“We honor those members of our military who sacrificed their lives in order to defend our freedoms. We owe these heroes—and their loved ones—everything. Not just on Memorial Day. Every day.”
Wonderful! So, are you gonna stop invading and destabilizing lesser nations that don’t think like the USA? Like Cuba, Venezuela? I am asking you, why can’t the USA let other people live and fructify as they wish? Are you not in control? If not, then who is?
By the way, around 1986, I actually was the porter who picked up the luggage for George Bush Sr, and his entourage of secret agents while he stayed at the Empress Hotel, Victoria, BC, Canada. 3 days.
I still remember the security and the protocol that went through.
Total professionals, the US team: I got up and went to work at 7am. A manager took me aside and told me I had a special assignment. For those of you that know the Empress, he stayed at the Vice Royal suite on the second floor of the Humboldt wing. Suite #211. That is a memory I will not forget.
At the time, they were invading, destabilizing Central America.
It’s the early 1990s. Life is tough, like always. Pot is illegal, no one knows about aliens, corporate media bullshit, mind control, there is no internet. I spent the day doing the usual chores.
That night, a Friday night, I played Volleyball, indoor soccer, and floor hockey from 6 to 9pm. Then rushed home to see the X-Files. This tune comes from that episode. I was hooked instantly. Life is like that.
Yo, USA, just shut up once and for all about human rights. 100 years later and this has not been aknowledged. Actually, dear USA, just shut up about everything.
100 years ago, the Tulsa Race Massacre happened, when white supremacists aided by the police attacked, bombed, looted and set fire to the self-sufficient and affluent Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, also known as “Black Wall Street”.
In a span of about 18 hours, between May 31 and June 1, 1921, white mobs ended up murdering more than 300 African Americans, burning thousands of African American homes, hospitals, schools, churches, and businesses and leaving up to 10,000 people homeless.The massacre started when a young Black man, was falsely accused of assaulting a young white woman. Envious of the thriving neighborhood, white racists found cause to act on their resentment and attack the community of Greenwood. The mobs were backed up by airplanes that reportedly dropped bombs and fired on Black residents.The events of the Tulsa massacre and bodies of the murdered Black people were photographed and turned into souvenir postcards.No one has ever been held responsible and survivors never received reparations.
A report by U of T researcher Jillian Kohler and Transparency International suggests secrecy surrounding COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data and drug company deals with governments could undermine public trust (photo by LUIS ROBAYO/AFP via Getty Images)
A lack of transparency in COVID-19 vaccine trials and deals signed between governments and drug companies could undermine the global response to the pandemic, warn researchers at the University of Toronto and Transparency International in a new report.
Published by Transparency International, “For Whose Benefit?” takes an in-depth look at the development and sale of the world’s top 20 COVID-19 vaccines, including those developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
The study, supported by a U of T Connaught Global Challenge Award, examined clinical trial data and nearly 200 contracts for vaccine sales up to March 2021, revealing a pattern of poor transparency and a tendency for governments to obscure key details of contracts with drug companies to provide vaccines.
Jillian Kohler (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)
“Transparency in clinical trials is always important, but the tempo of the development process for COVID-19 vaccines has been unprecedented, so there is an even greater need for transparency in the current situation,” said Jillian Kohler, a professor at U of T’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy in the Faculty of Arts & Science.
With recent Gallup polling showing that one third of the world’s adult population – 1.3 billion people – are unwilling to take a coronavirus vaccine, transparency is vital to build confidence, the researchers say.
They add that clinical trial transparency is the only way to monitor the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and it is a key safeguard against selective reporting of results or manipulation of data. Yet, analysis of the 86 registered clinical trials for the top 20 vaccines revealed:
Results from just 45 per cent of these trials were announced
Of this figure, 41 per cent provided only top-level results via a press release or press conference, with the full data unavailable for media scrutiny or academic review
Clinical trial protocols were published for just 12 per cent of trials. There were no publicly accessible protocols for 88 per cent of the trials and no way of knowing the conditions under which they were carried out
“The lack of transparency of many clinical trials combined with the huge financial incentives for producing effective treatments leaves the door wide open for selective reporting of results or outright data manipulation,” said Jonathan Cushing, head of Transparency International’s global health program.
