The “biggest crime against humanity perpetrated by the US government” with Dr Anthony Fauci front & center. This is why so many doctors, medical workers & victims believe & told me that Fauci will go down as arguably the biggest mass murderer in history. And Covid was not his… https://t.co/vJ0SzbsEPA
Chinese Foreign Ministry: “The United States has sought to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, grossly interfered in the elections of at least 30 countries, and attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders." pic.twitter.com/RuaHBh6Xqw
“I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise,” Bass writes. “I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.”
“I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.”
A seventh-year student at a medical school in Texas penned an op-ed for Newsweek this week calling out the establishment for imposing lockdowns, masks, “vaccines” and booster shots, and other unscientific, life-destroying tyranny in the name of fighting covid.
Kevin Bass, a medical student and researcher, says he initially supported the government’s covid fascism. He believed it was the right thing to do in order to save lives, but now believes the exact opposite.
“I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise,” Bass writes. “I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.”
“I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.”
Are the powers that be now openly admitting they were wrong to try to avoid paying the price for their crimes against humanity?
For whatever reason, Bass just believed everything that Tony Fauci and other authorities were declaring at the time as solutions to the covid virus, which to this day, just to clarify, has still never been isolated and proven to exist.
Now, though, Bass admits that the entire approach the scientific community took to address covid was “inherently flawed … and continues to be.” And these inherent flaws, he says, resulted “in thousands if not millions of preventable deaths.”
“What we did not properly appreciate is that preferences determine how scientific expertise is used, and that our preferences might be – indeed, our preferences were – very different from many of the people that we serve,” he explains.
“We created policy based on our preferences, then justified it using data. And then we portrayed those opposing our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish, and evil.”
Why this sudden change in belief? It could be because the entire world is waking up to the fact that the “vaccines” are a sham – and a deadly one, at that. Hundreds of millions of Americans let themselves get jabbed based on the inherently flawed consensus of the scientific community, of which Bass is a part.
These people’s inherently flawed beliefs at the start of the scamdemic destroyed so many lives that people are now demanding that heads roll. So, in an attempt to save themselves from the fallow, the Kevin Basses of the world are finally relenting to the fact that they were wrong in the hopes that the court of public opinion will deliver a non-guilty verdict and let their crimes against humanity slide.
Bass’s op-ed is shockingly admissive, and the fact that Newsweek even published it at all is telling. The narrative is shifting to where everyone, regardless of what “side” they are on, is reaching a common understanding that what happened during covid can never be allowed to happen again.
“My motivation for writing this is simple: It’s clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better,” Bass concludes.
“It’s OK to be wrong and admit where one was wrong and what one learned. That’s a central part of the way science works. Yet I fear that many are too entrenched in groupthink – and too afraid to publicly take responsibility – to do this.”
More covid-related news can be found at Plague.info.
Ukraine should not be placed on a pedestal in the West’s attempts to support the country in its conflict with Russia. That’s according to Andrew Milburn, founder of the ‘Mozart Group’, which has been providing training for Kiev’s forces.
The retired Marine commander shared his experience and conclusions from working in Ukraine during an appearance on the Team House podcast last month. Attention to the video, which had only amassed some 20,000 views since it was posted, was drawn by Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal on Monday.
During the podcast, Milburn stated that Ukraine is a “corrupt, f****d-up society.” While he stressed that continued Western support for the country was important and justified by the need to uphold “global norms,” he suggested that the whole point was “not about Ukraine.”
“I have a Ukrainian flag tied to my bag, but I’m not like ‘oh my God, Ukraine is so awesome,’ because I understand that there are plenty of f****d up people running Ukraine,” Milburn said, admitting that he’s really “not a big fan” of the country.
He also stated that “a number of things” that Kiev’s forces do with Russian POWs violate the Hague convention on the laws of armed conflict, especially when it comes to filming interrogations of captured Russian soldiers and posting them online.
Milburn noted that the trainers from Mozart Group don’t condone such acts and have always tried to distance themselves from any unit that showed them videos of killing Russian POWs. “We’ve been shown those videos plenty of times,” he said, adding that “there were plenty” of atrocities being committed by Ukrainian forces and “all kinds of atrocities to go around.”
After months in Ukraine training soldiers, Ret Col Andrew Milburn of @TheMozartGroup mercenary firm gets sauced on camera & spills the beans:
Ukraine is a "corrupt, fucked-up society" run by "fucked-up people"
While Milburn’s Mozart Group claims charity status, it is considered to be among the largest private military companies currently working in Ukraine and has been providing military training to Ukrainian soldiers since the early days of the conflict. However, it has also been the source of several damning reports on the dark underbelly of Kiev’s armed forces.
Back in August, Milburn was quoted by CBS news in a since-deleted report that revealed how Western-supplied weapons were disappearing in Ukraine and popping up on the black market. Recently, he was also quoted by Newsweek in a report revealing that the Ukrainian military was seeing casualty rates of 70% or more, contrary to official Kiev’s claims.
The idea that this was just laughed off and it didn’t lead to a much larger conversation about why this fuckface needs to be hauled off to The Hague is endlessly depressing. We are ruled by absolute psychopaths. https://t.co/J38ZirS0Hl
— Comrade Misty is Putin’s Buddy 🍀 (@SarcasmStardust) November 12, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies.[3,6,57] We have witnessed a long list of unprecedented intrusions into medical practice, including attacks on medical experts, destruction of medical careers among doctors refusing to participate in killing their patients, and a massive regimentation of health care, led by non-qualified individuals with enormous wealth, power and influence.
‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️‼️⚠️ A REAL DOSE OF THE TRUTH.. Search NIH-COVID19 WHAT'S THE TRUTH. pic.twitter.com/qxAqRp5xDj
The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies.[3,6,57] We have witnessed a long list of unprecedented intrusions into medical practice, including attacks on medical experts, destruction of medical careers among doctors refusing to participate in killing their patients, and a massive regimentation of health care, led by non-qualified individuals with enormous wealth, power and influence.
For the first time in American history a president, governors, mayors, hospital administrators and federal bureaucrats are determining medical treatments based not on accurate scientifically based or even experience based information, but rather to force the acceptance of special forms of care and “prevention”—including remdesivir, use of respirators and ultimately a series of essentially untested messenger RNA vaccines. For the first time in history medical treatment, protocols are not being formulated based on the experience of the physicians treating the largest number of patients successfully, but rather individuals and bureaucracies that have never treated a single patient—including Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, EcoHealth Alliance, the CDC, WHO, state public health officers and hospital administrators.[23,38]
The media (TV, newspapers, magazines, etc), medical societies, state medical boards and the owners of social media have appointed themselves to be the sole source of information concerning this so-called “pandemic”. Websites have been removed, highly credentialed and experienced clinical doctors and scientific experts in the field of infectious diseases have been demonized, careers have been destroyed and all dissenting information has been labeled “misinformation” and “dangerous lies”, even when sourced from top experts in the fields of virology, infectious diseases, pulmonary critical care, and epidemiology. These blackouts of truth occur even when this information is backed by extensive scientific citations from some of the most qualified medical specialists in the world.[23] Incredibly, even individuals, such as Dr. Michael Yeadon, a retired ex-Chief Scientist, and vice-president for the science division of Pfizer Pharmaceutical company in the UK, who charged the company with making an extremely dangerous vaccine, is ignored and demonized. Further, he, along with other highly qualified scientists have stated that no one should take this vaccine.
Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most cited experts in his field, who has successfully treated over 2000 COVID patients by using a protocol of early treatment (which the so-called experts completely ignored), has been the victim of a particularly vicious assault by those benefiting financially from the vaccines. He has published his results in peer reviewed journals, reporting an 80% reduction in hospitalizations and a 75% reduction in deaths by using early treatment.[44] Despite this, he is under an unrelenting series of attacks by the information controllers, none of which have treated a single patient.
Neither Anthony Fauci, the CDC, WHO nor any medical governmental establishment has ever offered any early treatment other than Tylenol, hydration and call an ambulance once you have difficulty breathing. This is unprecedented in the entire history of medical care as early treatment of infections is critical to saving lives and preventing severe complications. Not only have these medical organizations and federal lapdogs not even suggested early treatment, they attacked anyone who attempted to initiate such treatment with all the weapons at their disposal—loss of license, removal of hospital privileges, shaming, destruction of reputations and even arrest.[2]
A good example of this outrage against freedom of speech and providing informed consent information is the recent suspension by the medical board in Maine of Dr. Meryl Nass’ medical license and the ordering of her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation for prescribing Ivermectin and sharing her expertise in this field.[9,65] I know Dr, Nass personally and can vouch for her integrity, brilliance and dedication to truth. Her scientific credentials are impeccable. This behavior by a medical licensing board is reminiscent of the methodology of the Soviet KGB during the period when dissidents were incarcerated in psychiatric gulags to silence their dissent.
Another unprecedented tactic is to remove dissenting doctors from their positions as journal editors, reviewers and retracting of their scientific papers from journals, even after these papers have been in print. Until this pandemic event, I have never seen so many journal papers being retracted— the vast majority promoting alternatives to official dogma, especially if the papers question vaccine safety. Normally a submitted paper or study is reviewed by experts in the field, called peer review. These reviews can be quite intense and nit picking in detail, insisting that all errors within the paper be corrected before publication. So, unless fraud or some other major hidden problem is discovered after the paper is in print, the paper remains in the scientific literature.
We are now witnessing a growing number of excellent scientific papers, written by top experts in the field, being retracted from major medical and scientific journals weeks, months and even years after publication. A careful review indicates that in far too many instances the authors dared question accepted dogma by the controllers of scientific publications—especially concerning the safety, alternative treatments or efficacy of vaccines.[12,63] These journals rely on extensive adverting by pharmaceutical companies for their revenue. Several instances have occurred where powerful pharmaceutical companies exerted their influence on owners of these journals to remove articles that in any way question these companies’ products.[13,34,35]
Worse still is the actual designing of medical articles for promoting drugs and pharmaceutical products that involve fake studies, so-called ghostwritten articles.[49,64] Richard Horton is quoted by the Guardian as saying “journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”[13,63] Proven fraudulent “ghostwritten” articles sponsored by pharmaceutical giants have appeared regularly in top clinical journals, such as JAMA, and New England Journal of Medicine—never to be removed despite proven scientific abuse and manipulation of data.[49,63]
ICYMI: Dr. Mike Yeadon — Former Pfizer VP NAMES NAMES of his ex-Big Pharma colleagues + calls for accountability for those directly responsible for crimes against humanity pic.twitter.com/syLgr13cw5
We are starting to understand that all those diseases and sudden deaths occurring globally are caused by the experimental jabs. Once this is proven this might be one of the biggest cases of crimes against humanity ever witnessed.
A group on Facebook called “DiedSuddenlyNews” had 300k members from all over the world talking about their own experiences with vaccine side effects & or people they have knowns side effects or deaths. Facebook just deleted the group. Disgraceful
Remember when it was 4 Canadian doctors that had suddenly died? Then 28? It’s now at 80 and still counting. “Sudden death of 80 Canadian doctors since rollout of COVID‐19 vaccines.” #DiedSuddenly#Deathvax#DoNotComplypic.twitter.com/4z0ZC62qvH
I was not anti vax hence why I took the Jabs. I am definitely not misinformation. I am a human being who deserves to be properly recognised by the NHS and the government and treated accordingly. Vaccine injured and bereaved are being treated as collateral damage and it’s unfair. pic.twitter.com/89QCHjQ62h
The deliberately designed fake pandemic began in earnest in the middle of February 2020. A mathematical modeller called Ferguson, working at Imperial College in London, scared the living daylights out of millions by predicting that 600,000 people might die in the UK alone. There was talk of millions being taken ill in Britain and of hospitals all over the world being overwhelmed by sick patients.
