilities and US employers.
It sounds like a script in a science fiction movie, but it’s not: Emails obtained by The Intercept show that the National Institutes of Health worked together with one of its grantees, EcoHealth, to evade gain-of-function (GOF) research restrictions.
While EcoHealth’s plans for the research “triggered concerns at NIH,” staff went ahead and “adopted language that EcoHealth Alliance crafted” so the work could go on. The Intercept added that none of the featured experiments could have triggered the current pandemic, but the idea of the deceptive move shows what persons in a position of authority at the highest levels will do to circumvent safety rules and regulations.
The violations were serious enough to spark concerns from Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “The discussions reveal that neither party is taking the risks sufficiently seriously,” Bloom told The Intercept.
Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, minced no words with his opinion on what happened. “It’s absolutely outrageous,” Wain-Hobson said. “The NIH is bending over backward to help people it’s funded. It isn’t clear that the NIH is protecting the U.S. taxpayer.”
In an op-ed, “Fauci Fooled America,” published Monday in Newsweek, two scientists accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of bungling the government’s response to COVID by getting “major epidemiology and public health questions wrong.”
Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, and Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine wrote: “Reality and scientific studies have now caught up with him.”
“The evidence is in. Governors, journalists, scientists, university presidents, hospital administrators and business leaders can continue to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci or open their eyes. After 700,000-plus COVID deaths and the devastating effects of lockdowns, it is time to return to basic principles of public health.”
The authors ticked off a list of “key issues” Fauci got wrong, including failure to recognize natural immunity, protecting the elderly, school closures, masks and contact tracing.
“By pushing vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci ignores naturally acquired immunity among the COVID-recovered, of which there are more than 45 million in the United States,” the authors wrote. “Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity.”
Kulldorff and Bhattacharya cited a study from Israel, which concluded the vaccinated were 27 times more likely to get symptomatic COVID than the unvaccinated who had recovered from a prior infection.
They pointed out that the scientific community has known about natural immunity from disease “at least since the Athenian Plague in 430 BC.”
On Fauci’s dictates to mandate the vaccine for healthcare workers, the two argued: “Under Fauci’s mandates, hospitals are firing heroic nurses who recovered from COVID they contracted while caring for patients. With their superior immunity, they can safely care for the oldest and frailest patients with even lower transmission risk than the vaccinated.”
On school closures they wrote: “Considering the devastating effects of school closures on children, Dr. Fauci’s advocacy for school closures may be the single biggest mistake of his career … While children do get infected, their risk for COVID death is minuscule, lower than their already low risk of dying from the flu.”
Kulldorff and Bhattacharya pointed to Sweden, noting that during the 2020 spring wave of COVID, the country kept daycare and schools open for all 1.8 million children ages 1 to 15, with no masks, testing or social distancing.
The authors argued contact tracing “was a hopeless waste of valuable public health resources that did not stop the disease,” and that Fauci failed at protecting the vulnerable.
“After more than 700,000 reported COVID deaths in America, we now know that lockdowns failed to protect high-risk older people,” they said.
On collateral public health damage, they argued that a “fundamental public health principle is that health is multidimensional; the control of a single infectious disease is not synonymous with health.”
They wrote that Fauci: “ … failed to properly consider and weigh the disastrous effects lockdowns would have on cancer detection and treatment, cardiovascular disease outcomes, diabetes care, childhood vaccination rates, mental health and opioid overdoses, to name a few. Americans will live with — and die from — this collateral damage for many years to come.”
In private conversations, Kulldorff and Bhattacharya said, most of their scientific colleagues agree with them on these points but few have spoken up out of fear of “financial censorship.”
“Many are afraid of losing positions or research grants, aware that Dr. Fauci sits on top of the largest pile of infectious disease research money in the world,” they wrote.
In his forthcoming book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. includes a comprehensive discussion of Fauci’s influence and power over the scientific community, revealing how Fauci uses the “financial clout at his disposal to wield extraordinary influence over hospitals, universities, journals and thousands of influential doctors and scientists — whose careers and institutions he has the power to ruin, advance or reward.” Kennedy’s book is due out Nov. 16.
Jeremy Loffredo is a freelance reporter for The Defender. His investigative reporting has been featured in The Grayzone and Unlimited Hangout. Jeremy formerly produced news programs at RT America.
President Joe Biden has called out Russia and OPEC countries for causing US energy prices to rise, even as he implements policies to curtail domestic oil and natural gas production.