The report’s analysis of 183 contracts for 12 different COVID-19 vaccines revealed:
Only seven per cent of vaccine contracts between developers and governments were published through official channels
Just one contract (0.5 per cent) was published without redactions. Most feature entire pages of redactions that obscure information of critical public interest
There are large disparities in the price paid. For the Oxford/Astra-Zeneca vaccine, for example, upper-middle income economies such as South Africa paid an average of 25 per cent more per dose than high income economies like the European Union
Cushing said the lack of transparency over the contracts was as disturbing as the poor transparency in the clinical trials.
“Hiding contracts from public view or publishing documents filled with redacted text means we don’t know what governments have signed up to,” Cushing said. “Given the huge amounts of public money invested in research and development around the world, citizens have a right to know everything about the vaccines their taxes helped to fund.”
The researchers make several recommendations that they say would improve transparency, boost public confidence and help secure the long-term success of COVID-19 response:
National governments should adopt and enforce legislation requiring the pre-registration of all clinical trials and the publication of summary results within 12 months of their completion
All governments that have bought vaccines should follow the lead of the United States and publish their contracts
Vaccine developers should publish their clinical trial protocols on a publicly accessible registry, if they have not done so already
Developers should also only use media to announce clinical trial results in tandem with data analysis published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, trial registry or as a pre-print article
“As researchers, we want to have impact in terms of academic reports but also in the real world,” Kohler said. “Our report is a roadmap toward better public policy and an informed citizenry, which would serve us well right now and in future global health crises.”
U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds Lower Court Decision in Hardeman v Monsanto Finding Monsanto Guilty. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Friday upheld a $25 million judgment and trial verdict finding Bayer’s Roundup caused a California resident’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma, dealing a blow to the chemical company’s hopes of limiting its legal risk over the weedkiller. The Court of Appeals rejected Bayer’s argument that lawsuits like Edwin Hardeman’s never should go to trial because federal pesticide laws barred allegations that the company failed to warn of Roundup’s cancer risks. “It’s a slam dunk for plaintiffs,” said Leslie Brueckner, an attorney with Public Justice who helped with Hardeman’s appeal. “This proves these claims are viable in the tort system.”Roundup weedkiller’s days are numbered. Bayer-Monsanto’s shareholders should jump ship while they still can. Boycott Roundup and all synthetic pesticides. Boycott GMO foods and clothing. We can destroy Bayer-Monsanto and the GMO/agrichemical industry in the consumer markets while the courts are giving it to them on the legal front.
Enlisting in the US military should be infinitely more shameful than being a sex worker.
Poverty CONTRIBUTES to most enlistments, but this only works because people tell them “Oh I’m so proud of you, defending our country is a noble thing” instead of “So you’re going to go kill kids for crude oil? Gross.”
What sort of technological leap forward are we talking about – the difference between the Wright Brothers Kitty Hawk and the Apollo rockets to the moon? Elizondo: “We’re talking about the differences between a child’s kite and perhaps the space shuttle – that’s perhaps a more accurate comparison.”
Footage of radar showing more than a dozen unidentified flying objects moving at great speed and swarming a US warship is genuine, a Defense Department official has confirmed, after the video was released by a UFO enthusiast.
“I can confirm that the video you sent was taken by Navy personnel,” a Pentagon spokesperson told NBC after a video was published by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell. The footage, showing a US Navy ship’s radar screen, shows a total of 14 unidentified objects appearing.
The voices of bewildered sailors can be heard in the background as the crew apparently discusses the strange sighting. Some of them can be heard saying “they’re going fast” as the crew sought to mark the objects’ range and bearing.
The incident has been included in the “ongoing examinations” of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), a Naval Intelligence program established to collect reports of mysterious sightings, the Pentagon official confirmed, while saying that “no further information” about this situation could be released.