The media led the panic, as they usually do, and within days people were cancelling holidays and panic buying loo rolls, soap and loaves of bread. The British always buy loo rolls, soap and loaves of bread at times of crisis. Curiously, the people who were buying the most loo rolls didn’t seem to be buying any food though you would have thought that without any of the latter there wouldn’t have been much need for the former.
The stock market had a nervous breakdown and collapsed in a corner, as it always does at times like this, and the chap called Ferguson was interviewed and quoted everywhere sharing his gloomy predictions.
At this point, back in February 2020, I was puzzled by the fuss being made over what seemed to me to be no more toxic than the flu. Back in February 2020, I said I thought that the hoax might be part of a plan to introduce compulsory vaccination.
When I looked at the figures that were available it was immediately obvious that something wasn’t right. I expressed my doubts on www.vernoncoleman.com and pointed out that according to the WHO it was not unusual for 650,000 people to die of flu in a single season.
I started looking for a hidden agenda and came up with several.
On 28th February I suggested that the virus might be being used to stop unnecessary travel, and to save oil for more important things like Prime Ministerial limousines and fighter jets or for flying Prince Charles to climate change meetings, or to soften us up for compulsory vaccination.
On 2nd March I pointed out that the mortality figures which were being quoted were wrong because the authorities were only identifying people who had the disease and were in hospital. They weren’t counting the thousands of people who had the disease but had only mild symptoms. I pointed out that if 1,000 people go to their doctor with the flu, and one patient dies then the mortality rate is 0.1% but if another 9,000 people have the flu but don’t go to their doctor then the mortality rate is 0.01%.
I predicted that governments would use the crisis to create a cashless society and to get rid of old people.
It all rather reminded me of the exaggerated AIDS scare when the British Medical Association warned us that everyone would be affected by the year 2000.
On 3rd March 2020, I warned once again that compulsory inoculation would be coming. The panic grew and people were seen walking around with plastic boxes on their heads. In the UK the coronavirus was made a notifiable disease.
Within days, doctors everywhere were warning that old people would have to be left to die because the virus was going to kill millions and every hospital bed would be needed for young coronavirus patients. On 7th March I reported that people had been cheering at the prospect of old people dying in huge numbers. `It will clear hospital beds,’ said one commentator.
By 14th March I was still pretty much on my own among doctors in insisting that the coronavirus wasn’t going to kill us all. I was reminded of bird flu and swine flu. I had dismissed the scare stories about those two diseases at the time but the authorities had made dramatic claims. The WHO had claimed that the bird flu would kill up to 150 million people. I said that was rubbish. In the end, the bird flu killed less than 500. The UK Government claimed that swine flu would kill 65,000 in 2009 and spent £500 million on medicines that had to be thrown away. Again, the total number of deaths didn’t reach 500. It wasn’t until a little later that I discovered that those wildly inaccurate predictions had been made by Professor Ferguson of Imperial College, London – a college with financial links to the vaccine-loving Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ferguson had also made absurdly inaccurate predictions about mad cow disease – he had predicted up to 150,000 people could die but the total was 177. And it was Imperial College which made terrible predictions about foot and mouth disease. Ferguson’s forecasts, later described as severely flawed, led to six million animals being killed unnecessarily and cost the UK £10 billion.
Despite knowing all this, governments in the UK and the USA and, indeed, much of the rest of the world, listened to Ferguson’s predictions, accepted them with enthusiasm and introduced lockdowns and anti-social distancing.
It was clear at the time that governments would have done better to have ignored Ferguson and his team at Imperial College and taken advice from Bob the Builder or Postman Pat instead. The world would have been a better, safer place but possibly a less profitable one for vaccine companies.
Angry at the way people were being terrified by a disease which was clearly no more deadly than the flu, I made a video for YouTube on 18th March. I called it ‘Coronavirus Scare: The Hoax of the Century’. The video was removed from YouTube and then removed much later on from BrandNewTube after that platform had been hacked. It has been rescued and you can now watch it HERE.
I’ve had a lot of abuse over the years, mainly from people hired by drug companies, but this time the abuse was phenomenal, deliberate and cold-blooded and I became the subject of a sneering, libellous, smear campaign.
I carried on making videos because I don’t like being bullied by abusive thugs, because it was clearly too late to stop but mainly because I was still angry about all the lies being told and the people being unnecessarily upset.
On 19th March, the public health bodies in the UK and the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens decided that the new disease should no longer be classified as a `high consequence infectious disease’. The coronavirus was downgraded to flu level.
A couple of days after this momentous decision (which was ignored by the mainstream press) the UK Government introduced lockdowns and introduced the most oppressive Bill in British Parliamentary history. The Emergency Bill, which was 358 pages long, turned Britain into a totalitarian state and gave the Government and the police unprecedented powers. Public meetings and elections were banned and there were new powers relating to “restrictions on use and disclosure of information.”
Curiously, even inexplicably, much the same thing happened around the world.
Following Ferguson’s guidance, governments introduced lockdowns and anti-social distancing, told the elderly they had to stay indoors, sent thousands of elderly folk out of hospitals and into care homes and cancelled operations and other procedures for millions of cancer patients.
The disease turned out to be unique in that doctors seemed able to make a diagnosis without doing any tests or, in some cases, without even seeing their patients. The list of symptoms associated with the coronavirus grew and grew and the official line was that anyone suffering from a cough or a sneeze had the disease. Thousands of patients were sent to care homes to keep hospitals empty so that nurses could learn how to dance and rehearse their clapping. In the UK, doctors got so good at diagnosing coronavirus that Britain soon headed the world figures for coronavirus deaths. Back in March 2020, I had pointed out that anyone who wasn’t actually riddled with bullet holes was being put down as a covid-19 death and that the death totals were being exaggerated. Little did I know that even the bodies with bullet holes were being listed as covid-19 deaths. Anyone who ever had covid-19 was put down as having died of it even if they were run over by a bus or hacked to death by a mad politician. Officially, it was impossible to recover from the disease.
On 30th March 2020, I predicted that the lockdowns would kill 100,000 to 250,000 people in Britain. I predicted that the result would be that far more people would be killed by the lockdown policies than would die as a result of the virus.
Tragically, the UK Government has now admitted that this prediction has also been proved accurate. And during the next few years, the number of deaths resulting from the closure of hospital departments will soar to unimaginable levels. Suicides, as I predicted, will soar. Exactly the same thing has happened in other countries. This is a global crime.
To that must be added the number who will die through poverty as unemployment levels soar to unprecedented levels. Again, I predicted this back in March 2020.
Meanwhile, the UK Government’s own figures proved that the number of people who died from covid-19 was less than the number who regularly die from flu.
The mortality rates from covid-19 and the flu are pretty well identical. The total number alleged to have died from the coronavirus has been wildly exaggerated. And for the first time in history, governments have forbidden medical and nursing staff to debate or question official policies.
Government figures show that the ordinary flu can affect a billion people a year. And the official evidence shows that the covid-19 virus is less infectious than the flu. The total number of global deaths from the coronavirus is far, far fewer than the 650,000 who can die of the flu in a single season. (It is also far fewer than the 1.5 million who can die of TB in a single year – also an infectious disease.)
In mid-July 2020 we were told that covid-19 appeared to have unprecedented powers.
If you catch a disease, you will usually acquire immunity. But not, it seemed with covid-19. It was announced that immunity to covid-19 mysteriously disappears after a few months.
We were told we would need repeated vaccinations – maybe four times a year.
I reported in July 2020 that the UK Government had agreed to buy 190 million doses of vaccine for a population less than a third of that. I predicted that vaccine company shares would soar.
The rules that were introduced were unutterably stupid, incomprehensible and indefensible. The entire world appeared to be run by people who were at least one sandwich and a bottle of fizzy pop short of a picnic. You could go into a pub but not a bowling alley. You could have your hair permed and your nails varnished but physiotherapy departments were still closed. The idea was to keep people confused, miserable and damned near suicidal and it all worked brilliantly well.
Researchers then claimed that a skin rash was another sign of covid-19. Apparently 8.8% of patients with a positive covid-19 test also have a rash. No one in government realised that the rashes were probably caused by the damned sanitiser fluid that everyone was being forced to use in absurd quantities.
We were, I wrote two and a half years ago, living in a manufactured nightmare.
It was, I said, either the most unlikely badly managed epidemic in the history of the world or it is, as I described it in my video made on 18th March, the hoax of the century. (To watch my video published on 18th March 2020 click HERE).
Either way, we need to arrest everyone involved in the decision-making process.
There are no ads, no fees and no requests for donations on websites or videos. Dr. Coleman pays for everything through book sales. If you want to help finance his work, please just buy a book – there are over 100 books by Vernon Coleman in print.
Vernon Coleman’s first book about covid-19, written in April 2020, is called Coming Apocalypse. It is available on Amazon as a paperback and an eBook. The author describes how the hoax developed and predicts what sort of future we face.
The US Govt funded the creation of #Covid19 via gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and propagandized the world to use untested and unsafe Big Pharma vaccines (for profit). The biggest crime against humanity may end up killing more people than the Nazis did
The US Govt funded the creation of #Covid19 via gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and propagandized the world to use untested and unsafe Big Pharma vaccines (for profit). The biggest crime against humanity may end up killing more people than the Nazis did. #DiedSuddenlyhttps://t.co/HlxQCTjUU0
Economic coercive measures, commonly known as economic sanctions, are a means of coercive pressure through disruption of trade relations and economic isolation. The use of sanctions under international law is governed chiefly by Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, providing that the Security Council may decide to enact a “complete or partial interruption of economic relations” in order to restore international peace and security.
Measures not authorized by the Security Council, or “unilateral coercive measures” (UCM), have become an increasingly common coercive tactic of the United States, which presently imposes sanctions on approximately one-third of the global population.
Since 2010, the United States has also been enforcing select secondary sanctions against international actors that maintain economic relations with sanctioned states. The adverse effects of these measures on civilian populations of targeted countries—“especially severe for vulnerable groups,” including “women and children”—have been repeatedly and unequivocally documented.
Issues surrounding the legality of UCM have largely centered around the question of compatibility with the United Nations Charter. One primary concern has been the claimed illegitimacy of sanction measures not authorized in multilateral fashion by the Security Council. Others allude to the problems raised by UCM in both the context of state sovereignty (principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states) and international humanitarian law (right to life, health and medical care set forth in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights).
The United Nations General Assembly has also voiced regular concerns about UCM. A resolution overwhelmingly passed 29 years in a row calling for the cessation of the United States’s “economic blockade” on Cuba is illustrative.
UN General Assembly votes on a resolution (June 23, 2021) demanding an end to the U.S. economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba. [Source: news.un.org]
On February 13, 2020, the government of Venezuela submitted a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting an investigation into another possible legal frailty of the United States UCM—namely, whether such measures can constitute crimes against humanity pursuant to Article 7 of the Rome Statute. As recourse to economic warfare ramps up further amidst an intensifying new Cold War, pressure mounts surrounding the Court’s eventual decision.