“If you take a look at, you know, gas prices and you take a look at oil prices, that is a consequence of, thus far, the refusal of Russia or the OPEC nations to pump more oil,” Biden told reporters on Tuesday at the COP26 climate summit in Scotland. “We’ll see what happens on that score sooner than later,” he added.
Prices for the leading US crude benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), have surged to around $84 per barrel from $48 per barrel since the beginning of 2021, contributing to the nation’s highest inflation rate in 13 years. Gasoline prices are at a seven-year high. The key natural gas benchmark, Henry Hub, is nearing $6/mmBtu in Nymex futures trading after starting the year below $2.50/mmBtu.
While the president pointed the finger at Russia and OPEC for failing to help bring down oil prices, he said that inflation more broadly is being spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on supply chains. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Sunday that the supply-chain woes will continue until the pandemic ends.
The Biden administration called on OPEC in August to help bring oil prices down, raising the ire of major US producers, who argued that he should be encouraging higher domestic supplies.
The day he took office in January, Biden revoked a federal permit for a new pipeline needed to bring more Canadian oil to US refiners. A week later, he suspended the leasing of new oil and gas properties on federal lands and waters as part of his plan to slash reliance on fossil fuels.
The US surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest crude producer in 2018 and became the third-biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas in 2019. That same year, the country achieved net energy independence for the first time since the 1950s – reaching a goal that many observers thought impossible.
But US oil and gas output stumbled last year amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and domestic volumes are projected to decline again in 2021.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory panel today unanimously recommended Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for children 5 to 11, despite concerns raised during the meeting about Pfizer’s clinical data, the fact that children who previously acquired natural immunity to COVID were included in clinical trials and evidence showing COVID poses little risk to children.
If Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director signs off on the decision, children ages 5 through 11 could start receiving COVID vaccines as early as tonight.
The CDC’s guidelines for the vaccine’s use are not legally binding, but heavily influence the medical community’s practice.
Prior to today’s decision by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) the Biden administration enlisted more than 20,000 pediatricians, family doctors and pharmacies to administer the vaccines — with 15 million doses already packed with dry ice, loaded into small specialized containers and shipped via airplanes and trucks to vaccination sites across the country, federal officials said on Monday.
Walensky sent a clear signal during the ACIP meeting about where she stands, CNN reported. “We have been asking when we will be able to expand this protection to our younger children,” Walensky said in opening comments to the committee.
“As you review the data today, it will be key to keep in mind the specific risks to children from this virus and the pandemic, and to put that risk into context of other vaccine-preventable diseases,” Walensky said.
Walensky noted that children are routinely vaccinated against diseases like chickenpox — which results in far fewer hospitalizations and deaths in children compared to COVID.
During today’s meeting, ACIP members reviewed and discussed the science behind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authorization last week of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine in all children 5-11 years old.
That authorization was based mostly on a Pfizer-BioNTech study of 4,600 children worldwide, of whom approximately 3,100 got the low-dose vaccine and about 1,500 got a placebo.
These studies showed the vaccine is about 91% effective against COVID. The immune system response to the vaccine, as measured by antibodies, was comparable to the response seen in 16- to 25-year-olds, NPR reported.
During the meeting, the CDC said 745 children under 18 have died of COVID since the beginning of the pandemic — although the COVID-19 team admitted 79% were confirmed to be hospitalized for COVID, while the rest were hospital admissions for other causes.
“The chance that a child will have severe COVID, require hospitalization or develop a long-term complication like MIS-C [multisystem inflammatory syndrome] remains low, but still the risk is too high and too devastating to our children, and far higher than for many other diseases for which we vaccinate children,” Walensky said.
Efficacy of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine in children
The CDC said Pfizer’s COVID vaccine was 90.9% effective against symptomatic COVID and none of the adverse events experienced during clinical trials were assessed by “the investigator” as related to the vaccine.
To determine the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine, Pfizer measured the blood of 264 children for antibodies.
“There were 3,000 vaccinated children in the trial. Why isn’t blood from the other 2,700-plus being measured for antibodies?” asked Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense Scientific Advisory Panel.
“Pfizer never explains why, when they have an important clinical trial in which over 3,000 children were injected in this age group, only a subset of less than 10% were used to assess efficacy,” Nass said.
