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  • The Mad Warhorse of Neoliberalism is Galloping Towards Perdition

    We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
    — Gore Vidal, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, 2004

    As Americans drown in debt and atomization, the liberal class applauds the arrival of a post-nation-state neo-feudal order which is devoid of checks and balances, integration, national cohesion, or collective memory, rendering any working class resistance to fascism a Herculean task. This has been made possible because of the demise of traditional American liberalism, rooted in the values of the civil rights movement and the New Deal, and its usurpation by the cult of neoliberalism which is anchored in unrestricted immigration, multiculturalism, identity politics, and the nakedly imperialistic policies embraced by the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton. This growing collaboration between neoliberals and the oligarchy has fomented an unprecedented degree of both tribalism and unfettered capitalism, and placed us on a runaway train racing to authoritarianism.

    Identity politics, supported by a cornucopia of faux-left elements since the ‘90s with a cult-like zealotry, has unleashed an apocalyptic counter-revolution that is disintegrating our national identity. The anti-working class has been created to facilitate this dissolution. Children are being indoctrinated in the multicultural curriculum, which is predicated on the idea that white people are the oppressor and people of color are the oppressed. This has made both class consciousness and any understanding of history impossible, while depriving Americans of color and immigrant youth with a proper grounding in American letters and classics of Western Civilization. Such a curriculum constitutes the quintessence of racism, yet has been sold to the masses as “fighting racism.”

    The multicultural society, essentially a Tower of Babel, has transformed the US into a hellscape of ghettoized enclaves which break down along lines of ethnicity, religion, and language. It has also facilitated the rise of the vocational community and the phenomenon of hyper-careerism. This, in turn, poses yet another threat to civil society, as fanatical careerists are generally indifferent to everything outside of their field.

    Indeed, it has become commonplace for Americans who are ensconced in excellent jobs to be so indifferent to life outside of their specialty that they would shrug apathetically if informed that US and Chinese warships had opened fire on one another in the South China Sea. As long as Weill Cornell, Sloan Kettering, Columbia University, or the Metropolitan Opera House don’t get incinerated, they would only feel a vague and abstract connection to such an event. This obsessive single-minded devotion to one’s career, an identity which has come to envelop one’s very soul, is inextricably linked to the multicultural society, as many Americans increasingly feel that no life exists outside of work. As our society disintegrates, the ability of our countrymen to think rationally unravels along with it.

    Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993, liberals have collaborated with every reactionary policy that has been promoted by the establishment: illegal wars of aggression, the privatization of the prisons, deindustrialization and offshoring, the oligarchy’s importation of tens of millions of undocumented workers and guest workers to depress wages and foment deunionization, the destruction of the public schools, the Patriot Act (which revoked habeas corpus), the Military Commissions Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, the return of Russophobia, the monopolization of the media into just a handful of corporations, the use of academia to generate student loan debt (now in excess of $1.5 trillion), the privatization of health care, the fomenting of unprecedented forms of tribalism and atomization; and more recently, the lockdown. Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet unleashed the dogs of war on the left. In the West today this is unnecessary, for the left has destroyed itself.

    The more liberals sell their souls to the forces of reaction, the more they delude themselves into thinking that they are on the left. This has led to a kind of political schizophrenia, as those who betray the legacies of FDR and Martin Luther King are pulled inexorably into a vortex of ignorance, dogmatism, and superstition. Neoliberals, who should really be called “illiberals,” fail to see the preposterousness of their claiming to combat “the far right,” even as deep state operatives like John Brennan are regurgitating the exact same identity politics language that multiculturalists have been churning out for decades. Furthermore, we have political commentators such as General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of American forces in Afghanistan, comparing Trump supporters (i.e., the scourge of “white privilege”), to Al-Qaeda. Now replete with its own Green Zone, the Capitol is under martial law.

    Recall that “humanitarian interventions” resulted in civil wars in Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, Syria (granted, many jihadis have been foreigners), and Afghanistan. This pitting of identity politics acolytes against what remains of American society is reminiscent of the way in which Washington pitted Sunnis and Shiites against one another in Iraq.

    The anti-white jihadi is the offspring of ghettoization, the multicultural curriculum, and identity studies, and harbors a deep-seated hostility to Western Civilization. This anti-working class is being used by the establishment not unlike jihadis have been used by the Western elites in Syria: as a battering ram to degrade, destabilize, fragment, and if left unchecked, ultimately obliterate our national identity, thereby granting the oligarchy illimitable powers. Our jihadis are undoubtedly less violent than Syria’s (or even Sweden’s for that matter); and yet the two crusades are not dissimilar, as both are fanatically committed to the destruction of a particular civilization.

    Siccing a majority on a minority is irrefutably reactionary, but doing the inversion is no less so, especially when there are powerful forces at work attempting to transform the minority into a new majority. A significant swath of leftists in the West have been hoodwinked into believing that multiculturalism is diametrically opposed to Nazism, when they are, in fact, two sides to the same coin. The relentless demonization of Trump, coupled with the dubious nature of his removal, mirrors the demonization and removal of Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Noriega, and Milošević, where the vilification of a head of state served as a pretext for launching wars on the citizenry of these countries.

    The loathing of liberals for the Orange One, which they petulantly cling to despite his ouster, is tied to the fact that he made a mockery of the idea that liberals represent the lesser of two evils. While indubitably crass and bombastic at times, Trump had the temerity to take a principled stand on a number of key issues, such as pursuing detente with Russia, questioning the need for NATO following the breakup of the USSR, tirelessly ridiculing the lies of the presstitutes, condemning critical race theory, and denouncing the catastrophic offshoring of jobs. Trump’s support for hydroxychloroquine, and his warnings that the lockdowns were destroying New York City, have likewise proved prophetic. Meanwhile, liberals haven’t taken a principled stand on anything in thirty years.

    Don’t misconstrue my intentions: I am not attempting to equate Trump supporters with the supporters of Allende. Undoubtedly, some of his supporters hold certain reactionary beliefs. Yet unlike liberals, whose solution for every domestic problem is to carry out more witch hunts and outsource more jobs, millions of Trump voters have legitimate grievances, as their lives have been upended by deindustrialization and offshoring, the lockdown, the opioid epidemic, inadequate health care, and the systematic dismantling of public education.

    Liberal complicity in sustaining our unconscionable for-profit health care system, as evidenced by their enthusiastic support for Obamacare, has resulted in a demise of medical scientific integrity. Vioxx, the opioid epidemic, the psychotropic drug epidemic, and the anthrax vaccine constitute four of the most catastrophic drug regulatory failures in the history of medicine. The problem is that for the pharmaceutical industry, these aren’t failures at all, but successes, as these drugs have yielded staggering profits. The greatest danger posed by privatized health care is that medicines and procedures which represent the greatest threat to patient health are often extremely lucrative. This medical profiteering is so rampant that it is instigating a weaponization of health care and a restoration of Nazi bioethics, where informed consent and respect for patient dignity are completely jettisoned. Should Covid vaccines become mandatory – and keep in mind that drug companies are shielded from liability in the US should their vaccines cause harm – this would constitute an unequivocal violation of the Nuremberg Code. (A code, incidentally, written by white guys, hence ripe for burning). The SS physician credo, that any medical atrocity is justified as long as it is done “for the greater good,” is thriving under the lockdown.

    A considerable amount of evidence exists that effective and inexpensive Covid treatment options involving hydroxychloroquine, budesonide, and ivermectin were suppressed (see here, here, here, here and here), which could have negated the need for lockdowns altogether and saved many thousands of lives. Granted, these drugs would have torpedoed the pharmaceutical industry’s desire to profit off of the crisis with Remdesivir and mRNA vaccines, the latter of particularly dubious safety and efficacy. (The authorities have explicitly stated that the vaccines, which are experimental and have only been granted an Emergency Use Authorization, will not end social distancing and the mandatory wearing of masks). We have been told that half a million Americans have died from Covid, but how many of these patients were under the age of 70 and had no significant comorbidities?  PCR tests have churned out vast numbers of false positives which has also helped maintain the hysteria and relentless fearmongering, while the notion of asymptomatic spread remains mired in conjecture. According to Reuters, the US lost over 20 million jobs in April of 2020 alone. Nevertheless, the lockdown did what it was designed to do: further erode civil liberties, while exacerbating atomization and economic inequality.

    It is important to note that powerful tycoons that are not ensconced in the medical industrial complex, such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, have profited off of the pandemic, adding even more wealth to their already bloated fortunes. Consequently, lockdown profiteering is not confined to the robber barons within the health care oligarchy.

    Commenting on the draconian lockdown measures, Daniel Jeanmonod, MD, writes in “Lockdowns are a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:”

    The following two examples confirm these results: a country with low lockdown stringency like Sweden has at the moment the same fatality rate per million inhabitants as France, but lower than Spain, Italy and UK, where severe lockdown measures were applied.

    In addition, Sweden has had for the second wave a much smaller excess mortality than France, Italy or Spain, an observation which allows one to suspect that lockdown measures are delaying the establishment of herd immunity. This is not desirable, as the time during which the old, sick and frail can be exposed to the virus gets longer.

    In “The Covid Pandemic Is the Result of Public Health Authorities Blocking Effective Treatment,” Paul Craig Roberts questions the motives behind the lockdown:

    Why are authorities enforcing ineffective measures while ignoring proven successful measures that greatly reduce the Covid threat and perhaps eliminate it altogether? Is it because the proven measures are inexpensive and offer no opportunity for large profits from vaccines?  Is it because the ‘Covid pandemic’ is useful for mandating control measures that curtail civil liberties?  Is it because the lockdowns decimate family businesses and enable further economic concentration?  The answer is ‘yes’ to all three questions.

    Dr. Simone Gold, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors (and recently arrested to the delight of MedPage), has reiterated these concerns, tweeting on February 3rd:

    What do lockdowns, masks, and panic all have in common?
    Their positive impact on hospitalization rates is ZERO.
    But their negative impact on life and liberty is severe and totally unnecessary.
    The science doesn’t lie. The ‘scientists’ do.

    Yet liberals continue to support the lockdowns, and in Germany Antifa have marched against their countrymen who have protested against the coercive measures, equating them with “the far right.” The degree to which Western societies have been tribalized by identity politics has made it very easy for the elites to impose what is essentially a collective house arrest on the entire Western world.

    Democracy fell into grave jeopardy when liberals abandoned liberty of thought in favor of genuflecting at the altar of the presstitute priesthood. Indeed, when The New York Times tells liberals to jump they jump, when The New York Times tells liberals to be indifferent they are indifferent, when The New York Times tells liberals to be outraged they are outraged, and when “The Newspaper of Record” tells liberals to be ecstatic they are ecstatic. Can a democracy survive if a vast swath of its inhabitants can no longer differentiate between right and left, journalism and propaganda, psychological operations and intellectual analysis, even day and night? No less worrisome, the majority of American doctors are blindly accepting whatever they are told by the mullahs of FDA, CDC, NIH, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. This is the inevitable result of physicians becoming increasingly specialized while often possessing the humanities education of a junior high school student. In many ways, we have become a nation of Adolf Eichmanns and Albert Speers.

    Those who stray from ideological “norms,” regardless of whether it be the lockdown or identity politics, are increasingly portrayed as either unhinged or guilty of incitement, and this language has become particularly vitriolic following “the riot” on January 6th. As Dmitry Babich pointed out on the January 11th Russia Today Cross Talk episode, the precise details of what transpired during the “storming of the United States Capitol” (to quote Wikipedia) are not of paramount importance. What matters is that the incident is being exploited by the establishment as a neoliberal Reichstag fire.

    When identity politics youth brigades were assaulting people and inflicting billions of dollars in property damage over a period of many months, in an orgy of violence that was clearly designed to pressure the Trump administration to resign, the media applauded enthusiastically, even referring to the rioters as “peaceful demonstrators.” Calls for revenge against Trump administration officials are likewise unprecedented. As the Democratic Party has thrown away the rule book and turned the country into a banana republic, what is to prevent leaders in the Christian Right from meeting with some like-minded generals and doing the same? The peculiar events of January 6th conveniently scuttled an ongoing congressional investigation into serious allegations of voter fraud, and succeeded in transforming the anti-constitutionalists into the constitutionalists in the minds of millions of people, both at home and around the world.

    Those who once sang “Kumbaya My Lord” and “We Shall Overcome” are now calling for dissenting voices to be silenced, either through deplatforming on social media, placing dissidents on a blacklist, or with the iron heel. Writing for The Atlantic, Graeme Wood, in addressing the problem of Americans who object to the dissolution of their national identity, prefers a more refined approach to CIA hit squads: “The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.” Having burned their own books, and sworn allegiance to the god of unreason, neoliberals have no other option than to relinquish ties to this death cult or pick up the truncheon of authoritarianism.

    The mindless faux-left support for the most barbaric foreign policies could only lead to their support for lawlessness, violence, and barbarism at home. Indeed, those who kill and torture abroad, if not held accountable, will inevitably seek to do so domestically. This fine line is embodied by the story of Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was brutally tortured by US-backed Guatemalan security forces in 1989, and who recently passed away, another soul lost to the cancer wards. That this totalitarianization is being supported in the name of protecting the country from imaginary neo-Nazis signifies the complete moral and intellectual collapse of the liberal class, a pitiable gaggle that will support any domestic policy, provided it is officially carried out in the name of fighting intolerance and bigotry. Such a tactic was glaringly on display when Biden, in condemning violence against women a couple of years ago, remarked that “This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change.” Translation: let’s burn the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the name of fighting racism and sexism.

    What are we to make of this strange country where lawyers are indifferent to the rule of law, doctors are contemptuous of informed consent, journalists regurgitate whatever they are told by establishment spokespersons, and leftists speak of the working class as “deplorables?” As conservatives typically associate privatization with democratization, and nationalization with tyranny, there are no longer any significant firewalls in place to protect the people from despotism. Moreover, due to multiculturalism’s antipathy to all things white and Western, the WASP right in turn has rejected all things foreign, even as this leads them to untenable and patently erroneous conclusions, such as the idea that Americans have the best health care system in the world, a canard parroted ad nauseam in online medical blogs.

    The multicultural society is an anarchic and atomized zone where solidarity, reason, morality, empathy, and any sense of a collective memory cease to exist. Unsurprisingly, this has turned workers into nothing more than plastic cutlery, to be used once and then discarded. Civilization is in grave danger due to the rise of the woke book burners who have declared classics of Western Civilization to be the quintessence of “white supremacy.” Thanks to their implementation of the anti-humanities, the overwhelming majority of New York City public high school graduates have never even heard of Ernest Hemingway, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, John Hersey, Theodore Dreiser, Norman Thomas, Carl Sandburg, John Dos Passos, Dalton Trumbo, Gore Vidal, Clarence Darrow and William Kunstler. (I could go on for an entire page, at least). For all their incessant whining about racism, American liberals, who enjoy total ideological hegemony over most urban public schools, look at children of color as less than animals, and take better care of their poodles and dachshunds. Inculcated with the song of anti-whiteness, the post-American, simultaneously ghettoized prisoner and settler, unleashes its rage on America, but in so doing, puts on the shackles of the oligarchy.

    The messianic crusade to eradicate whiteness is destabilizing the country and fomenting an inverted Manifest Destiny. Writing in “Whiteness Is a Pandemic,” Damon Young posits that “Whiteness is a public health crisis.” Continuing, he informs us that “White supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect.” (Note how the author uses “whiteness” and “white supremacy” interchangeably). Indeed, this article epitomizes the pathological, anti-Western, and deeply divisive and sectarian dogma being pushed on impressionable young people, both by the media and by the multicultural curriculum.

    The Taliban recently came for Dr. Seuss, who we are now told is “offensive.” Teachers that challenge these pieties and attempt to introduce children of color and immigrant youth to the dreaded “dead white men” incur the wrath of the anti-literacy overseers, and if they continue to flout neoliberal pathologies, invariably face termination. Perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that instead of “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” the oligarchy has been kind enough to give us a snappy slogan for the counter-revolution: “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Just bear in mind that the anti-white jihadi isn’t interested in sending the aristocracy to the guillotine but the working class itself.

    Historically significant black writers and orators such as Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson, all of whom were unwavering in their support for integration, are dismissed as Uncle Toms and Oreos (black on the outside, white on the inside). To quote Captain Beatty, the anti-intellectual pyromaniac of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: “If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.”

    As transpires in Orwell’s 1984, the burning of the humanities has turned much of the population into automatons, who are not only illiterate, but who are also stripped of any sense of a cultural identity. Unlike many countries in the global south that have a history of weak democratic institutions, the oligarchy understands that in order to destroy democracy at home they have to sever the link between the American people and their past. Hence, if one were to show a World War II film such as Au Revoir les Enfants to a group of teenagers in an identity politics madrassa, it would be incomprehensible to them, as they aren’t taught anything about fascism, and they wouldn’t understand why on earth white people would be hunting down and murdering other white people. In many ways, both our civilization and our democracy were lost in the classroom.

    Liberal cultists (who are, in fact, doubly enslaved, both to the cult of identity politics and to the lockdown cult), rejoice in the dismantling of the nation-state which has ensued following offshoring, unrestricted immigration, and the rise of the multicultural curriculum and identity studies. What they fail to acknowledge are the devastating consequences, as these policies are inextricably linked with the annihilation of the middle class, the public schools, checks and balances, and any semblance of national cohesion. One could make the argument that in this post-nation-state neo-feudal America, the plutocracy has ceased to be a capitalist class in the Marxist sense and taken on the characteristics of a new baronage. Irregardless of whether the establishment’s endgame is tyranny under identity politics or tyranny under the Christian Right, once freedom of speech lies gelid and lifeless on the bloodstained ground it will be lost forever.

    There is a chilling passage in John Hersey’s epistolary novel The Conspiracy, which opens a window into life in imperial Rome under Nero, where Tigellinus sends a confidential letter to Faenus Rufus, both of whom are co-commanders of the Praetorian Guard. Addressing his fellow totalitarian, he writes, “We believe we are now on the threshold of uncovering certain crimes of opinion, the punishment of which, I am confident, will provide ample propitiation.”

    Aren’t Simone Gold and Julian Assange being prosecuted for “crimes of opinion?” The cruel treatment meted out to Julian serves as a particularly harrowing warning regarding the ongoing implosion of democracy in the West. What a pity that the righteous campaigners who once fought so valiantly for the New Deal and the civil rights movement now look upon those very ideals with sneering, ridicule, and contempt.

    The post The Mad Warhorse of Neoliberalism is Galloping Towards Perdition first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Mad Warhorse of Neoliberalism is Galloping Towards Perdition

    We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
    — Gore Vidal, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, 2004

    As Americans drown in debt and atomization, the liberal class applauds the arrival of a post-nation-state neo-feudal order which is devoid of checks and balances, integration, national cohesion, or collective memory, rendering any working class resistance to fascism a Herculean task. This has been made possible because of the demise of traditional American liberalism, rooted in the values of the civil rights movement and the New Deal, and its usurpation by the cult of neoliberalism which is anchored in unrestricted immigration, multiculturalism, identity politics, and the nakedly imperialistic policies embraced by the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton. This growing collaboration between neoliberals and the oligarchy has fomented an unprecedented degree of both tribalism and unfettered capitalism, and placed us on a runaway train racing to authoritarianism.

    Identity politics, supported by a cornucopia of faux-left elements since the ‘90s with a cult-like zealotry, has unleashed an apocalyptic counter-revolution that is disintegrating our national identity. The anti-working class has been created to facilitate this dissolution. Children are being indoctrinated in the multicultural curriculum, which is predicated on the idea that white people are the oppressor and people of color are the oppressed. This has made both class consciousness and any understanding of history impossible, while depriving Americans of color and immigrant youth with a proper grounding in American letters and classics of Western Civilization. Such a curriculum constitutes the quintessence of racism, yet has been sold to the masses as “fighting racism.”

    The multicultural society, essentially a Tower of Babel, has transformed the US into a hellscape of ghettoized enclaves which break down along lines of ethnicity, religion, and language. It has also facilitated the rise of the vocational community and the phenomenon of hyper-careerism. This, in turn, poses yet another threat to civil society, as fanatical careerists are generally indifferent to everything outside of their field.

    Indeed, it has become commonplace for Americans who are ensconced in excellent jobs to be so indifferent to life outside of their specialty that they would shrug apathetically if informed that US and Chinese warships had opened fire on one another in the South China Sea. As long as Weill Cornell, Sloan Kettering, Columbia University, or the Metropolitan Opera House don’t get incinerated, they would only feel a vague and abstract connection to such an event. This obsessive single-minded devotion to one’s career, an identity which has come to envelop one’s very soul, is inextricably linked to the multicultural society, as many Americans increasingly feel that no life exists outside of work. As our society disintegrates, the ability of our countrymen to think rationally unravels along with it.

    Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993, liberals have collaborated with every reactionary policy that has been promoted by the establishment: illegal wars of aggression, the privatization of the prisons, deindustrialization and offshoring, the oligarchy’s importation of tens of millions of undocumented workers and guest workers to depress wages and foment deunionization, the destruction of the public schools, the Patriot Act (which revoked habeas corpus), the Military Commissions Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, the return of Russophobia, the monopolization of the media into just a handful of corporations, the use of academia to generate student loan debt (now in excess of $1.5 trillion), the privatization of health care, the fomenting of unprecedented forms of tribalism and atomization; and more recently, the lockdown. Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet unleashed the dogs of war on the left. In the West today this is unnecessary, for the left has destroyed itself.

    The more liberals sell their souls to the forces of reaction, the more they delude themselves into thinking that they are on the left. This has led to a kind of political schizophrenia, as those who betray the legacies of FDR and Martin Luther King are pulled inexorably into a vortex of ignorance, dogmatism, and superstition. Neoliberals, who should really be called “illiberals,” fail to see the preposterousness of their claiming to combat “the far right,” even as deep state operatives like John Brennan are regurgitating the exact same identity politics language that multiculturalists have been churning out for decades. Furthermore, we have political commentators such as General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of American forces in Afghanistan, comparing Trump supporters (i.e., the scourge of “white privilege”), to Al-Qaeda. Now replete with its own Green Zone, the Capitol is under martial law.

    Recall that “humanitarian interventions” resulted in civil wars in Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, Syria (granted, many jihadis have been foreigners), and Afghanistan. This pitting of identity politics acolytes against what remains of American society is reminiscent of the way in which Washington pitted Sunnis and Shiites against one another in Iraq.

    The anti-white jihadi is the offspring of ghettoization, the multicultural curriculum, and identity studies, and harbors a deep-seated hostility to Western Civilization. This anti-working class is being used by the establishment not unlike jihadis have been used by the Western elites in Syria: as a battering ram to degrade, destabilize, fragment, and if left unchecked, ultimately obliterate our national identity, thereby granting the oligarchy illimitable powers. Our jihadis are undoubtedly less violent than Syria’s (or even Sweden’s for that matter); and yet the two crusades are not dissimilar, as both are fanatically committed to the destruction of a particular civilization.

    Siccing a majority on a minority is irrefutably reactionary, but doing the inversion is no less so, especially when there are powerful forces at work attempting to transform the minority into a new majority. A significant swath of leftists in the West have been hoodwinked into believing that multiculturalism is diametrically opposed to Nazism, when they are, in fact, two sides to the same coin. The relentless demonization of Trump, coupled with the dubious nature of his removal, mirrors the demonization and removal of Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Noriega, and Milošević, where the vilification of a head of state served as a pretext for launching wars on the citizenry of these countries.

    The loathing of liberals for the Orange One, which they petulantly cling to despite his ouster, is tied to the fact that he made a mockery of the idea that liberals represent the lesser of two evils. While indubitably crass and bombastic at times, Trump had the temerity to take a principled stand on a number of key issues, such as pursuing detente with Russia, questioning the need for NATO following the breakup of the USSR, tirelessly ridiculing the lies of the presstitutes, condemning critical race theory, and denouncing the catastrophic offshoring of jobs. Trump’s support for hydroxychloroquine, and his warnings that the lockdowns were destroying New York City, have likewise proved prophetic. Meanwhile, liberals haven’t taken a principled stand on anything in thirty years.

    Don’t misconstrue my intentions: I am not attempting to equate Trump supporters with the supporters of Allende. Undoubtedly, some of his supporters hold certain reactionary beliefs. Yet unlike liberals, whose solution for every domestic problem is to carry out more witch hunts and outsource more jobs, millions of Trump voters have legitimate grievances, as their lives have been upended by deindustrialization and offshoring, the lockdown, the opioid epidemic, inadequate health care, and the systematic dismantling of public education.

    Liberal complicity in sustaining our unconscionable for-profit health care system, as evidenced by their enthusiastic support for Obamacare, has resulted in a demise of medical scientific integrity. Vioxx, the opioid epidemic, the psychotropic drug epidemic, and the anthrax vaccine constitute four of the most catastrophic drug regulatory failures in the history of medicine. The problem is that for the pharmaceutical industry, these aren’t failures at all, but successes, as these drugs have yielded staggering profits. The greatest danger posed by privatized health care is that medicines and procedures which represent the greatest threat to patient health are often extremely lucrative. This medical profiteering is so rampant that it is instigating a weaponization of health care and a restoration of Nazi bioethics, where informed consent and respect for patient dignity are completely jettisoned. Should Covid vaccines become mandatory – and keep in mind that drug companies are shielded from liability in the US should their vaccines cause harm – this would constitute an unequivocal violation of the Nuremberg Code. (A code, incidentally, written by white guys, hence ripe for burning). The SS physician credo, that any medical atrocity is justified as long as it is done “for the greater good,” is thriving under the lockdown.

    A considerable amount of evidence exists that effective and inexpensive Covid treatment options involving hydroxychloroquine, budesonide, and ivermectin were suppressed (see here, here, here, here and here), which could have negated the need for lockdowns altogether and saved many thousands of lives. Granted, these drugs would have torpedoed the pharmaceutical industry’s desire to profit off of the crisis with Remdesivir and mRNA vaccines, the latter of particularly dubious safety and efficacy. (The authorities have explicitly stated that the vaccines, which are experimental and have only been granted an Emergency Use Authorization, will not end social distancing and the mandatory wearing of masks). We have been told that half a million Americans have died from Covid, but how many of these patients were under the age of 70 and had no significant comorbidities?  PCR tests have churned out vast numbers of false positives which has also helped maintain the hysteria and relentless fearmongering, while the notion of asymptomatic spread remains mired in conjecture. According to Reuters, the US lost over 20 million jobs in April of 2020 alone. Nevertheless, the lockdown did what it was designed to do: further erode civil liberties, while exacerbating atomization and economic inequality.

    It is important to note that powerful tycoons that are not ensconced in the medical industrial complex, such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, have profited off of the pandemic, adding even more wealth to their already bloated fortunes. Consequently, lockdown profiteering is not confined to the robber barons within the health care oligarchy.

    Commenting on the draconian lockdown measures, Daniel Jeanmonod, MD, writes in “Lockdowns are a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:”

    The following two examples confirm these results: a country with low lockdown stringency like Sweden has at the moment the same fatality rate per million inhabitants as France, but lower than Spain, Italy and UK, where severe lockdown measures were applied.

    In addition, Sweden has had for the second wave a much smaller excess mortality than France, Italy or Spain, an observation which allows one to suspect that lockdown measures are delaying the establishment of herd immunity. This is not desirable, as the time during which the old, sick and frail can be exposed to the virus gets longer.