Case Background
Venezuela has a population of more than 28 million. Since the 1930s, it has been a significant oil-producing state and is considered to preside over the world’s largest oil reserves.
Under President Hugo Chávez (1998-2013), a new national constitution was adopted which provided for the use of national oil revenues to improve social conditions. The United States responded to this shift in policy with an attempted, but ultimately foiled, coup d’état in 2002. Despite hostile relations with the United States and a series of anti-terrorism and anti-drug trafficking-related sanctions, the Chávez social programs achieved impressive results in improving the standard of living for the Venezuelan population. Poverty and unemployment rates dropped markedly and education standards and literacy rates steadily increased.
Following the death of President Chávez and the election of Nicolás Maduro, the United States intensified its economic coercion. In March 2015, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13692, declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and providing for the blocking of Venezuelan assets.
The Trump administration ramped up the financial pressure with Executive Order 13808 in August 2017, denying the Venezuelan government, including the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, access to United States financial markets. Executive Orders 13827 and 13835 followed in spring 2018, prohibiting transactions involving the Venezuelan government’s issuance of digital currency and transactions related to the purchase of Venezuelan debt, respectively.
President Trump issued Executive Order 13850 in November 2018 setting forth a framework to block the assets of, and restrict certain transactions with, any person deemed by the Treasury Department to be engaging in transactions with the Venezuelan government that advances its “corrupt purposes.” In January 2019, the United States, in a display of open contempt for democracy, ceased to recognize the government of President Maduro, instead acknowledging Juan Guaidó as interim President.
Strangulation of the Venezuelan economy escalated further in August 2019 with Executive Order 13884, freezing property interests of the Venezuelan government in the United States, prohibiting U.S. citizens from engaging in transactions with the Venezuelan government and authorizing financial sanctions and visa restrictions on non-U.S. citizens who assist or support the Venezuelan government.
Effect of United States UCM
All of the above-enumerated measures were enacted unilaterally by the United States government and have had a catastrophic impact on the Venezuelan economy, which has in turn precipitated a humanitarian crisis for the Venezuelan population.
In February 2021, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Negative Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures, Elena Douhan, released preliminary findings on the impact of United States UCM on the enjoyment of basic human rights in Venezuela. Ms. Douhan notes that, before the imposition of UCM, Venezuela was committing 76% of its national oil revenues to the advancement of social programs. As a result of the monumental UCM-related drop in oil revenue (e.g., from $42 billion in 2013 to just $4 billion in 2018), the government is now unable to commit even one percent to the social programs.
The loss of these resources has led to a “devastating impact on the whole population of Venezuela” with basic human rights directly affected. These include the:
Right to food—more than 50% of food consumption has been impacted by United States UCM, which led to one-third of the Venezuelan population becoming acutely food insecure;
Right to water—water-related services have been significantly disrupted by United States UCM such that the average Venezuelan household has access to running water for only a couple of hours sporadically throughout a given week;
Right to health—access to quality healthcare has been significantly disrupted by United States UCM, resulting in extreme shortages of medical staff and equipment; maternal and infant mortality rates have increased, as well as mortality rates from various diseases; and
Right to education—United States UCM have resulted in a massive decrease in government funding for education, frustrating the ability of schools to procure staff and basic necessities, including meals for students; the situation has been further exacerbated by regular electrical and internet outages.
The severely beleaguered financial condition of the Venezuelan government has also inhibited its ability to provide basic health services amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to its unwillingness to unfreeze Venezuelan assets to enable the purchase of Covid vaccines, the United States has also declined to donate vaccinations to Venezuela, citing concerns over a lack of Venezuelan “transparency.”
Claim
The Venezuelan referral claims that United States UCM constitute crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. Specifically, the claim asserts that the United States UCM represent a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population of Venezuela; that this effect is known to the United States; and that these UCM manifest themselves in punishable acts enumerated in Article 7—in particular, murder (Art. 7(1)(a)), extermination (Art. 7(1)(b)), deportation (Art. 7(1)(d)), persecution (Art. 7(1)(h)), and other inhumane acts (Art. 7(1)(k)).
The referral is novel in multiple respects. First, UCM have not previously been challenged on grounds that they violate international criminal law. Claims abound that UCM are inconsistent with the United Nations Charter, with principles of state sovereignty and with international humanitarian law, but their possible criminality has not been investigated.
Second, the ICC has not previously investigated a case alleging crimes against humanity emanating from policies enacted in one state, but executed on the territory of another. The referral advances the argument that it is accepted in ICC case law that “non-state actors” can commit crimes against humanity even where they do not control the territory in which they are operating. As such, there is no principled reason why “states” cannot commit crimes against humanity in territory which they do not control—i.e., the United States can commit crimes against humanity on the territory of Venezuela.
Third, the referral also raises a jurisdictional oddity. While Article 12 of the Rome Statute clearly provides jurisdiction over qualifying crimes committed on the territory of a member state party, the question arises where precisely the alleged crimes against humanity flowing from United States UCM occur. The referral acknowledges that the actual decisions to impose the UCM in question occurred outside the territory of Venezuela, but argues that the clear intent of the decisions was to have effects within its territory. Thus, the question of whether the ICC can exercise territorial jurisdiction over actions by a non-Rome Statute member state directed against the territory of a Rome Statute member state must be addressed by the Court and further raises the stakes in connection with potential implications of the referral.
Assessment of Venezuela’s Challenge
In addition to raising serious international legal concerns under, inter alia, the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian law, UCM cause significant and well-documented suffering among innocent civilian populations and are ripe for investigation under international criminal law.
The Venezuelan referral advances sound arguments that United States UCM can constitute crimes against humanity. It appears unequivocal that the United States imposes these measures, which appear to satisfy the criteria set forth in Article 7 of the Rome Statute, knowing full well their effects on the Venezuelan population.
Despite calls for the investigation of others when politically expedient, the United States has hidden itself behind its non-party status to the Rome Statute to avoid investigation of its own actions and has a history of unprecedented hostility toward the ICC.
In 2002, the United States enacted the American Service-Members Protection Act “to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials…against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not part.” The Act authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate”—including conceivably force—to bring about the release of United States personnel detained by the ICC.
In June 2020, President Trump issued Executive Order 13928, taking the extraordinary step of declaring the Court’s pending investigation into United States crimes in Afghanistan an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and authorizing the freezing of assets of ICC personnel and placement of restrictions on their ability to travel to the United States.
The ICC has displayed a distinct wariness of confrontation with the United States, giving rise to credible concerns surrounding its impartiality. Upon taking office in 2021, the new Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, immediately brought controversy and renewed doubts of credibility on the Court with his arbitrary decision to “deprioritize” inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by United States military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan under the Bush administration and to, instead, focus selectively on infractions of the Taliban.
The Court may well be tempted to skirt Venezuela’s requested investigation of the United States on technical jurisdictional grounds, but yet another dismissal of a sound case against the United States, all the while vigorously launching a new probe into Russian crimes in Ukraine, could further tarnish the ICC’s already suspect reputation.
Though the referral has unsurprisingly received little coverage in the United States, the stakes are indeed high. A decision to exercise jurisdiction and to proceed with investigation would set an unwelcome precedent for the United States—even if the chances of U.S. leaders actually standing trial is all but non-existent.
An investigation, and ultimate finding, by the ICC would cast concrete doubt on already dubious United States UCM and could possibly prompt a United Nations General Assembly request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the broader legality of UCM. At a time when its economic coercive tactics are coming to seriously jeopardize the global economy—and, accordingly, raise critical eyebrows around the world—the United States can ill afford an adverse ICC ruling. For the ICC, on the other hand, the referral presents an opportunity to show its courage and prove its impartial commitment to global justice.
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Ryan Swan is a doctoral researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies in Germany. He holds a J.D. from the UCLA School of Law and a Master’s in international relations and politics from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Ryan can be reached at swan2018@lawnet.ucla.edu.
First published on November 15, 2015, this incisive report was among Global Research’s most popular articles. As a result of media censorship it is no longer featured by the search engines .
GR Editor’s Note .
Let us put this in historical perspective: the commemoration of the War to End All Wars acknowledges that 15 million lives were lost in the course of World War I (1914-18).
The loss of life in the second World War (1939-1945) was on a much large scale, when compared to World War I: 60 million lives both military and civilian were lost during World War II. (Four times those killed during World War I).
The largest WWII casualties were China and the Soviet Union, 26 million in the Soviet Union, China estimates its losses at approximately 20 million deaths.
Ironically, these two countries (allies of the US during WWII) which lost a large share of their population during WWII are now under the Biden-Harris administration categorized as “enemies of America”, which are threatening the Western World.
NATO-US Forces are at Russia’s Doorstep. A so-called “preemptive war” against China and Russia is currently contemplated.
Germany and Austria lost approximately 8 million people during WWII, Japan lost more than 2.5 million people. The US and Britain respectively lost more than 400,000 lives.
This carefully researched article by James A. Lucas documents the more than 20 million lives lost resulting from US led wars, military coups and intelligence ops carried out in the wake of what is euphemistically called the “post-war era” (1945- ).
The extensive loss of life in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Libya is not included in this study.
Continuous US led warfare (1945- ): there was no “post-war era“.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Martin Luther King Day, January 17, 2022
***
After the catastrophic attacks of September 11 2001 monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger began to permeate the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing those same feelings in people in other nations, but they produced hardly a ripple. Although Americans understand in the abstract the wisdom of people around the world empathizing with the suffering of one another, such a reminder of wrongs committed by our nation got little hearing and was soon overshadowed by an accelerated “war on terrorism.”
But we must continue our efforts to develop understanding and compassion in the world. Hopefully, this article will assist in doing that by addressing the question “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” This theme is developed in this report which contains an estimated numbers of such deaths in 37 nations as well as brief explanations of why the U.S. is considered culpable.
The causes of wars are complex. In some instances nations other than the U.S. may have been responsible for more deaths, but if the involvement of our nation appeared to have been a necessary cause of a war or conflict it was considered responsible for the deaths in it. In other words they probably would not have taken place if the U.S. had not used the heavy hand of its power. The military and economic power of the United States was crucial.
This study reveals that U.S. military forces were directly responsible for about 10 to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the two Iraq Wars. The Korean War also includes Chinese deaths while the Vietnam War also includes fatalities in Cambodia and Laos.
The American public probably is not aware of these numbers and knows even less about the proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible. In the latter wars there were between nine and 14 million deaths in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan.
But the victims are not just from big nations or one part of the world. The remaining deaths were in smaller ones which constitute over half the total number of nations. Virtually all parts of the world have been the target of U.S. intervention.
The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world.
To the families and friends of these victims it makes little difference whether the causes were U.S. military action, proxy military forces, the provision of U.S. military supplies or advisors, or other ways, such as economic pressures applied by our nation. They had to make decisions about other things such as finding lost loved ones, whether to become refugees, and how to survive.
And the pain and anger is spread even further. Some authorities estimate that there are as many as 10 wounded for each person who dies in wars. Their visible, continued suffering is a continuing reminder to their fellow countrymen.
It is essential that Americans learn more about this topic so that they can begin to understand the pain that others feel. Someone once observed that the Germans during WWII “chose not to know.” We cannot allow history to say this about our country. The question posed above was “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” The answer is: possibly 10,000.