Nass explained:
“Pfizer claims three cases of COVID in the vaccinated group versus 16 in the placebo group show efficacy of the vaccine. But the FDA did not accept this claim. Note that all cases were mild, none hospitalized or died. So are they planning to vaccinate 28 million kids to prevent colds?”
Nass noted Pfizer also enrolled kids who had prior evidence of having had COVID in the clinical trial, “which should never have been allowed.”
“Of the kids who were already immune at the start of the trials, none developed COVID,” Nass said. “About 150 kids in the placebo group were recovered and none got COVID.”
Nass said kids with preceding COVID infection did not have their antibody levels checked after the first dose, as Pfizer stated they did not collect the data because they “tried to minimize blood draws in children.”
“The real reason they did not want to collect data is because it might support the fact that kids who already had COVID might only need one vaccine dose, or none at all,” Nass said.
During the brief public comment session, Patricia Neuenschwander, a registered nurse noted there was no prevention of hospitalization, death or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children — a condition being used to justify vaccinating younger children against COVID, despite numerous cases of MIS-C having been reported after receipt of a COVID vaccine.
Neuenschwander reminded the ACIP that vaccinations do not prevent infection or transmission. It is a mild illness in the vast majority of children, she said, and prior immunity is being ignored — the expansion group was only followed for 17 days.
David Wiseman, a research scientist with a background in pharmacy, pharmacology and experimental pathology, asked the CDC panel why the efficacy study was not validated by the FDA, and why Pfizer changed the buffer [see page 14] in the vaccine but did not test it in animals or kids — planning to use an untested version of the vaccine in 5 to 11-year-olds.
Wiseman said the FDA abandoned its responsibility, and he asked if the ACIP would do the same.
The CDC said 1,640 cases of myocarditis have been reported to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in people under age 30 after having received a COVID vaccine, but only 877 met the CDC’s case definition.
The CDC said there were nine reported deaths in people with myocarditis, but then the agency reduced the number to three, with two cases pending evaluation and one case without adequate information.
“I have to say that it is beyond belief that CDC could whittle down 877 cases reported in young people to three actual cases. Where did the rest go?” Nass asked.
“According to the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, 7 of 16 12- to 17-year-olds with myocarditis were still on exercise restriction three months after diagnosis — that is 44% could not exercise three months later,” Nass said. “This is huge.”
Nass further noted 25% of 250 myocarditis cases were still symptomatic at three months, and only 74% of cases were designated by cardiologists as definitely resolved at 3 months.
“The bottom line is getting COVID, I think, is much riskier to the heart than getting this vaccine,” said Dr. Matthew Oster, a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Hospital of Atlanta.
Dr. Tom Shimabukuro covered vaccine safety monitoring from the CDC’s surveillance system in children. Shimabukuro said COVID is getting the “most intensive vaccine monitoring program in history,” yet he did not go into detail on surveillance data.
Acknowledging that some parents are hesitant about vaccinating their children right away, Dr. Matthew Daley, a member of the ACIP said, “we hear you loud and clear and of course you only want what’s best for your child. I encourage you to talk to your family physician or pediatrician, they can walk through this with you.”
Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) releases detailed footage of its confrontation late last month against an American act of piracy targeting an Iranian fuel shipment.
The incident took place on October 25, but news and footage of which were released on Wednesday.
During the episode, American forces confiscated the tanker that was carrying a cargo of Iranian oil in the strategic Sea of Oman, transferring its consignment of crude to another vessel.
The IRGC then staged a maritime operation against the second vessel, landing its helicopters on its deck and navigating the ship towards Iranian waters.
The footage depicts the incident in great detail, first showing the IRGC Navy’s intelligence command and intelligence gathering network detecting the vessel laden with the stolen crude.
The IRGC Navy is subsequently seen dispatching its rapid reaction units to the area to seize back the cargo.
The commandos then engage in a heliborne operation, which features their aircraft landing on the second vessel, the forces disembarking, and their recapturing the stolen consignment.
The IRGC Navy’s drone units, speedboats, and other vessels are, meanwhile, seen assisting the operation.
USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) and USS Michael Murphy (DDG-112), two American destroyers, are then seen approaching second tanker to prevent its recapture, but are warned away by the IRGC Navy.
The footage relayed from the operation, meanwhile, depicts the involved American vessels and their crew in striking detail.
A statement issued by the IRGC’s public relations office, said after the heliborne operation by the IRGC, the US forces started pursuing the second vessel using several helicopters and warships. They, however, stopped short of capturing it.
The US forces then dispatched more warships to block the vessel that was carrying the stolen crude. “The Americans [though] decided against continuing the operation and left the area after understanding the brave and ardent fighters of the IRGC Navy’s readiness and resolve for confronting whatever adventurism and threat against the interests of the Iranian nation,” the statement added.
Thanking the Corps for the successful operation, Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji said “Iran’s enemies” had resorted to the act of piracy after realizing that the Islamic Republic was determined to export its fuel, despite the United States’ sanctions targeting the country. – Video
The gubernatorial election in Virginia saw another example of a ‘racism hoax’ that caused media outrage before the truth emerged. It’s little wonder these stunts are becoming more common in a country fixated on identity politics.
At a time when the mere hint of a badly worded sentence invites accusations of racism, many race entrepreneurs feel incentivised to fabricate claims of incidents that can provoke howls of outrage.
This week’s election for the post of governor of Virginia saw just how the phenomenon of a race hoax works. Supporters of the Lincoln Project – an anti-Trump advocacy group – dressed up as Neo-Nazi white supremacists and, clutching tiki torches, photographed themselves next to the campaign bus of the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin. Chanting “we’re all in for Glenn,” they sought to promote the impression that a vote for Youngkin was a vote for racial hatred.
The hoax provoked the intended reaction of outrage. “To my fellow Virginia residents,” tweeted NBC’s legal analyst, Glenn Kirschner, “please vote against this blatant display of racism, hatred and intolerance. Please vote FOR a kind, welcoming, diverse Virginia. Please vote @TerryMcAuliffe for governor. Because #JusticeMatters.” The tweet was subsequently deleted.
The Lincoln Project’s dirty trick soon got the Jewish Democratic Council of America on board. It published a tweet – also subsequently deleted – demanding that Youngkin condemn the tiki torchbearers or risk being denounced for endorsing anti-Semitism.
More broadly, Democrats were quick to exploit the performance of the Lincoln Project as an illustration that their opponents’ political base was steeped in white supremacy. America’s cultural fixation with race means that they are primed to perceive episodes of racism in the most innocuous of settings. The race hoax perpetrated by the Lincoln Project was designed to feed the American media’s voracious appetite for sensational incidents of hate crimes.
In recent times, the most widely reported alleged race hoax involved the black American actor Jussie Smollett, who claimed he was assaulted in the early hours of the morning in Chicago by two men wearing MAGA hats. He insisted that he was subjected to homophobic and racial slurs and that some unknown chemical substance was poured on him and a noose tied around his neck.
Smollett’s account of this ‘lynching’ provoked anger, and numerous well-known public figures – including the now-Vice President Kamala Harris – lined up to demonstrate their support. Once the police discovered that Smollett apparently made up the attack – he is facing a criminal case – an embarrassed media moved on to find other instances of hate crime.
As it happens, the manufacturing of a race hoax is far from a rare event. Inventing victimhood is not uncommon, particularly within higher education. For example, in September 2017, five black students at the US Air Force Academy Preparatory School discovered racial slurs written on their doors. An investigation later found that one of the students supposedly targeted was responsible for the vandalism.
In his book, ‘Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War’, published in 2019, Wilfred Reilly examined over 100 high-profile incidents of so-called hate crimes that never actually occurred. He pointed out that he was “able to rather easily assemble a data set of 409 hate hoax cases,” concentrated heavily in the previous five years. According to Reilly, his data set has since swelled to become a list of 608 unique hate hoax case studies, containing more than 800 individual incidents of hoaxes.
The fake reporting of hate crimes is encouraged by the singular focus of criminal justice agencies on this issue. In effect, hate crime has turned into a political weapon used to promote the dogma of systemic racism. The eagerness with which claims of hate crime are publicised to prove a point has created an incentive to present oneself as its victim. The proliferation of the phenomenon of race hoax is the inexorable consequence of cultural attitudes that perceive the world through the prism of racism.
The constant obsession with white privilege, whiteness, and systemic racism has created a cultural terrain that is hospitable to the flourishing of race hoaxes.
So, next time you hear that racism is on the rise and society is facing an epidemic of hate crime, take a reality check – because it may turn out that what is at issue is an epidemic of fake news.
Frank Furedi is an author and social commentator. He is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Author of How Fear Works: The Culture of Fear in the 21st Century.
… Most American adults of voting age don’t appear willing to reject the applicability of international law to Israel’s ongoing colonization of occupied territories in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights. … Full article
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