    In “The Covid Pandemic Is the Result of Public Health Authorities Blocking Effective Treatment,” Paul Craig Roberts questions the motives behind the lockdown:

    Why are authorities enforcing ineffective measures while ignoring proven successful measures that greatly reduce the Covid threat and perhaps eliminate it altogether? Is it because the proven measures are inexpensive and offer no opportunity for large profits from vaccines?  Is it because the ‘Covid pandemic’ is useful for mandating control measures that curtail civil liberties?  Is it because the lockdowns decimate family businesses and enable further economic concentration?  The answer is ‘yes’ to all three questions.

    Dr. Simone Gold, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors (and recently arrested to the delight of MedPage), has reiterated these concerns, tweeting on February 3rd:

    What do lockdowns, masks, and panic all have in common?
    Their positive impact on hospitalization rates is ZERO.
    But their negative impact on life and liberty is severe and totally unnecessary.
    The science doesn’t lie. The ‘scientists’ do.

    Yet liberals continue to support the lockdowns, and in Germany Antifa have marched against their countrymen who have protested against the coercive measures, equating them with “the far right.” The degree to which Western societies have been tribalized by identity politics has made it very easy for the elites to impose what is essentially a collective house arrest on the entire Western world.

    Democracy fell into grave jeopardy when liberals abandoned liberty of thought in favor of genuflecting at the altar of the presstitute priesthood. Indeed, when The New York Times tells liberals to jump they jump, when The New York Times tells liberals to be indifferent they are indifferent, when The New York Times tells liberals to be outraged they are outraged, and when “The Newspaper of Record” tells liberals to be ecstatic they are ecstatic. Can a democracy survive if a vast swath of its inhabitants can no longer differentiate between right and left, journalism and propaganda, psychological operations and intellectual analysis, even day and night? No less worrisome, the majority of American doctors are blindly accepting whatever they are told by the mullahs of FDA, CDC, NIH, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. This is the inevitable result of physicians becoming increasingly specialized while often possessing the humanities education of a junior high school student. In many ways, we have become a nation of Adolf Eichmanns and Albert Speers.

    Those who stray from ideological “norms,” regardless of whether it be the lockdown or identity politics, are increasingly portrayed as either unhinged or guilty of incitement, and this language has become particularly vitriolic following “the riot” on January 6th. As Dmitry Babich pointed out on the January 11th Russia Today Cross Talk episode, the precise details of what transpired during the “storming of the United States Capitol” (to quote Wikipedia) are not of paramount importance. What matters is that the incident is being exploited by the establishment as a neoliberal Reichstag fire.

    When identity politics youth brigades were assaulting people and inflicting billions of dollars in property damage over a period of many months, in an orgy of violence that was clearly designed to pressure the Trump administration to resign, the media applauded enthusiastically, even referring to the rioters as “peaceful demonstrators.” Calls for revenge against Trump administration officials are likewise unprecedented. As the Democratic Party has thrown away the rule book and turned the country into a banana republic, what is to prevent leaders in the Christian Right from meeting with some like-minded generals and doing the same? The peculiar events of January 6th conveniently scuttled an ongoing congressional investigation into serious allegations of voter fraud, and succeeded in transforming the anti-constitutionalists into the constitutionalists in the minds of millions of people, both at home and around the world.

    Those who once sang “Kumbaya My Lord” and “We Shall Overcome” are now calling for dissenting voices to be silenced, either through deplatforming on social media, placing dissidents on a blacklist, or with the iron heel. Writing for The Atlantic, Graeme Wood, in addressing the problem of Americans who object to the dissolution of their national identity, prefers a more refined approach to CIA hit squads: “The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.” Having burned their own books, and sworn allegiance to the god of unreason, neoliberals have no other option than to relinquish ties to this death cult or pick up the truncheon of authoritarianism.

    The mindless faux-left support for the most barbaric foreign policies could only lead to their support for lawlessness, violence, and barbarism at home. Indeed, those who kill and torture abroad, if not held accountable, will inevitably seek to do so domestically. This fine line is embodied by the story of Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was brutally tortured by US-backed Guatemalan security forces in 1989, and who recently passed away, another soul lost to the cancer wards. That this totalitarianization is being supported in the name of protecting the country from imaginary neo-Nazis signifies the complete moral and intellectual collapse of the liberal class, a pitiable gaggle that will support any domestic policy, provided it is officially carried out in the name of fighting intolerance and bigotry. Such a tactic was glaringly on display when Biden, in condemning violence against women a couple of years ago, remarked that “This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change.” Translation: let’s burn the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the name of fighting racism and sexism.

    What are we to make of this strange country where lawyers are indifferent to the rule of law, doctors are contemptuous of informed consent, journalists regurgitate whatever they are told by establishment spokespersons, and leftists speak of the working class as “deplorables?” As conservatives typically associate privatization with democratization, and nationalization with tyranny, there are no longer any significant firewalls in place to protect the people from despotism. Moreover, due to multiculturalism’s antipathy to all things white and Western, the WASP right in turn has rejected all things foreign, even as this leads them to untenable and patently erroneous conclusions, such as the idea that Americans have the best health care system in the world, a canard parroted ad nauseam in online medical blogs.

    The multicultural society is an anarchic and atomized zone where solidarity, reason, morality, empathy, and any sense of a collective memory cease to exist. Unsurprisingly, this has turned workers into nothing more than plastic cutlery, to be used once and then discarded. Civilization is in grave danger due to the rise of the woke book burners who have declared classics of Western Civilization to be the quintessence of “white supremacy.” Thanks to their implementation of the anti-humanities, the overwhelming majority of New York City public high school graduates have never even heard of Ernest Hemingway, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, John Hersey, Theodore Dreiser, Norman Thomas, Carl Sandburg, John Dos Passos, Dalton Trumbo, Gore Vidal, Clarence Darrow and William Kunstler. (I could go on for an entire page, at least). For all their incessant whining about racism, American liberals, who enjoy total ideological hegemony over most urban public schools, look at children of color as less than animals, and take better care of their poodles and dachshunds. Inculcated with the song of anti-whiteness, the post-American, simultaneously ghettoized prisoner and settler, unleashes its rage on America, but in so doing, puts on the shackles of the oligarchy.

    The messianic crusade to eradicate whiteness is destabilizing the country and fomenting an inverted Manifest Destiny. Writing in “Whiteness Is a Pandemic,” Damon Young posits that “Whiteness is a public health crisis.” Continuing, he informs us that “White supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect.” (Note how the author uses “whiteness” and “white supremacy” interchangeably). Indeed, this article epitomizes the pathological, anti-Western, and deeply divisive and sectarian dogma being pushed on impressionable young people, both by the media and by the multicultural curriculum.

    The Taliban recently came for Dr. Seuss, who we are now told is “offensive.” Teachers that challenge these pieties and attempt to introduce children of color and immigrant youth to the dreaded “dead white men” incur the wrath of the anti-literacy overseers, and if they continue to flout neoliberal pathologies, invariably face termination. Perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that instead of “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” the oligarchy has been kind enough to give us a snappy slogan for the counter-revolution: “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Just bear in mind that the anti-white jihadi isn’t interested in sending the aristocracy to the guillotine but the working class itself.

    Historically significant black writers and orators such as Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson, all of whom were unwavering in their support for integration, are dismissed as Uncle Toms and Oreos (black on the outside, white on the inside). To quote Captain Beatty, the anti-intellectual pyromaniac of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: “If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.”

    As transpires in Orwell’s 1984, the burning of the humanities has turned much of the population into automatons, who are not only illiterate, but who are also stripped of any sense of a cultural identity. Unlike many countries in the global south that have a history of weak democratic institutions, the oligarchy understands that in order to destroy democracy at home they have to sever the link between the American people and their past. Hence, if one were to show a World War II film such as Au Revoir les Enfants to a group of teenagers in an identity politics madrassa, it would be incomprehensible to them, as they aren’t taught anything about fascism, and they wouldn’t understand why on earth white people would be hunting down and murdering other white people. In many ways, both our civilization and our democracy were lost in the classroom.

    Liberal cultists (who are, in fact, doubly enslaved, both to the cult of identity politics and to the lockdown cult), rejoice in the dismantling of the nation-state which has ensued following offshoring, unrestricted immigration, and the rise of the multicultural curriculum and identity studies. What they fail to acknowledge are the devastating consequences, as these policies are inextricably linked with the annihilation of the middle class, the public schools, checks and balances, and any semblance of national cohesion. One could make the argument that in this post-nation-state neo-feudal America, the plutocracy has ceased to be a capitalist class in the Marxist sense and taken on the characteristics of a new baronage. Irregardless of whether the establishment’s endgame is tyranny under identity politics or tyranny under the Christian Right, once freedom of speech lies gelid and lifeless on the bloodstained ground it will be lost forever.

    There is a chilling passage in John Hersey’s epistolary novel The Conspiracy, which opens a window into life in imperial Rome under Nero, where Tigellinus sends a confidential letter to Faenus Rufus, both of whom are co-commanders of the Praetorian Guard. Addressing his fellow totalitarian, he writes, “We believe we are now on the threshold of uncovering certain crimes of opinion, the punishment of which, I am confident, will provide ample propitiation.”

    Aren’t Simone Gold and Julian Assange being prosecuted for “crimes of opinion?” The cruel treatment meted out to Julian serves as a particularly harrowing warning regarding the ongoing implosion of democracy in the West. What a pity that the righteous campaigners who once fought so valiantly for the New Deal and the civil rights movement now look upon those very ideals with sneering, ridicule, and contempt.

    David Penner has taught English and ESL within the City University of New York and at Fordham. His articles on politics and health care have appeared in CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Dr. Linda and KevinMD; while his poetry has been published with Dissident Voice. Also a photographer, he is the author of three books: Faces of Manhattan Island, Faces of The New Economy, and Manhattan Pairs.
    He can be reached at: 321davidadam@gmail. Read other articles by David.

    This article was posted on Sunday, April 11th, 2021 at 11:54pm and is filed under Authoritarianism, Barbarism, Bill Clinton, Civil Liberties, COVID-19, Crimes against Humanity, Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump, Fearmongering, Health/Medical, Identity Politics, Immigration, Joe Biden, Liberalism, Lockdown, Media, Multiculturalism, Neoliberalism, Opinion, Racism, The “Left”, Vaccines, War Crimes.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Human Rights for Children: Saving Children from Covid Measures Abuses  

    Open Letter to Dr. Nils Melzer, Swiss Human Rights Chair at the Geneva Academy

    Background

    The Geneva Academy of international Humanitarian Law and Human Rights is a postgraduate joint center located in Geneva, Switzerland. The faculty includes professors from both founding institutions and guest professors from major universities.  The Geneva Academy is affiliated with the University of Geneva.

    Dr. Nils Melzer has been the Swiss Human Rights Chair (HR Chair) at the Geneva Academy since March 2016. As HR Chair he develops and promotes the Geneva Academy expertise in HR via policy work, cutting-edge research, expert meetings, the development of partnerships and teaching. Since November 2016, Nils Melzer has also been the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.

    *****

    Dear Dr. Melzer,

    As UN special Rapporteur on Torture, your mandate comprises three main activities:

    1) transmitting urgent appeals to States with regard to individuals reported to be at risk of torture, as well as communications on past alleged cases of torture;
    2) undertaking fact-finding country visits; and,
    3) submitting annual reports on activities, the mandate and methods of work to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

    See a full description of mandate here.

    Dr. Melzer, your first mandate as Special Rapporteur on Torture is appealing urgently on States and Nations with regard to individuals that are at risk of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. This is the case with children, being forced to wearing masks, including in class, physical distancing, home schooling, out of touch with their friends and colleagues, but forced to be repeatedly covid tested in schools with the hurtful RT-PCT test (RT-PCT = reverse transcription of the polymerase chain reaction). A case in point – though not exclusive – is Switzerland, where cantonal authorities are compelling schools to periodically test children from as young as Kindergarten to pre-college level.

    Children’s mask wearing (as well as for senior adults) causes chronic headaches and fatigue because blood and brain receive insufficient oxygen which may lead to lasting damage, including memory loss. Children suffer psychological traumas. Depression and suicide rates increase exponentially.

    At the same time, children are increasingly being coerced via teachers and community authorities to be vaccinated against Covid-19, even though the mRNA-type “vaccines” almost the only so-called vaccines available in Europe and the US, are not officially considered as “vaccines” by CDC, but “experimental gene therapies”; i.e., primarily the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnsons and Johnson and a number of other GAVI-supported COVAX injections, or so-called vaccines.

    These so-called vaccines – or rather gene-therapy experimental inoculations – are known to be dangerous and bear special long-term risks for children.

    Dr. Melzer, this is an Urgent Appeal – to save Human Rights for children around the world from cruel and inhuman covid measures applied to them, including to adolescents and young adults – measures that have nothing but absolutely nothing to do with health protection but everything with oppression towards long-term slavery, and, yes, a systematic and massive-style depopulation.

    You recently said correctly and wisely “Sadly, today, torture remains a very real part of situations of conflict and violence”. What many of the 193 UN member governments are forcing their children to go through is a form of torture, especially considering their potential – and likely long-term effects. (See again the report of Doctors for Covid Ethics here.)

    You added that you won’t be able to “save the world single-handedly as a Special Rapporteur, …..  that there are hundreds of stakeholders – organizations, NGO’s, UN agencies and individual experts – who have been working on torture issues for decades. [However], a Special Rapporteur’s independence means I can pick up issues that have remained under the radar of the international community, bring them to the table and try to drive cooperation.”

    Dr. Melzer, what I described before as cruel and inhuman acts against children, akin to torture, is one of those issues you mentioned. Therefore, my quest today, my Appeal to you as Human Rights Representative, is to please pick up the issue of covid-based Human Rights abuses on the world population, but particularly on children.

    What the absurd covid measures do to the world is a crime, but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole as children are our societies’ future. And worse of all, these measures have nothing to do with health protection – but absolutely nothing. They are sheer tyranny to control.

    Children behind masks, social distancing, locked down, remote schooling, deprived from meeting, talking and playing with their peers, friends — instead scaring them into losing their personalities, their self-assurance and self-esteem — results not only in a physical health problem, but also a psychological health issue which, over time, has untold, uncountable collateral damage, including total submissiveness for today’s children.

    Our children are vulnerable – they are our future.

    They need their Human Rights defended.

    Dear Dr. Melzer,  please speak up for them at the UN, at UNICEF, in front of the 193 UN member governments, which follow all more or less the same insane covid narrative, the same covid Human Rights abuse, and especially the same Human Rights abuse on children.

    Thank you.

    Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Read other articles by Peter.

    This article was posted on Saturday, April 10th, 2021 at 12:27am and is filed under Children’s Rights, Children/Youth, COVID-19, Health/Medical, Human Rights, Lockdown, Masks, Mental Health, Students, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Human Rights for Children: Saving Children from Covid Measures Abuses  

    Background

    The Geneva Academy of international Humanitarian Law and Human Rights is a postgraduate joint center located in Geneva, Switzerland. The faculty includes professors from both founding institutions and guest professors from major universities.  The Geneva Academy is affiliated with the University of Geneva.

    Dr. Nils Melzer has been the Swiss Human Rights Chair (HR Chair) at the Geneva Academy since March 2016. As HR Chair he develops and promotes the Geneva Academy expertise in HR via policy work, cutting-edge research, expert meetings, the development of partnerships and teaching. Since November 2016, Nils Melzer has also been the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.

    *****

    Dear Dr. Melzer,

    As UN special Rapporteur on Torture, your mandate comprises three main activities:

    1) transmitting urgent appeals to States with regard to individuals reported to be at risk of torture, as well as communications on past alleged cases of torture;
    2) undertaking fact-finding country visits; and,
    3) submitting annual reports on activities, the mandate and methods of work to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

    See a full description of mandate here.

    Dr. Melzer, your first mandate as Special Rapporteur on Torture is appealing urgently on States and Nations with regard to individuals that are at risk of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. This is the case with children, being forced to wearing masks, including in class, physical distancing, home schooling, out of touch with their friends and colleagues, but forced to be repeatedly covid tested in schools with the hurtful RT-PCT test (RT-PCT = reverse transcription of the polymerase chain reaction). A case in point – though not exclusive – is Switzerland, where cantonal authorities are compelling schools to periodically test children from as young as Kindergarten to pre-college level.

    Children’s mask wearing (as well as for senior adults) causes chronic headaches and fatigue because blood and brain receive insufficient oxygen which may lead to lasting damage, including memory loss. Children suffer psychological traumas. Depression and suicide rates increase exponentially.

    At the same time, children are increasingly being coerced via teachers and community authorities to be vaccinated against Covid-19, even though the mRNA-type “vaccines” almost the only so-called vaccines available in Europe and the US, are not officially considered as “vaccines” by CDC, but “experimental gene therapies”; i.e., primarily the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnsons and Johnson and a number of other GAVI-supported COVAX injections, or so-called vaccines.

    These so-called vaccines – or rather gene-therapy experimental inoculations – are known to be dangerous and bear special long-term risks for children.1

    Dr. Melzer, this is an Urgent Appeal – to save Human Rights for children around the world from cruel and inhuman covid measures applied to them, including to adolescents and young adults – measures that have nothing but absolutely nothing to do with health protection but everything with oppression towards long-term slavery, and, yes, a systematic and massive-style depopulation.

    You recently said correctly and wisely “Sadly, today, torture remains a very real part of situations of conflict and violence”. What many of the 193 UN member governments are forcing their children to go through is a form of torture, especially considering their potential – and likely long-term effects. (See again the report of Doctors for Covid Ethics here.)

    You added that you won’t be able to “save the world single-handedly as a Special Rapporteur, …..  that there are hundreds of stakeholders – organizations, NGO’s, UN agencies and individual experts – who have been working on torture issues for decades. [However], a Special Rapporteur’s independence means I can pick up issues that have remained under the radar of the international community, bring them to the table and try to drive cooperation.”

    Dr. Melzer, what I described before as cruel and inhuman acts against children, akin to torture, is one of those issues you mentioned. Therefore, my quest today, my Appeal to you as Human Rights Representative, is to please pick up the issue of covid-based Human Rights abuses on the world population, but particularly on children.

    What the absurd covid measures do to the world is a crime, but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole as children are our societies’ future. And worse of all, these measures have nothing to do with health protection – but absolutely nothing. They are sheer tyranny to control.

    Children behind masks, social distancing, locked down, remote schooling, deprived from meeting, talking and playing with their peers, friends — instead scaring them into losing their personalities, their self-assurance and self-esteem — results not only in a physical health problem, but also a psychological health issue which, over time, has untold, uncountable collateral damage, including total submissiveness for today’s children.

    Our children are vulnerable – they are our future.

    They need their Human Rights defended.

    Dear Dr. Melzer,  please speak up for them at the UN, at UNICEF, in front of the 193 UN member governments, which follow all more or less the same insane covid narrative, the same covid Human Rights abuse, and especially the same Human Rights abuse on children.

    Thank you.

    1. See: Doctors for Covid Ethics Rebuttal Letter to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
    The post Human Rights for Children: Saving Children from Covid Measures Abuses   first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The US Indo-Pacific Strategy and Its Delusions

    Newsclick’s Prabir Purkayastha talks about the recent Anchorage meeting between Chinese and US officials, the larger dimensions of the Indo-Pacific strategy of the United States, and how all of this ties into the politics around vaccines that dominates global diplomacy today.

    The post The US Indo-Pacific Strategy and Its Delusions first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Push for COVID Immunity Passports

    Sensible, ideal, wonderful – if you happen to be in the European Union. This is the air of confidence surrounding the March 17 proposal for a digital COVID immunity passport, or what is officially being called the Digital Green Certificate.

    The Digital Green Certificate is actually a bundle of three: vaccination certificates stating the brand of vaccine used, data and place of inoculation and number of doses administered; negative test certificates (either a rapid antigen test or a NAAT/RT-PCR test); and medical certificates for those who have recovered from COVID-19 in the last 180 days.

    The measure is discrimination made sound, preference made prominent. The essential requirement to obtain such a pass is evidence that you have been vaccinated by a jab with a vaccine approved by the European Medicines Agency. But the European Commission did append a qualification to this requirement. Member states could decide whether to accept vaccines that the EMA had yet to approve. Not in itself reassuring, given the varied approaches European states have taken to the international vaccine market.

    Such administrative and bureaucratic impositions are the stuff of nightmares for ethicists and philosophers. For those in economics, business and management, it is an eminently sensible idea that will enable people to move within Europe, preferably in time for summer.

    The director of Eagle Travel, David Reculez, put the case for the defence. “For us, the travel agencies, the new certificate is really a good hope because it will definitely help people to travel again.” People wanted to travel in a safe way without being hampered by “hard rules or quarantine.”

    Countries with tourist-heavy economies – Greece, Spain and Croatia, for instance – are enthused. On February 23, Greece’s Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis announced the use of vaccination passports. Agreements have been struck with Israel, Cyprus and Serbia to enable a generous flow of vaccinated residents this summer. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has had the ear of the EU President Ursula von der Leyen, pushing for a unified EU position on the matter, despite his country’s separate bilateral efforts.

    France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are, to various degrees, opposed and sceptical. France’s minister of state for tourism, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne thought “the idea of restricting movement to only people who are vaccinated” a “premature” debate given that only “4 to 5% of the European populace had been vaccinated.” The country’s minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune found it “shocking, while this vaccination campaign is still underway in Europe, that there would be more rights for some people than for others. This is not our conception of protection and access to vaccines.”

    A number of health practitioners and bioethicists hold similar concerns. Sarah Chan of the Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics in Edinburgh makes a convincing case for the prosecution. “I think vaccine passports have the potential to be unnecessarily divisive. It’s likely to lead to negative consequences, particularly in being unfair and creating inequalities.”

    In February, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that “there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination” including combating variants of SARS-CoV-2; the duration of protection following vaccination; the timing of booster doses and whether vaccination offered protection against asymptomatic infection.

    Prioritising vaccinations for travel “could result in inadequate supplies of vaccines for priority populations considered at high risk of severe COVID-19 disease.” To introduce “a requirement of vaccination as a condition for travel has the potential to hinder equitable global access to a limited vaccine supply and would be unlikely to maximize the benefits of vaccination for individual societies and overall global health.”

    We can already see the green pass concept deployed in Israel. The incentive to do so is clear. “With the green pass,” encourages the voiceover of an advertisement promoting the idea, “doors simply open in front of you … We’re returning to life.”

    The country has been using an app to show who has been fully inoculated against coronavirus or those who have recovered from infection. For both vaccinated individuals and recovered coronavirus patients, the pass is valid till June 6, 2021. It acts as a form of exclusive access, a mark of approval should you wish to go to concerts, theatres, gyms and hotels. Hoteliers such as Armin Grunewald, whose establishment can be found near the Sea of Galilee, told the Guardian that, “People were looking happy and liberated”.

    Cryptographers and students of information security were less merry. The Ramzor app has been blighted by problems since it was launched. In the view of computer scientist Orr Dunkelman, based at Haifa University, it unnecessarily reveals information such as the date a person recovered from COVID-19 or received a vaccine. It also employs an old encryption library susceptible to security breaches. Ran Bar Zik, software columnist for Haaretz, goes so far as to call it “a catastrophe in the making,” suggesting a paper vaccination form instead.

    In February, the Knesset approved a law allowing the Health Ministry to provide the name, national identification number, phone number and address of any citizen who can be vaccinated but has not received a jab, to a range of authorities. These include the Education Ministry and the Welfare Ministry. At the time of its passage, Tamar Zandberg of the Meretz party suggested that, “Disclosing such information is a slippery slope, and damage’s people’s privacy.”

    An uncomfortable spectre is unfolding. While paperwork certifying good health has been a feature of transport and travel – the WHO’s Yellow card showing certified vaccinations for such infections as cholera, plague and typhoid being a most known example – COVID-19 green certificates are another matter. Epidemiologist Christopher Dye and sociologist Melinda C. Mills, writing in Science, remark that, “The greatest risk is that people for whom vaccination is unacceptable, untested, inaccessible, or impossible are denied access to goods and services.” They consider the various instances where inequity can manifest: ethnic minorities reluctant to take the jab; a lack of data on vaccine efficacy for people at risk (pregnant women for instance); unreachable, undocumented migrants; the digital technological divide; and eligibility requirements.

    In a global sense, the unvaccinated in the COVID-19 age risk becoming the great modern unwashed, derided or ignored, socially and politically excluded. The effect is analogous to depriving people of passports, alienating them from citizenship citing biomedical grounds. Dye and Mills are optimists confident that such passports can “be guided by exemplary science, appropriate technologies, and fair use for all.” But as with previous categories of the invisible and the undocumented, verifiable vaccination passes loom as rigid hierarchies of compliance, surveillance and division.

    The post The Push for COVID Immunity Passports first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Push for COVID Immunity Passports

    Sensible, ideal, wonderful – if you happen to be in the European Union. This is the air of confidence surrounding the March 17 proposal for a digital COVID immunity passport, or what is officially being called the Digital Green Certificate.

    The Digital Green Certificate is actually a bundle of three: vaccination certificates stating the brand of vaccine used, data and place of inoculation and number of doses administered; negative test certificates (either a rapid antigen test or a NAAT/RT-PCR test); and medical certificates for those who have recovered from COVID-19 in the last 180 days.

    The measure is discrimination made sound, preference made prominent. The essential requirement to obtain such a pass is evidence that you have been vaccinated by a jab with a vaccine approved by the European Medicines Agency. But the European Commission did append a qualification to this requirement. Member states could decide whether to accept vaccines that the EMA had yet to approve. Not in itself reassuring, given the varied approaches European states have taken to the international vaccine market.

    Such administrative and bureaucratic impositions are the stuff of nightmares for ethicists and philosophers. For those in economics, business and management, it is an eminently sensible idea that will enable people to move within Europe, preferably in time for summer.

    The director of Eagle Travel, David Reculez, put the case for the defence. “For us, the travel agencies, the new certificate is really a good hope because it will definitely help people to travel again.” People wanted to travel in a safe way without being hampered by “hard rules or quarantine.”

    Countries with tourist-heavy economies – Greece, Spain and Croatia, for instance – are enthused. On February 23, Greece’s Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis announced the use of vaccination passports. Agreements have been struck with Israel, Cyprus and Serbia to enable a generous flow of vaccinated residents this summer. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has had the ear of the EU President Ursula von der Leyen, pushing for a unified EU position on the matter, despite his country’s separate bilateral efforts.

    France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are, to various degrees, opposed and sceptical. France’s minister of state for tourism, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne thought “the idea of restricting movement to only people who are vaccinated” a “premature” debate given that only “4 to 5% of the European populace had been vaccinated.” The country’s minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune found it “shocking, while this vaccination campaign is still underway in Europe, that there would be more rights for some people than for others. This is not our conception of protection and access to vaccines.”

    A number of health practitioners and bioethicists hold similar concerns. Sarah Chan of the Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics in Edinburgh makes a convincing case for the prosecution. “I think vaccine passports have the potential to be unnecessarily divisive. It’s likely to lead to negative consequences, particularly in being unfair and creating inequalities.”

    In February, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that “there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination” including combating variants of SARS-CoV-2; the duration of protection following vaccination; the timing of booster doses and whether vaccination offered protection against asymptomatic infection.

    Prioritising vaccinations for travel “could result in inadequate supplies of vaccines for priority populations considered at high risk of severe COVID-19 disease.” To introduce “a requirement of vaccination as a condition for travel has the potential to hinder equitable global access to a limited vaccine supply and would be unlikely to maximize the benefits of vaccination for individual societies and overall global health.”

    We can already see the green pass concept deployed in Israel. The incentive to do so is clear. “With the green pass,” encourages the voiceover of an advertisement promoting the idea, “doors simply open in front of you … We’re returning to life.”