Corbell – known for his documentary films largely focused on UFOs and government disclosure – said that the video had been taken in the CIC (Combat Information Center) of the USS Omaha on July 15, 2019 somewhere off the Californian coast near San Diego. He also said that at least one of the observed objects entered water at some point in a development similar to the ones previously reported by the US sailors, who saw UFOs over the sea.
The UFO enthusiast also claimed that a submarine was used to search the area where one of the objects descended into water but no traces of the UFO were found. “The most impressive evidence we witnessed was their endurance. The event lasted over an hour with all contacts just disappearing. We were never able to discern where they departed to,” a crewman at the USS Omaha said, according to Corbell.
The filmmaker also told Daily Star that, according to the data he obtained, the Navy encountered up to 100 UFOs over just one month in 2019. “It was reported to me that there were 50 to 100 unidentified that were swarming many of the ships. Over radio they were talking back and forth and experiencing similar types of contacts,” he said.
It is the second piece of footage Corbell has released over recent weeks. In mid-May, he published another leaked video that the Pentagon has since confirmed as genuine. That video showed a round object darting around over the California coast before abruptly plunging into the water.
The publications come as US intelligence agencies prepare an official report on UFOs. The Intelligence Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2021 signed by former president Donald Trump back in December contains a demand for a detailed analysis of UFO data and intelligence collected by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the UAPTF and the FBI.
The report is expected to be presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June.
By Malcolm Kendrick, doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, ‘Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,’ is available here.
Those of us who put forward an alternative view to the prevailing orthodoxy on the virus or on vaccinations are being vilified, threatened and cancelled. This is not how science, or a functioning democracy, works.
I haven’t written for a while, sorry. Instead, I have been sorting out two complaints about my writing made to the General Medical Council (GMC). Also, a complaint from NHS England, and two irate phone calls from other doctors, informing me I shouldn’t make any negative comments about vaccines
For those in other countries, or who don’t know about such things, doctors in the UK are ruled by many different organisations, all of whom feel able to make judgement and hand down various sanctions. The deadliest of them, the Spanish Inquisition if you like, is the GMC, who can strike you off the medical register and stop you working as a doctor. They have great power, with no oversight.
Prior to this, I had been phoned by, and attacked by, two journalists and a couple of fact-checking organisations that have sprung up which can decide your guilt or innocence with regard to any information about Covid-19. Of course, no one can check the fact-checkers. They are the self-appointed guardians of ‘truth’. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes – indeed. Who does guard the guardians?
In truth they have not scared me off, just greatly annoyed me. The problem is that if they really decide to hunt you down, then you are wiped from the system. Dr. Joseph Mercola, the American alternative medicine proponent, is, for example, having to remove information from his site in great haste. Once wiped from the internet, it becomes very difficult for anyone to read anything you write or listen to anything you say. It is a major problem if this is how one makes a living.
I was removed from Wikipedia a couple of years ago, but I do have a couple of insulting pages on Rational W to take their place. Edited and controlled by – who knows?
I think it is the extreme wing of the vegan party who decided to wipe me from Wikipedia and write the Rational W slights. I say this because a large number of other people I know who are critical of the diet-heart hypothesis, those who dared to suggest that eating animal products is perfectly healthy, were also obliterated from Wikipedia at pretty much the same time.
I did rather like the idea of Wikipedia when it started, but it has been taken over by people, some may say zealots, with their own agendas. This is particularly true of a few scientific areas I am particularly interested in. Diet, heart disease and Covid-19.
Frustratingly, there is nothing you can do if Wikipedia decides to wipe you out. There is no appeal. Those who have gained the power to edit Wikipedia are answerable to no one. They rule their little empires with absolute power. They are, of course, exactly the sort of people who should have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with science. Their minds were made up years ago. They have agendas, they are the anti-science, anti-scientist brigade.