Comments on Gathering These Numbers
Generally speaking, the much smaller number of Americans who have died is not included in this study, not because they are not important, but because this report focuses on the impact of U.S. actions on its adversaries.
An accurate count of the number of deaths is not easy to achieve, and this collection of data was undertaken with full realization of this fact. These estimates will probably be revised later either upward or downward by the reader and the author. But undoubtedly the total will remain in the millions.
The difficulty of gathering reliable information is shown by two estimates in this context. For several years I heard statements on radio that three million Cambodians had been killed under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. However, in recent years the figure I heard was one million. Another example is that the number of persons estimated to have died in Iraq due to sanctions after the first U.S. Iraq War was over 1 million, but in more recent years, based on a more recent study, a lower estimate of around a half a million has emerged.
Often information about wars is revealed only much later when someone decides to speak out, when more secret information is revealed due to persistent efforts of a few, or after special congressional committees make reports
Both victorious and defeated nations may have their own reasons for underreporting the number of deaths. Further, in recent wars involving the United States it was not uncommon to hear statements like “we do not do body counts” and references to “collateral damage” as a euphemism for dead and wounded. Life is cheap for some, especially those who manipulate people on the battlefield as if it were a chessboard.
To say that it is difficult to get exact figures is not to say that we should not try. Effort was needed to arrive at the figures of six million Jews killed during WWII, but knowledge of that number now is widespread and it has fueled the determination to prevent future holocausts. That struggle continues.
The U.S. is responsible for between 1 and 1.8 million deaths during the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, by luring the Soviet Union into invading that nation. (1,2,3,4)
The Soviet Union had friendly relations its neighbor, Afghanistan, which had a secular government. The Soviets feared that if that government became fundamentalist this change could spill over into the Soviet Union.
In 1998, in an interview with the Parisian publication Le Novel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to President Carter, admitted that he had been responsible for instigating aid to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan which caused the Soviets to invade. In his own words:
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. (5,1,6)
Brzezinski justified laying this trap, since he said it gave the Soviet Union its Vietnam and caused the breakup of the Soviet Union. “Regret what?” he said. “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?” (7)
The CIA spent 5 to 6 billion dollars on its operation in Afghanistan in order to bleed the Soviet Union. (1,2,3) When that 10-year war ended over a million people were dead and Afghan heroin had captured 60% of the U.S. market. (4)
The U.S. has been responsible directly for about 12,000 deaths in Afghanistan many of which resulted from bombing in retaliation for the attacks on U.S. property on September 11, 2001. Subsequently U.S. troops invaded that country. (4)
Angola
An indigenous armed struggle against Portuguese rule in Angola began in 1961. In 1977 an Angolan government was recognized by the U.N., although the U.S. was one of the few nations that opposed this action. In 1986 Uncle Sam approved material assistance to UNITA, a group that was trying to overthrow the government. Even today this struggle, which has involved many nations at times, continues.
U.S. intervention was justified to the U.S. public as a reaction to the intervention of 50,000 Cuban troops in Angola. However, according to Piero Gleijeses, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University the reverse was true. The Cuban intervention came as a result of a CIA – financed covert invasion via neighboring Zaire and a drive on the Angolan capital by the U.S. ally, South Africa1,2,3). (Three estimates of deaths range from 300,000 to 750,000 (4,5,6)
Argentina: See South America: Operation Condor
Bangladesh: See Pakistan
Bolivia
Hugo Banzer was the leader of a repressive regime in Bolivia in the 1970s. The U.S. had been disturbed when a previous leader nationalized the tin mines and distributed land to Indian peasants. Later that action to benefit the poor was reversed.
Banzer, who was trained at the U.S.-operated School of the Americas in Panama and later at Fort Hood, Texas, came back from exile frequently to confer with U.S. Air Force Major Robert Lundin. In 1971 he staged a successful coup with the help of the U.S. Air Force radio system. In the first years of his dictatorship he received twice as military assistance from the U.S. as in the previous dozen years together.
A few years later the Catholic Church denounced an army massacre of striking tin workers in 1975, Banzer, assisted by information provided by the CIA, was able to target and locate leftist priests and nuns. His anti-clergy strategy, known as the Banzer Plan, was adopted by nine other Latin American dictatorships in 1977. (2) He has been accused of being responsible for 400 deaths during his tenure. (1)
Also see: See South America: Operation Condor
Brazil: See South America: Operation Condor
Cambodia
U.S. bombing of Cambodia had already been underway for several years in secret under the Johnson and Nixon administrations, but when President Nixon openly began bombing in preparation for a land assault on Cambodia it caused major protests in the U.S. against the Vietnam War.
There is little awareness today of the scope of these bombings and the human suffering involved.
Immense damage was done to the villages and cities of Cambodia, causing refugees and internal displacement of the population. This unstable situation enabled the Khmer Rouge, a small political party led by Pol Pot, to assume power. Over the years we have repeatedly heard about the Khmer Rouge’s role in the deaths of millions in Cambodia without any acknowledgement being made this mass killing was made possible by the the U.S. bombing of that nation which destabilized it by death , injuries, hunger and dislocation of its people.
So the U.S. bears responsibility not only for the deaths from the bombings but also for those resulting from the activities of the Khmer Rouge – a total of about 2.5 million people. Even when Vietnam latrer invaded Cambodia in 1979 the CIA was still supporting the Khmer Rouge. (1,2,3)
Also see Vietnam
Chad
An estimated 40,000 people in Chad were killed and as many as 200,000 tortured by a government, headed by Hissen Habre who was brought to power in June, 1982 with the help of CIA money and arms. He remained in power for eight years. (1,2)
Human Rights Watch claimed that Habre was responsible for thousands of killings. In 2001, while living in Senegal, he was almost tried for crimes committed by him in Chad. However, a court there blocked these proceedings. Then human rights people decided to pursue the case in Belgium, because some of Habre’s torture victims lived there. The U.S., in June 2003, told Belgium that it risked losing its status as host to NATO’s headquarters if it allowed such a legal proceeding to happen. So the result was that the law that allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad was repealed. However, two months later a new law was passed which made special provision for the continuation of the case against Habre.
Chile
The CIA intervened in Chile’s 1958 and 1964 elections. In 1970 a socialist candidate, Salvador Allende, was elected president. The CIA wanted to incite a military coup to prevent his inauguration, but the Chilean army’s chief of staff, General Rene Schneider, opposed this action. The CIA then planned, along with some people in the Chilean military, to assassinate Schneider. This plot failed and Allende took office. President Nixon was not to be dissuaded and he ordered the CIA to create a coup climate: “Make the economy scream,” he said.
What followed were guerilla warfare, arson, bombing, sabotage and terror. ITT and other U.S. corporations with Chilean holdings sponsored demonstrations and strikes. Finally, on September 11, 1973 Allende died either by suicide or by assassination. At that time Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State, said the following regarding Chile: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.” (1)
During 17 years of terror under Allende’s successor, General Augusto Pinochet, an estimated 3,000 Chileans were killed and many others were tortured or “disappeared.” (2,3,4,5)
Also see South America: Operation Condor
China An estimated 900,000 Chinese died during the Korean War.
For more information, See: Korea.
Colombia
One estimate is that 67,000 deaths have occurred from the 1960s to recent years due to support by the U.S. of Colombian state terrorism. (1)
According to a 1994 Amnesty International report, more than 20,000 people were killed for political reasons in Colombia since 1986, mainly by the military and its paramilitary allies. Amnesty alleged that “U.S.- supplied military equipment, ostensibly delivered for use against narcotics traffickers, was being used by the Colombian military to commit abuses in the name of “counter-insurgency.” (2) In 2002 another estimate was made that 3,500 people die each year in a U.S. funded civilian war in Colombia. (3)
In 1996 Human Rights Watch issued a report “Assassination Squads in Colombia” which revealed that CIA agents went to Colombia in 1991 to help the military to train undercover agents in anti-subversive activity. (4,5)
In recent years the U.S. government has provided assistance under Plan Colombia. The Colombian government has been charged with using most of the funds for destruction of crops and support of the paramilitary group.
Cuba
In the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba on April 18, 1961 which ended after 3 days, 114 of the invading force were killed, 1,189 were taken prisoners and a few escaped to waiting U.S. ships. (1) The captured exiles were quickly tried, a few executed and the rest sentenced to thirty years in prison for treason. These exiles were released after 20 months in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine.
Some people estimate that the number of Cuban forces killed range from 2,000, to 4,000. Another estimate is that 1,800 Cuban forces were killed on an open highway by napalm. This appears to have been a precursor of the Highway of Death in Iraq in 1991 when U.S. forces mercilessly annihilated large numbers of Iraqis on a highway. (2)
Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire)
The beginning of massive violence was instigated in this country in 1879 by its colonizer King Leopold of Belgium. The Congo’s population was reduced by 10 million people over a period of 20 years which some have referred to as “Leopold’s Genocide.” (1) The U.S. has been responsible for about a third of that many deaths in that nation in the more recent past. (2)
In 1960 the Congo became an independent state with Patrice Lumumba being its first prime minister. He was assassinated with the CIA being implicated, although some say that his murder was actually the responsibility of Belgium. (3) But nevertheless, the CIA was planning to kill him. (4) Before his assassination the CIA sent one of its scientists, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo carrying “lethal biological material” intended for use in Lumumba’s assassination. This virus would have been able to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the Congo area of Africa and was transported in a diplomatic pouch.
Much of the time in recent years there has been a civil war within the Democratic Republic of Congo, fomented often by the U.S. and other nations, including neighboring nations. (5)
In April 1977, Newsday reported that the CIA was secretly supporting efforts to recruit several hundred mercenaries in the U.S. and Great Britain to serve alongside Zaire’s army. In that same year the U.S. provided $15 million of military supplies to the Zairian President Mobutu to fend off an invasion by a rival group operating in Angola. (6)
In May 1979, the U.S. sent several million dollars of aid to Mobutu who had been condemned 3 months earlier by the U.S. State Department for human rights violations. (7) During the Cold War the U.S. funneled over 300 million dollars in weapons into Zaire (8,9) $100 million in military training was provided to him. (2) In 2001 it was reported to a U.S. congressional committee that American companies, including one linked to former President George Bush Sr., were stoking the Congo for monetary gains. There is an international battle over resources in that country with over 125 companies and individuals being implicated. One of these substances is coltan, which is used in the manufacture of cell phones. (2)
Dominican Republic
In 1962, Juan Bosch became president of the Dominican Republic. He advocated such programs as land reform and public works programs. This did not bode well for his future relationship with the U.S., and after only 7 months in office, he was deposed by a CIA coup. In 1965 when a group was trying to reinstall him to his office President Johnson said, “This Bosch is no good.” Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann replied “He’s no good at all. If we don’t get a decent government in there, Mr. President, we get another Bosch. It’s just going to be another sinkhole.” Two days later a U.S. invasion started and 22,000 soldiers and marines entered the Dominican Republic and about 3,000 Dominicans died during the fighting. The cover excuse for doing this was that this was done to protect foreigners there. (1,2,3,4)
East Timor
In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor. This incursion was launched the day after U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia where they had given President Suharto permission to use American arms, which under U.S. law, could not be used for aggression. Daniel Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the UN. said that the U.S. wanted “things to turn out as they did.” (1,2) The result was an estimated 200,000 dead out of a population of 700,000. (1,2)
Sixteen years later, on November 12, 1991, two hundred and seventeen East Timorese protesters in Dili, many of them children, marching from a memorial service, were gunned down by Indonesian Kopassus shock troops who were headed by U.S.- trained commanders Prabowo Subianto (son in law of General Suharto) and Kiki Syahnakri. Trucks were seen dumping bodies into the sea. (5)
El Salvador
The civil war from 1981 to1992 in El Salvador was financed by $6 billion in U.S. aid given to support the government in its efforts to crush a movement to bring social justice to the people in that nation of about 8 million people. (1) During that time U.S. military advisers demonstrated methods of torture on teenage prisoners, according to an interview with a deserter from the Salvadoran army published in the New York Times. This former member of the Salvadoran National Guard testified that he was a member of a squad of twelve who found people who they were told were guerillas and tortured them. Part of the training he received was in torture at a U.S. location somewhere in Panama. (2)
About 900 villagers were massacred in the village of El Mozote in 1981. Ten of the twelve El Salvadoran government soldiers cited as participating in this act were graduates of the School of the Americas operated by the U.S. (2) They were only a small part of about 75,000 people killed during that civil war. (1)
According to a 1993 United Nations’ Truth Commission report, over 96 % of the human rights violations carried out during the war were committed by the Salvadoran army or the paramilitary deaths squads associated with the Salvadoran army. (3)
That commission linked graduates of the School of the Americas to many notorious killings. The New York Times and the Washington Post followed with scathing articles. In 1996, the White House Oversight Board issued a report that supported many of the charges against that school made by Rev. Roy Bourgeois, head of the School of the Americas Watch. That same year the Pentagon released formerly classified reports indicating that graduates were trained in killing, extortion, and physical abuse for interrogations, false imprisonment and other methods of control. (4)
Grenada
The CIA began to destabilize Grenada in 1979 after Maurice Bishop became president, partially because he refused to join the quarantine of Cuba. The campaign against him resulted in his overthrow and the invasion by the U.S. of Grenada on October 25, 1983, with about 277 people dying. (1,2) It was fallaciously charged that an airport was being built in Grenada that could be used to attack the U.S. and it was also erroneously claimed that the lives of American medical students on that island were in danger.