    The country has been using an app to show who has been fully inoculated against coronavirus or those who have recovered from infection. For both vaccinated individuals and recovered coronavirus patients, the pass is valid till June 6, 2021. It acts as a form of exclusive access, a mark of approval should you wish to go to concerts, theatres, gyms and hotels. Hoteliers such as Armin Grunewald, whose establishment can be found near the Sea of Galilee, told the Guardian that, “People were looking happy and liberated”.

    Cryptographers and students of information security were less merry. The Ramzor app has been blighted by problems since it was launched. In the view of computer scientist Orr Dunkelman, based at Haifa University, it unnecessarily reveals information such as the date a person recovered from COVID-19 or received a vaccine. It also employs an old encryption library susceptible to security breaches. Ran Bar Zik, software columnist for Haaretz, goes so far as to call it “a catastrophe in the making,” suggesting a paper vaccination form instead.

    In February, the Knesset approved a law allowing the Health Ministry to provide the name, national identification number, phone number and address of any citizen who can be vaccinated but has not received a jab, to a range of authorities. These include the Education Ministry and the Welfare Ministry. At the time of its passage, Tamar Zandberg of the Meretz party suggested that, “Disclosing such information is a slippery slope, and damage’s people’s privacy.”

    An uncomfortable spectre is unfolding. While paperwork certifying good health has been a feature of transport and travel – the WHO’s Yellow card showing certified vaccinations for such infections as cholera, plague and typhoid being a most known example – COVID-19 green certificates are another matter. Epidemiologist Christopher Dye and sociologist Melinda C. Mills, writing in Science, remark that, “The greatest risk is that people for whom vaccination is unacceptable, untested, inaccessible, or impossible are denied access to goods and services.” They consider the various instances where inequity can manifest: ethnic minorities reluctant to take the jab; a lack of data on vaccine efficacy for people at risk (pregnant women for instance); unreachable, undocumented migrants; the digital technological divide; and eligibility requirements.

    In a global sense, the unvaccinated in the COVID-19 age risk becoming the great modern unwashed, derided or ignored, socially and politically excluded. The effect is analogous to depriving people of passports, alienating them from citizenship citing biomedical grounds. Dye and Mills are optimists confident that such passports can “be guided by exemplary science, appropriate technologies, and fair use for all.” But as with previous categories of the invisible and the undocumented, verifiable vaccination passes loom as rigid hierarchies of compliance, surveillance and division.

    This article was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2021 at 7:38pm and is filed under COVID-19, EU, Health/Medical, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Push for COVID Immunity Passports

    Sensible, ideal, wonderful – if you happen to be in the European Union. This is the air of confidence surrounding the March 17 proposal for a digital COVID immunity passport, or what is officially being called the Digital Green Certificate.

    The Digital Green Certificate is actually a bundle of three: vaccination certificates stating the brand of vaccine used, data and place of inoculation and number of doses administered; negative test certificates (either a rapid antigen test or a NAAT/RT-PCR test); and medical certificates for those who have recovered from COVID-19 in the last 180 days.

    The measure is discrimination made sound, preference made prominent. The essential requirement to obtain such a pass is evidence that you have been vaccinated by a jab with a vaccine approved by the European Medicines Agency. But the European Commission did append a qualification to this requirement. Member states could decide whether to accept vaccines that the EMA had yet to approve. Not in itself reassuring, given the varied approaches European states have taken to the international vaccine market.

    Such administrative and bureaucratic impositions are the stuff of nightmares for ethicists and philosophers. For those in economics, business and management, it is an eminently sensible idea that will enable people to move within Europe, preferably in time for summer.

    The director of Eagle Travel, David Reculez, put the case for the defence. “For us, the travel agencies, the new certificate is really a good hope because it will definitely help people to travel again.” People wanted to travel in a safe way without being hampered by “hard rules or quarantine.”

    Countries with tourist-heavy economies – Greece, Spain and Croatia, for instance – are enthused. On February 23, Greece’s Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis announced the use of vaccination passports. Agreements have been struck with Israel, Cyprus and Serbia to enable a generous flow of vaccinated residents this summer. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has had the ear of the EU President Ursula von der Leyen, pushing for a unified EU position on the matter, despite his country’s separate bilateral efforts.

    France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are, to various degrees, opposed and sceptical. France’s minister of state for tourism, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne thought “the idea of restricting movement to only people who are vaccinated” a “premature” debate given that only “4 to 5% of the European populace had been vaccinated.” The country’s minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune found it “shocking, while this vaccination campaign is still underway in Europe, that there would be more rights for some people than for others. This is not our conception of protection and access to vaccines.”

    A number of health practitioners and bioethicists hold similar concerns. Sarah Chan of the Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics in Edinburgh makes a convincing case for the prosecution. “I think vaccine passports have the potential to be unnecessarily divisive. It’s likely to lead to negative consequences, particularly in being unfair and creating inequalities.”

    In February, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that “there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination” including combating variants of SARS-CoV-2; the duration of protection following vaccination; the timing of booster doses and whether vaccination offered protection against asymptomatic infection.

    Prioritising vaccinations for travel “could result in inadequate supplies of vaccines for priority populations considered at high risk of severe COVID-19 disease.” To introduce “a requirement of vaccination as a condition for travel has the potential to hinder equitable global access to a limited vaccine supply and would be unlikely to maximize the benefits of vaccination for individual societies and overall global health.”

    We can already see the green pass concept deployed in Israel. The incentive to do so is clear. “With the green pass,” encourages the voiceover of an advertisement promoting the idea, “doors simply open in front of you … We’re returning to life.”

    The country has been using an app to show who has been fully inoculated against coronavirus or those who have recovered from infection. For both vaccinated individuals and recovered coronavirus patients, the pass is valid till June 6, 2021. It acts as a form of exclusive access, a mark of approval should you wish to go to concerts, theatres, gyms and hotels. Hoteliers such as Armin Grunewald, whose establishment can be found near the Sea of Galilee, told the Guardian that, “People were looking happy and liberated”.

    Cryptographers and students of information security were less merry. The Ramzor app has been blighted by problems since it was launched. In the view of computer scientist Orr Dunkelman, based at Haifa University, it unnecessarily reveals information such as the date a person recovered from COVID-19 or received a vaccine. It also employs an old encryption library susceptible to security breaches. Ran Bar Zik, software columnist for Haaretz, goes so far as to call it “a catastrophe in the making,” suggesting a paper vaccination form instead.

    In February, the Knesset approved a law allowing the Health Ministry to provide the name, national identification number, phone number and address of any citizen who can be vaccinated but has not received a jab, to a range of authorities. These include the Education Ministry and the Welfare Ministry. At the time of its passage, Tamar Zandberg of the Meretz party suggested that, “Disclosing such information is a slippery slope, and damage’s people’s privacy.”

    An uncomfortable spectre is unfolding. While paperwork certifying good health has been a feature of transport and travel – the WHO’s Yellow card showing certified vaccinations for such infections as cholera, plague and typhoid being a most known example – COVID-19 green certificates are another matter. Epidemiologist Christopher Dye and sociologist Melinda C. Mills, writing in Science, remark that, “The greatest risk is that people for whom vaccination is unacceptable, untested, inaccessible, or impossible are denied access to goods and services.” They consider the various instances where inequity can manifest: ethnic minorities reluctant to take the jab; a lack of data on vaccine efficacy for people at risk (pregnant women for instance); unreachable, undocumented migrants; the digital technological divide; and eligibility requirements.

    In a global sense, the unvaccinated in the COVID-19 age risk becoming the great modern unwashed, derided or ignored, socially and politically excluded. The effect is analogous to depriving people of passports, alienating them from citizenship citing biomedical grounds. Dye and Mills are optimists confident that such passports can “be guided by exemplary science, appropriate technologies, and fair use for all.” But as with previous categories of the invisible and the undocumented, verifiable vaccination passes loom as rigid hierarchies of compliance, surveillance and division.

    This article was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2021 at 7:38pm and is filed under COVID-19, EU, Health/Medical, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China and Russia Vaccines Defeat Cold War Virus

    A friend in need is a friend indeed, and several countries which may have previously sniffed at vaccines produced by China and Russia are finding truth in the old adage.

    China is ramping up supplies of its CoronaVac to Brazil and other Latin American countries where Covid-19 infections are threatening to overwhelm public health services. Brazil has become a new global hotspot for deadly variants of the coronavirus. With nearly 280,000 deaths, the most populous country in Latin America has the second-highest global toll after the United States (533,000).

    Meanwhile, several European nations are reportedly in discussions to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine after a breakthrough deal last week with Italy – the first member the European Union – to start local production of the Russian jab. Germany, France and Spain are among other EU states considering similar local manufacturing arrangements for Sputnik V.

    The European need is made all the more acute because of the slow rollout of approved vaccines and recently the pausing of the AstraZeneca jab by several nations owing to concerns about potentially fatal side-effects from blood-clotting.

    Here’s the thing. China’s and Russia’s vaccines have been shown to be effective against Covid-19 symptoms and safe. The jabs are easily mass produced at an affordable cost compared with Western counterparts, and both China and Russia have said they are willing to provide license agreements for local production which would expedite supply logistics.

    China has 17 other vaccines reportedly undergoing trial. So far, there appears to be no ill-effects from administering to humans.

    The global results speak for themselves. Scores of countries have taken orders for the Chinese and Russian shots. Beijing has donated vaccines to over 50 low-income nations.

    © Reuters / Agustin Marcarian

    How attitudes have changed. Back in December, a Bloomberg headline stated: “China’s struggling to get the world to trust its Covid vaccines”.

    Among those expressing disdain previously was the right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who said humans undergoing trials for the Chinese vaccine were “guinea pigs” inferring unsafe risks.

    Given the crisis that Brazil finds itself in with soaring Covid-19 infections, which critics put down to negligent federal government health policies, Bolsonaro and his cabinet have only been too glad to avail of millions of doses of vaccine from China. So much so that the Brazilian president has scrubbed the earlier antagonistic rhetoric towards Chinese telecoms giant Huawei which he had adopted in deference to Washington’s hostile China policy. Indeed, Huawei is now being considered by the Brazilian government for 5G modernization of its telecoms network. No doubt, a sign of gratitude that China has come to the Covid rescue.

    Similarly, Europe was rather sniffy in its attitude towards Russia’s Sputnik V. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council chief Charles Michel have insinuated that China and Russia are motivated by “propaganda objectives” above medical and public health interests.

    Sputnik V was the first government-registered vaccine anywhere in the world as of last August. Yet it is still awaiting formal approval by the European Medicines Agency, even though it has been proven in large-scale trials to be highly effective and safe to administer among all age groups.

    In any case, regardless of official approval in Brussels, several European countries have gone ahead with bilateral agreements to order Russian and Chinese vaccines. They include Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic as well as non-EU state Serbia and other Balkan nations.

    Due to its rapid and rigorous early management of the pandemic, through quarantine and contact tracing, China has succeeded in eradicating the disease. Life among its 1.4 billion population has returned to pre-pandemic normalcy. China’s death toll stands at around 4,600 – less than that of the United States or Europe by a factor of more than 100-fold.

    A man wearing a face mask following an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) uses his phone while walking near the Qianmen street ahead of Lunar New Year celebrations, in Beijing, China February 10, 2021 © Reuters / Carlos Garcia Rawlins

    Beijing says it wants to rebuild the global economy from renewed emphasis on trade, investment and cooperative partnerships as part of its Belt and Road Initiative of new silk routes. An essential part of realizing that vision requires defeating the Covid-19 pandemic collectively in every region of the world.

    China and Russia’s outlook contrasts with the “vaccine nationalism” of the United States and Europe which has seen these regions hoard millions of surplus or unused doses. Both China and Russia know that the only way for the planet to recover from this once-in-a-century pandemic is for all nations to unite in solidarity and to share scientific achievements. Public health before private profit is the watchword.

    In this situation, a Cold War mentality of viewing others as enemies is an odious obstacle to progress. It’s a vile, futile plaything of ideological elites. It is becoming clear that nations, media and politicians who are infected with such a political virus are an anachronism. Common human need is driving international relations of solidarity. Cynics in the West may begrudge China and Russia reaping the success of “vaccine diplomacy”. Others will view it more generously as those two nations showing responsible and ethical leadership to pull humanity out of a global crisis for the greater good.

    See related: “Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West?“

    The post China and Russia Vaccines Defeat Cold War Virus first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Perfidy Meets Putty: Congressional Democrats Betray Voters

    Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party’s presidential and Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats’ leaders are abandoning their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future.

    Here is the present scene. Leading Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have decided to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the giant health insurance companies like Aetna and United Healthcare to “cover recently laid-off workers and those who purchase their own coverage,” as the New York Times reported. There are no price restraints on the gouging insurance premiums or loophole-ridden policies. That is why giant corporate socialist insurers love the “American Rescue Plan,” which gives them socialist cash on the barrelhead. The law lets insurers decide how and whether they pay healthcare bills with co-pays, deductibles, or grant waivers. All these anti-consumer details are buried in the endless and inscrutable fine print.

    Whatever happened to the Democrats’ (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, etc.) demand for single-payer – everybody in, nobody out – with free choice of doctors and hospitals instead of the existing cruel, and profiteering industry for which enough is never enough? Senator Sanders often mentioned a Yale study, published on February 15, 2020, that found:

    Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to repeal the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than $450 billion annually….” (See the study: Improving the Prognosis of Health Care in the USA, February 15, 2020).

    Well, House Speaker Pelosi is discouraging House Democrats from supporting Representative Pramila Jayapal’s H.R. 1384, Medicare for All Act of 2019, the gold standard for single-payer. News reports indicate that Representative Jayapal (D-WA) and Representative. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) will reintroduce their Medicare for All bill next week. Speaker Pelosi is telling Democrats in the House to focus instead on the modest expansion of Obamacare with its corporate welfare, utter complexity and seriously inadequate coverage. Almost eighty million Americans are presently uninsured or underinsured – a level that will not be significantly reduced for deprived workers by tweaking Obamacare during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    A modified Obamacare, with no price ceilings, will hardly reduce the tens of thousands of American deaths every year because people cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time to prevent fatalities. The Yale study also found that: “ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo.” Tweaking Obamacare does little to stem the relentless surge in healthcare prices and profits in our country, which is unique for not placing billing ceilings on medical procedures and drugs. This “get whatever you can” behavior by the vendors is so uncontrolled that healthcare billing fraud and abuse is costing people one billion dollars A DAY! Malcolm Sparrow, who is an applied mathematician at Harvard, estimates medical billing fraud amounts to at least ten percent of all healthcare expenses each year.

    Obamacare does nothing to limit the perverse incentives of a fee-for-service system that includes unnecessary operations, over-diagnosis, and over-prescribing all of which increase the risks of preventable casualties. A Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine peer-reviewed study in 2016 estimates that close to 5000 lives are lost weekly due to such “preventable problems” just in hospitals (see: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S., May 3, 2016).

    It gets worse. Year after year, the corporate Democrats, along with the Republicans, are facilitating expanding corporate takeovers of Medicare and Medicaid. The giant and widening attack on Medicare is called “Medicare Advantage,” which more accurately should be called “Medicare [Dis]advantage.” Our corporatized government, under both Parties, has been allowing deceptive promotional seductions of elderly people to take Medicare [Dis]advantage – now fully 40% of all Medicare beneficiaries – which is just a corporate insurance plan with multiple undisclosed tripwires.

    Former President Trump worsened what he inherited from the Democrats in outsourcing Medicare. He launched something called “direct contracting” that, “could fully turn Medicare over to private health insurers” declared Diane Archer, former chair of Consumer Reports, in her article on March 8, 2021. Medicare Advantage premiums can be pricey. According to Kay Tillow, Executive Director of the Nurses Professional Organization, “The Medicare Advantage Plans are smiling all the way to the bank. In 2019 each Medicare Advantage beneficiary cost taxpayers $11,822 while those in original Medicare cost $10,813 each – that’s over $1,000 more and over 9% more per person for the for-profit insurers!”

    Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the corporate takeover of Medicare? Last year, many Democratic candidates pontificated about the need for single-payer health insurance, but now in Congress, we are scarcely hearing a peep about this vital human right. Their campaign rhetoric is just distant memory. Tragically, it is now harder than ever for the elderly to get out of Medicare [Dis]advantage and go back to traditional Medicare.

    Millions of elderly people are deceived by televised marketing lies and slick brochures.  The hapless Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should investigate and end the deceptions. Congressional investigations and hearings are long overdue. As the authoritative Dr. Fred Hyde says about the so-called Medicare Advantage: “It’s not what you pay, it’s what you get.” That is, the corporate health plan works until they get sick, until “they want their doctor and their hospital.” Dr. Hyde was referring to the narrow networks where these companies park their beneficiaries.

    More astonishing in this story of the rapacious corporate takeover of Medicare is that AARP promotes these flawed plans to their members, takes paid ads by big insurers in AARP publications, and derives income from this collaboration.

    Imagine, over 50,000 SEIU retirees are automatically placed by their unions in these Medicare [Dis]advantage traps without first being allowed to choose traditional Medicare.

    This whole sordid sabotage of the nineteen sixties Democrats’ dream, under President Lyndon Johnson, of taking the first step toward universal healthcare coverage for everyone, begs for more exposes. It begs for more clamor by the progressive Democrats in Congress who are strangely passive so far. I’m speaking of Representatives Jayapal, Raskin, Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and the receding “Squad,” as well as Senators Warren and Sanders. If we can’t expect these stalwarts to start the counterattack that will save lives, save trillions of dollars over the years, focus on prevention not just treatment, and diminish the anxiety, dread, and fear, that the citizens of Canada and other western nations do not experience because they are insured from birth on, who is left to defend the American people against the arrogant health insurance corporate barons?

    I’m sending this column to these self-styled progressive Democrats along with a two-page specific critique of corporate Medicare from the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) website. PNHP’s membership counts over 15,000 pro-single-payer physicians. In a comment on the PNHP site, Don McCanne, M.D., says, “Remember, the mission of private, for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers is to make money, whereas the mission of our traditional Medicare program is to provide health care. We are supporting a program that deferentially caters to the private insurers and their interests when we should be supporting a program that is designed to take care of patients. Those being deceived by the private Medicare Advantage marketing materials really do not realize the bad deal they may be getting until they face the private insurer barriers to needed care. Silver Sneakers won’t take care of that.” (See: https://pnhp.org/news/russell-mokhiber-explains-why-private-medicare-advantage-plans-are-a-bad-deal/)

    If you care about this issue, tell your Members of Congress it is time to pass Medicare for All represented by H.R. 1384.

    The post Perfidy Meets Putty: Congressional Democrats Betray Voters first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Perfidy Meets Putty: Congressional Democrats Betray Voters

    Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party’s presidential and Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats’ leaders are abandoning their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future.

    Here is the present scene. Leading Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have decided to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the giant health insurance companies like Aetna and United Healthcare to “cover recently laid-off workers and those who purchase their own coverage,” as the New York Times reported. There are no price restraints on the gouging insurance premiums or loophole-ridden policies. That is why giant corporate socialist insurers love the “American Rescue Plan,” which gives them socialist cash on the barrelhead. The law lets insurers decide how and whether they pay healthcare bills with co-pays, deductibles, or grant waivers. All these anti-consumer details are buried in the endless and inscrutable fine print.

    Whatever happened to the Democrats’ (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, etc.) demand for single-payer – everybody in, nobody out – with free choice of doctors and hospitals instead of the existing cruel, and profiteering industry for which enough is never enough? Senator Sanders often mentioned a Yale study, published on February 15, 2020, that found:

    Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to repeal the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than $450 billion annually….” (See the study: Improving the Prognosis of Health Care in the USA, February 15, 2020).

    Well, House Speaker Pelosi is discouraging House Democrats from supporting Representative Pramila Jayapal’s H.R. 1384, Medicare for All Act of 2019, the gold standard for single-payer. News reports indicate that Representative Jayapal (D-WA) and Representative. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) will reintroduce their Medicare for All bill next week. Speaker Pelosi is telling Democrats in the House to focus instead on the modest expansion of Obamacare with its corporate welfare, utter complexity and seriously inadequate coverage. Almost eighty million Americans are presently uninsured or underinsured – a level that will not be significantly reduced for deprived workers by tweaking Obamacare during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    A modified Obamacare, with no price ceilings, will hardly reduce the tens of thousands of American deaths every year because people cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time to prevent fatalities. The Yale study also found that: “ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo.” Tweaking Obamacare does little to stem the relentless surge in healthcare prices and profits in our country, which is unique for not placing billing ceilings on medical procedures and drugs. This “get whatever you can” behavior by the vendors is so uncontrolled that healthcare billing fraud and abuse is costing people one billion dollars A DAY! Malcolm Sparrow, who is an applied mathematician at Harvard, estimates medical billing fraud amounts to at least ten percent of all healthcare expenses each year.

    Obamacare does nothing to limit the perverse incentives of a fee-for-service system that includes unnecessary operations, over-diagnosis, and over-prescribing all of which increase the risks of preventable casualties. A Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine peer-reviewed study in 2016 estimates that close to 5000 lives are lost weekly due to such “preventable problems” just in hospitals (see: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S., May 3, 2016).

    It gets worse. Year after year, the corporate Democrats, along with the Republicans, are facilitating expanding corporate takeovers of Medicare and Medicaid. The giant and widening attack on Medicare is called “Medicare Advantage,” which more accurately should be called “Medicare [Dis]advantage.” Our corporatized government, under both Parties, has been allowing deceptive promotional seductions of elderly people to take Medicare [Dis]advantage – now fully 40% of all Medicare beneficiaries – which is just a corporate insurance plan with multiple undisclosed tripwires.

    Former President Trump worsened what he inherited from the Democrats in outsourcing Medicare. He launched something called “direct contracting” that, “could fully turn Medicare over to private health insurers” declared Diane Archer, former chair of Consumer Reports, in her article on March 8, 2021. Medicare Advantage premiums can be pricey. According to Kay Tillow, Executive Director of the Nurses Professional Organization, “The Medicare Advantage Plans are smiling all the way to the bank. In 2019 each Medicare Advantage beneficiary cost taxpayers $11,822 while those in original Medicare cost $10,813 each – that’s over $1,000 more and over 9% more per person for the for-profit insurers!”

    Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the corporate takeover of Medicare? Last year, many Democratic candidates pontificated about the need for single-payer health insurance, but now in Congress, we are scarcely hearing a peep about this vital human right. Their campaign rhetoric is just distant memory. Tragically, it is now harder than ever for the elderly to get out of Medicare [Dis]advantage and go back to traditional Medicare.

    Millions of elderly people are deceived by televised marketing lies and slick brochures.  The hapless Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should investigate and end the deceptions. Congressional investigations and hearings are long overdue. As the authoritative Dr. Fred Hyde says about the so-called Medicare Advantage: “It’s not what you pay, it’s what you get.” That is, the corporate health plan works until they get sick, until “they want their doctor and their hospital.” Dr. Hyde was referring to the narrow networks where these companies park their beneficiaries.

    More astonishing in this story of the rapacious corporate takeover of Medicare is that AARP promotes these flawed plans to their members, takes paid ads by big insurers in AARP publications, and derives income from this collaboration.

    Imagine, over 50,000 SEIU retirees are automatically placed by their unions in these Medicare [Dis]advantage traps without first being allowed to choose traditional Medicare.

    This whole sordid sabotage of the nineteen sixties Democrats’ dream, under President Lyndon Johnson, of taking the first step toward universal healthcare coverage for everyone, begs for more exposes. It begs for more clamor by the progressive Democrats in Congress who are strangely passive so far. I’m speaking of Representatives Jayapal, Raskin, Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and the receding “Squad,” as well as Senators Warren and Sanders. If we can’t expect these stalwarts to start the counterattack that will save lives, save trillions of dollars over the years, focus on prevention not just treatment, and diminish the anxiety, dread, and fear, that the citizens of Canada and other western nations do not experience because they are insured from birth on, who is left to defend the American people against the arrogant health insurance corporate barons?

    I’m sending this column to these self-styled progressive Democrats along with a two-page specific critique of corporate Medicare from the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) website. PNHP’s membership counts over 15,000 pro-single-payer physicians. In a comment on the PNHP site, Don McCanne, M.D., says, “Remember, the mission of private, for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers is to make money, whereas the mission of our traditional Medicare program is to provide health care. We are supporting a program that deferentially caters to the private insurers and their interests when we should be supporting a program that is designed to take care of patients. Those being deceived by the private Medicare Advantage marketing materials really do not realize the bad deal they may be getting until they face the private insurer barriers to needed care. Silver Sneakers won’t take care of that.” (See: https://pnhp.org/news/russell-mokhiber-explains-why-private-medicare-advantage-plans-are-a-bad-deal/)

    If you care about this issue, tell your Members of Congress it is time to pass Medicare for All represented by H.R. 1384.

    This article was posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2021 at 7:18am and is filed under Democrats, Health/Medical.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Our Children are Crying

    Children are the world’s most valuable resource, and its best hope for the future.
    — John F. Kennedy (“Re: United States Committee for UNICEF, July 25, 1963.”) •

    What President Kennedy said over half a century ago, is more valid today than ever. This world needs a generation that can lead us out of the mess of dystopian values that was created predominantly by a western civilization of greed. The covid crisis, man-made, served the destruction of the world economy, as well as the ensuing World Economic Forum (WEF) designed “Great Reset”. If not stopped by our youth and coming generation, Covid cum Great Reset is about to give civilization the final blow.

    However, the dark forces of the Global Cabal, the Deep State, has plunged humanity, all 193 UN member states at once, into a global catastrophe of epic proportions. To break that globalist spell and to get out of the disaster still unfolding, the world needs thinking people, courageous people, informed and awakened people; people who are not afraid to swim against the stream, to stem the ever-increasing flow of misinformation and government and media lies. It takes educated people. It takes people who dare to resist.

    We are experiencing today just the contrary. The minute global elite that has taken a covid-stranglehold on the world’s 7.8 billion people, is doing everything to keep our children, the generations that are supposed to lead the world and humanity into a bright future, uneducated, scared, socially unfit to communicate, to take initiatives, to lead. Today’s youth is depressed by this constant fear propaganda, by the authorities (sic) rules of confinement, not being able to see their friends, to play with them, communicate with them, to do the healthiest social activities there are – exchanging ideas with peers, acquaintances and friends.

    One might think, there is a purpose behind it all. Could it be that this minute diabolical Globalist Cabal, those who are behind “The Great Reset”, co-authored by the WEF’s founder and CEO since the NGO’s creation in 1971, Klaus Schwab, could it be that these people have a plan, namely, to leave the world to a generation of uneducated, fear-indoctrinated people, who are used to and have been trained to follow orders, obey authorities and believe their very leaders’ (sic) lies and fall for their manipulations?

    It doesn’t take rocket science to believe that this could, indeed, be part of the Cabal’s demonic plan: breaking our society apart. Leaving behind no natural and new leaders to shape the world according to the real needs of the people, of our children not the imposed “needs” of an egocentric dictatorial cabal.

    *****

    In a new book (in German), “Generation Mask – Corona: Fear and Challenge” (Generation Maske – Corona: Angst und Herausforderung), the immunologist and toxicologist Professor Stefan W. Hockertz illustrates the plight of our children in this artificially induced age of corona. He asks in particular the question: what does this pandemic – better called plandemic – do with our children and adolescents?

    They are being flooded by autocratic measures they do not understand, like being forced to cover their faces by wearing masks in school, it’s like a forced-hiding of their identity from their friends and peers; being obliged to follow strict rules of social distancing – don’t get close to your friend, for the protection of your health, you need a distance to your friend, you can no longer freely communicate, and even if you could, due to the covered face, you could not read your friend’s facial expressions – which is key to any useful conversation, between kids as well as adults.