The main purpose of science is to question and attack. To subject ideas to the greatest scrutiny. Those who decide to shut down and stifle debate – whatever they may believe themselves to be doing – are, in fact, traitors to the cause of science. Stranglers of the enlightenment, assassins of progress.
They are not alone, and things have gotten far worse in the past year or so. Science has taken a terrible battering during Covid-19, though I have always known that dissent against a widely held scientific hypothesis is difficult.
Just trying to get published is a nightmare. The peer-review system is one of the many weapons used against innovative thinking. ‘Let’s see what the current experts think of this new idea which threatens to overturn everything they have researched and taught over the last 30 years, and have built their reputations on… I wonder if they will like it and approve it?’
Experts certainly create a formidable barrier to change. As described by David Sackett, a founding father of evidence-based medicine, in his article, ‘The sins of expertness and a proposal for redemption’:
“… It then dawned on me that experts like me commit two sins that retard the advance of science and harm the young. Firstly, adding our prestige to our opinions gives the latter far greater persuasive power than they deserve on scientific grounds alone. Whether through deference, fear, or respect, others tend not to challenge them, and progress towards the truth is impaired in the presence of an expert.
“The second sin of expertness is committed on grant applications and manuscripts that challenge the current expert consensus. Reviewers face the unavoidable temptation to accept or reject new evidence and ideas, not on the basis of their scientific merit, but on the extent to which they agree or disagree with the public positions taken by experts on these matters.”
And his remedy:
“But there are still far more experts around than is healthy for the advancement of science. Because their voluntary retirement does not seem to be any more frequent in 2000 than it was in 1980, I repeat my proposal that the retirement of experts be made compulsory at the point of their academic promotion and tenure.”
Expertise is great. ‘Experts’… well, that is a completely different matter. We certainly have a few formidable ones kicking about with Covid-19. In the UK, we have the great and good of the SAGE committee made up of – who knows? – and chosen for whatever reasons. They wield enormous power, and never disagree on anything. In the US, we have Fauci and the CDC. Ditto.
In the background we have the World Health Organisation (WHO)… who can tell you what way the wind is blowing if nothing else. They remind me of Groucho Marx’s famous comment. “These are my principles. And you if you don’t like them… I have others.” However, we at the WHO would like to make it clear that nothing about Covid-19 has anything to do with China, in any way. Can we have more money please?
Anyway, where are we with this virus, and with science?
In my opinion, Covid-19 succeeded in breaking my last vestiges of faith in medical scientific research. I cannot believe anything I read. I accept no mainstream facts or figures.
We are told such utter nonsense. For example, the ‘fact’ that vaccination protects against Covid-19 more effectively than having had the disease itself… This is just utter nonsense.
We were told that the virus was spread by touching contaminated surfaces… Really? We were told it spread through droplets, not aerosols. Which is the most complete garbage. We were told that everyone has to wear a mask. We were told it could easily be passed on by asymptomatic people. Based on nothing at all. I could go on.
Yet, no one seems remotely bothered by any of this nonsense. The public seems to lap it up, and attack anyone who questions the current narrative. I feel that I am clinging onto a dying religion. The religion of Francis Bacon and the Enlightenment, as set out here:
“Baconian method, methodical observation of facts as a means of studying and interpreting natural phenomena. This essentially empirical method was formulated early in the 17th century by Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, as a scientific substitute for the prevailing systems of thought, which, to his mind, relied all too often on fanciful guessing and the mere citing of authorities to establish truths of science.
“After first dismissing all prejudices and preconceptions, Bacon’s method, as explained in Novum Organum (1620; ‘New Instrument’), consisted of three main steps: first, a description of facts; second, a tabulation, or classification, of those facts into three categories – instances of the presence of the characteristic under investigation, instances of its absence, or instances of its presence in varying degrees; third, the rejection of whatever appears, in the light of these tables, not to be connected with the phenomenon under investigation and the determination of what is connected with it.”
This way of thinking, it seems, lasted from 1620 to 2020. 400 years of immense scientific progress. The age of enlightenment. We are moving back to the prevailing systems of thought… to fanciful guessing and the mere citing of authorities to establish truths of science.