Guatemala
In 1951 Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala. He appropriated some unused land operated by the United Fruit Company and compensated the company. (1,2) That company then started a campaign to paint Arbenz as a tool of an international conspiracy and hired about 300 mercenaries who sabotaged oil supplies and trains. (3) In 1954 a CIA-orchestrated coup put him out of office and he left the country. During the next 40 years various regimes killed thousands of people.
In 1999 the Washington Post reported that an Historical Clarification Commission concluded that over 200,000 people had been killed during the civil war and that there had been 42,000 individual human rights violations, 29,000 of them fatal, 92% of which were committed by the army. The commission further reported that the U.S. government and the CIA had pressured the Guatemalan government into suppressing the guerilla movement by ruthless means. (4,5)
According to the Commission between 1981 and 1983 the military government of Guatemala – financed and supported by the U.S. government – destroyed some four hundred Mayan villages in a campaign of genocide. (4) One of the documents made available to the commission was a 1966 memo from a U.S. State Department official, which described how a “safe house” was set up in the palace for use by Guatemalan security agents and their U.S. contacts. This was the headquarters for the Guatemalan “dirty war” against leftist insurgents and suspected allies. (2)
Haiti
From 1957 to 1986 Haiti was ruled by Papa Doc Duvalier and later by his son. During that time their private terrorist force killed between 30,000 and 100,000 people. (1) Millions of dollars in CIA subsidies flowed into Haiti during that time, mainly to suppress popular movements, (2) although most American military aid to the country, according to William Blum, was covertly channeled through Israel.
Reportedly, governments after the second Duvalier reign were responsible for an even larger number of fatalities, and the influence on Haiti by the U.S., particularly through the CIA, has continued. The U.S. later forced out of the presidential office a black Catholic priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide, even though he was elected with 67% of the vote in the early 1990s. The wealthy white class in Haiti opposed him in this predominantly black nation, because of his social programs designed to help the poor and end corruption. (3) Later he returned to office, but that did not last long. He was forced by the U.S. to leave office and now lives in South Africa.
Honduras
In the 1980s the CIA supported Battalion 316 in Honduras, which kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of its citizens. Torture equipment and manuals were provided by CIA Argentinean personnel who worked with U.S. agents in the training of the Hondurans. Approximately 400 people lost their lives. (1,2) This is another instance of torture in the world sponsored by the U.S. (3)
Battalion 316 used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations in the 1980s. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves. Declassified documents and other sources show that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy knew of numerous crimes, including murder and torture, yet continued to support Battalion 316 and collaborate with its leaders.” (4)
Honduras was a staging ground in the early 1980s for the Contras who were trying to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. John D. Negroponte, currently Deputy Secretary of State, was our embassador when our military aid to Honduras rose from $4 million to $77.4 million per year. Negroponte denies having had any knowledge of these atrocities during his tenure. However, his predecessor in that position, Jack R. Binns, had reported in 1981 that he was deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations. (5)
Hungary
In 1956 Hungary, a Soviet satellite nation, revolted against the Soviet Union. During the uprising broadcasts by the U.S. Radio Free Europe into Hungary sometimes took on an aggressive tone, encouraging the rebels to believe that Western support was imminent, and even giving tactical advice on how to fight the Soviets. Their hopes were raised then dashed by these broadcasts which cast an even darker shadow over the Hungarian tragedy.“ (1) The Hungarian and Soviet death toll was about 3,000 and the revolution was crushed. (2)
Indonesia
In 1965, in Indonesia, a coup replaced General Sukarno with General Suharto as leader. The U.S. played a role in that change of government. Robert Martens,a former officer in the U.S. embassy in Indonesia, described how U.S. diplomats and CIA officers provided up to 5,000 names to Indonesian Army death squads in 1965 and checked them off as they were killed or captured. Martens admitted that “I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.” (1,2,3) Estimates of the number of deaths range from 500,000 to 3 million. (4,5,6) From 1993 to 1997 the U.S. provided Jakarta with almost $400 million in economic aid and sold tens of million of dollars of weaponry to that nation. U.S. Green Berets provided training for the Indonesia’s elite force which was responsible for many of atrocities in East Timor. (3)
Iran
Iran lost about 262,000 people in the war against Iraq from 1980 to 1988. (1) See Iraq for more information about that war.
On July 3, 1988 the U.S. Navy ship, the Vincennes, was operating withing Iranian waters providing military support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. During a battle against Iranian gunboats it fired two missiles at an Iranian Airbus, which was on a routine civilian flight. All 290 civilian on board were killed. (2,3)
Iraq
A. The Iraq-Iran War lasted from 1980 to 1988 and during that time there were about 105,000 Iraqi deaths according to the Washington Post. (1,2)
According to Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, the U.S. provided the Iraqis with billions of dollars in credits and helped Iraq in other ways such as making sure that Iraq had military equipment including biological agents This surge of help for Iraq came as Iran seemed to be winning the war and was close to Basra. (1) The U.S. was not adverse to both countries weakening themselves as a result of the war, but it did not appear to want either side to win.
B: The U.S.-Iraq War and the Sanctions Against Iraq extended from 1990 to 2003.
Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990 and the U.S. responded by demanding that Iraq withdraw, and four days later the U.N. levied international sanctions.
Iraq had reason to believe that the U.S. would not object to its invasion of Kuwait, since U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, had told Saddam Hussein that the U.S. had no position on the dispute that his country had with Kuwait. So the green light was given, but it seemed to be more of a trap.
As a part of the public relations strategy to energize the American public into supporting an attack against Iraq the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. falsely testified before Congress that Iraqi troops were pulling the plugs on incubators in Iraqi hospitals. (1) This contributed to a war frenzy in the U.S.
The U.S. air assault started on January 17, 1991 and it lasted for 42 days. On February 23 President H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. ground assault to begin. The invasion took place with much needless killing of Iraqi military personnel. Only about 150 American military personnel died compared to about 200,000 Iraqis. Some of the Iraqis were mercilessly killed on the Highway of Death and about 400 tons of depleted uranium were left in that nation by the U.S. (2,3)
Other deaths later were from delayed deaths due to wounds, civilians killed, those killed by effects of damage of the Iraqi water treatment facilities and other aspects of its damaged infrastructure and by the sanctions.
In 1995 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. reported that U.N sanctions against on Iraq had been responsible for the deaths of more than 560,000 children since 1990. (5)
Leslie Stahl on the TV Program 60 Minutes in 1996 mentioned to Madeleine Albright, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And – and you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think is worth it.” (4)
In 1999 UNICEF reported that 5,000 children died each month as a result of the sanction and the War with the U.S. (6)
Richard Garfield later estimated that the more likely number of excess deaths among children under five years of age from 1990 through March 1998 to be 227,000 – double those of the previous decade. Garfield estimated that the numbers to be 350,000 through 2000 (based in part on result of another study). (7)
However, there are limitations to his study. His figures were not updated for the remaining three years of the sanctions. Also, two other somewhat vulnerable age groups were not studied: young children above the age of five and the elderly.
All of these reports were considerable indicators of massive numbers of deaths which the U.S. was aware of and which was a part of its strategy to cause enough pain and terror among Iraqis to cause them to revolt against their government.
C: Iraq-U.S. War started in 2003 and has not been concluded
Just as the end of the Cold War emboldened the U.S. to attack Iraq in 1991 so the attacks of September 11, 2001 laid the groundwork for the U.S. to launch the current war against Iraq. While in some other wars we learned much later about the lies that were used to deceive us, some of the deceptions that were used to get us into this war became known almost as soon as they were uttered. There were no weapons of mass destruction, we were not trying to promote democracy, we were not trying to save the Iraqi people from a dictator.
The total number of Iraqi deaths that are a result of our current Iraq against Iraq War is 654,000, of which 600,000 are attributed to acts of violence, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. (1,2)
Since these deaths are a result of the U.S. invasion, our leaders must accept responsibility for them.
Israeli-Palestinian War
About 100,000 to 200,000 Israelis and Palestinians, but mostly the latter, have been killed in the struggle between those two groups. The U.S. has been a strong supporter of Israel, providing billions of dollars in aid and supporting its possession of nuclear weapons. (1,2)
Korea, North and South
The Korean War started in 1950 when, according to the Truman administration, North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25th. However, since then another explanation has emerged which maintains that the attack by North Korea came during a time of many border incursions by both sides. South Korea initiated most of the border clashes with North Korea beginning in 1948. The North Korea government claimed that by 1949 the South Korean army committed 2,617 armed incursions. It was a myth that the Soviet Union ordered North Korea to attack South Korea. (1,2)
The U.S. started its attack before a U.N. resolution was passed supporting our nation’s intervention, and our military forces added to the mayhem in the war by introducing the use of napalm. (1)
During the war the bulk of the deaths were South Koreans, North Koreans and Chinese. Four sources give deaths counts ranging from 1.8 to 4.5 million. (3,4,5,6) Another source gives a total of 4 million but does not identify to which nation they belonged. (7)
John H. Kim, a U.S. Army veteran and the Chair of the Korea Committee of Veterans for Peace, stated in an article that during the Korean War “the U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy were directly involved in the killing of about three million civilians – both South and North Koreans – at many locations throughout Korea…It is reported that the U.S. dropped some 650,000 tons of bombs, including 43,000 tons of napalm bombs, during the Korean War.” It is presumed that this total does not include Chinese casualties.
Another source states a total of about 500,000 who were Koreans and presumably only military. (8,9)
Laos
From 1965 to 1973 during the Vietnam War the U.S. dropped over two million tons of bombs on Laos – more than was dropped in WWII by both sides. Over a quarter of the population became refugees. This was later called a “secret war,” since it occurred at the same time as the Vietnam War, but got little press. Hundreds of thousands were killed. Branfman make the only estimate that I am aware of , stating that hundreds of thousands died. This can be interpeted to mean that at least 200,000 died. (1,2,3)
U.S. military intervention in Laos actually began much earlier. A civil war started in the 1950s when the U.S. recruited a force of 40,000 Laotians to oppose the Pathet Lao, a leftist political party that ultimately took power in 1975.
Also See Vietnam
Nepal
Between 8,000 and 12,000 Nepalese have died since a civil war broke out in 1996. The death rate, according to Foreign Policy in Focus, sharply increased with the arrival of almost 8,400 American M-16 submachine guns (950 rpm) and U.S. advisers. Nepal is 85 percent rural and badly in need of land reform. Not surprisingly 42 % of its people live below the poverty level. (1,2)
In 2002, after another civil war erupted, President George W. Bush pushed a bill through Congress authorizing $20 million in military aid to the Nepalese government. (3)
Nicaragua
In 1981 the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza government in Nicaragua, (1) and until 1990 about 25,000 Nicaraguans were killed in an armed struggle between the Sandinista government and Contra rebels who were formed from the remnants of Somoza’s national government. The use of assassination manuals by the Contras surfaced in 1984. (2,3)
The U.S. supported the victorious government regime by providing covert military aid to the Contras (anti-communist guerillas) starting in November, 1981. But when Congress discovered that the CIA had supervised acts of sabotage in Nicaragua without notifying Congress, it passed the Boland Amendment in 1983 which prohibited the CIA, Defense Department and any other government agency from providing any further covert military assistance. (4)
But ways were found to get around this prohibition. The National Security Council, which was not explicitly covered by the law, raised private and foreign funds for the Contras. In addition, arms were sold to Iran and the proceeds were diverted from those sales to the Contras engaged in the insurgency against the Sandinista government. (5) Finally, the Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990 by voters who thought that a change in leadership would placate the U.S., which was causing misery to Nicaragua’s citizenry by it support of the Contras.
Pakistan
In 1971 West Pakistan, an authoritarian state supported by the U.S., brutally invaded East Pakistan. The war ended after India, whose economy was staggering after admitting about 10 million refugees, invaded East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and defeated the West Pakistani forces. (1)
Millions of people died during that brutal struggle, referred to by some as genocide committed by West Pakistan. That country had long been an ally of the U.S., starting with $411 million provided to establish its armed forces which spent 80% of its budget on its military. $15 million in arms flowed into W. Pakistan during the war. (2,3,4)
Three sources estimate that 3 million people died and (5,2,6) one source estimates 1.5 million. (3)
Panama
In December, 1989 U.S. troops invaded Panama, ostensibly to arrest Manuel Noriega, that nation’s president. This was an example of the U.S. view that it is the master of the world and can arrest anyone it wants to. For a number of years before that he had worked for the CIA, but fell out of favor partially because he was not an opponent of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. (1) It has been estimated that between 500 and 4,000 people died. (2,3,4)
Paraguay: See South America: Operation Condor
Philippines
The Philippines were under the control of the U.S. for over a hundred years. In about the last 50 to 60 years the U.S. has funded and otherwise helped various Philippine governments which sought to suppress the activities of groups working for the welfare of its people. In 1969 the Symington Committee in the U.S. Congress revealed how war material was sent there for a counter-insurgency campaign. U.S. Special Forces and Marines were active in some combat operations. The estimated number of persons that were executed and disappeared under President Fernando Marcos was over 100,000. (1,2)
South America: Operation Condor
This was a joint operation of 6 despotic South American governments (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) to share information about their political opponents. An estimated 13,000 people were killed under this plan. (1)
It was established on November 25, 1975 in Chile by an act of the Interamerican Reunion on Military Intelligence. According to U.S. embassy political officer, John Tipton, the CIA and the Chilean Secret Police were working together, although the CIA did not set up the operation to make this collaboration work. Reportedly, it ended in 1983. (2)
On March 6, 2001 the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor. (3)
Sudan
Since 1955, when it gained its independence, Sudan has been involved most of the time in a civil war. Until about 2003 approximately 2 million people had been killed. It not known if the death toll in Darfur is part of that total.
Human rights groups have complained that U.S. policies have helped to prolong the Sudanese civil war by supporting efforts to overthrow the central government in Khartoum. In 1999 U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) who said that she offered him food supplies if he would reject a peace plan sponsored by Egypt and Libya.
In 1978 the vastness of Sudan’s oil reservers was discovered and within two years it became the sixth largest recipient of U.S, military aid. It’s reasonable to assume that if the U.S. aid a government to come to power it will feel obligated to give the U.S. part of the oil pie.
A British group, Christian Aid, has accused foreign oil companies of complicity in the depopulation of villages. These companies – not American – receive government protection and in turn allow the government use of its airstrips and roads.
In August 1998 the U.S. bombed Khartoum, Sudan with 75 cruise míssiles. Our government said that the target was a chemical weapons factory owned by Osama bin Laden. Actually, bin Laden was no longer the owner, and the plant had been the sole supplier of pharmaceutical supplies for that poor nation. As a result of the bombing tens of thousands may have died because of the lack of medicines to treat malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases. The U.S. settled a lawsuit filed by the factory’s owner. (1,2)
Uruguay: See South America: Operation Condor
Vietnam
In Vietnam, under an agreement several decades ago, there was supposed to be an election for a unified North and South Vietnam. The U.S. opposed this and supported the Diem government in South Vietnam. In August, 1964 the CIA and others helped fabricate a phony Vietnamese attack on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin and this was used as a pretext for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (1)
During that war an American assassination operation,called Operation Phoenix, terrorized the South Vietnamese people, and during the war American troops were responsible in 1968 for the mass slaughter of the people in the village of My Lai.
According to a Vietnamese government statement in 1995 the number of deaths of civilians and military personnel during the Vietnam War was 5.1 million. (2)
Since deaths in Cambodia and Laos were about 2.7 million (See Cambodia and Laos) the estimated total for the Vietnam War is 7.8 million.
The Virtual Truth Commission provides a total for the war of 5 million, (3) and Robert McNamara, former Secretary Defense, according to the New York Times Magazine says that the number of Vietnamese dead is 3.4 million. (4,5)
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia was a socialist federation of several republics. Since it refused to be closely tied to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it gained some suport from the U.S. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, Yugoslavia’s usefulness to the U.S. ended, and the U.S and Germany worked to convert its socialist economy to a capitalist one by a process primarily of dividing and conquering. There were ethnic and religious differences between various parts of Yugoslavia which were manipulated by the U.S. to cause several wars which resulted in the dissolution of that country.
From the early 1990s until now Yugoslavia split into several independent nations whose lowered income, along with CIA connivance, has made it a pawn in the hands of capitalist countries. (1) The dissolution of Yugoslavia was caused primarily by the U.S. (2)
Here are estimates of some, if not all, of the internal wars in Yugoslavia. All wars: 107,000; (3,4)
Bosnia and Krajina: 250,000; (5) Bosnia: 20,000 to 30,000; (5) Croatia: 15,000; (6) and
Kosovo: 500 to 5,000. (7)
NOTES
Afghanistan
1.Mark Zepezauer, Boomerang (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2003), p.135.
6.The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan, Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998, Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
7.William Blum, Rogue State (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2000), p.5
1.Howard W. French “From Old Files, a New Story of the U.S. Role in the Angolan War” New York Times 3/31/02
2.Angolan Update, American Friends Service Committee FS, 11/1/99 flyer.
3.Norman Solomon, War Made Easy, (John Wiley & Sons, 2005) p. 82-83.
4.Lance Selfa, U.S. Imperialism, A Century of Slaughter, International Socialist Review Issue 7, Spring 1999 (as appears in Third world Traveler www. thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/Century_Imperialism.html)
5. Jeffress Ramsay, Africa , (Dushkin/McGraw Hill Guilford Connecticut), 1997, p. 144-145.
6.Mark Zepezauer, The CIA’S Greatest Hits (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994), p.54.
2.David Model, President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the Bombing of Cambodia excerpted from the book Lying for Empire How to Commit War Crimes With A Straight Face, Common Courage Press, 2005, paperhttp://thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/Nixon_Cambodia_LFE.html.
3.James A. Lucas, Torture Gets The Silence Treatment, Countercurrents, July 26, 2004.
4.Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson, Unearthed: Fatal Secrets, Baltimore Sun, reprint of a series that appeared June 11-18, 1995 in Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, School of Assassins, p. 46 Orbis Books 2001.
5.Michael Dobbs, Negroponte’s Time in Honduras at Issue, Washington Post, March 21, 2005
6.Peter Dale Scott, The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967, Pacific Affairs, 58, Summer 1985, pages 239-264.http://www.namebase.org/scott.
7.Mark Zepezauer, The CIA’S Greatest Hits (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994), p.30.
Iran
1.Geoff Simons, Iraq from Sumer to Saddam, 1996, St. Martins Press, NY p. 317.
1.Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time (New York, Thunder’s Mouth), 1994, p.31-32
2.Ibid., p. 52-54
3.Ibid., p. 43
4.Anthony Arnove, Iraq Under Siege, (South End Press Cambridge MA 2000). p. 175.
5.Food and Agricultural Organizaiton, The Children are Dying, 1995 World View Forum, Internationa Action Center, International Relief Association, p. 78
6.Anthony Arnove, Iraq Under Siege, South End Press Cambridge MA 2000. p. 61.
7.David Cortright, A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions December 3, 2001, The Nation.
U.S-Iraq War 2003-?
1.Jonathan Bor 654,000 Deaths Tied to Iraq War Baltimore Sun , October 11,2006
2.William Blum, Killing Hope (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995), p. 46
3.Kanako Tokuno, Chinese Winter Offensive in Korean War – the Debacle of American Strategy, ICE Case Studies Number 186, May, 2006http://www.american.edu/ted/ice/chosin.htm.
4.John G. Stroessinger, Why Nations go to War, (New York; St. Martin’s Press), p. 99)
1.Romeo T. Capulong, A Century of Crimes Against the Filipino People, Presentation, Public Interest Law Center, World Tribunal for Iraq Trial in New York City on August 25,2004. http://www.peoplejudgebush.org/files/RomeoCapulong.pdf).
2.Roland B. Simbulan The CIA in Manila – Covert Operations and the CIA’s Hidden Hisotry in the Philippines Equipo Nizkor Information – Derechos, derechos.org/nizkor/filipinas/doc/cia.
South America: Operation Condor
1.John Dinges, Pulling Back the Veil on Condor, The Nation, July 24, 2000.
1.Sara Flounders, Bosnia Tragedy:The Unknown Role of the Pentagon in NATO in the Balkans (New York: International Action Center) p. 47-75
2.James A. Lucas, Media Disinformation on the War in Yugoslavia: The Dayton Peace Accords Revisited, Global Research, September 7, 2005 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context= viewArticle&code=LUC20050907&articleId=899
It has been nearly a century since the widespread implementation of fluoride in our water supply. More than 377 million unsuspecting people worldwide consume the chemical each day. World Health Organization representatives state the product prevents tooth deterioration. Authorities insist the additive is essential for oral hygiene.
However, many independent researchers dispute these claims. They meticulously analyzed data and reached a startling conclusion: there is no benevolent purpose for governments to expose citizens to fluoride. Even more chillingly, investigators conclude the synthesized substance has resulted in mass poisoning on a global scale.
Ties To Nazi Germany
Fluoride, a byproduct of fertilizer, steel, and aluminum production, can be traced back to the Third Reich. According to chemist Charles E. Perkins, Hitler desired an elixir that would create a more docile population and sterilization of certain groups. Nazi physicians discovered one particular neurotoxin which met the Führer’s demands. Concentration camp prisoners began receiving fluoride-laced medication.
Perkins dedicated his career to uncovering fluorine pathology and cautioned: “as a research chemist of established standing built within the past 22 years, and 53 chemical patents, based on my practical experience in the health and chemical fields, let me warn… fluoridation of drinking water is criminal insanity and national suicide.”
From Pollutant To ‘Supplement’
In America, fluoride’s current application can be traced back to the 1940s. Crops, plants, and livestock were being killed by prolific industrial dumping. Corporations faced a major dilemma when legislators banned the environmental disposal of hazardous waste materials. American Aluminum Company director Frances Frary was determined to find a way around these new regulations.
The wealthy manufacturing tycoon approached the Mellon Institute (an organization with a history of defending asbestos as noncarcinogenic) and contracted them to conduct a survey. After receiving a lucrative payout, incentivized academics announced fluoride is completely safe. With the administrative green light, major businesses could sell pollutants to communities nationwide. Lethal elements were suddenly disguised as a helpful supplement and generated billions in revenue.
Censorship Of Opposition
One outspoken proponent of fluoride was Harold Hodge, a man responsible for injecting live test subjects with plutonium and uranium during the Human Radiation Experiments. Yet he received strong opposition amongst certain associates in the toxicology field. Doctor George Waldbott witnessed patients experiencing adverse reactions after his county began municipal fluoridation. He performed numerous double-blind studies and concluded the additive causes both physiological and neurological damage.
Upon publishing his results, the clinician received intense ridicule for contending mainstream officials. Another medical professional denounced by so-called experts was Phyllis Mullenix, MD. She ascertained fluoride is linked to cancer, memory problems, and low IQs. After publicly releasing her peer-reviewed findings, she was swiftly fired from Forsyth Dental Center.
Does Not Prevent Cavities
Society has been convinced that fluoride is necessary to keep our teeth strong. In reality, statistics repeatedly disprove these claims. Areas with untampered water have equal, or lower, rates of cavities. There is not a single scientific paper or laboratory study proving fluoridation reduces tooth decay. On the contrary, there are hundreds of documents outlying its innumerable dangers.
More than 1,000 United States Environmental Protection Agency members voted unanimously in favor of banning the harmful compound. Robert Carton Ph.D., a federal employee and former EPA Union President asserted: “water fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud of this century, if not of all time.”
Doctor Dean Burk of the National Cancer Institute examined the connection between cancer and fluoridation. He ultimately concluded: “in point of fact, fluoride causes more cancer, and causes it faster, than any other chemical”.
Tubes of toothpaste are labeled with the warning: “call poison control if ingested“ due to the toxicity of fluoride. Simultaneously, individuals ingest this insidious substance directly from their faucets daily. While the establishment insists this compound is for our benefit, bureaucrats collect billions of dollars from tobacco sales.
One has to wonder: are the powers-that-be truly concerned about our wellbeing or could we merely be a source of infinite revenue?
Iran has been subject to crippling U.S. sanctions and military provocations in recent weeks. The most recent U.S. escalation began in mid-July when the U.K., through its territory of Gibraltar, seized an Iranian oil tanker accused of violating E.U.-imposed sanctions against Syria. Iran has since taken three “foreign” tankers into custody and placed seventeen Iranians accused of spying for the CIA under arrest. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the 2020 election buzz has been temporarily drowned out by the deaths of over thirty people in three mass shootings. From Iran to Ohio, the U.S. empire is in a state of decay.
Iran is responding to U.S. imperial decay by defending itself on behalf of the former colonial world, much of which is still under the thumb of neocolonial and imperialist exploitation. The Islamic Republic has been under a state of siege by the imperialist world for over half of a century. Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh was overthrown in 1953 with the help of the CIA. This placed Iran under the autocratic puppet rule of the Shah. The Shah used a secret police force, the SAVAK, to murder, kidnap, and torture of tens of thousands of Iranians. All of this occurred under the supervision of the U.S. and U.K.
The Iranian people overthrew the Shah and re-nationalized the nation’s vast oil reserves in 1979. Washington never forgave Iran for refusing to bow down to its imperial dictates. Iran maintains sovereignty on several fronts. On the domestic front, Iran has developed an advanced military infrastructure capable of defending the country from foreign invasion. On the international front, the Islamic Republic has developed firm ties with Russia, China, Syria, and a litany of nations which has allowed it to modernize its economy. U.S. sanctions have kept Iran’s people without key medical and other resources necessary for survival, but this hasn’t stopped them from defending the self-determination of Iran and allied nations.
When Iran stands up to the U.S. and its imperial allies, it isn’t merely defending itself. Iran is defending the rest of the world’s peoples. Iran has given critical aid to the Syrian government in its righteous fight against foreign-sponsored “jihadist” mercenaries. Iran has also been a key ally of Venezuela; which, like Iran, has suffered gravely because of U.S. sanctions. Iran’s seizure of foreign oil tankers and CIA agents shows that it is not afraid of the U.S. or its allies. U.S. imperialism is in decay and cannot assert hegemony in the old way. There are no CIA-backed coups in the cards and a full-scale attack on Iran would be political suicide not just for Trump, but for the entire U.S. and E.U. political establishment which has rapidly seen its political legitimacy dwindle over the last several decades.
Just as the U.S. is unable to operate in the same way around the world, mass shootings in the U.S. represent a domestic example of a militarized, racist Empire in decay. White America has historically acted as the foot soldiers in the Empire’s system of racialized social control dating back to the original sin of slavery. Slave patrols, lynch mobs, and their modern manifestations in the American police and prison state are historical byproducts of a ruthless system of profit rooted in the white supremacist dehumanization of Africans in America. For several centuries, most white Americans relished in the benefits conferred to them by a system that placed Black and anyone else deemed a sub-human race to the bottom of the class structure. Only in the last forty to fifty years since Black Americans forced concessions upon the state has it been distasteful to publicly rejoice in the fruits of white supremacy.
Mass shootings demonstrate the U.S.’ descent into barbarism. In 2017, in response to the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Democratic Party presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg remarked on Twitter that “I did not carry assault weapons around a foreign country so I could come home and see them used to massacre my countrymen.” Democratic Party representative Steve Cohen deleted a similar tweet not long after the most recent string of mass shootings in California, Ohio, and El Paso “You want to shoot an assault weapon? Go to Afghanistan or Iraq. Enlist!” Such responses to white violence in the U.S. reveal the double standard inherent in the logic of white superiority and imperial violence. Mass shootings that disrupt the mythical tranquility of white society represent a crisis worthy of response while institutionalized mass murder in the form of military intervention is characterized as a necessary and heroic act.
A social system predicated on white supremacy, empire, and a declining capitalist economy inevitably brings about conditions of depravity like those seen in the recent mass shootings. Fascism festers when capitalism forces those who have become comfortable with certain conditions, such as the presence of (white) jobs, into a state of precarity. That’s why the El Paso shooter’s manifesto can simultaneously condemn both U.S. political parties and automation while taking out murderous rage on undocumented immigrants. Economic and political violence is supposed to be reserved for subhuman “savages” such as indigenous peoples, undocumented migrants, and Black Americans. The chickens have come home to roost in White America and it should come as no surprise in an alienated, heavily surveilled society that one of the responses is violence at the barrel of the gun.
Much of the world, including large sections of the U.S. population, is no stranger to U.S. imperial violence. Black Americans and indigenous peoples native to what is now the U.S. mainland are murdered by law enforcement nearly every day in the United States. Iraq lost over one million people during the U.S. invasion beginning in 2003. Iran lost one million itself in the war two decades prior when the U.S. supplied Iraq with chemical weapons to invade the Islamic Republic post-revolution. An empire in decay only becomes more violent and ruthless in its attempt to maintain hegemony. The U.S. has killed over 40,000 Venezuelans in one year’s worth of sanctions. And with China and Russia labeled the greatest threat to U.S. “national security,” the threat of a global war of nuclear proportions looms over humanity like a storm cloud.
The U.S. has long been on the path to barbarism. Iran’s resistance to U.S. imperialism provides an international example of heroism and is a continuation of the anti-colonial struggle of the 20th century. Mass shootings and global provocations are a sign of an empire that is even more dangerous because it is dying. Only by joining in this struggle can exploited and oppressed sections of the U.S. population achieve true peace and justice in our lifetime. Without mass resistance to white supremacy and war, the U.S. empire threatens to devour itself alive and will no doubt attempt to take the rest of us with it.
Ignorance is the most potent weapon in the vast armoury of the privileged and powerful. The use of force and prisons to oppress citizens and deny them basic human rights is effective but tends to cause a reaction. People physically oppressed feel the pain and often resist and revolt against their oppressors.
But the locks and chains of mental imprisonment through imposed ignorance are invisible and much more effective. For those detained within prisons of ignorance do not even recognise their enslavement. Information is power and those who control the flow of information are very powerful. Keeping the populace ignorant or ensuring they are only partially informed or misinformed is how the rich and powerful maintain control.
The statement above swirled around my brain last week as I struggled to contain my anger and rage at the treatment of Venezuela and her people by Trump’s American gangsters and their hired liars and lickspittles who daily pollute our screens and newsstands with tales designed to misinform, half inform and conceal completely the motives of the mobsters in smart suits and ties who flash smiles and issue soundbites in public but who are responsible for carnage, extreme poverty and premature deaths in private.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo displayed the self-assured shamelessness of the arrogant crook he is by labeling the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and others who dare to support the democratically elected President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, as “disgusting”. He did so a few days ago as he sat appropriately alongside the dishonorable multi-millionaire UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP, so powerful he can flaunt laws and tax bills everyone else is compelled to obey and so rich he forgets to declare the purchase of seven luxury flats:”It is disgusting to see leaders, in not only the United Kingdom, but the United States as well, who continue to support the murderous dictator Maduro. It is not in either of our country’s best interests for those leaders to continue to advocate on their behalf“.
The only thing that is “disgusting” is the dishonest, deceitful display of hypocrisy by Pompeo on behalf of America as they implement a vicious economic war against the people of Venezuela in pursuit of control over their vast oil reserves, the largest reserves on the planet.
Pompeo represents the biggest bully nation in the world. The suggestion they are concerned with the human rights or welfare of the Venezuelan people is an outrageous misrepresentation of reality. The truth of the situation is crystal clear but you will only find it if you look beneath and beyond the cacophony of sneeringly dishonest media coverage that disgracefully disguises itself as news output.
Last week I listened to and watched bulletin after bulletin glowingly report the attempt of US imposed puppet Juan Guido to encourage a violent overthrow of a democratically elected President in Venezuela.Guido was given hours of coverage and acres of newsprint to proclaim the end of the elected Maduro “regime” without a hint of critical context or a sniff of journalistic questioning of the legitimacy of a self-appointed President in preference to one who attracted over 6.2 million votes in a democratic election less than twelve months ago.