    Our kids in the west are being fear-induced and permanently indoctrinated by radio, TV-broadcasts, by permanently having to listen to “case” figures, infections, hospitalizations and death rates. Never mind, that most of these figures are false or distorted, made even more meaningless by absurdly obsessive testing-testing-testing.

    To crown it all off – newspapers and magazines depict pictures of coffins, not one or two, but hundreds, mass graves. They are utterly disturbing for adults, let alone for children. Fear is being weaponized and replaced by more fear, followed by depression, the perspective of no future,  and often and ever more frequently ending in suicide. Children’s, adolescents’ suicides are skyrocketing.

    Children who are the least vulnerable to the covid disease are forced into mass-testing, entire communities, by order of the mayor or the governor,  all the way to kindergarten. Testing with hurtful nasal swaps, as often as once or twice a month, and if positive – high percentages of these PCR tests, so far, the only covid test method available in the west – are false positives.

    The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is a technique used to “amplify” small segments of DNA. If over-amplified, the test results become positive, false positives. Maybe there is a purpose for over-amplifying – increasing the “case figures”, justifying more repression. If one kid tests positive in one of the periodic school tests, the entire class is ordered into quarantine, schooling from home, via computer, Skype, Zoom.

    That’s in the wealthy west. What about in the Global South, where not everybody can afford the necessary electronic equipment for “home-schooling”?  There will simply be no schooling, no learning, no interchange with classmates. No education.

    Testing is traumatic, especially for young children. It is hurtful and scares a kid on several levels, physically – a swap-stick deep into the upper nose, into the sinus cavities, is hurtful and can be even traumatic for children; and psychologically, what if I’m positive? “All my school mates and teachers have to stay home because of me”; or “I could infect my parents and frail grand-parents”. Guilt is everywhere. Guilt is like fear. It makes people pliable, manipulable – takes all initiative and enthusiasm for life away.

    For many kids this continuous repression makes them aggressive, frustrated and eventually so depressed, that many see no way out as they see no future in their lives. They are crying from despair, crying from fear, crying from isolation, crying for not being able to congregate with their friends, classmates and peers, and crying for seeing no way out.

    What is being done to our children is inhuman. The unilateral, viciously applied repressive measures of confinement, not being able to physically go to school and mix and exchange with friends is destructive. It may leave a deep dent in the social and psychological fabric and subsequent behavior of this future post-covid generation.

    No doubt, with a few exceptions, most of the 193 UN member countries applying the same oppressive rules, are aware of what they are doing. They know what and why they are doing what they are doing. They are complicity and in one way or another corrupted and perhaps coerced to adhere to the dictate from “above” or else, if they don’t follow the ruling narrative. Yet, with a minimum of integrity of our leaders, this would not be happening.

    First, they destroy the world’s economy in proportions never seen in recent history, then they destroy our future generations so there are no flag-bearers of a new generation into a bright future, once we, our children’s parents, have disappeared out. Our children are being primed as slaves for a minute diabolical elite to become trans-humans for the “Great Reset”.

    *****

    In his book, Dr. Stefan Hockhertz articulates these concerns and worries of the children, for parents, teachers and authorities to understand them. With the objective of stemming against this catastrophically oppressive trend, Dr. Hockhertz also uses the book to uncover lies and manipulations of governments and the media. He corrects false information and outright lies, but also invites to a dialogue for bringing about more objectivity and less dictatorial rules. After all, this is not a deadly pandemic, but has developed into a plandemic – where clearly a set of different, societally harmful objectives is being played out and relentlessly pursued.

    As an immunologist and toxicologist, Dr. Hockhertz also corrects the highly propagated alleged over-fatality and informs about the dangers of the “vaccines”, especially the RNA-based inoculations. He warns against these vaccines – which, in fact, are no vaccines, but rather gene-therapy injections. They have not been sufficiently researched and tested to be considered safe. To the contrary, primary inoculation results are disastrous in terms of serious side effects and death rates. And this only after less than six months into a worldwide vaccination campaign.

    See also Dr. J. Bart Classen’s January 18, 2021 peer-reviewed Research Paper “COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease”, written for the SCIVISION Publication “Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ISSN 2639-9458).

    The paper points to the potential medium- to long-term disabling neurological effects, especially degenerative diseases, that may be linked to RNA-based inoculations. This would be disastrous for children. Entire generations could be wiped out, so to speak.

    We must not allow this to happen. We must listen to our children’s grief. We must clear the path for a bright future for our children, for our successor generation and for the future of humanity.

    • First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

    • “Re: United States Committee for UNICEF July 25, 1963.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. White House Central Files. Chronological File. Series 1. President’s Outgoing Executive Correspondence, Box 11, Folder: “July 1963: 16-31,” JFKL.

    The post Our Children are Crying first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Our Children are Crying

    Children are the world’s most valuable resource, and its best hope for the future.
    — John F. Kennedy (“Re: United States Committee for UNICEF, July 25, 1963.”) •

    What President Kennedy said over half a century ago, is more valid today than ever. This world needs a generation that can lead us out of the mess of dystopian values that was created predominantly by a western civilization of greed. The covid crisis, man-made, served the destruction of the world economy, as well as the ensuing World Economic Forum (WEF) designed “Great Reset”. If not stopped by our youth and coming generation, Covid cum Great Reset is about to give civilization the final blow.

    However, the dark forces of the Global Cabal, the Deep State, has plunged humanity, all 193 UN member states at once, into a global catastrophe of epic proportions. To break that globalist spell and to get out of the disaster still unfolding, the world needs thinking people, courageous people, informed and awakened people; people who are not afraid to swim against the stream, to stem the ever-increasing flow of misinformation and government and media lies. It takes educated people. It takes people who dare to resist.

    We are experiencing today just the contrary. The minute global elite that has taken a covid-stranglehold on the world’s 7.8 billion people, is doing everything to keep our children, the generations that are supposed to lead the world and humanity into a bright future, uneducated, scared, socially unfit to communicate, to take initiatives, to lead. Today’s youth is depressed by this constant fear propaganda, by the authorities (sic) rules of confinement, not being able to see their friends, to play with them, communicate with them, to do the healthiest social activities there are – exchanging ideas with peers, acquaintances and friends.

    One might think, there is a purpose behind it all. Could it be that this minute diabolical Globalist Cabal, those who are behind “The Great Reset”, co-authored by the WEF’s founder and CEO since the NGO’s creation in 1971, Klaus Schwab, could it be that these people have a plan, namely, to leave the world to a generation of uneducated, fear-indoctrinated people, who are used to and have been trained to follow orders, obey authorities and believe their very leaders’ (sic) lies and fall for their manipulations?

    It doesn’t take rocket science to believe that this could, indeed, be part of the Cabal’s demonic plan: breaking our society apart. Leaving behind no natural and new leaders to shape the world according to the real needs of the people, of our children not the imposed “needs” of an egocentric dictatorial cabal.

    *****

    In a new book (in German), “Generation Mask – Corona: Fear and Challenge” (Generation Maske – Corona: Angst und Herausforderung), the immunologist and toxicologist Professor Stefan W. Hockertz illustrates the plight of our children in this artificially induced age of corona. He asks in particular the question: what does this pandemic – better called plandemic – do with our children and adolescents?

    They are being flooded by autocratic measures they do not understand, like being forced to cover their faces by wearing masks in school, it’s like a forced-hiding of their identity from their friends and peers; being obliged to follow strict rules of social distancing – don’t get close to your friend, for the protection of your health, you need a distance to your friend, you can no longer freely communicate, and even if you could, due to the covered face, you could not read your friend’s facial expressions – which is key to any useful conversation, between kids as well as adults.

    Our kids in the west are being fear-induced and permanently indoctrinated by radio, TV-broadcasts, by permanently having to listen to “case” figures, infections, hospitalizations and death rates. Never mind, that most of these figures are false or distorted, made even more meaningless by absurdly obsessive testing-testing-testing.

    To crown it all off – newspapers and magazines depict pictures of coffins, not one or two, but hundreds, mass graves. They are utterly disturbing for adults, let alone for children. Fear is being weaponized and replaced by more fear, followed by depression, the perspective of no future,  and often and ever more frequently ending in suicide. Children’s, adolescents’ suicides are skyrocketing.

    Children who are the least vulnerable to the covid disease are forced into mass-testing, entire communities, by order of the mayor or the governor,  all the way to kindergarten. Testing with hurtful nasal swaps, as often as once or twice a month, and if positive – high percentages of these PCR tests, so far, the only covid test method available in the west – are false positives.

    The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is a technique used to “amplify” small segments of DNA. If over-amplified, the test results become positive, false positives. Maybe there is a purpose for over-amplifying – increasing the “case figures”, justifying more repression. If one kid tests positive in one of the periodic school tests, the entire class is ordered into quarantine, schooling from home, via computer, Skype, Zoom.

    That’s in the wealthy west. What about in the Global South, where not everybody can afford the necessary electronic equipment for “home-schooling”?  There will simply be no schooling, no learning, no interchange with classmates. No education.

    Testing is traumatic, especially for young children. It is hurtful and scares a kid on several levels, physically – a swap-stick deep into the upper nose, into the sinus cavities, is hurtful and can be even traumatic for children; and psychologically, what if I’m positive? “All my school mates and teachers have to stay home because of me”; or “I could infect my parents and frail grand-parents”. Guilt is everywhere. Guilt is like fear. It makes people pliable, manipulable – takes all initiative and enthusiasm for life away.

    For many kids this continuous repression makes them aggressive, frustrated and eventually so depressed, that many see no way out as they see no future in their lives. They are crying from despair, crying from fear, crying from isolation, crying for not being able to congregate with their friends, classmates and peers, and crying for seeing no way out.

    What is being done to our children is inhuman. The unilateral, viciously applied repressive measures of confinement, not being able to physically go to school and mix and exchange with friends is destructive. It may leave a deep dent in the social and psychological fabric and subsequent behavior of this future post-covid generation.

    No doubt, with a few exceptions, most of the 193 UN member countries applying the same oppressive rules, are aware of what they are doing. They know what and why they are doing what they are doing. They are complicity and in one way or another corrupted and perhaps coerced to adhere to the dictate from “above” or else, if they don’t follow the ruling narrative. Yet, with a minimum of integrity of our leaders, this would not be happening.

    First, they destroy the world’s economy in proportions never seen in recent history, then they destroy our future generations so there are no flag-bearers of a new generation into a bright future, once we, our children’s parents, have disappeared out. Our children are being primed as slaves for a minute diabolical elite to become trans-humans for the “Great Reset”.

    *****

    In his book, Dr. Stefan Hockhertz articulates these concerns and worries of the children, for parents, teachers and authorities to understand them. With the objective of stemming against this catastrophically oppressive trend, Dr. Hockhertz also uses the book to uncover lies and manipulations of governments and the media. He corrects false information and outright lies, but also invites to a dialogue for bringing about more objectivity and less dictatorial rules. After all, this is not a deadly pandemic, but has developed into a plandemic – where clearly a set of different, societally harmful objectives is being played out and relentlessly pursued.

    As an immunologist and toxicologist, Dr. Hockhertz also corrects the highly propagated alleged over-fatality and informs about the dangers of the “vaccines”, especially the RNA-based inoculations. He warns against these vaccines – which, in fact, are no vaccines, but rather gene-therapy injections. They have not been sufficiently researched and tested to be considered safe. To the contrary, primary inoculation results are disastrous in terms of serious side effects and death rates. And this only after less than six months into a worldwide vaccination campaign.

    See also Dr. J. Bart Classen’s January 18, 2021 peer-reviewed Research Paper “COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease”, written for the SCIVISION Publication “Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ISSN 2639-9458).

    The paper points to the potential medium- to long-term disabling neurological effects, especially degenerative diseases, that may be linked to RNA-based inoculations. This would be disastrous for children. Entire generations could be wiped out, so to speak.

    We must not allow this to happen. We must listen to our children’s grief. We must clear the path for a bright future for our children, for our successor generation and for the future of humanity.

    • First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

    • “Re: United States Committee for UNICEF July 25, 1963.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. White House Central Files. Chronological File. Series 1. President’s Outgoing Executive Correspondence, Box 11, Folder: “July 1963: 16-31,” JFKL.

    Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Read other articles by Peter.

    This article was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2021 at 10:36am and is filed under Children/Youth, COVID-19, Fearmongering, Health/Medical, Lockdown, Media, Mental Health, Students, The “Great Reset”, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Switzerland Sliding into Dictatorship

    The first human right is the right to life.
    — Wang Yi, Minister of Foreign Affairs and State Counselor of the People’s Republic of China

    A secret paper from the Swiss Federal Council (Swiss Executive) was leaked to the Swiss Newspaper Der Blick divulging that the Federal Council is considering granting owners of restaurants, theatres, cinemas, and more, as well as private event organizers, the right to allow access to those people only, who have had their corona virus shots.

    In addition to the Blick, Swiss Radio and Television (SRG) repeated this news item in the morning of 23 February. SRG, the Swiss fear-inducing propaganda broadcasting system, also linked so-called “corona deniers” to anti-Semitism, referring to an article in Swissinfo, “Covid Pandemic Fans Flames of anti-Semitism in Switzerland.”  Anti-Semitism has often been used to intimidate free opinions that run counter the official narrative.

    If this dictatorial and discriminatory idea is passed as a law, Switzerland would be one of the first countries to grant special privileges to those who have accepted being vaccinated against a virus that DOES NOT REQUIRE ANY VACCINATION to be defeated, as there are many excellent cheap and decades-old remedies that, for example, have helped China to master the corona virus without a vaccine.

    Such coercion runs totally against an individual’s universal right to decide on his/her own, over his or her body and on how to manage his or her health. Nobody has the right to infringe on an individual’s choice and even less so, to link societal privileges to such bodily intrusions.

    Mind you, this “secret document” may have been “leaked” on purpose, as a trial balloon to test the people’s reactions. Unfortunately, the Swiss are so tremendously indoctrinated by 24/7 of fear-invoking covid-propaganda that the majority may say – YES, let’s go for the vaccination privilege. In other words, another break in societal solidarity – divide to conquer.

    It would be coercion, indirectly forcing the population to accept a “vaccine” that is not really a vaccine, but an inoculation, also called “gene therapy”. Switzerland offers so far only the Moderna and Pfizer-Pfizer-BioNTech injections, and AstraZeneca is under consideration. These are mRNA-type remedies that may affect the human genome. Any distortion of human DNA may be passed on to future generations. The effects of such DNA distortions may be life-hindrances and cannot be “healed” or corrected.

    Long-term effects of these mRNA-type injections may only be known in one to several years. Short term “side-effects” have already shown death rates, way above those considered “normal” with traditional vaccines.

    Strangely, none of the traditional vaccines from Russia – Sputnik V – and China – Sinopharm – are available in Switzerland, or in most European countries.  Why?

    The traditional vaccines are simply based on the injection of a weakened virus that will trigger the human immune system and create antibodies as soon as the individual comes in contact with the virus, in this case, the covid-virus. This method has been known and experienced for decades and it is successful.

    More important, a vaccine is really not needed to combat the corona virus. There are several traditional medications that have worked wonders in patients. For some obscure reasons they are outlawed, ordered by higher authorities way above us, the common humanity, those self-declared “authorities” – call them the Deep Dark State, or the Globalist Cabal. These “authorities” have placed themselves, at once, above the governments of the 193 UN member countries, who all were brought under the spell of this SARS-CoV-2, alias Covid-19 man-invented virus.

    For more details and a full spectrum of references, see here.

    There are, of course, hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars involved in the worldwide vaccination programs. But that cannot be the only reason for this worldwide plandemic tyranny.

    What could be other reasons why everybody; i.e., the entire world population, about 7 billion people, according to Bill Gates, has to be vaccinated, “before the world can go back to normal”? Vaccinated against a virus that is not more harmful than the common flu.1

    Could this vaccination-drive be linked to the objectives of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Great Reset? – Linked to the Great Reset’s objectives that run in parallel with the UN Agenda 2030 – a ten-year period in which humanity should be totally reformed, with a new ultra-neoliberal economic model, where only a few mega-wealthy elitist oligarchs, including those that control the all-powerful media domineering social platforms, have control over a vastly reduced world population?

    Could it be the beginning of an all-digitized Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932), under a One World Order (OWO) which would be fully in control of each individual, including control of each human’s resources, incomes, whether he or she behaves according to the OWO’s rules, deciding whether he or she eats? – Even electromagnetic brain control – making “transhumans” out of humans – which may be the purpose of installing hurriedly, by night and fog, 5G antennas?

    *****

    Back to the Swiss Federal Council’s weighing in on giving preference treatment for vaccinated people – this would not only be a discriminatory decision; it would clearly be a coercion for “vaccination”. Such acts are against Human Rights and against the Swiss Constitution.

    *****

    The Blick newspaper referred to the “leaked” document as a “confidential debate paper” from the Federal Department of Home Affairs (Ministry of Interior), under which falls the Department of Health – created “to give the population an incentive to be vaccinated”.

    Incentive or coercion?

    “The government has decided to allow special treatment according to vaccination status, without any additional legal basis,” Blick reports.

    The document reportedly states that while public institutions such as public transportation and hospitals wouldn’t be able to treat those who have been vaccinated differently from people who haven’t had their shots, private establishments “should be able to give preferential treatment to vaccinated people,” according to Blick.

    If proof of vaccination is shown, immunized people can eat in restaurants, attend concerts and other events that would be closed to others. Vaccinated people would still need to wear masks in shops and on public transport, the Blick reports.

    For more details on this horrendous step towards tyranny, see this.

    Swiss President, Guy Parmelin, already said that “in the future, anyone who wishes to travel will need to be vaccinated.”

    In order for the Swiss Federal Council to take such drastic decisions, the Parliament has to be deactivated, which is only the case in a state of emergency, akin to Martial Law. This would be health-induced Martial Law.

    And mind you, it would likely be just a first step to more – much more – oppressive, coercive and dictatorial actions.

    Think about it! What is behind such radical actions – for a virus that has a mortality rate of between 0.03 and 0.08%, very similar to the annually appearing common flu?1

    However, the “leaked” document states that a system of privileges would not be implemented immediately, and “can only be applied if the majority of the adult population has the opportunity to be vaccinated. This should be the case from May or June [2021] at the latest.”

    At which point there is hope that the (i) Swiss population has attained herd immunity, (ii) Swiss Parliament revokes its “deactivation” – and stands up for the old values of democracy that gave Switzerland for many decades a stellar reputation, and / or (iii) a majority of Swiss rejects this tyranny, protests and resists by any means they find – peacefully. As aggression inspires aggression and Peace inspires Peace.

    1. See Anthony S. Fauci, et al., “Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted,” NIAID/NIH 28 February 2020, NEJM.
    The post Switzerland Sliding into Dictatorship first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Switzerland Sliding into Dictatorship

    The first human right is the right to life.
    — Wang Yi, Minister of Foreign Affairs and State Counselor of the People’s Republic of China

    A secret paper from the Swiss Federal Council (Swiss Executive) was leaked to the Swiss Newspaper Der Blick divulging that the Federal Council is considering granting owners of restaurants, theatres, cinemas, and more, as well as private event organizers, the right to allow access to those people only, who have had their corona virus shots.

    In addition to the Blick, Swiss Radio and Television (SRG) repeated this news item in the morning of 23 February. SRG, the Swiss fear-inducing propaganda broadcasting system, also linked so-called “corona deniers” to anti-Semitism, referring to an article in Swissinfo, “Covid Pandemic Fans Flames of anti-Semitism in Switzerland.”  Anti-Semitism has often been used to intimidate free opinions that run counter the official narrative.

    If this dictatorial and discriminatory idea is passed as a law, Switzerland would be one of the first countries to grant special privileges to those who have accepted being vaccinated against a virus that DOES NOT REQUIRE ANY VACCINATION to be defeated, as there are many excellent cheap and decades-old remedies that, for example, have helped China to master the corona virus without a vaccine.

    Such coercion runs totally against an individual’s universal right to decide on his/her own, over his or her body and on how to manage his or her health. Nobody has the right to infringe on an individual’s choice and even less so, to link societal privileges to such bodily intrusions.

    Mind you, this “secret document” may have been “leaked” on purpose, as a trial balloon to test the people’s reactions. Unfortunately, the Swiss are so tremendously indoctrinated by 24/7 of fear-invoking covid-propaganda that the majority may say – YES, let’s go for the vaccination privilege. In other words, another break in societal solidarity – divide to conquer.

    It would be coercion, indirectly forcing the population to accept a “vaccine” that is not really a vaccine, but an inoculation, also called “gene therapy”. Switzerland offers so far only the Moderna and Pfizer-Pfizer-BioNTech injections, and AstraZeneca is under consideration. These are mRNA-type remedies that may affect the human genome. Any distortion of human DNA may be passed on to future generations. The effects of such DNA distortions may be life-hindrances and cannot be “healed” or corrected.

    Long-term effects of these mRNA-type injections may only be known in one to several years. Short term “side-effects” have already shown death rates, way above those considered “normal” with traditional vaccines.

    Strangely, none of the traditional vaccines from Russia – Sputnik V – and China – Sinopharm – are available in Switzerland, or in most European countries.  Why?

    The traditional vaccines are simply based on the injection of a weakened virus that will trigger the human immune system and create antibodies as soon as the individual comes in contact with the virus, in this case, the covid-virus. This method has been known and experienced for decades and it is successful.

    More important, a vaccine is really not needed to combat the corona virus. There are several traditional medications that have worked wonders in patients. For some obscure reasons they are outlawed, ordered by higher authorities way above us, the common humanity, those self-declared “authorities” – call them the Deep Dark State, or the Globalist Cabal. These “authorities” have placed themselves, at once, above the governments of the 193 UN member countries, who all were brought under the spell of this SARS-CoV-2, alias Covid-19 man-invented virus.

    For more details and a full spectrum of references, see here.

    There are, of course, hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars involved in the worldwide vaccination programs. But that cannot be the only reason for this worldwide plandemic tyranny.

    What could be other reasons why everybody; i.e., the entire world population, about 7 billion people, according to Bill Gates, has to be vaccinated, “before the world can go back to normal”? Vaccinated against a virus that is not more harmful than the common flu.

    Could this vaccination-drive be linked to the objectives of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Great Reset? – Linked to the Great Reset’s objectives that run in parallel with the UN Agenda 2030 – a ten-year period in which humanity should be totally reformed, with a new ultra-neoliberal economic model, where only a few mega-wealthy elitist oligarchs, including those that control the all-powerful media domineering social platforms, have control over a vastly reduced world population?

    Could it be the beginning of an all-digitized Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932), under a One World Order (OWO) which would be fully in control of each individual, including control of each human’s resources, incomes, whether he or she behaves according to the OWO’s rules, deciding whether he or she eats? – Even electromagnetic brain control – making “transhumans” out of humans – which may be the purpose of installing hurriedly, by night and fog, 5G antennas?

    *****

    Back to the Swiss Federal Council’s weighing in on giving preference treatment for vaccinated people – this would not only be a discriminatory decision; it would clearly be a coercion for “vaccination”. Such acts are against Human Rights and against the Swiss Constitution.

    *****

    The Blick newspaper referred to the “leaked” document as a “confidential debate paper” from the Federal Department of Home Affairs (Ministry of Interior), under which falls the Department of Health – created “to give the population an incentive to be vaccinated”.

    Incentive or coercion?

    “The government has decided to allow special treatment according to vaccination status, without any additional legal basis,” Blick reports.

    The document reportedly states that while public institutions such as public transportation and hospitals wouldn’t be able to treat those who have been vaccinated differently from people who haven’t had their shots, private establishments “should be able to give preferential treatment to vaccinated people,” according to Blick.

    If proof of vaccination is shown, immunized people can eat in restaurants, attend concerts and other events that would be closed to others. Vaccinated people would still need to wear masks in shops and on public transport, the Blick reports.

    For more details on this horrendous step towards tyranny, see this.

    Swiss President, Guy Parmelin, already said that “in the future, anyone who wishes to travel will need to be vaccinated.”

    In order for the Swiss Federal Council to take such drastic decisions, the Parliament has to be deactivated, which is only the case in a state of emergency, akin to Martial Law. This would be health-induced Martial Law.

    And mind you, it would likely be just a first step to more – much more – oppressive, coercive and dictatorial actions.

    Think about it! What is behind such radical actions – for a virus that has a mortality rate of between 0.03 and 0.08%, very similar to the annually appearing common flu?

    However, the “leaked” document states that a system of privileges would not be implemented immediately, and “can only be applied if the majority of the adult population has the opportunity to be vaccinated. This should be the case from May or June [2021] at the latest.”

    At which point there is hope that the (i) Swiss population has attained herd immunity, (ii) Swiss Parliament revokes its “deactivation” – and stands up for the old values of democracy that gave Switzerland for many decades a stellar reputation, and / or (iii) a majority of Swiss rejects this tyranny, protests and resists by any means they find – peacefully. As aggression inspires aggression and Peace inspires Peace.

    Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Read other articles by Peter.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2021 at 8:49pm and is filed under COVID-19, Democracy, Health/Medical, Human Rights, Opinion, Propaganda, Switzerland.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • American Exceptionalism: Private Wealth and Public Squalor

    A December 2017 statement from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights notes that, while the US manages to spend “more [money] on national defence than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined”, US infant mortality rates were, as of 2013, “the highest in the developed world”.

    The Special Rapporteur provides a barrage of other details from his own visit to the US, during which he was able to observe the country’s “bid to become the most unequal society in the world” – with some 40 million people living in poverty – as well as assess “soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction”.

    Capitalism, it seems, is a deadly business indeed.

    — Belen Fernandez

    A demonstrator from the Occupy Wall Street campaign seen with a dollar taped over his mouth as he stands near the financial district of New York September 30, 2011 [File: Lucas Jackson/Reuters]

    A demonstrator from the Occupy Wall Street campaign seen with a dollar taped over his mouth as he stands near the financial district of New York September 30, 2011.  (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

    How the Cookie Crumbles

    She’s 80, comes from Ayr, Scotland, lives in a sea town along the Oregon Coast. She is caretaker for her 55-year-old nephew. Her heart-failed husband, liver shot through, dialysis weekly, is another of her charges.

    Imagine, she and her family ran a small chain of shops — clocks, another locksmith, another fish and chips. That was in Bonnie Scotland.

    Her sister married a bloke in the US Air Force, and she shipped out with him. Pregnant. Child Drew, early on, in Tucson at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, he was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome. Life for her changed, and then her sister promised if anything happened to this sister, Aunt Regina would take care of Drew. That was a long long time ago.

    Regina’s sister and her sister’s husband immolated in a crash coming back from El Paso. Boy Drew left with a younger sister — the boy age 20, sis 16.

    For 35 years, our Regina and her Bob raised the boy. Drew is now 55, and part of my job is to support him in his job at a grocery store. He’s been there more than 15 years, and he makes $12.01 an hour.

    Forget that economic injustice for a moment. Listen to how the crumbling cookie goes in predatory capitalism — Regina has not been back to the old country in 20 years. She has two knees that are shot. She needs two replacements, but she is the caretaker for the chronically-sick husband. Drew lives with them, getting his two-times a week work at the grocery store as a bagger.

    He’s got the infectious personality, and he also has some “issues” glomming onto female staff. Regina was not told that adults with Downs Syndrome many times have lost the synoptic connections tied to urgency for urination and defecation.

    Sweet drinks he gulps down, like a lost man in the Sahara. He scarfs down or wolfs down his food.

    Like anyone, Drew wants to be in a relationship, married, on some piece of property with a horse, dogs and big garden. He works eight hours a week, and receives under $800 in social security payments.