Throughout its history—wherever it arrived and settled in as the dominant economic system—capitalism provoked struggles over the redistribution of wealth. In other words, this system always distributes wealth in a particular way and likewise produces dissatisfaction with that particular distribution. Those dissatisfied then struggle, more or less, consciously or not, peacefully or violently to redistribute wealth. The struggles are socially divisive and sometimes rise to civil war levels.
The French Revolution marked the end of French feudalism and its transition to capitalism. The revolutionaries’ slogans promised the transition would bring with it “liberté, égalité, fraternité” (liberty, equality and fraternity). In other words, equality was to be a key accompaniment to or product of capitalism’s establishment, of finally replacing feudalism’s lord-serf organization of production with capitalism’s very different employer-employee system. Transition to capitalism would erase the gross inequalities of French feudalism. The American Revolution likewise broke not only from its British colonial master but also from the feudal monarchy of George III. “All men are created equal” was a central theme of its profound commitment to equality together with capitalism.
In France, the United States and beyond, capitalism justified itself by reference to its achievement or at least its targeting of equality in general. This equality included the distribution of wealth and income, at least in theory and rhetoric. Yet from the beginning, all capitalisms wrestled with contradictions between lip service to equality and inequality in their actual practices. Adam Smith worried about the “accumulation of stock” (wealth or “capital”) in some hands but not in others. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had different visions of the future of an independent United States in terms of whether it would or would not secure wealth equality later dubbed “Jeffersonian democracy.” There was and always remained in the United States an awkward dissonance between theoretical and rhetorical commitments to equality and the realities of slavery and then systemic racist inequalities. The inequalities of gender likewise contradicted commitments to equality. It took centuries of capitalism to achieve even the merely formal political equality of universal suffrage.
Thus, there should be no surprise that U.S. capitalism—like most other capitalisms—provokes a widely troubling contradiction between the actual wealth inequality it produces and tendentially deepens (as Thomas Piketty has definitively shown) and its repeatedly professed commitment to equality. Efforts to redistribute wealth—to thereby move from less to more equal distributions—follow. Yet, they also disturbingly divide societies where the capitalist economic system prevails.
Wealth redistributions take from those who have and give to those who have not. Those whose wealth is redistributed resent or resist this taking, while those who receive during the redistributions of wealth develop rationales to justify that receipt. Each side of such redistributions often demonizes the other. Politics typically becomes the arena where demonizations and conflicts over redistribution occur. Those at risk of being deprived due to redistributions aim either to oppose redistribution or else to escape it. If the opposition is impossible or difficult, escape is the chosen strategy. Thus, if profits of capitalists are to be taxed to redistribute wealth to the poor, big businesses may escape by moving politically to shift the burden of taxation onto small or medium businesses. Alternatively, all businesses may unite to shift the burden of such redistributive taxation onto higher-paid employees’ wages and salaries, and away from business profits.
Recipients of redistributions face parallel political problems of whom to target for contributing to wealth redistribution. Will recipients support a tax on all profits or rather a tax just on big business with maybe some redistribution flowing from big to medium and small business? Or might low-wage recipients target high-wage workers for redistributive taxation?
All kinds of other redistributions between regions, races and genders display comparable strategic political choices.
Conflicts over redistributions are thus intrinsic to capitalism and always have been. They reflect but also deepen social divisions. They can and often have become violent and socially disruptive. They may trigger demands for system change. They may function as catalysts for revolutions. Because pre-capitalist economic systems like slavery and feudalism had fewer theoretical and rhetorical commitments to equality in general, they had fewer redistribution struggles. Those finally emerged when inequalities became relatively more extreme than the levels of inequality that more frequently provoked redistribution struggles in capitalism.