Even Jon Snow and Channel 4 News have joined the ranks of the disgraced purveyors of US friendly lies and half-truths. Snow referred to Maduro, the guy re-elected President with over 6.2 million votes in a field of several candidates, as the “failed President”. The display of bias and prejudice against Maduro was sickening and nauseating.
The very same so-called ‘news’ stations like BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and CNN who promoted and encouraged an illegal, undemocratic and violent overthrow of the Maduro government then had the brass necks to condemn that government’s police and security services for quelling the isolated malcontents who threw missiles and even fired live ammunition at the legitimate police force of Venezuela.
If only they displayed such concern for ‘protesters’ when reporting the shooting of children with flags and placards in the West Bank and Gaza strip by the illegally occupying Israeli Defence Forces?
What is withheld from public view and given no or cursory coverage is the fact that Venezuela has been deliberately targeted by the US for regime change and the economic sanctions imposed have been illegal under international law and deadly to the poor of Venezuela.
Consider the Executive Summary of the devastating Report from the American based Center For Economic And Policy Research (CEPR) published last month:
“This paper looks at some of the most important impacts of the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US government since August of 2017. It finds that most of the impact of these sanctions has not been on the government but on the civilian population.
The sanctions reduced the public’s caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation. They exacerbated Venezuela’s economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans. Even more severe and destructive than the broad economic sanctions of August 2017 were the sanctions imposed by executive order on January 28, 2019 and subsequent executive orders this year; and the recognition of a parallel government, which as shown below, created a whole new set of financial and trade sanctions that are even more constricting than the executive orders themselves.
“We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018; and that these sanctions would fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the US is a signatory. They are also illegal under international law and treaties which the US has signed, and would appear to violate US law as well”.
This rigorously researched academic report finds the US Government guilty of imposing illegal economic sanctions amounting to a form of collective punishment costing 40,000 Venezuelan lives and the fact is that most if not all readers of this column will be learning of this shocking fact for the first time.
America is guilty of breaching the Geneva and Hague Conventions designed to defend human rights; breaking international laws designed to protect the national sovereignty of nations; and causing the premature deaths of more than 40,000 Venezuelan citizens, and you are only just learning about it?
If this does not enrage you and alert you to how ill-informed we are collectively about the actions, motives and consequences of US actions you are on the side of the oppressors in the world and don’t care about such atrocities.
At the start of February I watched BBC anchor-man Andrew Neil on one of his many BBC provided platforms attack Ken Livingston for suggesting many of Venezuela’s economic problems were caused by US economic sanctions. Neil aggressively challenged Livingston to name any sanctions and suggested the only sanctions that existed were from 2015 under Barack Obama and they were “aimed solely at Venezuelan regime members”.According to Mr BBC, Andrew Neil, there were ‘no economic sanctions by the US against Venezuela which could cause any economic damage’. The exchange is promoted by the ‘Voice of Reason’ website under the headline: ‘Andrew Neil demolishes left wing myth that Venezuela’s demise was caused by America‘.
Andrew Neil and the British Biased Corporation are no strangers to the peddling of biased, misleading and unfounded views and news of course. They do it consistently and professionally. Sometimes they are caught out and reprimanded but often the damage is done in the artificial influencing and manipulation of public opinion.
Two years ago during an interview with former First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, in the run up to the Scottish Parliament elections Mr Neil used out of date data and biased Tory propaganda to suggest primary school children in Scotland were “functionally illiterate”.
It was a woefully inaccurate and politically biased claim. The toothless and inadequate watchdog, Ofcom, has now found the interview to be misleading and inaccurate but a full two years after the broadcast took place. So we know how biased the mainstream media can be and should not be surprised that an academic report so damning of the US economic sanctions and involvement in undermining Venezuela is repressed. However what about the Human Rights Council (HRC) of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly? Would you expect a similar report from such a respected and esteemed body to be ignored?
In September last year a detailed and comprehensive report was submitted to the HRC by the independent expert appointed on behalf of the HRC of the United Nations to examine the economic and democratic situation within both Venezuela and Ecuador. After months of interviews, examination of evidence, visitations across Venezuela and independent evaluation of contributions from all sides of the political divide within Venezuela Alfred de Zayas published his Report.
The methodology he used in compiling his report followed the principle audiatur et altera pars, listen to all sides. He stringently adhered to Article 6 of the Special Procedures Mandate Holders of the HRC which requires mandate holders to establish the facts based on objective, reliable information emanating from relevant credible sources that have been duly cross-checked to the best extent possible.
The outcome was a damning indictment of the US and its illegal use of economic sanctions to engineer a politically desirable objective. The recent academic report referred to above only underlines the accuracy and truth of this report from the HRC Independent Expert. Several direct quotations are appropriate.
In relation to Venezuela’s achievements:
“The Independent Expert noted the eradication of illiteracy, free education from primary school to university, and programs to reduce extreme poverty, provide housing to the homeless and vulnerable, phase out privilege and discrimination, and extend medical care to everyone.”
In connection with the history of US interference in other sovereign nations through economic warfare to cause humanitarian disasters to justify military interventions:
“The Charter of the United Nations rests on the philosophy of multilateralism, a commitment to international cooperation, and the sovereign equality of States. Countries must not be isolated and boycotted, but helped in strengthening their democratic institutions. Over the past sixty years, non-conventional economic wars have been waged against Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in order to make their economies fail, facilitate regime change and impose a neo-liberal socioeconomic model. In order to discredit selected governments, failures in the field of human rights are maximized so as to make violent overthrow more palatable. Human rights are being “weaponized” against rivals. Yet, human rights are the heritage of every human being and should never be instrumentalized as weapons of demonization”.
On the unilateral and illegal economic sanctions imposed and supported by the US, Canada and, shamefully, the EU:
“The effects of sanctions imposed by Presidents Obama and Trump and unilateral measures by Canada and the European Union have directly and indirectly aggravated the shortages in medicines such as insulin and anti-retroviral drugs. To the extent that economic sanctions have caused delays in distribution and thus contributed to many deaths, sanctions contravene the human rights obligations of the countries imposing them. Moreover, sanctions can amount to crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. An investigation by that Court would be appropriate, but the geopolitical submissiveness of the Court may prevent this.”
The US, Canada and the EU are guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’ but the Independent Expert doubts the International Criminal Court will investigate because of the identity of the powerful nations who are the perpetrators of the crimes.
Most damning but prophetic of all the words submitted by the Independent Expert in his Report were contained in Paragraph 37. Please read the whole Report but consider, reflect on, share and re-read this essential paragraph:”Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns with the intention of forcing them to surrender. Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees. A difference, perhaps, is that twenty-first century sanctions are accompanied by the manipulation of public opinion through “fake news”, aggressive public relations and a pseudo-human rights rhetoric so as to give the impression that a human rights “end” justifies the criminal means. There is not only a horizontal juridical world order governed by the Charter of the United Nations and principles of sovereign equality, but also a vertical world order reflecting the hierarchy of a geopolitical system that links dominant States with the rest of the world according to military and economic power. It is the latter, geopolitical system that generates geopolitical crimes, hitherto in total impunity. It is reported that the United States is currently training foreign lawyers in how to draft legislation to impose further sanctions on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in an effort to asphyxiate Venezuelan State institutions.”
Open your eyes to the reality of US involvement in Venezuela and recognise it as the criminal enterprise that it is. Don’t accept the prison of ignorance built for us by the powerful. Break out and condemn them for their conscious breeches of international law and crimes against humanity.
Hands Off Venezuela. No To Economic Sanctions. Yes To Maduro & Democracy.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
THE HAGUE — A senior judge at the United Nations’ International Court in The Hague has resigned in protest of “shocking” interference from the Trump administration into a preliminary war-crimes investigation into U.S. troops.
The judge, Christoph Flügge, who hails from Germany, slammed National Security Advisor John Bolton over his response last year to a preliminary investigation into American soldiers accused of torturing people in Afghanistan. That investigation ultimately found “a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity” were committed by U.S. forces, MintPress News reported.
“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton said in September. He also called for sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and warned the body against pursuing any investigations into “Israel or other U.S. allies.”
Bolton even cited a Palestinian-led effort to bring Israel to the ICC over its human-rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank as a reason for closing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington.
He went on to promise to ban ICC “judges and prosecutors from entering the United States,” adding:
We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”
“John Bolton, the national security adviser to the U.S. president, held a speech last September in which he wished death on the International Criminal Court,” Flügge said after leaving his post. Flugge continued on Bolton’s declaration:
If these judges ever interfere in the domestic concerns of the U.S. or investigate an American citizen, [Bolton] said the American government would do all it could to ensure that these judges would no longer be allowed to travel to the United States – and that they would perhaps even be criminally prosecuted.”
The American security adviser held his speech at a time when The Hague was planning preliminary investigations into American soldiers who had been accused of torturing people in Afghanistan. The American threats against international judges clearly show the new political climate. It is shocking. I had never heard such a threat.
It is consistent with the new American line: ‘We are No 1 and we stand above the law.’”
A supine UN, a dreadful precedent
The attacks from the White House were one of two reasons for Flügge’s resignation, as the judge was left aghast by the UN’s deferential response to Turkey after Turkey arrested Aydın Sefa Akay, another UN judge, over alleged links to Fethullah Gülen, a cleric living in exile in the U.S. whom Turkish President Recep Erdoğan claims is the mastermind behind the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey.
Akay was at the end of his tenure when the charge was leveled by Turkey. “We, the other judges, immediately protested. But his tenure was nevertheless not extended by the UN secretary general. And with that, he’s gone,” Flügge said.
The assaults by Turkey and the U.S. were both undertaken in the summertime. Afterwards, Flügge said he realized that the “diplomatic world” did not value the independent judiciary that was the ICC. The lack of a response by the UN to Turkey for its meddling in ICC matters set a dangerous precedent, according to the judge.
“Every incident in which judicial independence is breached is one too many,” Flügge said. “Now there is this case, and everyone can invoke it in the future. Everyone can say: ‘But you let Turkey get its way.’ This is an original sin. It can’t be fixed.”
Alexander Rubinstein is a staff writer for MintPress News based in Washington, DC. He reports on police, prisons and protests in the United States and the United States’ policing of the world. He previously reported for RT and Sputnik News.
Open Letter to the United Nations. Call for debate, hearings and voting on an effective plan of action against various United States (US) government crimes of global significance
I am writing to request that both the 1) member states of the UN General Assembly and 2) member states of the Security Council hold hearings, debate and vote on an effective plan of action against various crimes that have been committed by people working for the government of the US that are of significance to the global community.
These crimes include:
The US government’s current (2018) attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua
US government interventionist policies and practices into the internal affairs of most of the member states of the UN (i.e. the US governments long history of being the #1 global bully on Earth)
The US government’s ascendancy to having become the #1 violator of human rights globally and
The Global Surveillance State program of the US secret police (e.g. NSA, CIA, FBI, DEA, DIA, etc.).
In April 2018, elements of the US government (e.g. NSA, CIA) began attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua. I have been in Nicaragua from March 2018 to present (i.e. September 2018) and have been a direct eyewitness to US government attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua.
US secret police operatives have incited riots, provoked killings and paid for the highways and roads in Nicaragua to become barricaded to obstruct transportation.
“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