    The state pays Aunt Regina for his care. Her biggest worry is Drew losing his job because of the bathroom accidents or the sexual harassment.

    Regina is kind but firm, and her bedside manner isn’t from the latest holistic and enlightened training around people who live with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

    “I tell Drew, that if he messes up one more time, the grocery store will fire him. The job is more than pocket change for him. He gets out, has responsibilities, is growing some from the integrated employment, and, mind you this is a big AND, I get him out of the house for a few hours a week so I can gain some sense of sanity. I don’t know if he has to be put into a state institution.”

    Luck of the draw, luck of the gene expression, luck of the accidental car mortalities, luck luck luck.

    That’s the way the cookie crumbles, and in capitalism, we are not judged by how we treat our aged, infirm, vulnerable, youth, sick, disabled, poor. The worse we treat “them,” the more “they” have to struggle, the more daily fear “they” have of failing, faltering, flipping out mentally, the more successful those Capitalists and those Investors and those Finance Wizards and those Upper Economic Class are!

    Redistribution of wealth for “them” is taking every last penny from “them,” us. Working people at $12.01 an hour after 15 years in a national/international chain.

    A mentality that posits that “they” meant to do that, defecate in their pants, or, oh, “they” know better, and, oh, “they” are gaming the system and pulling the wool over your bleeding heart social services worker heads.

    Heartless in a Time of Plague   

    Our Scottish Regina is worried about what will happen to Drew once she kicks the bucket, or when she is no longer physically capable of carrying on and running a household with a very demanding Drew and a very failing Bob, her 86-year-old husband.

    We talk about the old country’s National Health Service. We talk about the failures of a society that has been ripped open time and time again by the purulent investors — another word for making money anyway they can.

    Gutting medical care, gutting entitlement programs, gutting progressive taxation, gutting the measures for health and safety for and by the public. Where oh where will Drew go once his aunt and uncle pass on?

    Think of every dollar and penny pinched, and then think of how much we the taxpayer shell out for every nanosecond of the crimes of corporations eating at the belly of communities, and every penny taken in light speed for everything run by the imposters, the misanthropes.

    Every million$ here, every billion$ there. Grifters and grabbers. How much did the first Billionaire’s “impeachment” cost us? How much does an Alex Jones or Tom Brady or Michelle Obama get paid for their insipid bolstering of their self-referential mythology? Each speech? Each rot gut book penned?

    Every rivet sunk into a Hellfire missile, every pound of fuel used in US Military Terrorism Toys, every nanosecond million made through illegal and unethical investing through algorithm?

    That Moon shot by India, or that Mars rover by Japan, or Israel gunning for more surveillance. How much is every human lifetime worth, if we are lumped together in that big pile of “other” and “non-human”?

    That heartless cookie crumbling capitalism is rotten to the core. The joke is, though, by the filthy rich, the Art of War Friedman’s and Bezos and all the Google middling’s and upper crust, that if all the billions were taken from the filthy rich, and dumped into the majority on planet earth — the poor, the uneducated, the misbegotten, the terminal, the dysfunctional, the Jerry Springer protagonists and antagonists, in five years all that and more would be back in the hands of the Star Chamber 1,000 or 2,000 Multi-Billionaires.

    “We’d just get it all back, because the masses are inherently stupid, know nothing about the value of a dollar, would buy all the junk and shit and whoring dreams we create to sell. We’d have all that so-called ‘redistributed’ wealth back in our hands.”

    That myth is coupled with another one, where the rich and the rest of us, having collectively, as much as the 1,000 or millionth richest? Christian Parenti lays it out simply and clearly here:

    The 85 richest in the world probably include the four members of the Walton family (owners of Wal-Mart, among the top ten superrich in the USA) who together are worth over $100 billion. Rich families like the DuPonts have controlling interests in giant corporations like General Motors, Coca-Cola, and United Brands. They own about forty manorial estates and private museums in Delaware alone and have set up 31 tax-exempt foundations. The superrich in America and in many other countries find ways, legal and illegal, to shelter much of their wealth in secret accounts. We don’t really know how very rich the very rich really are.

    Regarding the poorest portion of the world population—whom I would call the valiant, struggling “better half”—what mass configuration of wealth could we possibly be talking about? The aggregate wealth possessed by the 85 super-richest individuals, and the aggregate wealth owned by the world’s 3.5 billion poorest, are of different dimensions and different natures. Can we really compare private jets, mansions, landed estates, super luxury vacation retreats, luxury apartments, luxury condos, and luxury cars, not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars in equities, bonds, commercial properties, art works, antiques, etc.—can we really compare all that enormous wealth against some millions of used cars, used furniture, and used television sets, many of which are ready to break down? Of what resale value if any, are such minor durable-use commodities? especially in communities of high unemployment, dismal health and housing conditions, no running water, no decent sanitation facilities, etc. We don’t really know how poor the very poor really are.

    — 85 Billionaires and the Better Half by Michael Parenti

    Ways of Thinking - Feudalism is very much alive

    Image by Judite B

    The books and discourse and deep discussions and analyses have already been posited and published, and yet, we are in 2021, and the school system, the media system, the propaganda machines of government-military-resource extraction-big ag/med/pharma/AI/finance continue to cobble truth, censor the reality of the penury system that is consumer-corporate-criminal-corrupt Capitalism.

    Here, a hodgepodge of readings ramifying the thesis in this essay of mine —

    Chris Hedges and Richard Wolff: Capitalism Does Not Work for the Majority of the People

    Make No Mistake: The Rule Of The Rich Has Been A Deadly Epoch For Humanity

    Michael Parenti: Does Capitalism Work? (2002)

    The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism

    Capitalism: The Systematic Poverty and Exploitation of Human Beings by Finian Cunningham

    Michael Parenti: These Countries Are Not Underdeveloped, They Are Overexploited (1986)

    Luxury Eco-Communism: A Wonderful World is Possible

    The Growing Disparity In Living Conditions and Its Consequences by Rainer Shea

    Covid-19 and the Health Crisis in Latin America by Yanis Iqbal

    The Start Of The Great Meltdown For Industrial Civilization by Rainer Shea

    MFTN: Poverty Will Kill More Of Us Than Terrorism

    The Rich Are Only Rich If We Let Them Be by Dariel Garner

    Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World by Michael Parenti

    The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger + How Economic Inequality Harms Societies

    Wealth Belongs To All Of Us – Not Just To The Rich by Dariel Garner

    We Are So Poor Because They Are So Rich by Dariel Garner

    Here are the source links — X and Y

    Railroaded into this Mess 

    It all comes back to the rackets — war, banking, big ag, law, prisons, military, computing, finance, insuring, retail, lending, investing, for-profit medicine, education, utilities.

    The rackets of putting garnishments on all of our wages. The punishment rackets of fines, foreclosures, levies, taxes, fees, surcharges, add-ons, user fees, disposal fees, tolls, late fees, interest fees, penalties, wage attachments, wage theft, any-government-revenue/policing/judicial entity having the legal right to crack into any savings or checking or real estate holding they want to….And steal!

    Imagine that freedom, uh? My Drew or my Don, they work for pittances, and they have their measly wages garnished if they make too much above the allowable social security benefit level. Imagine all of the flimflam, all those middle and peripheral and shadowy and underhanded people and agencies each taking a gram of flesh until that human life has been pecked away.

    Stuck in a closet somewhere. Huddled around a TV, surrounded by the deadly products of a food industry responsible for billions dead. Food (sic) more deadly than cancer sticks, AKA cigarettes.

    Think hard how those children-who-come-to-me-as-adults as their social services manager, wanting me to help them find jobs in a dog-eat-dog culture, where the cookie isn’t just crumbling, but rather smashed into smithereens by the capitalists. All those poisons in food, all the polluting, toxin-laced, dam-building, river-tainting, air-staining processes that bring us better living with plastics-fastfood-shelf lives of a decade. Better living through chemistry, pharmaceutics, chronic illness, disease management, pain regulating.

    Then, we cannot discuss the possibilities of a society with more and more allergies, more and more chronic illnesses, more and more learning disabilities, more and more developmental disabilities, more and more intellectual disabilities, more and more trauma and PTSD and generalized anxiety and physiological premature weathering.

    And poverty does more than just kills. Poverty eats at the soul, drives people to unsafe harbors like consumerism, disposability, obsessions, addictions, inattentiveness, collective Stockholm Syndrome, perversions, empty calories-entertainment-thinking.

    There are numbers just for one aspect of our consumer-retail-exploitative societies competing in a trans-national gallery of dirty capitalism — 4.2 million premature deaths annually? Five million? More? Exposure to air pollution caused over 7.0 million deaths and 103.1 million disability-adjusted life years lost in one year.

    Attributed to dirty (polluted) air. Not dirty water. Not dirty food. Not dirty drugs. Not smoking. Not boozing. Not war.

    The study uses existing data from IHME on global burden of diseases (Mortality and Disability Adjusted Life Years) related to air pollution such as Trachea, Bronchus and Lung cancer, COPD, Ischemic heart disease and Stroke. This study shows that air pollution is one of the major environmental risk factors for the global burden of disease in 1990-2015 and has remained relatively stable for the past 25 years. By region, the largest burden of disease related to air pollution is found in Western Pacific and South-East Asia, reflecting the heavy industry and air pollution hotspots within the developing nations of these regions. Moreover, the rates of Disability Adjusted Life Years increased because of increase in pollution, especially in South-East Asia region, African region, and Eastern Mediterranean region where populations are both growing and ageing.

    — Source —

    I’ve written about this for years — how there is so much disconnect in Criminal Capitalism, where the marketing ploys and psychological tricks force babies and then toddlers and then kindergarteners and then grade schoolers and then more and more millions of growing minds to adapt to counterintuitive thinking, to accept death, slow or otherwise, as part of the social contract. Dog-eat-dog, predation, big fish/small pond, and the roots of America after decimating Turtle Island, one smoke and mirror show after another snake oil sales pitch.

    Which sane or humane person would accept a PayDay loan scam? Which humane person would accept forced arbitration clauses? Which caring human would not endorse clean, well-run, full coverage public transportation? Which caring mother would not demand prenatal care, and medicine and clinics on demand? Where is the logic of old men and old women (look at the senate, the congress, the administration) running the lives of the unborn, newborn and youth into the ground.

    Even the thirty-somethings in Brooks Brothers suits look, sound, smell, and espouse OLD. I don’t mean old and wise, or elder thinkers, or experienced and well traveled. I mean old in decayed.

    If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with old minds and new programs. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but a new program.

    The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people.

    — Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

    These flimflam artists, these liars and cheaters and pontificators and media monsters, they are antithetical to a good governance, good society, good people.

    They not only do not know the stories of Drew and his Aunt Regina and Uncle Bob, but they have no forward-thinking solutions to the aging old foster parents and the still healthy middle-aged Drew. With all his beauty. With all his kindness. With all his adept knowledge of how to get on, get along, get his day going. Drew, born in the cookie crumbles crap shoot. Regina, who was on her way back to the UK, Scotland, when she answered the call to take care of Drew and his sister.

    This story is repeated a million times a month, worldwide. The penalty for living, for being human, for being not one of them (rich, powerful, greed-wielding) and for stopping their lives to do the right thing.

    You wake up one day and believe you have a worthy life. You wake up and take account of what good you have done. You wake up and look in the mirror and wonder what it is you actually dreamt, thought, spoke, cared for, read, built, protected, grew, sheltered, did, held sacred, envisioned, husbanded, parented, fostered, ate, drank, created.

    Did any of that living have purpose, or some connection to the humanity that is the real culture of Homo Sapiens, mother culture?

    Daily, I have a million intersections with culture and cultures — Big D for deaf or small d for disabled? Brain-injured at birth, or hit by a truck at age 11. Traumatic Brain Injury from an early childhood beating, or massive psychological trauma from a rape at age 20. Born with any number of diagnosed maladies, or any expression of “being born on the autism spectrum.” Fragile X or fetal alcohol affective disorder. Or Downs Syndrome.

    The luck of the draw is one enormous field of chance, and the outcomes are not just tied to the abilities — emotional, spiritual, economic, personal — of those you call family, but how the society at large and each community gauge the value of life, the value placed on those whose luck of the draw came up short in some areas.

    But the world is fragile, and those on some neuro typical scale and those atypically neuro, can we build our culture together, and heal and protect and shelter and engender and facilitate and teach and learn from?

    There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.

    — Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

    victor-palenque-ishmael-lords-wolves-read-ishmael-daniel-quinn

    The post American Exceptionalism: Private Wealth and Public Squalor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Vaccine (Dis)Information War

    by C.J. Hopkins / February 23rd, 2021

    So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made by corporations!

    OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,” but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been “tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

    This non-experimental experimental vaccine is truly a historic development, because apart from saving the world from a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms whatsoever) in roughly 95% of those infected, and that over 99% of those infected survive, the possibilities for future applications of messenger-RNA technology, and the genetic modification of humans, generally, is virtually unlimited at this point.

    Imagine all the diseases we can cure, and all the genetic “mistakes” we can fix, now that we can reprogram people’s genes to do whatever we want … cancer, heart disease, dementia, blindness, not to mention the common cold! We could even cure psychiatric disorders, like “antisocial personality disorder,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” and other “conduct disorders” and “personality disorders.” Who knows? In another hundred years, we will probably be able to genetically cleanse the human species of age-old scourges, like racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, etcetera, by reprogramming everyone’s defective alleles, or implanting some kind of nanotechnological neurosynaptic chips into our brains. The only thing standing in our way is people’s totally irrational resistance to letting corporations redesign the human organism, which, clearly, was rather poorly designed, and thus is vulnerable to all these horrible diseases, and emotional and behavioral disorders.

    But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The important thing at the moment is to defeat this common-flu-like pestilence that has no significant effect on age-adjusted death rates, and the mortality profile of which is more or less identical to the normal mortality profile, but which has nonetheless left the global corporatocracy no choice but to “lock down” the entire planet, plunge millions into desperate poverty, order everyone to wear medical-looking masks, unleash armed goon squads to raid people’s homes, and otherwise transform society into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare. And, of course, the only way to do that (i.e., save humanity from a flu-like bug) is to coercively vaccinate every single human being on the planet Earth!

    OK, you’re probably thinking that doesn’t make much sense, this crusade to vaccinate the entire species against a relatively standard respiratory virus, but that’s just because you are still thinking critically. You really need to stop thinking like that. As The New York Times just pointed out, “critical thinking isn’t helping.” In fact, it might be symptomatic of one of those “disorders” I just mentioned above. Critical thinking leads to “vaccine hesitancy,” which is why corporations are working with governments to immediately censor any and all content that deviates from the official Covid-19 narrative and deplatform the authors of such content, or discredit them as “anti-vax disinformationists.”

    For example, Children’s Health Defense, which has been reporting on so-called “adverse events” and deaths in connection with the Covid vaccines, despite the fact that, according to the authorities, “there are no safety problems with the vaccines” and “there is no link between Covid-19 vaccines and those who die after receiving them.” In fact, according to the “fact-checkers” at Reuters, these purported “reports of adverse events” “may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable!”

    Yes, you’re reading between the lines right. The corporate media can’t come right out and say it, but it appears the “anti-vax disinformationists” are fabricating “adverse events” out of whole cloth and hacking them into the VAERS database and other such systems around the world. Worse, they are somehow infiltrating these made-up stories into the mainstream media in order to lure people into “vaccine hesitancy” and stop us from vaccinating every man, woman, and child in the physical universe, repeatedly, on an ongoing basis, for as long as the “medical experts” deem necessary.

    Here are just a few examples of their handiwork …

    • In California, a 60-year-old X-ray technologist received a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. A few hours later he had trouble breathing. He was hospitalized and died four days later. His widow says she’s not ready at this point to link her husband’s death to the vaccine. “I’m not putting any blame on Pfizer,” she said, “or on any other pharmaceutical company.” So, probably just another coincidence.
    • A 78-year-old woman in California died immediately after being vaccinated, but her death was not related to the vaccine, health officials assured the public. “(She) received an injection of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer around noon. While seated in the observation area after the injection, [she] complained of feeling discomfort and while being evaluated by medical personnel she lost consciousness.” Despite the sudden death of his wife, her husband intends to receive a second dose.
    • Also in Michigan, a 90-year-old man died the day after receiving the vaccine, but, again, this was just a tragic coincidence. As Dr. David Gorski explained, “the baseline death rate of 90-year-olds is high because they’re 90 years old,” which makes perfect sense … unless, of course, they died of Covid, in which case their age and underlying conditions make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

    And then there are all the people on Facebook sharing their stories of loved ones who have died shortly after receiving the Covid vaccine, who the Facebook “fact checkers” are doing their utmost to discredit with their official-looking “fact-check notices.” For example …

    OK, I realize it’s uncomfortable to have to face things like that (i.e., global corporations like Facebook implying that these people are lying or are using the sudden deaths of their loved ones to discourage others from getting vaccinated), especially if you’re just trying to follow orders and parrot official propaganda … even the most fanatical Covidian Cultists probably still have a shred of human empathy buried deep in their cold little hearts. But there’s an information war on, folks! You’re either with the Corporatocracy or against it! This is no time to get squeamish, or, you know, publicly exhibit an ounce of compassion. What would your friends and colleagues think of you?!

    No, report these anti-vaxxers to the authorities, shout them down on social media, switch off your critical-thinking faculties, and get in line to get your vaccination! The fate of the human species depends on it! And, if you’re lucky, maybe GloboCap will even give you one of these nifty numerical Covid-vaccine tattoos for free!

    C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volume I of his Consent Factory Essays is published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org. Read other articles by C.J..

    This article was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021 at 12:26pm and is filed under COVID-19, Disinformation, Fearmongering, Global Capitalism, Health/Medical, Media, Pharmaceuticals, Propaganda, Seniors/Retirees, Social media, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Vaccine (Dis)Information War

    So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made by corporations!

    OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,” but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been “tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

    This non-experimental experimental vaccine is truly a historic development, because apart from saving the world from a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms whatsoever) in roughly 95% of those infected, and that over 99% of those infected survive, the possibilities for future applications of messenger-RNA technology, and the genetic modification of humans, generally, is virtually unlimited at this point.

    Imagine all the diseases we can cure, and all the genetic “mistakes” we can fix, now that we can reprogram people’s genes to do whatever we want … cancer, heart disease, dementia, blindness, not to mention the common cold! We could even cure psychiatric disorders, like “antisocial personality disorder,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” and other “conduct disorders” and “personality disorders.” Who knows? In another hundred years, we will probably be able to genetically cleanse the human species of age-old scourges, like racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, etcetera, by reprogramming everyone’s defective alleles, or implanting some kind of nanotechnological neurosynaptic chips into our brains. The only thing standing in our way is people’s totally irrational resistance to letting corporations redesign the human organism, which, clearly, was rather poorly designed, and thus is vulnerable to all these horrible diseases, and emotional and behavioral disorders.

    But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The important thing at the moment is to defeat this common-flu-like pestilence that has no significant effect on age-adjusted death rates, and the mortality profile of which is more or less identical to the normal mortality profile, but which has nonetheless left the global corporatocracy no choice but to “lock down” the entire planet, plunge millions into desperate poverty, order everyone to wear medical-looking masks, unleash armed goon squads to raid people’s homes, and otherwise transform society into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare. And, of course, the only way to do that (i.e., save humanity from a flu-like bug) is to coercively vaccinate every single human being on the planet Earth!

    OK, you’re probably thinking that doesn’t make much sense, this crusade to vaccinate the entire species against a relatively standard respiratory virus, but that’s just because you are still thinking critically. You really need to stop thinking like that. As The New York Times just pointed out, “critical thinking isn’t helping.” In fact, it might be symptomatic of one of those “disorders” I just mentioned above. Critical thinking leads to “vaccine hesitancy,” which is why corporations are working with governments to immediately censor any and all content that deviates from the official Covid-19 narrative and deplatform the authors of such content, or discredit them as “anti-vax disinformationists.”

    For example, Children’s Health Defense, which has been reporting on so-called “adverse events” and deaths in connection with the Covid vaccines, despite the fact that, according to the authorities, “there are no safety problems with the vaccines” and “there is no link between Covid-19 vaccines and those who die after receiving them.” In fact, according to the “fact-checkers” at Reuters, these purported “reports of adverse events” “may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable!”

    Yes, you’re reading between the lines right. The corporate media can’t come right out and say it, but it appears the “anti-vax disinformationists” are fabricating “adverse events” out of whole cloth and hacking them into the VAERS database and other such systems around the world. Worse, they are somehow infiltrating these made-up stories into the mainstream media in order to lure people into “vaccine hesitancy” and stop us from vaccinating every man, woman, and child in the physical universe, repeatedly, on an ongoing basis, for as long as the “medical experts” deem necessary.

    Here are just a few examples of their handiwork …

    • In California, a 60-year-old X-ray technologist received a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. A few hours later he had trouble breathing. He was hospitalized and died four days later. His widow says she’s not ready at this point to link her husband’s death to the vaccine. “I’m not putting any blame on Pfizer,” she said, “or on any other pharmaceutical company.” So, probably just another coincidence.
    • A 78-year-old woman in California died immediately after being vaccinated, but her death was not related to the vaccine, health officials assured the public. “(She) received an injection of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer around noon. While seated in the observation area after the injection, [she] complained of feeling discomfort and while being evaluated by medical personnel she lost consciousness.” Despite the sudden death of his wife, her husband intends to receive a second dose.
    • Also in Michigan, a 90-year-old man died the day after receiving the vaccine, but, again, this was just a tragic coincidence. As Dr. David Gorski explained, “the baseline death rate of 90-year-olds is high because they’re 90 years old,” which makes perfect sense … unless, of course, they died of Covid, in which case their age and underlying conditions make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

    And then there are all the people on Facebook sharing their stories of loved ones who have died shortly after receiving the Covid vaccine, who the Facebook “fact checkers” are doing their utmost to discredit with their official-looking “fact-check notices.” For example …

    OK, I realize it’s uncomfortable to have to face things like that (i.e., global corporations like Facebook implying that these people are lying or are using the sudden deaths of their loved ones to discourage others from getting vaccinated), especially if you’re just trying to follow orders and parrot official propaganda … even the most fanatical Covidian Cultists probably still have a shred of human empathy buried deep in their cold little hearts. But there’s an information war on, folks! You’re either with the Corporatocracy or against it! This is no time to get squeamish, or, you know, publicly exhibit an ounce of compassion. What would your friends and colleagues think of you?!

    No, report these anti-vaxxers to the authorities, shout them down on social media, switch off your critical-thinking faculties, and get in line to get your vaccination! The fate of the human species depends on it! And, if you’re lucky, maybe GloboCap will even give you one of these nifty numerical Covid-vaccine tattoos for free!

    The post The Vaccine (Dis)Information War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why Politicians and Doctors Keep Ignoring the Medical Research on Vitamin D and Covid

    It is probably not a good idea to write while in the grip of anger. But I am struggling to suppress my emotions about a wasted year, during which politicians and many doctors have ignored a growing body of evidence suggesting that Vitamin D can play a critically important role in the prevention and treatment of Covid-19.

    It is time to speak out forcefully now that a new, large-scale Spanish study demonstrates not a just a correlation but a causal relationship between high-dose Vitamin D treatment of hospitalised Covid patients and significantly improved outcomes for their health.

    The pre-print paper in the Lancet shows there was an 80 per cent reduction in admission to intensive care units among hospitalised patients who were treated with large doses of Vitamin D, and a 64 per cent reduction in death. The possibility of these being chance findings are infinitesimally small, note the researchers. And to boot, the study found no side-effects even when these mega-doses were given short term to the hospitalised patients.

    Those are astounding figures that deserve to be on front pages, especially at a time when politicians and doctors are uncertain whether they can ever find a single magic-bullet vaccine against Covid as new variants pop up like spring daffodils.

    If Vitamin D can approximate a cure for many of those hospitalised with Covid, one can infer that it should prove even more effective when used as a prophylactic. Most people in northern latitudes ought to be taking Vitamin D through much of the year in significant doses – well above the current, outdated 400IU recommended by governments like the UK’s.

    Knee-jerk dismissals

    This new study ought to finally silence the naysayers, though doubtless it won’t. So far it has attracted little media attention. What has been most troubling over the past year is that every time I and others have gently drawn attention to each new study that demonstrated the dramatic benefits of Vitamin D, we were greeted with knee-jerk dismissals that the studies showed only a correlation, not a causal link.

    That was a deeply irresponsible response, especially in the midst of a global pandemic for which effective treatments are urgently needed. The never-satisfied have engaged in the worst kind of blame-shifting, implicitly maligning medical researchers for the fact that they could only organise small-scale, improvised studies because governments were not supporting and funding the larger-scale research needed to prove conclusively whether Vitamin D was effective.

    Further, the naysayers wilfully ignored the fact that all the separate studies showed very similar correlations, as well as the fact that hospitalised patients were invariably deficient, or very deficient, in Vitamin D. The cumulative effect of those studies should have been persuasive in themselves. And more to the point, they should have led to a concerted campaign pressuring governments to fund the necessary research. Instead much of the medical community has wasted valuable time either ignoring the research or nitpicking it into oblivion.

    There should have come a point – especially when a treatment like Vitamin D is very cheap and almost entirely safe – at which the precautionary principle kicked in. It was not only foolhardy but criminally negligent to be demanding 100 per cent proof before approving the use of Vitamin D on seriously ill patients. There was no risk in treating them with Vitamin D, unlike most other proposed drugs, and potentially much to gain.

    Stuck in old paradigm

    Already the usual voices have dismissed the new Barcelona study, saying it has yet to be peer-reviewed. That ignores the fact that it is an expansion on, and confirmation of, an earlier, much smaller study in Cordoba that has been peer-reviewed and that similarly showed dramatic, beneficial outcomes for patients.

    In addition to the earlier studies and the new one showing a causal link, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to bolster the case for using Vitamin D against Covid.

    For many years, limited studies – ones that Big Pharma showed no interest in expanding – had indicated that Vitamin D was useful both in warding off respiratory infections and in treating a wide variety of chronic auto-immune diseases such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis by damping down inflammatory responses of the kind that often overwhelm hospitalised Covid patients.

    But many doctors and politicians were stuck in an old paradigm – one rooted in the 1950s that viewed Vitamin D exclusively in terms of bone health.

    The role of Vitamin D – produced in the skin by sunlight – should have been at the forefront of medical research for Covid anyway, given that the prevalence of the disease, as with other respiratory infections, appears to slump through the sunny, summer months, and spikes in the winter.

    And while the media preferred to focus exclusively on poverty and racism as “correlative” explanations for the disproportionate number of deaths among BAME doctors and members of the public, Vitamin D seemed an equally, if not more plausible, candidate. Dark skins in cloud-covered northern latitudes make production of Vitamin D harder and deficiency more likely.

    Magic bullet preferred

    We should not be surprised that Big Pharma had no interest in promoting a vitamin freely available through much of the year and one they cannot license. They would, of course, rather patent an expensive magic bullet that offers the hope of enriching company directors and shareholders.

    But that is why we have governments, isn’t it? They could have stepped in to pick up the bill for the research after profit-motivated firms had refused to do so – if not to safeguard the health of their populations, at least to keep their health budgets under control. Most developed countries, even those with lots of sunshine, have large sections of their population that are Vitamin D deficient, especially among the elderly and housebound, the very groups most affected by Covid.

    But governments shirked their responsibility too. Most have not offered supplements beyond measly and largely useless 400IU tablets to the elderly, and they have failed to fortify foods. Those taking small doses are unlikely to significantly and quickly address any deficiency they have or maximise their resistance to Covid.

    To give a sense of what was potentially at stake, consider the findings of one of last year’s correlative studies, done by a team in Heidelberg. Their work implied that, had the UK ensured its population was not widely Vitamin D deficient, many tens of thousands of lives might have been saved.

    Science not ‘followed’

    There are lessons – ones we seem very reluctant to learn – from the catastrophic failures of the past year. And they aren’t just lessons for the politicians.

    If doctors and medical organisations had really been “following the science”, they would have led the clamour both for properly funded Vitamin D research and for its early use, if only on the precautionary principle. The reality is that very few did. In the UK it was left to MP David Davis, who trained as a molecular scientist, to take up the cause of Vitamin D and badger a government that has shown no inclination to listen.

    Instead, “follow the science” became a simple-minded mantra that allowed scientists to ignore the medical science when it did not lead them in the direction they had been trained to expect. “The science” told us to stay indoors, to minimise our contact with daylight, to limit our exposure to fresh air and exercise. We were required to abandon all traditional wisdom about our health.

    If one wants to understand at least some of the resistance to lockdowns, it might be worth examining that instinct and how deeply – and rightly – ingrained it is in us.

    Scientific arrogance

    If we learn anything from the past year it should be that the current, dominant, mechanistic view of medical science – one that too often disregards the natural world or even holds it in contempt – is deeply corrupting and dangerous.

    This is not intended as a rant against science. After all, the mass production of Vitamin D – in the absence of useful sunshine in northern latitudes for much of the year – depends on scientific procedures.

    Rather it is a rant against a blinkered science that has come to dominate western societies. Put simply, most experts – scientists and doctors – have not taken Vitamin D seriously, despite the growing evidence, because it is made in the mystical touch of sun on skin rather than by white-coated technicians in a laboratory.

    Just as most army generals are invested in war more than in peace because they would be out of job if we all chose to love one another, most scientists have been successfully trained to see the natural world as something to be interfered with, to be tamed, to be dissected, to be reassembled, to be improved. Like the rest of us, they have a need – a very unscientific one – to feel special, to believe that they are indispensable. But that arrogance comes at a cost.

    Unhealthy lifestyles

    The default assumption of many medical scientists was that any claim for Vitamin D – sunlight – having curative or protective properties against Covid-19 needed not urgent, further investigation but dismissal as quackery, as snake oil. How could nature possibly offer a Covid solution that scientists could not improve on?

    Unpopular as it may be to say it, that arrogance continues with the exclusive focus on vaccines. They will prove part of the way we emerge from the Covid winter. But we will be foolish indeed if we rely on them alone. We need to think about the way our societies are structured and the resulting unhealthy habits cultivated in us: the sedentary lifestyles many of us lead, the lack of exposure to nature and to sunshine, the gratuitous consumption on which our economies depend, and the advertiser-driven urge for instant gratification that has led to a plague of obesity.

    There is no vaccine for any of that yet.

    Already we are being forced into what are deeply troubling political debates – not scientific ones – around vaccines. Should vaccinations be made compulsory, or the vaccination-hesitant shamed into compliance? Should those who have received the vaccine be given special privileges through an immunity passport?

    The reality is that whenever we try to “defeat” nature, as if our scientists were military generals waging war on the natural world, we are forced on to new and difficult ethical terrain. As we seek to “improve on” the natural world, we must also remake our social worlds in ways that invariably move us further from lifestyles that we have evolved to need, both physically and emotionally.

    Magic of the stars

    This is not a call to ignore science or reject Covid emergency measures. But it is a call to show a lot more humility and caution as we ponder our place in the natural world – as well as our constant urge to “fix” what the rest of the planet does not regard as broken. A year of Covid has shown how disruptive our meddling can be and how fragile the systems of progress we think we have permanently created really are.

    When our politicians and regulators agitate for tough new restrictions on the public’s right to free speech, claiming fake news and misinformation about Covid, maybe they should remember that trust has to be earnt, not mandated through laws. A world in which profit and power rule is also one in which the likely response from those who are ruled is doubt, scepticism or cynicism.

    Maybe I should not have written this while I was so angry. Or maybe others ought to be angry too – angry about the fact that many, many lives were almost certainly lost unnecessarily, and may continue to be lost, because those who profit from disease have no incentive to protect health.

    We ought to be angry too about how in a better-ordered, more caring society, we might have found ways to avoid the worst excesses of lockdowns that have deprived our children of an education, of friendships, of play, of life in all its variety and excitement, and of sunshine. They lost all that while our politicians and their scientist enablers poured huge sums into labs, into test-tubes and into man-made magic bullets while contemptuously ignoring sunlight because it is free and everywhere and because it is a different kind of magic – the magic of the stars.

    UPDATE:

    There has been the expected social media backlash from some quarters against this post. I even appear to have angered the odd white-coated lab technician! Some doubtless did not actually read beyond the soundbite I offered on social media. But sadly, others seem to be highly invested in deflecting from the central argument I am making. So here it is in a nutshell:

    The only sane response to the Vitamin D medical studies showing dramatic benefits for those hospitalised with Covid is to demand urgent government funding of further research to test those findings and to use Vitamin D in hospitals in the meantime on the precautionary principle, given that it is very cheap and has proven to be completely safe.

    If you are trying to obscure that point, you should do so only if you are absolutely certain that these medical studies are wrong. Otherwise your behaviour is, on the best interpretation, shamefully irresponsible.

    This article was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2021 at 7:04pm and is filed under COVID-19, Disinformation, Drug Research, Health/Medical, Medical Ethics, Narrative, Pandemics, Pharmaceuticals, Science/Technology, Spain, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Why Politicians and Doctors Keep Ignoring the Medical Research on Vitamin D and Covid

    It is probably not a good idea to write while in the grip of anger. But I am struggling to suppress my emotions about a wasted year, during which politicians and many doctors have ignored a growing body of evidence suggesting that Vitamin D can play a critically important role in the prevention and treatment of Covid-19.

    It is time to speak out forcefully now that a new, large-scale Spanish study demonstrates not a just a correlation but a causal relationship between high-dose Vitamin D treatment of hospitalised Covid patients and significantly improved outcomes for their health.

    The pre-print paper in the Lancet shows there was an 80 per cent reduction in admission to intensive care units among hospitalised patients who were treated with large doses of Vitamin D, and a 64 per cent reduction in death. The possibility of these being chance findings are infinitesimally small, note the researchers. And to boot, the study found no side-effects even when these mega-doses were given short term to the hospitalised patients.

    Those are astounding figures that deserve to be on front pages, especially at a time when politicians and doctors are uncertain whether they can ever find a single magic-bullet vaccine against Covid as new variants pop up like spring daffodils.

    If Vitamin D can approximate a cure for many of those hospitalised with Covid, one can infer that it should prove even more effective when used as a prophylactic. Most people in northern latitudes ought to be taking Vitamin D through much of the year in significant doses – well above the current, outdated 400IU recommended by governments like the UK’s.

    Knee-jerk dismissals

    This new study ought to finally silence the naysayers, though doubtless it won’t. So far it has attracted little media attention. What has been most troubling over the past year is that every time I and others have gently drawn attention to each new study that demonstrated the dramatic benefits of Vitamin D, we were greeted with knee-jerk dismissals that the studies showed only a correlation, not a causal link.

    That was a deeply irresponsible response, especially in the midst of a global pandemic for which effective treatments are urgently needed. The never-satisfied have engaged in the worst kind of blame-shifting, implicitly maligning medical researchers for the fact that they could only organise small-scale, improvised studies because governments were not supporting and funding the larger-scale research needed to prove conclusively whether Vitamin D was effective.

    Further, the naysayers wilfully ignored the fact that all the separate studies showed very similar correlations, as well as the fact that hospitalised patients were invariably deficient, or very deficient, in Vitamin D. The cumulative effect of those studies should have been persuasive in themselves. And more to the point, they should have led to a concerted campaign pressuring governments to fund the necessary research. Instead much of the medical community has wasted valuable time either ignoring the research or nitpicking it into oblivion.

    There should have come a point – especially when a treatment like Vitamin D is very cheap and almost entirely safe – at which the precautionary principle kicked in. It was not only foolhardy but criminally negligent to be demanding 100 per cent proof before approving the use of Vitamin D on seriously ill patients. There was no risk in treating them with Vitamin D, unlike most other proposed drugs, and potentially much to gain.

    Stuck in old paradigm

    Already the usual voices have dismissed the new Barcelona study, saying it has yet to be peer-reviewed. That ignores the fact that it is an expansion on, and confirmation of, an earlier, much smaller study in Cordoba that has been peer-reviewed and that similarly showed dramatic, beneficial outcomes for patients.

    In addition to the earlier studies and the new one showing a causal link, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to bolster the case for using Vitamin D against Covid.

    For many years, limited studies – ones that Big Pharma showed no interest in expanding – had indicated that Vitamin D was useful both in warding off respiratory infections and in treating a wide variety of chronic auto-immune diseases such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis by damping down inflammatory responses of the kind that often overwhelm hospitalised Covid patients.

    But many doctors and politicians were stuck in an old paradigm – one rooted in the 1950s that viewed Vitamin D exclusively in terms of bone health.

    The role of Vitamin D – produced in the skin by sunlight – should have been at the forefront of medical research for Covid anyway, given that the prevalence of the disease, as with other respiratory infections, appears to slump through the sunny, summer months, and spikes in the winter.

    And while the media preferred to focus exclusively on poverty and racism as “correlative” explanations for the disproportionate number of deaths among BAME doctors and members of the public, Vitamin D seemed an equally, if not more plausible, candidate. Dark skins in cloud-covered northern latitudes make production of Vitamin D harder and deficiency more likely.

    Magic bullet preferred

    We should not be surprised that Big Pharma had no interest in promoting a vitamin freely available through much of the year and one they cannot license. They would, of course, rather patent an expensive magic bullet that offers the hope of enriching company directors and shareholders.

    But that is why we have governments, isn’t it? They could have stepped in to pick up the bill for the research after profit-motivated firms had refused to do so – if not to safeguard the health of their populations, at least to keep their health budgets under control. Most developed countries, even those with lots of sunshine, have large sections of their population that are Vitamin D deficient, especially among the elderly and housebound, the very groups most affected by Covid.

    But governments shirked their responsibility too. Most have not offered supplements beyond measly and largely useless 400IU tablets to the elderly, and they have failed to fortify foods. Those taking small doses are unlikely to significantly and quickly address any deficiency they have or maximise their resistance to Covid.

    To give a sense of what was potentially at stake, consider the findings of one of last year’s correlative studies, done by a team in Heidelberg. Their work implied that, had the UK ensured its population was not widely Vitamin D deficient, many tens of thousands of lives might have been saved.

    Science not ‘followed’

    There are lessons – ones we seem very reluctant to learn – from the catastrophic failures of the past year. And they aren’t just lessons for the politicians.

    If doctors and medical organisations had really been “following the science”, they would have led the clamour both for properly funded Vitamin D research and for its early use, if only on the precautionary principle. The reality is that very few did. In the UK it was left to MP David Davis, who trained as a molecular scientist, to take up the cause of Vitamin D and badger a government that has shown no inclination to listen.

    Instead, “follow the science” became a simple-minded mantra that allowed scientists to ignore the medical science when it did not lead them in the direction they had been trained to expect. “The science” told us to stay indoors, to minimise our contact with daylight, to limit our exposure to fresh air and exercise. We were required to abandon all traditional wisdom about our health.

    If one wants to understand at least some of the resistance to lockdowns, it might be worth examining that instinct and how deeply – and rightly – ingrained it is in us.

    Scientific arrogance

    If we learn anything from the past year it should be that the current, dominant, mechanistic view of medical science – one that too often disregards the natural world or even holds it in contempt – is deeply corrupting and dangerous.

    This is not intended as a rant against science. After all, the mass production of Vitamin D – in the absence of useful sunshine in northern latitudes for much of the year – depends on scientific procedures.

    Rather it is a rant against a blinkered science that has come to dominate western societies. Put simply, most experts – scientists and doctors – have not taken Vitamin D seriously, despite the growing evidence, because it is made in the mystical touch of sun on skin rather than by white-coated technicians in a laboratory.

    Just as most army generals are invested in war more than in peace because they would be out of job if we all chose to love one another, most scientists have been successfully trained to see the natural world as something to be interfered with, to be tamed, to be dissected, to be reassembled, to be improved. Like the rest of us, they have a need – a very unscientific one – to feel special, to believe that they are indispensable. But that arrogance comes at a cost.

    Unhealthy lifestyles

    The default assumption of many medical scientists was that any claim for Vitamin D – sunlight – having curative or protective properties against Covid-19 needed not urgent, further investigation but dismissal as quackery, as snake oil. How could nature possibly offer a Covid solution that scientists could not improve on?

    Unpopular as it may be to say it, that arrogance continues with the exclusive focus on vaccines. They will prove part of the way we emerge from the Covid winter. But we will be foolish indeed if we rely on them alone. We need to think about the way our societies are structured and the resulting unhealthy habits cultivated in us: the sedentary lifestyles many of us lead, the lack of exposure to nature and to sunshine, the gratuitous consumption on which our economies depend, and the advertiser-driven urge for instant gratification that has led to a plague of obesity.

    There is no vaccine for any of that yet.

    Already we are being forced into what are deeply troubling political debates – not scientific ones – around vaccines. Should vaccinations be made compulsory, or the vaccination-hesitant shamed into compliance? Should those who have received the vaccine be given special privileges through an immunity passport?

    The reality is that whenever we try to “defeat” nature, as if our scientists were military generals waging war on the natural world, we are forced on to new and difficult ethical terrain. As we seek to “improve on” the natural world, we must also remake our social worlds in ways that invariably move us further from lifestyles that we have evolved to need, both physically and emotionally.

    Magic of the stars

    This is not a call to ignore science or reject Covid emergency measures. But it is a call to show a lot more humility and caution as we ponder our place in the natural world – as well as our constant urge to “fix” what the rest of the planet does not regard as broken. A year of Covid has shown how disruptive our meddling can be and how fragile the systems of progress we think we have permanently created really are.

    When our politicians and regulators agitate for tough new restrictions on the public’s right to free speech, claiming fake news and misinformation about Covid, maybe they should remember that trust has to be earnt, not mandated through laws. A world in which profit and power rule is also one in which the likely response from those who are ruled is doubt, scepticism or cynicism.

    Maybe I should not have written this while I was so angry. Or maybe others ought to be angry too – angry about the fact that many, many lives were almost certainly lost unnecessarily, and may continue to be lost, because those who profit from disease have no incentive to protect health.

    We ought to be angry too about how in a better-ordered, more caring society, we might have found ways to avoid the worst excesses of lockdowns that have deprived our children of an education, of friendships, of play, of life in all its variety and excitement, and of sunshine. They lost all that while our politicians and their scientist enablers poured huge sums into labs, into test-tubes and into man-made magic bullets while contemptuously ignoring sunlight because it is free and everywhere and because it is a different kind of magic – the magic of the stars.

    UPDATE:

    There has been the expected social media backlash from some quarters against this post. I even appear to have angered the odd white-coated lab technician! Some doubtless did not actually read beyond the soundbite I offered on social media. But sadly, others seem to be highly invested in deflecting from the central argument I am making. So here it is in a nutshell:

    The only sane response to the Vitamin D medical studies showing dramatic benefits for those hospitalised with Covid is to demand urgent government funding of further research to test those findings and to use Vitamin D in hospitals in the meantime on the precautionary principle, given that it is very cheap and has proven to be completely safe.

    If you are trying to obscure that point, you should do so only if you are absolutely certain that these medical studies are wrong. Otherwise your behaviour is, on the best interpretation, shamefully irresponsible.

    The post Why Politicians and Doctors Keep Ignoring the Medical Research on Vitamin D and Covid first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Is there a remedy for the PCR disease? (Part 1)

    Bremen is a small city-state in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of two cities from the medieval Hanseatic League that have retained their political identity and autonomy over several centuries. The other is Hamburg. Such historical autonomy has also produced idiosyncratic personalities and unconventional or non-conformist policies.

    For instance, Bremen’s constitution was strongly influenced by the merchant Calvinism. So the city is noted for its lack of ostentation. The head of the church in Bremen is the mayor in his capacity as senator for religious affairs. To distinguish themselves from the surrounding aristocratic principalities and the kingdom of Prussia in the German Empire, Bremen citizens traditionally do not accept or display honors and medals. It is a city that prides itself on civility and citizen government, even if at the hand of patricians.

    Hence it is no surprise that the most concentrated civil and legal defense against the German federal government’s constructive pandemic measures have been undertaken by a Bremen law firm, led by Rainer Fuellmich.

    As Dr Fuellmich describes in detail in the video linked below, he and colleagues worldwide have filed a class action suit against the “propagator” of the notorious PCR test, Christian Drosten at the Berlin Charité university hospital. Christian Drosten has been the principal marketer of the test originally developed by Dr K Mullis (+2018) as the “gold standard” for identifying the Sars-Cov2 virus in humans. This use of the so-called PCR test, already denounced by Mullis in 2012, has been, and continues to be, the weapon of mass infection upon which the destruction of the SME sector and civil rights are predicated.

    Dr Füllmich explains why the evidence to date warrants not only charges of fraud (not negligence) and crimes against humanity.

    Even if Covid-19 has become an article of contemporary religious dogma, immune to rational debate, the time for a Reformation is never too late.

    The post Is there a remedy for the PCR disease? (Part 1) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Is there a remedy for the PCR disease? (Part 1)

    (Legal remedies for fraud and crimes against humanity)

    by T.P. Wilkinson / February 20th, 2021

    Bremen is a small city-state in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of two cities from the medieval Hanseatic League that have retained their political identity and autonomy over several centuries. The other is Hamburg. Such historical autonomy has also produced idiosyncratic personalities and unconventional or non-conformist policies.

    For instance, Bremen’s constitution was strongly influenced by the merchant Calvinism. So the city is noted for its lack of ostentation. The head of the church in Bremen is the mayor in his capacity as senator for religious affairs. To distinguish themselves from the surrounding aristocratic principalities and the kingdom of Prussia in the German Empire, Bremen citizens traditionally do not accept or display honors and medals. It is a city that prides itself on civility and citizen government, even if at the hand of patricians.

    Hence it is no surprise that the most concentrated civil and legal defense against the German federal government’s constructive pandemic measures have been undertaken by a Bremen law firm, led by Rainer Fuellmich.

    As Dr Fuellmich describes in detail in the video linked below, he and colleagues worldwide have filed a class action suit against the “propagator” of the notorious PCR test, Christian Drosten at the Berlin Charité university hospital. Christian Drosten has been the principal marketer of the test originally developed by Dr K Mullis (+2018) as the “gold standard” for identifying the Sars-Cov2 virus in humans. This use of the so-called PCR test, already denounced by Mullis in 2012, has been, and continues to be, the weapon of mass infection upon which the destruction of the SME sector and civil rights are predicated.

    Dr Füllmich explains why the evidence to date warrants not only charges of fraud (not negligence) and crimes against humanity.

    Even if Covid-19 has become an article of contemporary religious dogma, immune to rational debate, the time for a Reformation is never too late.

    This article was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2021 at 6:27pm and is filed under Class Action Lawsuits, COVID-19, Germany, Health/Medical.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West?

    In 2016, I attended an information session about First Nations in Lax Kxeen (colonial designation Prince Rupert),1 “BC.” During a break, I conversed with some fellow attendees. They expressed skepticism to colonial provincial authorities being behind the intentional spreading of smallpox among First Nations people2 and that a vaccine was withheld from infected Indigenous individuals. The attendees insisted that there was no vaccine at that time for smallpox.

    Yet, the English doctor Edward Jenner is celebrated for having discovered the smallpox vaccine in 1796. This is the predominant western account on the origin of the smallpox vaccination.

    It is also recorded that inoculation against smallpox was already being practiced in Sichuan province by Taoist alchemists in the 10th century CE.3 The Chinese inoculators administered dead or attenuated smallpox collected from less virulent scabs, which were inserted into the nose on a plug of cotton. Inoculation may also have been practiced much earlier by the Chinese — some sources cite dates as early as 200 BCE.

    China obviously has a historical background in strengthening the immune response of people. Yet, in the western media, one seldom reads or hears about the Chinese COVID-19 vaccines. Neither were we well informed about the effectiveness of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine — that was until recently, when some western nations have been coming up short on vaccine supplies. The Canadian government has been scrambling to meet the demand for vaccines since Pfizer shipments were held up. The focus of western state and corporate media seemed clearly on procuring supplies of the Pfizer (US), Moderna (US), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden) vaccines. This is despite effective, but less heralded, Russian and Chinese vaccines being available and at a more affordable price. South Korea’s Arirang News reported Russian test results that “its second COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective.” CBC.ca found this success problematic; it depicted a political quandary in considering a Russian vaccine: “At first dismissed and ridiculed by Western countries, Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has not only been rehabilitated; it’s emerging as a powerful tool of influence abroad for President Vladimir Putin.” France 24 concurred, hailing it as “a scientific and political victory for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

    Would Canada refuse to consider securing vaccines from Russia to safeguard the health of Canadians to avoid granting Putin, derided by Canadian magazine Macleans as a “new Stalin,” a political victory? Why shouldn’t Russia be lauded for coming up first with a working and effective vaccine? What does it matter if the leader of that country receives recognition? Shouldn’t the national priority be obtaining the best vaccine to protect the health of citizens?

    Medical data aside, western mass media has, apparently, been effective in stirring up a distrust of COVID-19 vaccines from China and Russia in comparison to western vaccines, as revealed in a YouGov poll of almost 19,000 people worldwide.

    Hungary has been mildly criticized for going its own way in ordering the Russian vaccine. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had no qualms and defended Budapest’s decision to buy two million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

    The Czech Republic is also considering following Hungary in using Russian and Chinese vaccines that are still pending approval by the European Union.

    Huge Potential Profits in Vaccines

    Investigative journalist Matt Tabibi pointed out,

    What Americans need to understand about the race to find vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 is that in the U.S., … the production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly riskless, subsidy-laden scam.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus strongly criticized big pharma for profiteering and vaccine inequalities. Adhanom charged that younger, healthier adults in wealthy countries were being prioritized for vaccination against COVID-19 before older people or health care workers in poorer countries and that markets were sought to maximize profitability.

    In chapter VII of the e-book The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” (December 2020, revised January 2021), professor Michel Chossudovsky writes:

    The plan to develop the Covid-19 vaccine is profit driven.

    The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July 2020 and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.

    The objective is ultimately to make money, by vaccinating the entire planet of 7.8 billion people for SARS-CoV-2….

    The Covid vaccine is a multibillion dollar Big Pharma operation which will contribute to increasing the public debt of more than 150 national governments.

    Imagine, if those thousands of people stay home, reduce contact with others, they may have survived the pandemic.4

    Chossudovsky also questions the safety of the rushed testing and the need for a vaccine given that the WHO and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both confirmed that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal influenza.”5

    Some Safety Concerns about Vaccines

    A report raised alarm about at least 36 people who developed a rare, lethal blood disorder, called thrombocytopenia, after receiving either of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines in the US. A Miami obstetrician, Gregory Michael, just 56, died of a brain hemorrhage just 16 days after receiving a Pfizer vaccination. His thrombocytopenia had caused his platelets to drop to virtually zero.

    A Johns Hopkins University expert on blood disorders, Jerry L. Spivak, who was uninvolved in Michael’s care, said that based on Michael’s wife’s description: “I think it is a medical certainty that the vaccine was related [to Michael’s death].”

    In Israel, at least three people suffered Bell’s palsy, facial paralysis, after receiving the vaccine. Data from Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials revealed seven COVID-19 participants had experienced Bell’s palsy in the weeks following vaccination.

    In Norway, at least 23 people who received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine died. According to authorities, thirteen of the fatalities were associated to the vaccine’s side effects. In addition, 10 deaths shortly following vaccination were being probed in Germany.

    Pfizer and Moderna use a novel vaccine based on mRNA. Following the deaths in Norway, Chinese health experts called for caution and the suspension of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, especially for elderly people.

    Regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC reported the administration of over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the US from 14 December 2020 through 7 February 2021. During this time, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System received 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people vaccinated for COVID-19. Based on the extremely low figure, the CDC advised people that “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective” and “to get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as you are eligible.”

    Yet, it seems some Europeans distrust their own government-approved Covid-19 vaccines. A black market has arisen; two doses of unapproved Chinese vaccines have reportedly sold for as high as 7,000 yuan (£800) — almost 20 times the reported usual price.

    Vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac, cautioned the public not to buy the vaccines online.

    Chinese Vaccines and Profit-seeking

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been magnanimous with what could be an extremely profitable property. Said Xi, “China is willing to strengthen cooperation with other countries in the research and development, production, and distribution of vaccines,”

    “We will fulfill our commitments, offer help and support to other developing countries, and work hard to make vaccines a public good that citizens of all countries can use and can afford.”

    Imagine that: making an in-demand product available as a “pubic good” instead of taking advantage of a seemingly dire situation to rake in huge profits. Africa, for one, is benefiting.

    Back in October 2020, Fortune.com proclaimed in its headline: “World’s vaccine testing ground deems Chinese COVID candidate ‘the safest, most promising.’” The tests conducted in Brazil were large, human trials of the COVID-19 vaccines that included Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm.

    São Paulo Governor João Doria said,

    The first results of the clinical study conducted in Brazil prove that among all the vaccines tested in the country, CoronaVac from Chinese developer Sinovacis the safest, the one with the best and most promising rates.

    On 3 February 2021, the peer-review medical journal, The Lancet, published a study by Wu et al. who spoke to the urgent need for a vaccine against COVID-19 for the elderly. Their study found that the Chinese CoronaVac, containing inactivated SARS-CoV-2, is safe and well tolerated by the elderly.

    Journalist Wei Ling Chua, who follows closely how events involving China are portrayed and perceived elsewhere, asked in an email on 12 February 2021:

    1) till this date, there is no report of a single death or hospitalisation after taking China vaccine

    2) unlike the capitalist west, China vaccine companies did not require nations to excuse them from legal liability from side effects.

    Despite, western nations acknowledging many having died soon after taking the vaccine, they all claim that after investigation the cause of death not related to vaccine. But, why does death happen so soon after taking the vaccine?

    Why following administration of a Chinese vaccine are there no reports of people dying soon afterwards?

    Closing Comments

    This essay does not explore the necessity for vaccination against COVID-19. Indeed, there are grounds to be skeptical of the necessity for all people to be vaccinated. However, if COVID-19 is genuinely an urgent health issue,6 then why would governments play politics with the health of their populace?

    1. The city’s name is an eponym for Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a European elitist who never set foot on the Pacific coast. For the Ts’msyen: “Place names are usually rooted in the natural world and the land they refer to.” See Kenneth Campbell, Persistence and Change: A History of the Ts’msyen Nation (Prince Rupert, [sic] BC: First Nation Educational Council, 2005): 10. Author Kenneth Campbell commented, “By writing and saying the name name in [Sm’algyax, the Ts’msyen language], both the language and the people are honored.” (p. 10)
    2. Tom Swanky, The Great Darkening: The True Story of Canada’s “War” of Extermination on the Pacific plus The Tsilhqot’in and other First Nations Resistance (Burnaby, BC: Dragon Heart Enterprises, 2012). See also an interview with Tom Swanky.
    3. Robert Temple, The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention (London: Prion Books, 2002): 135-137.
    4. Click on the following link to access the complete E-book consisting of a Preface, Highlights and Nine Chapters.
    5. For more on “the absolute and relative ‘flu-like’ risk of death from a SARS-CoV-2 infection” see “Review of calculated SARS-CoV-2 infection fatality rates: Good CDC science versus dubious CDC science, the actual risk that does not justify the ‘cure’ – By Prof Joseph Audie,” ResearchGate.
    6. Even about this be skeptical; research and inform yourself; and draw your own conclusions.
    The post Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West?

    In 2016, I attended an information session about First Nations in Lax Kxeen (colonial designation Prince Rupert), “BC.” During a break, I conversed with some fellow attendees. They expressed skepticism to colonial provincial authorities being behind the intentional spreading of smallpox among First Nations people and that a vaccine was withheld from infected Indigenous individuals. The attendees insisted that there was no vaccine at that time for smallpox.

    Yet, the English doctor Edward Jenner is celebrated for having discovered the smallpox vaccine in 1796. This is the predominant western account on the origin of the smallpox vaccination.

    It is also recorded that inoculation against smallpox was already being practiced in Sichuan province by Taoist alchemists in the 10th century CE. The Chinese inoculators administered dead or attenuated smallpox collected from less virulent scabs, which were inserted into the nose on a plug of cotton. Inoculation may also have been practiced much earlier by the Chinese — some sources cite dates as early as 200 BCE.

    China obviously has a historical background in strengthening the immune response of people. Yet, in the western media, one seldom reads or hears about the Chinese COVID-19 vaccines. Neither were we well informed about the effectiveness of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine — that was until recently, when some western nations have been coming up short on vaccine supplies. The Canadian government has been scrambling to meet the demand for vaccines since Pfizer shipments were held up. The focus of western state and corporate media seemed clearly on procuring supplies of the Pfizer (US), Moderna (US), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden) vaccines. This is despite effective, but less heralded, Russian and Chinese vaccines being available and at a more affordable price. South Korea’s Arirang News reported Russian test results that “its second COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective.” CBC.ca found this success problematic; it depicted a political quandary in considering a Russian vaccine: “At first dismissed and ridiculed by Western countries, Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has not only been rehabilitated; it’s emerging as a powerful tool of influence abroad for President Vladimir Putin.” France 24 concurred, hailing it as “a scientific and political victory for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

    Would Canada refuse to consider securing vaccines from Russia to safeguard the health of Canadians to avoid granting Putin, derided by Canadian magazine Macleans as a “new Stalin,” a political victory? Why shouldn’t Russia be lauded for coming up first with a working and effective vaccine? What does it matter if the leader of that country receives recognition? Shouldn’t the national priority be obtaining the best vaccine to protect the health of citizens?

    Medical data aside, western mass media has, apparently, been effective in stirring up a distrust of COVID-19 vaccines from China and Russia in comparison to western vaccines, as revealed in a YouGov poll of almost 19,000 people worldwide.

    Hungary has been mildly criticized for going its own way in ordering the Russian vaccine. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had no qualms and defended Budapest’s decision to buy two million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

    The Czech Republic is also considering following Hungary in using Russian and Chinese vaccines that are still pending approval by the European Union.

    Huge Potential Profits in Vaccines

    Investigative journalist Matt Tabibi pointed out,

    What Americans need to understand about the race to find vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 is that in the U.S., … the production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly riskless, subsidy-laden scam.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus strongly criticized big pharma for profiteering and vaccine inequalities. Adhanom charged that younger, healthier adults in wealthy countries were being prioritized for vaccination against COVID-19 before older people or health care workers in poorer countries and that markets were sought to maximize profitability.

    In chapter VII of the e-book The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” (December 2020, revised January 2021), professor Michel Chossudovsky writes:

    The plan to develop the Covid-19 vaccine is profit driven.

    The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July 2020 and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.

    The objective is ultimately to make money, by vaccinating the entire planet of 7.8 billion people for SARS-CoV-2….

    The Covid vaccine is a multibillion dollar Big Pharma operation which will contribute to increasing the public debt of more than 150 national governments.

    Imagine, if those thousands of people stay home, reduce contact with others, they may have survived the pandemic.

    Chossudovsky also questions the safety of the rushed testing and the need for a vaccine given that the WHO and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both confirmed that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal influenza.”

    Some Safety Concerns about Vaccines

    A report raised alarm about at least 36 people who developed a rare, lethal blood disorder, called thrombocytopenia, after receiving either of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines in the US. A Miami obstetrician, Gregory Michael, just 56, died of a brain hemorrhage just 16 days after receiving a Pfizer vaccination. His thrombocytopenia had caused his platelets to drop to virtually zero.

    A Johns Hopkins University expert on blood disorders, Jerry L. Spivak, who was uninvolved in Michael’s care, said that based on Michael’s wife’s description: “I think it is a medical certainty that the vaccine was related [to Michael’s death].”

    In Israel, at least three people suffered Bell’s palsy, facial paralysis, after receiving the vaccine. Data from Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials revealed seven COVID-19 participants had experienced Bell’s palsy in the weeks following vaccination.

    In Norway, at least 23 people who received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine died. According to authorities, thirteen of the fatalities were associated to the vaccine’s side effects. In addition, 10 deaths shortly following vaccination were being probed in Germany.

    Pfizer and Moderna use a novel vaccine based on mRNA. Following the deaths in Norway, Chinese health experts called for caution and the suspension of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, especially for elderly people.

    Regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC reported the administration of over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the US from 14 December 2020 through 7 February 2021. During this time, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System received 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people vaccinated for COVID-19. Based on the extremely low figure, the CDC advised people that “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective” and “to get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as you are eligible.”

    Yet, it seems some Europeans distrust their own government-approved Covid-19 vaccines. A black market has arisen; two doses of unapproved Chinese vaccines have reportedly sold for as high as 7,000 yuan (£800) — almost 20 times the reported usual price.

    Vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac, cautioned the public not to buy the vaccines online.

    Chinese Vaccines and Profit-seeking

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been magnanimous with what could be an extremely profitable property. Said Xi, “China is willing to strengthen cooperation with other countries in the research and development, production, and distribution of vaccines,”

    “We will fulfill our commitments, offer help and support to other developing countries, and work hard to make vaccines a public good that citizens of all countries can use and can afford.”

    Imagine that: making an in-demand product available as a “pubic good” instead of taking advantage of a seemingly dire situation to rake in huge profits. Africa, for one, is benefiting.

    Back in October 2020, Fortune.com proclaimed in its headline: “World’s vaccine testing ground deems Chinese COVID candidate ‘the safest, most promising.’” The tests conducted in Brazil were large, human trials of the COVID-19 vaccines that included Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm.

    São Paulo Governor João Doria said,

    The first results of the clinical study conducted in Brazil prove that among all the vaccines tested in the country, CoronaVac from Chinese developer Sinovacis the safest, the one with the best and most promising rates.

    On 3 February 2021, the peer-review medical journal, The Lancet, published a study by Wu et al. who spoke to the urgent need for a vaccine against COVID-19 for the elderly. Their study found that the Chinese CoronaVac, containing inactivated SARS-CoV-2, is safe and well tolerated by the elderly.

    Journalist Wei Ling Chua, who follows closely how events involving China are portrayed and perceived elsewhere, asked in an email on 12 February 2021:

    1) till this date, there is no report of a single death or hospitalisation after taking China vaccine

    2) unlike the capitalist west, China vaccine companies did not require nations to excuse them from legal liability from side effects.

    Despite, western nations acknowledging many having died soon after taking the vaccine, they all claim that after investigation the cause of death not related to vaccine. But, why does death happen so soon after taking the vaccine?

    Why following administration of a Chinese vaccine are there no reports of people dying soon afterwards?

    Closing Comments

    This essay does not explore the necessity for vaccination against COVID-19. Indeed, there are grounds to be skeptical of the necessity for all people to be vaccinated. However, if COVID-19 is genuinely an urgent health issue, then why would governments play politics with the health of their populace?

    This article was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2021 at 4:30pm and is filed under Africa, China, Corporate Globalization, COVID-19, Health/Medical, Russia, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Vaccinations and Stimulus Packages Won’t Mend the Economy

    The social and economic destruction engulfing the U.S. and dozens of other countries remains out of everyone’s control and more chaos, instability, and insecurity now mark the global landscape.

    The ruling elite have repeatedly shown their inability to tackle any serious problems effectively. They are at a loss for how to deal with current problems and refuse to consider any alternative to their obsolete economic system. The best they can do is recycle old ideas to maintain their class power and privilege. Their efforts to block the New focus mainly on promoting disinformation about “new and better forms of capitalism,” including oxymorons like “inclusive capitalism,” “responsible capitalism,” and “ethical capitalism.”

    Since the outbreak of the “COVID Pandemic” in March 2020 every week has been a roller coaster for humanity. The economy and society keep lurching from one crisis to another while incoherence and stress keep amplifying. It is said that 1 in 6 Americans went into therapy for the first time in 2020.

    Unemployment, under-employment, inequality, mental depression, anxiety, suicide, environmental decay, inflation, debt, health care costs, education, and poverty are worsening everywhere. Thousands of businesses that have been around for years keep disappearing left and right.

    Top-down actions in response to the “COVID Pandemic” have made so many things worse for so many people. Many are wondering which is worse: the covid-19 virus or the top-down response to the pandemic. Governments everywhere have steadfastly refused to mobilize the people to solve the many problems that are worsening. The moral climate is low and more people are worried about the future.

    An atmosphere has been created whereby people are supposed to feel like the exhausting “COVID Pandemic” will last forever and we can all forget about getting back to any normal healthy non-digital relations, activities, and interactions. No society in history has worn face masks for an entire year. We are told over and over again that there is no returning to anything called “normal.” Moving everything online and repeatedly asserting that this is great, “cool,” and wonderful is proving to be unsatisfactory and unfulfilling. People want and need real, direct, non-digital connections and interactions with other human beings. Life behind a screen is not life.

    Even with all the restrictions and shutdowns the virus, according to the mainstream media, continues to wreak havoc at home and abroad. It is almost like none of the severe restrictions on people’s freedoms made any difference. People have had to endure this humiliation while also not being permitted any role in deciding the aim, operation, and direction of the economy or any of the affairs of society; they are left out of the equation every step of the way and not even asked for superficial “input” that always goes unheeded anyway. Existing governance arrangements are simply not working to empower people or affirm their rights. The people’s interests and will are blocked at every turn by an outdated political setup that advances only the narrow interests of the rich.

    Despite intense pressure to blindly rely on the rich and their political representatives to “figure things out,” this is not working. Nor does it help that the mainstream media approaches multiple crises and issues with endless double-talk, disconnected facts, catchy sound-bites, dramatic exaggerations, angry voices, political axe-grinding, and lots of confusion. Coherence and a human-centered outlook are avoided at all costs. People are constantly left disoriented. Jumping arbitrarily and rapidly from one thing to another in the most unconscious way is presented as useful analysis and information. This is why sorting out basic information has become a full-time job for everyone. People are understandably worn-out and overwhelmed. Disinformation overload degrades mental, emotional, and physical health.

    The world has become an uglier and gloomier place—all in the name of “improving health.” It is no surprise that a recent Gallup Poll shows that the majority of Americans are extremely dissatisfied with government, the economy, the culture, and the moral climate.

    In this hazardous unstable context, there are two ever-present key pieces of disinformation operating side by side. Both are designed to deprive working people of any say, initiative, outlook, or power.

    First there is the “once everyone is vaccinated things will be much better” disinformation. This ignores the fact that capitalist crises have endogenous causes not exogenous causes and that the economic crisis started well before the “COVID Pandemic.” More than 150 years of recessions, depressions, booms, busts, instability, chaos, and anarchy have not been caused by external phenomena like bacteria, germs, and viruses but by the internal logic and operation of capital itself. A so-called “free market” economy by its very nature and logic ensures “winners” and “losers,” “booms” and “busts.” It is called a “dog-eat-dog” fend-for-yourself competitive world for a reason. The modern idea that humans are born to society and have rights by virtue of their being is alien to “free market” ideology.

    Despite the fact that millions have been vaccinated at home and abroad, poverty, inequality, unemployment, debt, and other problems continue to worsen. Businesses continue to suffer and disappear. Hospitality, leisure, recreation, and other sectors have been decimated in many countries. Air travel is dramatically lower. So are car sales. It is not enough to say, “Yes, the next few months will be rough and lousy economically speaking but we will get there with more vaccinations. Just be patient, it will all eventually work out.” This is not what is actually unfolding. The all-sided crisis we find ourselves in started before the “COVID Pandemic” and continues unabated. Such a view also makes a mockery of economic science and the people’s desire to decide the affairs of society and establish much better arrangements that exclude narrow private interests and do not rely on police powers.

    In the coming months millions more will be vaccinated but economic decline and decay will continue. Both the rate and amount of profit have been falling for years. And owners of capital are not going to invest in anything when there is no profit to be had and when it is easier instead to balloon fictitious capital and pretend everything is a stock market video game. The lack of vaccinations did not cause the economic collapse the word is currently suffering through, nor will more vaccinations reverse economic decline and decay. The “COVID Pandemic” has largely made some people vastly richer and millions more much poorer. The “COVID Pandemic” has significantly increased inequality. Unfortunately, the so-called “Great Reset” agenda of the World Economic Forum and Pope Francis’s recent call for a “Copernican Revolution” in the economy will make things worse for millions more because they will perpetuate the existing moribund economic system. Such agendas are designed to fool the gullible, block working class consciousness and action, and keep the initiative in the hands of the global oligarchy.

    The same applies to so-called “stimulus packages.” Various versions of these top-down monetary and fiscal programs have been launched in different countries, and while they have assuaged some problems for people, they have not been adequate or fixed any underlying problems. They have not prevented poverty or mass unemployment. Economies remain mired in crisis. In most cases “stimulus packages” have made things worse by increasing the amount of debt that many generations will have to repay. This is in addition to the many other forms of debt Americans suffer from and rent payments that will one day have to be paid.

    Many are also wondering why trillions of dollars can be printed and instantly turned over to the banks and corporations with no discussion but the same cannot be done for social programs, public enterprises, and the people. Why, for example, can all not get free healthcare or have taxes eliminated? Why can’t various forms of personal debt be wiped out instantly? If the government can print money for “them” why can’t they print money for “us”? Who is government supposed to serve? Billionaires?

    Nether the CARES Act of 2020 nor the stimulus package passed in December 2020 nor the one President Biden is pushing for in March 2021 will be adequate or solve any major problems. Many felt that the $600 stimulus checks that went out in December 2020 were pathetic and insulting.

    The problem lies with a socialized productive economy run by everyone but owned and controlled by a tiny handful of competing private interests determined to maximize profit as fast as possible regardless of the damage to the social and natural environment. There is no way for the economy to benefit all individuals and serve the general interests of society so long as it is dominated by a handful of billionaires. The social wealth produced by workers cannot benefit workers and the society if workers themselves do not control the wealth they produce and have first claim to.

    The outlook, agenda, and reference points of the rich must be rejected and replaced by a human-centered aim, agenda, direction, and outlook. The current trajectory is untenable and unsustainable. The situation is dangerous in many ways, but perhaps one good thing to come out of the accelerated pace of chaos, anarchy, and instability are the contradictions that are presenting new opportunities for action with analysis that favors working people.

    The post Vaccinations and Stimulus Packages Won’t Mend the Economy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Do Mandatory Masks and Vaccines Break the 10 Points of the Nuremburg Code?

    Image: Anadolu Agency

    Mandatory masks continue to be the standard operating procedure for many counties, regions, districts, states and nations worldwide, as the COVID cult agenda progresses. In many places, while COVID vaccines are not yet mandatory, authorities are rushing to prepare to make them so, by setting up schemes like immunity passports, vaccine certificates and mandatory tracking databases which log who has taken the shot and who has not. Meanwhile, inherent sovereign human rights are being limited to those who acquiesce to tkae the shot. The insanity and absurdity of the COVID cult is all the more apparent when you realize that its mandatory or quasi-mandatory rules stand in contradiction to a very important set of principles decided upon in 1947. I refer to the Nuremburg Code, the set of 10 points that arose from the infamous Nuremburg Trials conducted in the aftermath of World War II. I am not passing judgement on how impartial those trials were, because I know they were mainly run by the US and the Allies (as the victors), who for obvious reasons did not press charges against American generals such as Eisenhower (who later became US President) for his POW camps inside of Germany and carpet-bombing of Dresden. Nonetheless, the trials produced the Nuremburg Code which enshrined the principle of informed consent – a principle which, in the advent of the COVID scamdemic, is now highly relevant and is continually being put to the test. This article will look briefly at each of the 10 points in the light of COVID restrictions and rules.

    The 10 Points of the Code

    This website gives a brief history of how the 10 points of the Nuremburg Code came into existence. Interestingly, although the code is an international ethical landmark, it is apparently still not enshrined in American or German national law. We must assume those governments via their secret agencies like the CIA wanted to keep the door open to conduct medical experimentation (such as bioweapon programs like weaponized ticks) upon their citizenry without technically breaking the law:

    On August 19, 1947, the judges of the American military tribunal in the case of the USA vs. Karl Brandt et. al. delivered their verdict. Before announcing the guilt or innocence of each defendant, they confronted the difficult question of medical experimentation on human beings. Several German doctors had argued in their own defense that their experiments differed little from previous American or German ones. Furthermore they showed that no international law or informal statement differentiated between legal and illegal human experimentation. This argument worried Drs. Andrew Ivy and Leo Alexander, American doctors who had worked with the prosecution during the trial. On April 17, 1947, Dr. Alexander submitted a memorandum to the United States Counsel for War Crimes which outlined six points defining legitimate research. The verdict of August 19 reiterated almost all of these points in a section entitled “Permissible Medical Experiments” and revised the original six points into ten. Subsequently, the ten points became known as the “Nuremberg Code.” Although the code addressed the defense arguments in general, remarkably none of the specific findings against Brandt and his codefendants mentioned the code. Thus the legal force of the document was not well established. The uncertain use of the code continued in the half century following the trial when it informed numerous international ethics statements but failed to find a place in either the American or German national law codes. Nevertheless, it remains a landmark document on medical ethics and one of the most lasting products of the “Doctors Trial.”

    Nuremburg Code #1: Voluntary Consent is Essential

    The first point of the Code is:

    The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

    This point has already been broken many times over just with the introduction of mandatory masks alone. In the US, for example, masks are defined in several places as “medical devices” according to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). The first piece of evidence is on the FDA’s website itself at this page that discusses masks and is nested under the category Medical Devices as follows:

    Home / Medical Devices / Products and Medical Procedures / General Hospital Devices and Supplies / Personal Protective Equipment for Infection Control / N95 Respirators, Surgical Masks, and Face Masks


    The second piece of evidence is in the law: the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) which is US federal law enacted by Congress. It and other federal laws establish the legal framework within which FDA operates. The FD&C Act can be found in the United States Code (USC), which contains all general and permanent US laws, beginning at 21 USC 301. You can read it here. Look under Chapter II Definitions (pg.3) and scroll down to Section 201(h):

    (h) The term “device” (except when used in paragraph (n) of this section and in sections 301(i), 403(f), 502(c), and 602(c)) means an instrument, apparatus, implement, machine, contrivance, implant, in vitro reagent, or other similar or related article, including any component, part, or accessory, which is — (1) recognized in the official National Formulary, or the United States Pharmacopeia, or any supplement to them, (2) intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, in man or other animals, or (3) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals, and which does not achieve its primary intended purposes through chemical action within or on the body of man or other animals and which is not dependent upon being metabolized for the achievement of its primary intended purposes.

    Under this section, a mask meets the criteria required for being designated as a medical device, since it meets point (2), being an apparatus which is intended to prevent disease.

    Did any politician ask the people of the world whether they wanted to wear masks and volunteer themselves to wear medical devices? No. There has been no voluntary or informed consent.

    Nuremburg Code #2: Yield Fruitful Results Unprocurable By Other Means

    The second point of the Code is:

    The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.

    We have to face reality that COVID measures such as mandatory masks or vaccines are a giant medical experiment. Many people have been suffering the ill effects of under-oxygenation due to prolonged mask wearing. The untested vaccines constitute the biggest worldwide experiment in human history, having been rushed to market in under 12 months when vaccines usually take 7-20 years to develop. As covered in previous articles, these so-called vaccines (actually mRNA devices) were not designed to stop transmission, elicit a direct immune response (as traditional vaccines do) nor to stop moderate to severe symptoms, so their risk-to- benefit ratio is massively high. Cloth masks made of bandannas and rags are utterly “random and unnecessary in nature.” Meanwhile, there are many other ways to produce “fruitful results” for society without this experimentation: educating people about the principles of natural health, boosting the immune system naturally and even supplementing with vitamin D (research has shown a connection between those acquiring COVID and vitamin D deficiency).

    Nuremburg Code #3: Base Experiments on Results of Animal Experimentation and Natural History of Disease

    The third point of the Code is:

    The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.

    This point has also been broken. Big Pharma companies skipped animal trials in their rush to get their “vaccines” to market.

    Nuremburg Code #4: Avoid All Unnecessary Suffering and Injury

    The fourth point of the Code is:

    The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

    None of the masks and “vaccines” (which indisputably cause suffering, injury, and death) are necessary for many reasons:

    1. the COVID case and death count has been wildly inflated from the beginning;
    1. COVID is a repackaging scheme which reclassifies existing diseases to create the appearance of a new deadly disease and pandemic when there is none. See the work of people such as Dr. Genevieve Briand;
    1. the alleged novel virus SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated, purified and proven 100% to exist.

    Nuremburg Code #5: No Experiment to be Conducted if There’s Reason to Think Injury or Death Will Occur

    The fifth point of the Code is:

    No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.

    Is there an a priori reason to believe disabling injury or death will occur from the COVID not-vaccines? Given the past history of vacine injury, yes there is. Around 2 weeks ago on January 29th 2021, the CDC reported over 11,000 adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine, including 501 deaths and 10,748 other injuries, some of which were indeed disabling injuries. If you are not fainthearted, see these video clips and compilations (here, here, here and here) which show the possible horrible side effects of the vax.

    Nuremburg Code #6: Risk Should Never Exceed the Benefit

    The sixth point of the Code is:

    The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

    From Big Pharma’s point of view, the risk doesn’t exceed the benefit. They are shielded from legal liability thanks to the 1986 NCVIA and other preparatory laws like the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act which paved the way for Big Pharma legal immunity. There’s no risk, and the profits are astronomical. For the average individual, on the other hand, the situation is exactly the reverse; there’s no benefit to taking a non-vaccine which doesn’t protect you from severe symptoms and which doesn’t stop transmission, but which could lead to serious and debilitating effects like paralysis and death.

    Nuremburg Code #7: Preparation Must Be Made Against Even Remote Possibility of Injury, Disability or Death

    The seventh point of the Code is:

    Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

    No preparations have been made! The COVID vaccines are a giant worldwide human experiment, and every single participant is the equivalent of a human hamster or guinea pig. If you die, bad luck! Big Pharma will be sure to roll out their legal and PR departments and immediately question the connection bewteen their vax and your death. They will never, ever admit a connection, and even if they did, there are no legal consequences for them. There is no recourse.

    Nuremburg Code #8: Experiment Must Be Conducted by Scientifically Qualified Persons

    The eighth point of the Code is:

    The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.

    Doctors such as Dr. Stefan Lanka and Dr. Tom Cowan who challenge the mainstream narrative of virology – namely that contagious viruses exist and can infect you – would most certainly dispute that career bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma scientists are truly qualified, but even if you accept that they are, the scientists that make the vaccines are not the ones administering them. It’s the regular nurses and doctors who are doing that. How many of them truly know what the non-vaccine is, what it does, the complete list of its ingredients and the full list of its long-term side effects? No one knows the latter, precisely because this is a giant experiment.

    By creating unlawful mask mandates, politicians are playing doctor, putting themselves in the position of being medical experts by dictating health directives and medical interventions to the entire population. The people have not given consent for politicians, who are medically untrained, to act as their personal physicians.

    Nuremburg Code #9: Anyone Must Have the Freedom to Bring the Experiment to an End At Any Time

    The ninth point of the Code is:

    During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

    Do you have the right to bring the insane COVID cult medical experimentation to an end? Of course you don’t! People are being discriminated against for not wearing masks by being deprived of their rights to freely travel, trade and work. People are being threatened with fines and prison for not wearing masks. People’s rights are being violated when they exercise their right to make thier own medical decisions by refusing the vax. There is no freedom for the COVID subject who is being experimented upon.

    Nuremburg Code #10: The Scientist Must Bring the Experiment to an End At Any Time if There’s Probable Cause of it Resulting in Injury or Death

    The tenth point of the Code is:

    During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

    This point includes the phrase “probable cause” which is probably well-known to many people, especially Americans, since it is enshrined in the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution that protects people against searches and seizures unless the police have a warrant based on probable cause that that person has a committed a crime. Probable cause is legally considered to be a higher standard than “reasonable belief” or “reasonable suspicion” which is the wording used in other jurisdictions. Regardless, do you think any Big Pharma company has EVER voluntarily halted their vaccine rollout because of their “superior skill and careful judgment” that they might be harming people? No way! The profits are too great, and their line of defense is that some people may be injured or killed by the vaccines, but it’s all for the “greater good” of protecting society. As Martin Luther King said, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

    Conclusion

    Society is regressing right now. We are giving up hard-fought rights and freedoms out of fear. Collectively, we are forgetting that we have already long ago established fundamental human rights such as bodily autonomy, medical sovereignty and informed, voluntary consent. The Nuremburg Code is a stark reminder that we have been through all this before, and got through it to crystallize the lessons learned. We must remember Who We Are and stop this insane COVID medical experimentation – before it’s too late.

    The post Do Mandatory Masks and Vaccines Break the 10 Points of the Nuremburg Code? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Do Mandatory Masks and Vaccines Break the 10 Points of the Nuremburg Code?

    Image: Anadolu Agency

    Mandatory masks continue to be the standard operating procedure for many counties, regions, districts, states and nations worldwide, as the COVID cult agenda progresses. In many places, while COVID vaccines are not yet mandatory, authorities are rushing to prepare to make them so, by setting up schemes like immunity passports, vaccine certificates and mandatory tracking databases which log who has taken the shot and who has not. Meanwhile, inherent sovereign human rights are being limited to those who acquiesce to tkae the shot. The insanity and absurdity of the COVID cult is all the more apparent when you realize that its mandatory or quasi-mandatory rules stand in contradiction to a very important set of principles decided upon in 1947. I refer to the Nuremburg Code, the set of 10 points that arose from the infamous Nuremburg Trials conducted in the aftermath of World War II. I am not passing judgement on how impartial those trials were, because I know they were mainly run by the US and the Allies (as the victors), who for obvious reasons did not press charges against American generals such as Eisenhower (who later became US President) for his POW camps inside of Germany and carpet-bombing of Dresden. Nonetheless, the trials produced the Nuremburg Code which enshrined the principle of informed consent – a principle which, in the advent of the COVID scamdemic, is now highly relevant and is continually being put to the test. This article will look briefly at each of the 10 points in the light of COVID restrictions and rules.

    The 10 Points of the Code

    This website gives a brief history of how the 10 points of the Nuremburg Code came into existence. Interestingly, although the code is an international ethical landmark, it is apparently still not enshrined in American or German national law. We must assume those governments via their secret agencies like the CIA wanted to keep the door open to conduct medical experimentation (such as bioweapon programs like weaponized ticks) upon their citizenry without technically breaking the law:

    On August 19, 1947, the judges of the American military tribunal in the case of the USA vs. Karl Brandt et. al. delivered their verdict. Before announcing the guilt or innocence of each defendant, they confronted the difficult question of medical experimentation on human beings. Several German doctors had argued in their own defense that their experiments differed little from previous American or German ones. Furthermore they showed that no international law or informal statement differentiated between legal and illegal human experimentation. This argument worried Drs. Andrew Ivy and Leo Alexander, American doctors who had worked with the prosecution during the trial. On April 17, 1947, Dr. Alexander submitted a memorandum to the United States Counsel for War Crimes which outlined six points defining legitimate research. The verdict of August 19 reiterated almost all of these points in a section entitled “Permissible Medical Experiments” and revised the original six points into ten. Subsequently, the ten points became known as the “Nuremberg Code.” Although the code addressed the defense arguments in general, remarkably none of the specific findings against Brandt and his codefendants mentioned the code. Thus the legal force of the document was not well established. The uncertain use of the code continued in the half century following the trial when it informed numerous international ethics statements but failed to find a place in either the American or German national law codes. Nevertheless, it remains a landmark document on medical ethics and one of the most lasting products of the “Doctors Trial.”

    Nuremburg Code #1: Voluntary Consent is Essential

    The first point of the Code is:

    The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

    This point has already been broken many times over just with the introduction of mandatory masks alone. In the US, for example, masks are defined in several places as “medical devices” according to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). The first piece of evidence is on the FDA’s website itself at this page that discusses masks and is nested under the category Medical Devices as follows:

    Home / Medical Devices / Products and Medical Procedures / General Hospital Devices and Supplies / Personal Protective Equipment for Infection Control / N95 Respirators, Surgical Masks, and Face Masks


    The second piece of evidence is in the law: the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) which is US federal law enacted by Congress. It and other federal laws establish the legal framework within which FDA operates. The FD&C Act can be found in the United States Code (USC), which contains all general and permanent US laws, beginning at 21 USC 301. You can read it here. Look under Chapter II Definitions (pg.3) and scroll down to Section 201(h):

    (h) The term “device” (except when used in paragraph (n) of this section and in sections 301(i), 403(f), 502(c), and 602(c)) means an instrument, apparatus, implement, machine, contrivance, implant, in vitro reagent, or other similar or related article, including any component, part, or accessory, which is — (1) recognized in the official National Formulary, or the United States Pharmacopeia, or any supplement to them, (2) intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, in man or other animals, or (3) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals, and which does not achieve its primary intended purposes through chemical action within or on the body of man or other animals and which is not dependent upon being metabolized for the achievement of its primary intended purposes.

    Under this section, a mask meets the criteria required for being designated as a medical device, since it meets point (2), being an apparatus which is intended to prevent disease.

    Did any politician ask the people of the world whether they wanted to wear masks and volunteer themselves to wear medical devices? No. There has been no voluntary or informed consent.

    Nuremburg Code #2: Yield Fruitful Results Unprocurable By Other Means

    The second point of the Code is:

    The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.

    We have to face reality that COVID measures such as mandatory masks or vaccines are a giant medical experiment. Many people have been suffering the ill effects of under-oxygenation due to prolonged mask wearing. The untested vaccines constitute the biggest worldwide experiment in human history, having been rushed to market in under 12 months when vaccines usually take 7-20 years to develop. As covered in previous articles, these so-called vaccines (actually mRNA devices) were not designed to stop transmission, elicit a direct immune response (as traditional vaccines do) nor to stop moderate to severe symptoms, so their risk-to- benefit ratio is massively high. Cloth masks made of bandannas and rags are utterly “random and unnecessary in nature.” Meanwhile, there are many other ways to produce “fruitful results” for society without this experimentation: educating people about the principles of natural health, boosting the immune system naturally and even supplementing with vitamin D (research has shown a connection between those acquiring COVID and vitamin D deficiency).

    Nuremburg Code #3: Base Experiments on Results of Animal Experimentation and Natural History of Disease

    The third point of the Code is:

    The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.

    This point has also been broken. Big Pharma companies skipped animal trials in their rush to get their “vaccines” to market.

    Nuremburg Code #4: Avoid All Unnecessary Suffering and Injury

    The fourth point of the Code is:

    The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

    None of the masks and “vaccines” (which indisputably cause suffering, injury, and death) are necessary for many reasons:

    1. the COVID case and death count has been wildly inflated from the beginning;
    1. COVID is a repackaging scheme which reclassifies existing diseases to create the appearance of a new deadly disease and pandemic when there is none. See the work of people such as Dr. Genevieve Briand;
    1. the alleged novel virus SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated, purified and proven 100% to exist.

    Nuremburg Code #5: No Experiment to be Conducted if There’s Reason to Think Injury or Death Will Occur

    The fifth point of the Code is:

    No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.

    Is there an a priori reason to believe disabling injury or death will occur from the COVID not-vaccines? Given the past history of vacine injury, yes there is. Around 2 weeks ago on January 29th 2021, the CDC reported over 11,000 adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine, including 501 deaths and 10,748 other injuries, some of which were indeed disabling injuries. If you are not fainthearted, see these video clips and compilations (here, here, here and here) which show the possible horrible side effects of the vax.

    Nuremburg Code #6: Risk Should Never Exceed the Benefit

    The sixth point of the Code is:

    The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

    From Big Pharma’s point of view, the risk doesn’t exceed the benefit. They are shielded from legal liability thanks to the 1986 NCVIA and other preparatory laws like the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act which paved the way for Big Pharma legal immunity. There’s no risk, and the profits are astronomical. For the average individual, on the other hand, the situation is exactly the reverse; there’s no benefit to taking a non-vaccine which doesn’t protect you from severe symptoms and which doesn’t stop transmission, but which could lead to serious and debilitating effects like paralysis and death.

    Nuremburg Code #7: Preparation Must Be Made Against Even Remote Possibility of Injury, Disability or Death

    The seventh point of the Code is:

    Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

    No preparations have been made! The COVID vaccines are a giant worldwide human experiment, and every single participant is the equivalent of a human hamster or guinea pig. If you die, bad luck! Big Pharma will be sure to roll out their legal and PR departments and immediately question the connection bewteen their vax and your death. They will never, ever admit a connection, and even if they did, there are no legal consequences for them. There is no recourse.

    Nuremburg Code #8: Experiment Must Be Conducted by Scientifically Qualified Persons

    The eighth point of the Code is:

    The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.

    Doctors such as Dr. Stefan Lanka and Dr. Tom Cowan who challenge the mainstream narrative of virology – namely that contagious viruses exist and can infect you – would most certainly dispute that career bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma scientists are truly qualified, but even if you accept that they are, the scientists that make the vaccines are not the ones administering them. It’s the regular nurses and doctors who are doing that. How many of them truly know what the non-vaccine is, what it does, the complete list of its ingredients and the full list of its long-term side effects? No one knows the latter, precisely because this is a giant experiment.

    By creating unlawful mask mandates, politicians are playing doctor, putting themselves in the position of being medical experts by dictating health directives and medical interventions to the entire population. The people have not given consent for politicians, who are medically untrained, to act as their personal physicians.

    Nuremburg Code #9: Anyone Must Have the Freedom to Bring the Experiment to an End At Any Time

    The ninth point of the Code is:

    During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

    Do you have the right to bring the insane COVID cult medical experimentation to an end? Of course you don’t! People are being discriminated against for not wearing masks by being deprived of their rights to freely travel, trade and work. People are being threatened with fines and prison for not wearing masks. People’s rights are being violated when they exercise their right to make thier own medical decisions by refusing the vax. There is no freedom for the COVID subject who is being experimented upon.

    Nuremburg Code #10: The Scientist Must Bring the Experiment to an End At Any Time if There’s Probable Cause of it Resulting in Injury or Death

    The tenth point of the Code is:

    During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

    This point includes the phrase “probable cause” which is probably well-known to many people, especially Americans, since it is enshrined in the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution that protects people against searches and seizures unless the police have a warrant based on probable cause that that person has a committed a crime. Probable cause is legally considered to be a higher standard than “reasonable belief” or “reasonable suspicion” which is the wording used in other jurisdictions. Regardless, do you think any Big Pharma company has EVER voluntarily halted their vaccine rollout because of their “superior skill and careful judgment” that they might be harming people? No way! The profits are too great, and their line of defense is that some people may be injured or killed by the vaccines, but it’s all for the “greater good” of protecting society. As Martin Luther King said, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

    Conclusion

    Society is regressing right now. We are giving up hard-fought rights and freedoms out of fear. Collectively, we are forgetting that we have already long ago established fundamental human rights such as bodily autonomy, medical sovereignty and informed, voluntary consent. The Nuremburg Code is a stark reminder that we have been through all this before, and got through it to crystallize the lessons learned. We must remember Who We Are and stop this insane COVID medical experimentation – before it’s too late.

    Makia Freeman is the editor of The Freedom Articles, a long-time truth researcher and a promoter of freedom. He provides insightful, non-partisan, unique and cutting-edge analysis on who’s running the world, how they’re doing it and what the deeper agenda is – as well as solutions for restoring peace and freedom to the world. Read other articles by Makia.

    This article was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2021 at 4:36pm and is filed under COVID-19, Freedom, Health/Medical, Human Rights, Lockdown, Opinion, Pharmaceuticals.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Farmers’ Protest in India: Price of Failure Will Be immense

    Globally, there is an ongoing trend of a handful of big companies determining what food is grown, how it is grown, what is in it and who sells it. This model involves highly processed food adulterated with chemical inputs ending up in large near-monopoly supermarket chains or fast-food outlets that rely on industrial-scale farming.

    While the brands lining the shelves of giant retail outlets seem vast, a handful of food companies own these brands which, in turn, rely on a relatively narrow range of produce for ingredients. At the same time, this illusion of choice often comes at the expense of food security in poorer countries that were compelled to restructure their agriculture to facilitate agro-exports courtesy of the World Bank, IMF, the WTO and global agribusiness interests.

    In Mexico, transnational food retail and processing companies have taken over food distribution channels, replacing local foods with cheap processed items, often with the direct support of the government. Free trade and investment agreements have been critical to this process and the consequences for public health have been catastrophic.

    Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition in 2012. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25 to 35 per cent and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9 to 37 per cent. Some 29 per cent of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35 per cent of the youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in ten school age children experienced anaemia.

    Former Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, concludes that trade policies had favoured a greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable foods, particularly fruit and vegetables. He added that the overweight and obesity emergency that Mexico faces could have been avoided.

    In 2015, the non-profit organisation GRAIN reported that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in Mexico’s retail structure (towards supermarkets and convenience stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in the country.

    NAFTA eliminated rules preventing foreign investors from owning more than 49 per cent of a company. It also prohibited minimum amounts of domestic content in production and increased rights for foreign investors to retain profits and returns from initial investments. By 1999, US companies had invested 5.3 billion dollars in Mexico’s food processing industry, a 25-fold increase in just 12 years.

    US food corporations began to colonise the dominant food distribution networks of small-scale vendors, known as tiendas (corner shops). This helped spread nutritionally poor food as they allowed these corporations to sell and promote their foods to poorer populations in small towns and communities. By 2012, retail chains had displaced tiendas as Mexico’s main source of food sales.

    In Mexico, the loss of food sovereignty induced catastrophic changes to the nation’s diet and many small-scale farmers lost their livelihoods, which was accelerated by the dumping of surplus commodities (produced at below the cost of production due to subsidies) from the US. NAFTA rapidly drove millions of Mexican farmers, ranchers and small business people into bankruptcy, leading to the flight of millions of immigrant workers.

    Warning for India

    What happened in Mexico should serve as a warning as Indian farmers continue their protest against three recent farm bills that are designed to fully corporatize the agrifood sector through contract farming, the massive roll-back of public sector support systems, a reliance on imports (boosted by a future US trade deal) and the acceleration of large-scale (online) retail.

    If you want to know the eventual fate of India’s local markets and small retailers, look no further than what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2019. He stated that Amazon had “destroyed the retail industry across the United States.”

    And if you want to know the eventual fate of India’s farmers, look no further than the 1990s when the IMF and World Bank advised India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture in return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time.

    India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops for export to earn foreign exchange. Part of the strategy would also involve changing land laws so that land could be sold and amalgamated for industrial-scale farming.

    The plan was for foreign corporations to capture the sector, with the aforementioned policies having effectively weakened or displaced independent cultivators.

    To date, this process has been slow but the recent legislation could finally deliver a knock-out blow to tens of millions of farmers and give what the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and the global agritech, seed and agrochemical corporations have wanted all along. It will also serve the retail/agribusiness/logistics interests of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and its sixth richest, Gautam Adani.

    During their ongoing protests, farmers have been teargassed, smeared and beaten. Journalist Satya Sagar notes that government advisors fear that seeming to appear weak with the agitating farmers would not sit well with foreign agrifood investors and could stop the flow of big money into the sector – and the economy as a whole.

    And it is indeed ‘big’ money. Facebook invested 5.5 billion dollars last year in Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms (e-commerce retail). Google has also invested 4.5 billion dollars. Currently, Amazon and Flipkart (Walmart has an 81% stake) together control over 60% of the country’s overall e-commerce market. These and other international investors have a great deal to lose if the recent farm legislation is repealed. So does the Indian government.

    Since the 1990s, when India opened up to neoliberal economics, the country has become increasingly dependent on inflows of foreign capital. Policies are being governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign investment and maintain ‘market confidence’ by ceding to the demands of international capital. ‘Foreign direct investment’ has thus become the holy grail of the Modi-led administration.

    Little wonder the government needs to be seen as acting ‘tough’ on protesting farmers because now, more than ever, attracting and retaining foreign reserves will be required to purchase food on the international market once India surrenders responsibility for its food policy to private players by eliminating its buffer stocks.

    The plan to radically restructure agrifood in the country is being sold to the public under the guise of ‘modernising’ the sector. And this is to be carried out by self-proclaimed ‘wealth creators’ like Zuckerberg, Bezos and Ambani who are highly experienced at creating wealth – for themselves.

    According to the recent Oxfam report ‘The Inequality Virus’, Mukesh Ambani doubled his wealth between March and October 2020. The coronavirus-related lockdown in India resulted in the country’s billionaires increasing their wealth by around 35 per cent, while 170,000 people lost their jobs every hour in April 2020 alone.

    Prior to the lockdown, Oxfam reported that 73 per cent of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1 per cent, while 670 million Indians, the poorest half of the population, saw only a 1 per cent increase in their wealth.

    Moreover, the fortunes of India’s billionaires increased by almost 10 times over a decade and their total wealth was higher than the entire Union budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19.

    It is clear who these ‘wealth creators’ create wealth for. On the People’s Review site, Tanmoy Ibrahim writes a piece on India’s billionaire class, with a strong focus on Ambani and Adani. By outlining the nature of crony capitalism in India, it is clear that Modi’s ‘wealth creators’ are given carte blanche to plunder the public purse, people and the environment, while real wealth creators – not least the farmers – are fighting for existence.

    The current struggle should not be regarded as a battle between the government and farmers. If what happened in Mexico is anything to go by, the outcome will adversely affect the entire nation in terms of the further deterioration of public health and the loss of livelihoods.

    Consider that rates of obesity in India have already tripled in the last two decades and the nation is fast becoming the diabetes and heart disease capital of the world. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), between 2005 and 2015 the number of obese people doubled, even though one in five children in the 5-9 year age group were found to be stunted.

    This will be just part of the cost of handing over the sector to billionaire (comprador) capitalists Mukesh Ambani and Gautum Adani and Jeff Bezos (world’s richest person), Mark Zukerberg (world’s fourth richest person), the Cargill business family (14 billionaires) and the Walmart business family (richest in the US).

    These individuals are poised to siphon off the wealth of India’s agrifood sector while denying the livelihoods of many millions of small-scale farmers and local mom and pop retailers while undermining the health of the nation.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 at 7:26pm and is filed under Agriculture, COVID-19, Economic Inequality, Farmers, Food Security, Food Sovereignty, Food/Nutrition, Health/Medical, IMF, India, Land ownership, Land Theft, Land Use, Mexico, NAFTA, Neoliberalism, Protests, Resistance, World Bank.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Farmers’ Protest in India: Price of Failure Will Be immense

    Globally, there is an ongoing trend of a handful of big companies determining what food is grown, how it is grown, what is in it and who sells it. This model involves highly processed food adulterated with chemical inputs ending up in large near-monopoly supermarket chains or fast-food outlets that rely on industrial-scale farming.

    While the brands lining the shelves of giant retail outlets seem vast, a handful of food companies own these brands which, in turn, rely on a relatively narrow range of produce for ingredients. At the same time, this illusion of choice often comes at the expense of food security in poorer countries that were compelled to restructure their agriculture to facilitate agro-exports courtesy of the World Bank, IMF, the WTO and global agribusiness interests.

    In Mexico, transnational food retail and processing companies have taken over food distribution channels, replacing local foods with cheap processed items, often with the direct support of the government. Free trade and investment agreements have been critical to this process and the consequences for public health have been catastrophic.

    Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition in 2012. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25 to 35 per cent and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9 to 37 per cent. Some 29 per cent of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35 per cent of the youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in ten school age children experienced anaemia.

    Former Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, concludes that trade policies had favoured a greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable foods, particularly fruit and vegetables. He added that the overweight and obesity emergency that Mexico faces could have been avoided.

    In 2015, the non-profit organisation GRAIN reported that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in Mexico’s retail structure (towards supermarkets and convenience stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in the country.

    NAFTA eliminated rules preventing foreign investors from owning more than 49 per cent of a company. It also prohibited minimum amounts of domestic content in production and increased rights for foreign investors to retain profits and returns from initial investments. By 1999, US companies had invested 5.3 billion dollars in Mexico’s food processing industry, a 25-fold increase in just 12 years.

    US food corporations began to colonise the dominant food distribution networks of small-scale vendors, known as tiendas (corner shops). This helped spread nutritionally poor food as they allowed these corporations to sell and promote their foods to poorer populations in small towns and communities. By 2012, retail chains had displaced tiendas as Mexico’s main source of food sales.

    In Mexico, the loss of food sovereignty induced catastrophic changes to the nation’s diet and many small-scale farmers lost their livelihoods, which was accelerated by the dumping of surplus commodities (produced at below the cost of production due to subsidies) from the US. NAFTA rapidly drove millions of Mexican farmers, ranchers and small business people into bankruptcy, leading to the flight of millions of immigrant workers.

    Warning for India

    What happened in Mexico should serve as a warning as Indian farmers continue their protest against three recent farm bills that are designed to fully corporatize the agrifood sector through contract farming, the massive roll-back of public sector support systems, a reliance on imports (boosted by a future US trade deal) and the acceleration of large-scale (online) retail.

    If you want to know the eventual fate of India’s local markets and small retailers, look no further than what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2019. He stated that Amazon had “destroyed the retail industry across the United States.”

    And if you want to know the eventual fate of India’s farmers, look no further than the 1990s when the IMF and World Bank advised India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture in return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time.

    India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops for export to earn foreign exchange. Part of the strategy would also involve changing land laws so that land could be sold and amalgamated for industrial-scale farming.

    The plan was for foreign corporations to capture the sector, with the aforementioned policies having effectively weakened or displaced independent cultivators.

    To date, this process has been slow but the recent legislation could finally deliver a knock-out blow to tens of millions of farmers and give what the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and the global agritech, seed and agrochemical corporations have wanted all along. It will also serve the retail/agribusiness/logistics interests of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and its sixth richest, Gautam Adani.

    During their ongoing protests, farmers have been teargassed, smeared and beaten. Journalist Satya Sagar notes that government advisors fear that seeming to appear weak with the agitating farmers would not sit well with foreign agrifood investors and could stop the flow of big money into the sector – and the economy as a whole.

    And it is indeed ‘big’ money. Facebook invested 5.5 billion dollars last year in Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms (e-commerce retail). Google has also invested 4.5 billion dollars. Currently, Amazon and Flipkart (Walmart has an 81% stake) together control over 60% of the country’s overall e-commerce market. These and other international investors have a great deal to lose if the recent farm legislation is repealed. So does the Indian government.

    Since the 1990s, when India opened up to neoliberal economics, the country has become increasingly dependent on inflows of foreign capital. Policies are being governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign investment and maintain ‘market confidence’ by ceding to the demands of international capital. ‘Foreign direct investment’ has thus become the holy grail of the Modi-led administration.

    Little wonder the government needs to be seen as acting ‘tough’ on protesting farmers because now, more than ever, attracting and retaining foreign reserves will be required to purchase food on the international market once India surrenders responsibility for its food policy to private players by eliminating its buffer stocks.

    The plan to radically restructure agrifood in the country is being sold to the public under the guise of ‘modernising’ the sector. And this is to be carried out by self-proclaimed ‘wealth creators’ like Zuckerberg, Bezos and Ambani who are highly experienced at creating wealth – for themselves.

    According to the recent Oxfam report ‘The Inequality Virus’, Mukesh Ambani doubled his wealth between March and October 2020. The coronavirus-related lockdown in India resulted in the country’s billionaires increasing their wealth by around 35 per cent, while 170,000 people lost their jobs every hour in April 2020 alone.

    Prior to the lockdown, Oxfam reported that 73 per cent of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1 per cent, while 670 million Indians, the poorest half of the population, saw only a 1 per cent increase in their wealth.

    Moreover, the fortunes of India’s billionaires increased by almost 10 times over a decade and their total wealth was higher than the entire Union budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19.

    It is clear who these ‘wealth creators’ create wealth for. On the People’s Review site, Tanmoy Ibrahim writes a piece on India’s billionaire class, with a strong focus on Ambani and Adani. By outlining the nature of crony capitalism in India, it is clear that Modi’s ‘wealth creators’ are given carte blanche to plunder the public purse, people and the environment, while real wealth creators – not least the farmers – are fighting for existence.

    The current struggle should not be regarded as a battle between the government and farmers. If what happened in Mexico is anything to go by, the outcome will adversely affect the entire nation in terms of the further deterioration of public health and the loss of livelihoods.

    Consider that rates of obesity in India have already tripled in the last two decades and the nation is fast becoming the diabetes and heart disease capital of the world. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), between 2005 and 2015 the number of obese people doubled, even though one in five children in the 5-9 year age group were found to be stunted.

    This will be just part of the cost of handing over the sector to billionaire (comprador) capitalists Mukesh Ambani and Gautum Adani and Jeff Bezos (world’s richest person), Mark Zukerberg (world’s fourth richest person), the Cargill business family (14 billionaires) and the Walmart business family (richest in the US).

    These individuals are poised to siphon off the wealth of India’s agrifood sector while denying the livelihoods of many millions of small-scale farmers and local mom and pop retailers while undermining the health of the nation.

    The post Farmers’ Protest in India: Price of Failure Will Be immense first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Covering up Workplace Covid-19

    The San Francisco Chronicle ran an excellent article on Sunday, January 31 about the failure of the California Public Health Department (CDPH) to abide by state law requiring the agency to disclose information about COVID-19 outbreaks in the workplace, and about the failure of county public health departments, including San Francisco, to disclose information about workplace outbreaks.

    Of course the Chronicle consigned this article to the business section, when it really belonged on the front page above the fold. And the reporters, Chase DiFeliciantonio and Shwanika Narayan, were a bit hobbled by the need to be “objective” and allow both sides to get their say, as if there is a side that has some reasonable excuse for hiding COVID-19 outbreaks from you and me.

    So, let me up the game a bit. What these public health departments are doing is a simple cover-up, designed to protect the corporate elite at the expense of the health and safety of us workers and our families and friends. You know, like former President Richard Nixon pretending to know nothing about the Watergate break-in.

    AB685, or Where’s the Beef?

    Last September the state legislature passed Assembly Bill 685 (AB685). Among other things, this bill mandated that if there is a “potential exposure” to COVID-19 – for example, a worker testing positive – employers are supposed to tell their workers, their unions if they have one, and their county public health department. They are also supposed to create a “disinfection and safety plan.” Nice law, if you can enforce it.

    More to the point of this article, AB685 also requires the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to post on its website information that “allows the public to track the number and frequency of COVID-19 outbreaks and the number of COVID-19 cases and outbreaks by industry reported by any workplace.”

    AB685 became effective January 1, 2021. It is now February. There ain’t nothing on the CDPH website yet. If you don’t believe me, click here.

    This reporter sent an email on February 1 to the Office of Public Affairs of the CDPH, and asked if they could explain why there is no information on their website, as required by AB685. Their answer was just as informative as their website. That is to say, they have not answered.

    It appears that the authors of Sunday’s Chronicle article got a similar response from the CDPH, as the CDPH would not tell them “when it will begin publishing the AB685-mandated information on its website.” That is journalistic language for they told us to “Go take a hike.” Sorta like Nixon erasing that famous tape. I did say cover-up, didn’t I?

    Laws are only pieces of paper if they are not enforced, good for wiping your you-know-what and not much else.

    County Public Health Departments

    The Chronicle article also included a thorough survey of county health departments in California and what they are doing to report workplace COVID-19 outbreaks. The headline of the online version of this article sums up their findings very well: “L.A. and Oregon disclose workplace outbreaks. Most Bay Area health officers won’t. Why?”

    If you wanted to know what businesses in San Francisco have outbreaks, you could search the SF Department of Public Health website all day, until your fingers and your keyboard wear out, but you would come up blank.

    On the other hand, if you want to know where there are active outbreaks in Merced County, all you have to do is click here.

    The authors of the Chronicle article did the journalistic thing and quoted various experts saying that publicly revealing information about COVID-19 specific workplace outbreaks would make everybody safer. Like, maybe you don’t want to shop at some store, or eat at some restaurant, where there has been an outbreak. Or maybe, if you work there, you might want to demand some changes, or perhaps take a leave.

    Of course, being journalists, they also quoted various experts spouting the company line – that such revelations might hurt the business involved. Who can argue with that?

    Go to Work, Get Sick, Die

    So, like an “essential” worker looking for the vaccine, the public is pretty much on its own, trying to figure out where it is safe and where it is not. As are most workers who might want to know whether or not they are working in a safe worksite.

    Here are some numbers that did NOT come from our public health departments, but from a couple of studies reported in an article in David Sirota’s The Daily Poster:

    –> Workers deemed “essential” have a 55% higher chance of being infected than those who aren’t working. Their family members and roommates are, of course, also placed at much higher risk. This according to a study from University of Pennsylvania researchers.

    –> Looking at it from a different angle, workers who test positive are nearly twice as likely to work in an office or a school than at home, according to a study by the federal Center for Disease Control (CDC).

    Those statistics probably come as no surprise. But what workers are at the greatest risk? That might surprise you.

    At the top of the list are cooks. Cooks. Take that to your favorite supposedly-safe outdoor dining establishment.

    After that come “packaging and filling machine operators,” which includes cannery and food production workers, chemical and pharmaceutical packagers, and even tobacco company workers – the people who put the commodities you buy at the store into all those colorful bottles, boxes and cans designed to separate you from your money.

    Next comes agricultural workers (eat your vegetables, dear), then bakers (very sweet), and after that construction laborers.

    Here is the full list, based on research from UC San Francisco:Do you see yourself on that list?

    You might notice that I almost got through this whole article about COVID-19 without once mentioning former President “Dark Ages” Donald Trump. Hard to believe. But this is no longer Trump’s pandemic. The people in charge now are politicians like Mayor London Breed, Governor Gavin Newsom and – dare I say it – President Joe Biden.

    In fairness, Biden is new to the job and he has his hands full with crazy Republicans and corporate Democrats. But Breed and Newsom and their ilk have been on the job since well before the pandemic. Breed can give orders to the SF Public Health Department and Newsom can give orders to the California Department of Public Health. When will they step up to the plate and tell them to dump the cover-up and come clean? Let’s hope it is soon.

    • This is a slightly expanded version of the article first published by 48 Hills on February 1, 2021.

    The post Covering up Workplace Covid-19 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.