No “solution” to divisive struggles over wealth redistribution in capitalism was ever found. Capitalisms keep reproducing both theoretical and rhetorical appeals to equality as self-celebrations alongside actualities of deep and deepening wealth inequalities. Criticisms of capitalism on grounds of wealth inequality dog the system everywhere. Divisive social conflicts over capitalism’s unequal wealth distributions persist. Endless efforts to find and implement a successful redistributive system or mechanism continue. The latest comprises various proposals for universal basic incomes.
To avoid divisive social conflict over redistribution, the solution is not to distribute unequally in the first place. That can remove the cause and impetus for redistributive struggles and thus the need for endless and so far fruitless efforts to find the “right” redistribution formula or mechanism. The way forward is to democratize the decision about distributing wealth as it emerges from production. This can be accomplished by democratizing the enterprise, converting workplaces from their current capitalist organization (i.e., hierarchical divisions into employers—public or private—and employees) into worker cooperatives. In the latter, each worker has one vote, and all basic workplace issues are decided by majority vote after a free and open debate. That is when different views on what distribution of output should occur are articulated and democratically decided.
No redistribution is required, necessitated, or provoked. Workplace members are free to reopen, debate and decide anew on initial wealth distributions at any time. The same procedure would apply to workplace decisions governing what to produce, which technology to deploy, and where to locate production. All workers collectively and democratically decide what wage the collective of workers pays to each of them individually. They likewise decide how to dispose of or allocate any surplus, which is above the total individual wage bill and replacement of used-up inputs, that the enterprise might generate.
A parable can illustrate the basic point. Imagine parents taking their twins—Mary and John—to a park where there is an ice-cream vendor. The parents buy two ice creams and give both to Mary. John’s wails provoke a search for an appropriate redistribution of ice creams. The parents take away one of the ice creams from Mary and hand it to John. Anger, resentment, bitterness, envy and rage distress the rest of the day and divide family members. If affection and emotional support are similarly distributed and redistributed, deep and divisive scars result. The lesson: we don’t need a “better” or “right” redistribution; we need to distribute more equally and democratically in the first place.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Poverty CONTRIBUTES to most enlistments, but this only works because people tell them “Oh I’m so proud of you, defending our country is a noble thing” instead of “So you’re going to go kill kids for crude oil? Gross.”
Vice President Kamala Harris spent the weekend under fire from Republicans, which of course means that Kamala Harris spent the weekend being criticized for the most silly, vapid reason you could possibly criticize Kamala Harris for.
Apparently the likely future president tweeted “Enjoy the long weekend,” a reference to the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, instead of gushing about fallen troops and sacrifice.
That’s it, that’s the whole entire story. That silly, irrelevant offense by one of the sleaziestpeople in the single most corrupt and murderous government on earth is the whole entire basis for histrionic headlines from conservative media outlets like this:
Harris, the born politician, was quick to course correct.
“Throughout our history our service men and women have risked everything to defend our freedoms and our country,” the veep tweeted. “As we prepare to honor them on Memorial Day, we remember their service and their sacrifice.”
Which is of course complete bullshit. It has been generations since any member of the US military could be said to have served or sacrificed defending America or its freedoms, and that has been the case throughout almost the entirety of its history. If you are reading this it is statistically unlikely that you are of an age where any US military personnel died for any other reason than corporate profit and global domination, and if you are it’s almost certain you weren’t old enough to have had mature thoughts about it at the time.
Whenever you criticize the US war machine online within earshot of anyone who’s sufficiently propagandized, you will invariably be lectured about the second World War and how we’d all be speaking German or Japanese without the brave men who died for our freedom. This makes my point for me: the fact that apologists for US imperialism always need to reach all the way back through history to the cusp of living memory to find even one single example of the American military being used for purposes that weren’t evil proves that it most certainly is evil.
But this is one of the main reasons there are so very many movies and history documentaries made about World War Two: it’s an opportunity to portray US servicemen bravely fighting and dying for a noble cause without having to bend the truth beyond recognition. The other major reason is that focusing on the second World War allows members of the US empire to escape into a time when the Big Bad Guy on the world stage was someone else
From the end of World War Two to the fall of the USSR, the US military was used to smash the spread of communism and secure geostrategic interests toward the ultimate end of engineering the collapse of the Soviet Union. After this was accomplished in 1991, US foreign policy officially shifted to preserving a unipolar world order by preventing the rise of any other superpower which could rival its might.
In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union.
A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.
This is all US troops have been fighting and dying for since the Berlin Wall came down. Not “freedom”, not “democracy”, and certainly not the American people. Just continual uncontested domination of this planet at all cost: domination of its resources, its trade routes, its seas, its air, and its humans, no matter how many lives need to risked and snuffed out in order to achieve it. The US has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century in the reckless pursuit of that goal.
And, as Smedley Butler spelled out 86 years ago in his still-relevant book War is a Racket, US military personnel have been dying for profit. Nothing gets the gears of industry turning like war, and nothing better creates chaotic wild west environments of shock and confusion during which more wealth and power can be grabbed. War profiteers pour immense resources into lobbying, think tanks and campaign donations to manipulate and bribe policy makers into making decisions which promote war and military expansionism, with astounding success. This is all entirely legal.
It’s important to spread awareness that this is all US troops have been dying for, because the fairy tale that they fight for freedom and for their countrymen is a major propaganda narrative used in military recruitment. While poverty plays a significant role in driving up enlistments as predatory recruiters target poor and middle class youth promising them a future in the nation with the worst income inequality in the industrialized world, the fact that the aggressively propagandized glorification of military “service” makes it a more esteemed career path than working at a restaurant or a grocery store means people are more likely to enlist.
Without all that propaganda deceiving people into believing that military work is something virtuous, military service would be the most shameful job anyone could possibly have; other stigmatized jobs like sex work would be regarded as far more noble. You’d be less reluctant to tell your extended family over Christmas that you’re a janitor at a seedy massage parlor than that you’ve enlisted in the US military, because instead of congratulating and praising you, your Uncle Murray would look at you and say, “So you’re gonna be killing kids for crude oil?”
And that’s exactly how it should be. Continuing to uphold the lie that US troops fight and die for a good cause is helping to ensure a steady supply of teenagers to feed into the gears of the imperial war machine. Stop feeding into the lie that the war machine is worth killing and being killed for. Not out of disrespect for the dead, but out of reverence for the living.
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An individual who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the time provided the information on the lab researcher’s wife dying”Image Credit:ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty ImagesSHARE
Following US intelligence revelations that at least three workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalised in November 2019 with symptoms exactly matching COVID, it has now emerged that the wife of one of the researchers in the lab DIED from the virus just days after.
Former State Department official David Asher, who led an investigation Under President Trump, told the Daily Caller that “an individual who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the time provided the information on the lab researcher’s wife dying, according to Asher.”
All of this occurred while the communist Chinese government was telling the World Health Organisation that the virus was not transmissible between people. That situation continued for a further MONTH after this information was known.
Asher has said that it is “very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances” all became sick with “severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus.”
Asher has also previously said that the intelligence points to an involvement of the Chinese military conducting bioweapons research at the lab.
The former State Department official said Friday that the evidence shows the coronavirus was “optimized for transmission between humans in a way that no bat-borne coronavirus ever had been.”https://api.banned.video/embed/60b4561661212d5c3d6dc93e
Asher added that that the idea the COVID-19 virus emerged naturally out of a zoonotic situation is “ridiculous,” and that “there was almost no evidence that supported a natural, zoonotic evolution or source of COVID-19.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/41msUMrfEYw
A national Canadian public policy think tank said that COVID-19 lockdowns have “heaped misery” on Canada’s largest provinces. Alberta — the only province that jailed Christian pastors for ministering to their faithful and not adhering to health rules — was ranked as the most “miserable.”
“Compared to the Atlantic provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta in particular have not only failed to keep COVID cases and deaths under control but have also been extremely reliant on reactive and stringent lockdowns and their economies have suffered disproportionately,” read a May 25 press release from the MacDonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) regarding its “Provincial COVID Misery Index.”
“Lockdowns have heaped misery on the larger, more populous provinces, while Atlantic Canada’s bubble demonstrated the importance of keeping the virus out in the first place.”
Alberta received a “D” rating, followed closely by Ontario and Quebec, which also had “D” ratings.
Next was British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan with “C+” ratings. SUBSCRIBEto LifeSite’s daily headlinesSUBSCRIBEU.S. Canada World Catholic
Newfoundland and Labrador was rated a “B,” followed by New Brunswick with a “B+” rating. Nova Scotia ranked the second best with an “A” rating and Prince Edward Island (PEI) garnered an “A+” rating.
MLI’s “Provincial COVID Misery Index” was created using 11 different measures that were broken down into three categories: Disease Misery, Response Misery, and Economic Misery.
Disease Misery looked at “data related to the direct impact of COVID-19 on populations,” with Response Misery reflecting “reflects the responses and restrictions implemented by governments.” Economic Misery focused on the financial impact of “lockdowns and the costs of borrowing on individuals and governments.” — Article continues below Petition —PETITION: No to mandatory vaccination for the coronavirus
Provinces were given an overall score out of 100 in each category based on COVID-19 data such as positive cases, tests, deaths, lockdown severity, and GDP measures. The higher the number the worse the score.
Alberta received the worst overall score of 206.59 out of 300, with Ontario scoring 200.04 and Quebec 196.76.
MLI data show the province with the worst rating in the “Response Misery” category was Ontario at 64.44.
MLI said that when it comes to the “Disease Misery” category, Quebec ranked the “worst” with a score of 90.4, and languished under “high caseloads, high COVID-19 deaths, and high excess deaths – and this dismal record is only partially mitigated by recent lower-case counts.”
In the “Economic Misery” category, Alberta faired worst with a score of 79.89.
According to MLI, a “lockdown to zero” strategy used in some countries such as New Zealand at this stage in the “pandemic” is “all but certainly futile” due to the globalization of world economies.
Opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns and the government response has been most notable in the three provinces that faired worst on the misery index.
In Ontario, many doctors such as Dr. Patrick Phillips have come out blasting COVID-19 health measures. He recently criticized his local doctors’ college for saying they will punish those who speak out against the COVID-19 narrative pushed by government.
In April, a group of more than 60 elected members, most from Ontario, from the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government who call themselves the “End the Lockdowns Caucus,” held a national news conference calling for an end to lockdowns. Alberta has notoriously jailed three Christian pastors because refused to follow COVID- 19 health rules.
Notably, Pastor Artur Pawlowski of the Cave of Adullam church in Calgary was arrested on a highway and jailed for defying COVID-19 health rules. He was released from jail after a three-day stay, and is now fighting a court battle with the government.
Quebec recently was the site of the largest anti-lockdown COVID-19 protest to date in Canada, an event that saw more than 100,000 take to the streets of Montreal to voice opposition to restrictions.
While Canada’s Atlantic provinces faired better in terms of the MLI ratings, those provinces have enacted some of the most stringent lockdowns despite low virus counts. Churches have been shuttered, borders are closed, and travelers from other parts of Canada are required to quarantine upon arrival.
Just recently, the Supreme Court of the province of Nova Scotia ordered a “halt” to all “anti-vaccine and anti-public health order protests,” through a court injunction, a move that one constitutional lawyer says is a spectacular display of “overreach.”
While PEI – with a population of just under 160,000 – had the best score and was ranked as the least “miserable,” it has had zero deaths from COVID-19 and only has 14 current “active” cases, no doubt due to it being one of the only island provinces.
Just recently, the PEI government announced a reopening plan contingent on COVID-19 jabs, which won’t see the province fully open until early September.
Conversely, Alberta plans to fully open by early July with no restrictions in place. However, that is only if 70 percent of the population has received at least one COVID-19 injection.
I don’t care if he s right or wrong, I want to hear his reptilian ideas without censorship. At the very least he entertains us with views that are not platitudes and lies from the MSM.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone