News Articles | April 24, 2022

Africa, Agriculture, economy, Israel, labor, Palestine, prison, Russia, Syria, taxes, Ukraine, unions, vaccine, War, World Economy

How rich have America’s richest become?

These days, we like to think we know the answer. After all, we get from investigators at Forbes every fall a detailed annual list of the fortunes of America’s richest 400. And Forbes also publishes an annual list of the world’s billionaires — a scorecard Americans dominate — as well as a “real-time” list of billionaire fortunes based on daily stock trading.

Our wealth stats don’t end there. Business reporters at Bloomberg publish a competing “Billionaires Index,” with figures proudly “updated at the close of every trading day in New York.” Eight of the ten richest billionaires on Bloomberg’s list carry U.S. passports. The combined fortune, at last look, of these eight: $1.22 trillion. READ MORE

Periodically, we get a glimpse into the financial lives of the ultrarich. A pro athlete signs a huge contract, a tech CEO sells a boatload of shares in their company, or a billionaire heir unloads a Manhattan penthouse. Based on these nuggets of information, the media speculates as to how much income the rich might bring in every year. But nobody actually knows.

Thanks to an analysis of its unprecedented trove of IRS data, ProPublica is revealing the 15 people who reported the most U.S. income on their taxes from 2013 to 2018, along with data for the rest of the top 400. READ MORE

Lewis Mumford, one of the 20th century’s great urbanists, looked across the urban landscape, and he didn’t like what he saw. In his 1961 classic, The City In History, he wrote of “sprawling gigantism.”

“Circle over London, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Sydney . . . What is the shape of the city and how does it define itself? The original container has completely disappeared: the sharp division between city and country no longer exists. As the eye stretches toward the hazy periphery one can pick out no definite shapes except those formed by nature: one beholds rather a continuous shapeless mass . . . “

The loss of form and balance was the central target of Mumford’s often blistering criticism of modern society.  The city, the pinnacle of human creation, expressed what he saw as a general sickness of a civilization given to the pursuit of endless expansion.

“Mere increase in size no more signifies improvement, or even adaptation, than technological expansion ensures a good life. The very dynamism of growth, as in the change of hand weapons to the hydrogen bomb, only increases the area of possible destruction.”

 

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"We're tired of being ignored and left without the resources we need to care for our patients," explained California Nurses Association.

Thousands of nurses at 18 Northern California Sutter Health hospitals and medical facilities on Monday began a one-day strike to protest what their union called the healthcare provider's refusal to address "proposals about safe staffing and health and safety protections" amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

More than 8,000 members of California Nurses Association (CNA)—a National Nurses United (NNU) affiliate—and CNA-affiliated Caregivers and Healthcare Employees Union are participating in the action, according to NNU.

"The Sutter nurses voted for this strike," Renee Waters, a trauma-neuro intensive care registered nurse with 26 years' experience, said in a statement.

She added that "we are striking because Sutter is not transparent about the stockpile of PPE supplies and contact tracing," a reference to the personal protective equipment that has often been in short supply throughout the pandemic. READ MORE

Social media platforms are aggressively censoring challenges to the dominant narrative on Ukraine, the ruling Democratic Party, the wars in the Middle East and the corporate state.

The ruling class, made up of the traditional elites that run the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, is employing draconian forms of censorship on its right-wing and left-wing critics in a desperate effort to cling to power.

The traditional elites were discredited for pushing through a series of corporate assaults on workers, from deindustrialization to trade deals. They were unable to stem rising inflation, the looming economic crisis and the ecological emergency.

They were incapable of carrying out significant social and political reform to ameliorate widespread suffering and refused to accept responsibility for two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East.

And now they have launched a new and sophisticated McCarthyism. Character assassination. Algorithms. Shadow banning. De-platforming. READ MORE

Sergey Glazyev is a man living right in the eye of our current geopolitical and geo-economic hurricane. One of the most influential economists in the world, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a former adviser to the Kremlin from 2012 to 2019, for the past three years he has helmed Moscow’s uber strategic portfolio as minister in charge of integration and macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).

Glazyev’s recent intellectual production has been nothing short of transformative, epitomized by his essay “Sanctions and Sovereignty” and an extensive discussion of the new, emerging geo-economic paradigm in an interview with a Russian business magazine.

In another of his recent essays, Glazyev comments on how “I grew up in Zaporozhye, near which heavy fighting is now taking place in order to destroy the Ukrainian Nazis, who never existed in my small Motherland. I studied at a Ukrainian school and I know Ukrainian literature and language well, which from a scientific point of view is a dialect of Russian. I did not notice anything Russophobic in Ukrainian culture. In the 17 years of my life in Zaporozhye, I have never met a single Banderist.” READ MORE

Americans should be experiencing an uneasy sense of déjà vu. In the last two years, U.S.-trained officers have overthrown West African governments at least four times.  There are indications that other graduates have undermined civilian governments in other portions of the continent. But U.S. military officials have been less than informative. US Africa Command (AFRICOM) can’t explain why there has been a surge in coups. Indeed, AFRICOM insists that it doesn’t even know how often they’ve happened. That position reflects convenient ignorance, at best.

Maj. Gen. Andrew M. Rohling, the commander of US Army Southern European Task Force, Africa, insists that the Pentagon’s objective is to “showcase a way, the American way, that we train and build leaders not only in their tactical tasks, but in the ethos of the United States Army.” But as analyst Nick Turse, a fellow at The Nation Institute, observes, those values have been lacking in Africa, especially in West Africa, “where U.S.-trained officers have attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries, including Burkina Faso (three times), Guinea, Mali (three times), Mauritania, and the Gambia. The four most recent coups by US trainees have occurred in Burkina Faso (2022), Guinea (2021) and twice in Mali (2020 and 2021).” READ MORE

Like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, propaganda is pouring out of the US that is shaping our perceptions of the war in Ukraine. It is produced by the CIA, it is pronounced by the State Department and it is published by the media. It is coming from everywhere.

The heroes and the villains were cast from the start. The media rewrote history and created the myth of the “unprovoked war.” As if Russia’s launching of an illegal war was not sufficient to cast them as the villain in our minds, the media everywhere added the adjective “unprovoked” to create the super-villain needed to produce the necessary support for the war. As if NATO had not broken its promise not to encroach on Russia’s borders. As if Russia’s security concerns had not been ignored. As if Russia has not been surrounded by military bases and missiles. As if Ukraine wasn’t being flooded with weapons. As if Yeltsin and Putin had not protested and drawn their red lines for years. READ MORE

The plot behind Ukraine is far deeper than anyone is willing to talk about publically. Yanukovich was corrupt and his sons were acting like a protection racket. Yanukovich was keen on joining the EU but the treaty had a clause in there that would have put Ukraine in NATO through the backdoor. Ukraine would have to comply will all the rules and regulations of NATO without formally being admitted. Worse still, Ukraine was to trade exclusively with the EU when Russia was its main trading partner and its fuel came from Russia. This was the first attempt by the West to bring Ukraine into NATO.

That is why Yanukovich backed out and that is what began the whole uprising. To appease the protestors, Yanukovich agreed to early elections in nine months. This is where the US Neocons were hard at work to actually see the uprising as an opportunity and they wanted to install their own people. That was all in the leaked phone call of Victoria Nuland. READ MORE

The White House plan to destroy Russia by calling President Vladimir Putin names proceeds apace. Apparently, the man whom President Joe Biden has called a “thug,” “killer,” and “war criminal” is now also charged with carrying out a “genocide” and, according to CIA Director William Burns, he may in “despair” over his apparently stalled invasion, be contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Meanwhile over at the Pentagon, positively aglow with the largest “defense” budget since Vietnam, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley is advising that the war started in Ukraine will require building still more US military bases in Europe to confront Putin.

It is unclear who exactly in the band of rogues surrounding Biden is most responsible for the rhetorical flourishes and hyperbole, though one might assume that it is in a fact a group effort by a chorus of mental midgets, most of whom were inherited from the beatified Barack Obama’s Administration. Only Hillary is missing. But at the same time, one must wonder how if all the sobriquets inevitably fail to bring down Putin what plan B might be. After all, as Russia is a significant country possessing a ballistic and submarine launched nuclear missile capability that could destroy the United States, there will have to be some way to dialogue with the Kremlin after the Ukraine fiasco has ended. Calling foreign heads of state criminals and mass murderers is not the best way to restore a satisfactory level of mutual respect that will permit discussion regarding issues of mutual concern, like war and peace.

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While claiming to defend democracy, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has outlawed his opposition, ordered his rivals’ arrest, and presided over the disappearance and assassination of dissidents across the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has framed his country’s war against Russia as a battle for democracy itself. In a carefully choreographed address to US Congress on March 16, Zelensky stated, “Right now, the destiny of our country is being decided. The destiny of our people, whether Ukrainians will be free, whether they will be able to preserve their democracy.”

US corporate media has responded by showering Zelensky with fawning press, driving a campaign for his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and inspiring a flamboyant musical tribute to himself and the Ukrainian military during the 2022 Grammy awards ceremony on April 3.

Western media has looked the other way, however, as Zelensky and top officials in his administration have sanctioned a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of local Ukrainian lawmakers accused of collaborating with Russia. Several mayors and other Ukrainian officials have been killed since the outbreak of war, many reportedly by Ukrainian state agents after engaging in de-escalation talks with Russia. READ MORE

The multi-billion dollar pharma giant with an incredibly tainted past, who has seen exponential profits during the pandemic as a result of taxpayers being forced to pay for the jab, has also enjoyed billions in taxpayer dollars to advertise said jab.

The windfall of profits realized from vaccinating adults using propaganda and mandates quickly turned the company’s sights to children as their customer base waned as people realized the vaccine did not protect you from getting covid.

Despite children facing a near zero chance of dying from COVID-19, the FDA jumped on board and quickly approved Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine for children ages 5-11 last year.

Governments across the country then began requiring children to get the jab to go to school and researchers began to see an increase in myocarditis. READ MORE

A major new study adds more evidence that Moderna’s high-dose mRNA shots are more dangerous than Pfizer’s smaller jabs; will public health bureaucrats acknowledge reality as they push more boosters?

A huge new study shows mRNA shots sharply raised the risk of dangerous heart damage in Scandinavians who received them last year, and that Moderna’s 100-microgram shot was significantly more dangerous than Pfizer’s 30-microgram dose.

For young men, who are at particularly high risk of post-jab heart inflammation, the gap was especially significant.

Data from the study, published in a peer-reviewed journal called JAMA Cardiology, show that giving 1 million men aged 16-24 two doses of Moderna’s vaccine would lead to almost 300 hospitalizations for myocarditis and a related illness called pericarditis. Most would come after the second dose. Using Pfizer’s shot instead would lead to about 100 hospitalizations. SOURCE

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In what his lawyers have described as a “brief but significant moment in the case,” a British magistrates’ court has signed off on Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, bringing the WikiLeaks founder one step closer to a US trial under the Espionage Act which threatens press freedoms worldwide.

The extradition case now goes to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel for approval, which will likely be forthcoming as Patel is a reliably loyal empire manager. After that point, Assange’s legal team will be able to launch an appeal.

This is happening at the same time the United States and the United Kingdom are loudly demanding accountability for alleged war crimes by the Russian military in Ukraine, which is interesting because attempting to bring accountability for war crimes is precisely why Julian Assange is in prison. READ MORE or LISTEN

These acts of violence are not about security, law and order, or maintaining the status quo. They are revelatory of the Israeli drive to assert supreme Israeli sovereignty over Palestine and Palestinians.

Another Ramadan, another attack on Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. In explaining the Israeli attacks, the majority of Euro-American politicians, media analysts, and commentators, exemplified in this predictably inane CBC report, are emphasising the "high tensions" that come along with the confluence of three major religious events, and framing Israeli actions as a response to the "Palestinian terrorist attacks" in four Israeli cities.

Palestinians are accustomed to hearing these types of explanations that basically present a distorted picture of a religious conflict that is caused by political Islamist ideologies and their bigotry, intolerance, and hatred towards Jews. The Palestinian people, who are quintessentially defending their right to exist and live on the lands that they have called home for generations across centuries, are labelled by Israel and its Euro-American allies as violent, hateful, emotional, irrational, and backwards people who continuously cause cycles of violence. READ MORE

"Solar geoengineering would create regional trade-offs and potentially increases in malaria risk worldwide," said the new study's lead author.

A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications warns that attempting to fight the climate crisis using geoengineering—a method often promoted by the fossil fuel industry—could have the devastating consequence of exposing a billion additional people in vulnerable countries to the mosquito-borne disease malaria.

The first-of-its-kind study, compiled by a team of researchers from the U.S., Bangladesh, South Africa, and Germany, examines the potential global effects of using solar radiation management (SRM) to combat planetary warming. The strategy, long viewed with skepticism by environmentalists and scientists, involves spraying aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect solar rays away from Earth, providing a kind of "chemical sunshade."

The research team used climate models to simulate possible malaria transmission under future scenarios with medium or high levels of global warming, and with and without geoengineering. READ MORE

Besides the astronomical number of severe side effects, the CDC reports that 15,386 people died as a result of receiving the experimental injections.

However, a CDC healthcare fraud detection expert named Jane Doe investigated this and came to the shocking discovery that the number of deaths is at least five times higher than what the CDC is admitting. In fact, in her initial communications to professor in medicine Dr. Peter McCullough, this whistleblower said that the number of deaths is ten times higher. The CDC health fraud detection expert signed an affidavit, in which she stated her findings. She carefully chose the wordings ‘…under-reported by a conservative factor of at least five’, but as she revealed initially, the factor could also be ten. Here is an excerpt of the affidavit: 1

‘I have, over the last 25 years, developed over 100 distinct healthcare fraud detection algorithms. … When the COVID-19 vaccine clearly became associated with patient death and harm, I was inclined to investigate the matter. It is my professional estimate that VAERS (the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) database, while extremely useful, is under-reported by a conservative factor of at least 5. … and have assessed that the deaths occurring within 3 days of vaccination are higher than those reported in VAERS by a factor of at least 5.’

According to this CDC health fraud detection expert the number of vaccine deaths in the U.S. is not 15,386 but somewhere between 80,000 and 160,000.

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In true Orwellian fashion, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”— George Orwell

The U.S. government, which speaks in a language of force, is afraid of its citizenry.

What we are dealing with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it is conspiring to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority.

All of us are in danger.

In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

In the government’s latest assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—the Biden Administration has likened those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists. READ MORE

While the world is focused on the Ukrainian conflict, Turkish jets, helicopters, and drones were pounding Kurdish targets in Iraq and Syria on Monday. Targets were camps, ammunition warehouses, and civilian homes caught in the cross-fire.

In the northeast of Syria, in the countryside of Hasaka, the villages of Abu Rasin, Tal Tamer, al-Mabqir, Qabour al-Gharajneh, and Tel Shanan, Tal al-Ward, Rabi’at, Dada Abdul, al-Nuwaihat, al-Assadiya, Khadrawi, and Mushairfa were attacked with intensive artillery and airstrikes.

The Turkish Army, along with the Radical Islamic terrorist mercenaries they employ, caused massive destruction of many houses and properties, which caused panicked survivors to flee the area for Hasaka.  The number of dead and injured has yet to be reported.

The violence and bloodshed are caused by Turkey’s occupation of the Syrian land, which is inhabited by a Syrian ethnic majority, but under the brutal military control of a minority group.  The Kurdish separatist army SDF and YPG are aligned with the terrorist group PKK, who are Kurdish communists. To add to the confusion and competing interests, the SDF and YPG are paid mercenaries for the United States government. READ MORE

While the Pentagon and the United States State Department continues to provide a distorted rationale for the instigation of a major military conflict in Eastern Europe, billions of dollars are being utilized to transfer offensive weapons aimed at preventing a peaceful resolution to the current war in Ukraine.

Although the corporate and government-controlled media outlets in Western Europe and North America have reported to the public on a daily basis that their own administrations cannot be blamed for the current war in Ukraine, for any serious observer, the culpability for the tensions now existence on an international level can be traced back to the desire by imperialism to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

NATO was formed in 1949 in the aftermath of the Second World War and the initiation of the Cold War by Washington against the rising socialist and national liberation movements around the world. In 1949, only two countries on the African continent were independent, Ethiopia and Liberia. Both of these countries in 1949 were highly compromised due to the intervention of the United States and Britain in their internal affairs stemming from the legacy of African enslavement and the rise of imperialist fascism during the 1920s and 1930s. The founding members of NATO were all in North America and Western Europe being Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. READ MORE

Food shortages and skyrocketing food prices now appear inevitable. The global food price index hit its highest recorded level in March 2022, rising 12.6% in a single month. On average, food prices were one-third higher than in March 2021. In the U.S., food prices rose 9% in 2021, and are predicted to rise another 4.5% to 5% in the next 12 months

Inflation was already ramping up well before Russia went into Ukraine, thanks to the uncontrolled printing of fiat currencies that occurred in response to the COVID pandemic. Governments’ COVID responses have also wreaked havoc with global supply chains, causing disruptions that continue to this day

Ukraine has ceased exports of wheat, oats, millet, buckwheat and cattle, and Russia has banned exports of fertilizer.

Together, Russia and Belarus provide nearly 40% of the global exports of potash, a key fertilizer ingredient. Russia also exports 48% of the global ammonium nitrate, and combined with Ukraine, they export 28% of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium fertilizers. Experts are now predicting fertilizer prices may double as a result of Russia’s ban on fertilizer exports. READ MORE

Over two weeks after Patrick Lyoya, 26, was stopped, chased, tackled and shot in the back of the head by a Grand Rapids patrolman, killing him instantly, there still has not been any punitive action taken against the white officer responsible for the death of the Congolese immigrant.

The City of Grand Rapids has refused to even release the name of the officer since he has not yet been charged with a crime.

This incident in a major midwestern municipality clearly illustrates the systematic refusal by the local, state and federal government agencies to address the ongoing deaths at the hands of the police. Two years after the brutal shooting deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many others, the relevant authorities responsible for the funding and oversight of law-enforcement have refused to take any action to reform the operational culture of the police.

Lyoya’s family immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2014, according to quotes cited in the press from his father. Both of his parents are demanding justice in the case. READ MORE

VIDEO | 17.5 Minutes

The Great Reset is the name of the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, held in June 2020.

As government officials and leaders of international organizations meet to discuss a "financial system" to underpin the "world order", how close is centralised “digital money” to becoming a reality, and what dangers does this bring?

VIDEO | 12.5 Minutes

Navy SEALs Tried for Months to Report Superior for War Crimes and Were Told to “Let It Go”

Navy SEALs who witnessed their platoon chief commit war crimes in Iraq were encouraged not to speak out, and told they could lose their jobs for reporting him at a private meeting with a superior officer last year, according to new reports from The New York Times. A confidential Navy criminal investigation obtained by the Times reveals that the commandos saw Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher stab and kill an unarmed teenage captive, shoot to death a young girl and old man, and fire indiscriminately into crowds of civilians. But when the men on Gallagher’s team called a private meeting with their troop commander and demanded an investigation, they were told to stay quiet on the matter, and no action was taken. The group of seven SEALs eventually were able to force an investigation, and Chief Edward Gallagher was arrested in September on more than a dozen charges, including premeditated murder and attempted murder. The court-martial centers on a charge that Gallagher stabbed to death a teenage member of the self-proclaimed Islamic State while the unarmed youth was being treated by a medic. The trial begins May 28. If convicted, Gallagher could face life in prison. We speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and national correspondent for The New York Times Dave Philipps. His latest piece is headlined “Navy SEALs Were Warned Against Reporting Their Chief for War Crimes”

VIDEO | 55 Minutes

CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Joins Lee Camp

 

 

VIDEO | 29 Minutes

Economic Update: Ukraine & An Empire's Decline

Democracy At Work | 274K subscribers

This week on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff discusses nurses’ suicides as results of our profit-driven healthcare, sanctions and their effect on inflation, US states where 40% of workers earn under $15/hr, and US corporate profits triple from 2008 to present. In the second half, Wolff talks with host and journalist Chris Hedges about Ukraine and the end of the US empire.
 

VIDEO | 1.5 Hours

"Evil doesn’t begin to approach it" - Noam Chomsky speaks live on the Climate Crisis and Resistance

"I don't know what word in the language—I can’t find one—that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word “evil” doesn’t begin to approach it." - Noam Chomsky

VIDEO | 40 Minutes

US, EU Sacrificing Ukraine to ‘Weaken Russia’: Former NATO Adviser Jacques Baud

Former Swiss intelligence officer and NATO adviser Jacques Baud on the roots of the Ukraine-Russia war and its growing dangers.
 

VIDEO | 2.5 Hours

Europe and Press Freedom, with Roger Waters

We apologize for the poor quality of the re-stream from the source at the beginning of the video and for the lack of English translation, which the organizers did not provide. Consortium News provided summary translation to English in the chat on our YouTube page. The discussion begins at 10 and a half minutes into the stream.

A world of 100% green energy and electric cars is not only a healthier and more comfortable world, it is a world where oil and gas dictators like Vladimir Putin are defunded.

California’s energy mix was powered 97% by renewable energy on Sunday, April 3 at at 3:39 p.m., the highest contribution of renewables to the state’s grid on record, according to David Knowles at Yahoo News.

Although the milestone lasted only for a brief time, it points to a future in which California runs on 100% wind, solar, hydro and batteries, a future that will certainly arrive even faster than the state plans. As it is, California is ahead of its green energy goals.

The implication of these plans is that California intends to phase out methane gas as a source of power. The state is also trying to electrify transportation. A world of 100% green energy and electric cars is not only a healthier and more comfortable world, it is a world where oil and gas dictators like Vladimir Putin are defunded.

Based on the performance of these energy sectors in 2019 and 2020, California now gets about 60% of its electricity from low-carbon, non-fossil fuel sources. READ MORE

The hyperbolic language westerners use to describe fairly normal modern warfare in Ukraine suggests they’ve invested exactly zero thought in what their own governments have been doing in the middle east for the last two decades.

It’s like, yes, killing, violence and destruction is what war looks like. You’re describing the thing that war is. It’s creepy that you’re only just discovering this now. What did you think your government has been using to conduct its wars this whole time? Dank memes?

Before the Ukraine war I would’ve told you it’s impossible for me to despise shitlibs any more than I already do and impossible for me to have less respect for their foam-brained worldview. But I would have been wrong. Very, very wrong.

If your understanding of world events doesn’t account for the easily quantifiable fact that the US is the most tyrannical regime on earth by a massive margin, nothing else in your understanding of world events will be fact-based. READ MORE or LISTEN

The most upending event of the past 10,000 years is the advent of engineered food as fermentation farms displace factory farms. “We are on the Cusp of the Fastest, Deepest, Most Consequential Disruption of Agriculture in History.” (RethinkX.com)

“Modern foods will bankrupt the cattle industry within a decade.” (RethinkX)

More on that to follow, but first: Industrial farming, alongside global warming, ranks at the top of the list of existential risks this century. And, similar to the dangers attendant to excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, industrial farming is dangerously out of control, but in contrast to global warming, it is not followed at all by corporate media, begging the Orwellian question whether media other than corporate media truly exist? READ MORE

Even before the war in Ukraine, the sanctions on Russia, and the shipping blockade of the Black Sea, farmers across the US were getting ready for higher prices on seed, fertilizer, and crop chemicals. All winter, major farm media was warning farmers to book supplies early as prices would be high and supplies would be short. The war in Ukraine has only amped up the concern among farmers, input suppliers, and those who erroneously proclaim that we, the US, must feed the world.

The farm media offers suggestions as to how farmers, despite relatively higher crop prices, might deal with the even steeper increase in input costs. Use less, get your old tillage equipment out or, heaven forbid, consider manually pulling weeds like farmers used to do—- of course, years ago, farmers didn’t run thousands of acres. READ MORE

Article

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Prison Food

By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News

“Not for Human Consumption.” The author, who saw that label himself when he was incarcerated, calls out a widespread human rights violation being committed in U.S. prisons.

We’ve all been reading about inflation over the past several months.  Food prices are up dramatically this year, and it’s putting the squeeze on a lot of American families.  Many people are cutting back, eating less meat, and trying to conserve.  But what happens when you’re in prison when food prices are spiking?

On my first day in prison in 2013, one of the other inmates said to me, “It’s Friday.  Fish day.”  I responded, “Oh.  Ok.  I like fish.”  “Not this fish,” he said.  “We call it sewer trout.  Stay away from it.”  When I got to the cafeteria, I saw boxes stacked up behind the serving line.  They were all clearly marked: “Alaskan Cod. Product of China.  Not for Human Consumption.  Feed Use Only.”  I never ate the fish.

There are two ways that prisons are able to save money.  They cut food costs and they cut medication costs.  In many prisons and jails at the state and local level, any budget surplus goes into the warden’s or sheriff’s pocket.

Check out this article, which documents how an Alabama sheriff legally took home as personal profit more than $750,000 that had been budgeted to feed prisoners and used it to pay cash for a beach house.  The prisoners ended up eating scraps not meant for human beings.  READ MORE

The conditions of nearly 90 percent of the International Monetary Fund’s pandemic-related loans are forcing developing nations suffering some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises to implement austerity measures that fuel further impoverishment and inequality, an analysis published  this week by Oxfam International revealed.

Oxfam found that “13 out of the 15 IMF loan programs negotiated during the second year of the pandemic require new austerity measures such as taxes on food and fuel or spending cuts that could put vital public services at risk.”

This stands in stark contrast with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva’s admonition to the European Union last year that the wealthy bloc should not endanger its economic recovery with “the suffocating force of austerity.” READ MORE

Article

Zelensky’s Hardline Internal Purge

By Max Blumenthal  and  Esha Krishnaswamy
The Grayzone

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has framed his country’s war against Russia as a battle for democracy itself. In a carefully choreographed address to U.S. Congress on March 16, Zelensky stated,

“Right now, the destiny of our country is being decided. The destiny of our people, whether Ukrainians will be free, whether they will be able to preserve their democracy.”

U.S. corporate media has responded by showering Zelensky with fawning press, driving a campaign for his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and inspiring a flamboyant musical tribute to himself and the Ukrainian military during the 2022 Grammy awards ceremony on April 3.

Western media has looked the other way, however, as Zelensky and top officials in his administration have sanctioned a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of local Ukrainian lawmakers accused of collaborating with Russia. READ MORE

Most judges and lawyers agree that the war on drugs in the past 50 years has seriously diminished the right to privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

Now a small group of legal academics is arguing that the war in Ukraine should be used to diminish property rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.

Here is the backstory.

The Fourth Amendment was written to guarantee that the government may only search and seize persons, houses, papers and effects pursuant to a search warrant issued by a judge after the presentation under oath of evidence demonstrating that the place to be searched more likely than not contains evidence of crime. And the warrant itself must specifically describe the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized.

These requirements — the work of James Madison, who was the scrivener of the Constitution in 1787 and the author of the Bill of Rights in 1791 — were intended to have two effects. READ MORE

The UN Security Council held an extraordinary event on April 6 under the rubric Arria Formula Meeting on Biological Security regarding the biological activities in countries including Ukraine. Predictably, the US and UK representatives didn’t show up at the event and the western media also blacked out the proceedings. But that does not detract from the profound significance of what transpired. 

The highlight of the Security Council proceedings lasting over two hours was the disclosure by General Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, that Washington is creating biological laboratories in different countries and connecting them to a unified system.

He said the US has spent more than $5 billion on military biological programs since 2005 and detailed that in territories bordering Russia and China alone, about 60 facilities have been modernised during this period. The Ukrainian network of laboratories is designed to conduct research and monitor the biological situation consisting of 30 facilities in 14 populated locations. READ MORE

Although it seems inadvertent, the Russia-Ukraine war has bitterly exposed the limits of US influence in the Middle East. On the one hand, Washington has failed to force the OPEC countries to increase oil production, and on the other hand, the region is already calibrating to form a joint security architecture independent of Washington. In fact, as reports in the US mainstream media have highlighted, Biden’s decision to use its oil strategic reserves to control rising oil prices was specifically forced upon him by Saudia’s refusal to break the OPEC-plus pact – which includes Russia as well – to increase daily oil production. This is an indication of the extremely poor state of US-Saudia ties since the arrival of Joe Biden in the White House. This state is likely to deteriorate further, as pressure from within the US government – and state institutions – builds up on Biden to review, or downgrade, Washington’s ties with the Riyadh. READ MORE

Once again Israel demonstrates to the world its utter disregard for human rights.

And this is not only in the ongoing airstrikes on Syrian territory and the suburbs of Damascus from Lebanese territory or the Golan Heights, as a result of which Syrian civilians suffer. For example, this April alone, Israel’s F-16 fighter jets carried out another missile strike. On April 9, they struck the Al-Wusta area in Hama province in north-west Syria from Lebanese airspace. Late in the afternoon on April 14, as the Syrian state SANA news agency reported, Israel launched a new air attack from the Golan Heights on the outskirts of the Syrian capital at some points in the countryside to the west of the city.

Israeli air strikes on targets in Syria also took place in early February, when the Israeli Air Force launched two missile strikes on Syrian infrastructure. Firstly the Israeli Air Force struck targets near the town of Kiswah of Damascus province. The second strike was carried out by Israeli aircraft with ten surface-to-surface missiles against Syrian air defense units. One person was killed and five Syrian soldiers were wounded as a result. Syrian military and civilian infrastructure was also damaged. READ MORE

Syria has sent a formal accusation of US war crimes to UN Secretary General António Guterres and the UN Security Council. The Syrian side believes that the actions of the US-led coalition in Raqqa in 2017 led to the near total destruction of the city and mass civilian deaths.  The time has come to shed light on the heinous war crimes committed in the city by the Western coalition between June and October 2017, when Raqqa was under siege and subjected to barbaric bombardment, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The Syrian foreign ministry stresses that US and other Western coalition forces carried out indiscriminate artillery and air strikes against civilian infrastructure in and around Raqqa. According to the Syrian side, the military deliberately destroyed economic infrastructure, public and private property, while coalition missile strikes were accompanied by ground attacks by the Kurdish formations of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which did not distinguish between DAESH terrorists (a terrorist group banned in Russia) and civilians. READ MORE

“From an epidemiology perspective for causality, we apply what’s called “The Bradford Hill” criteria. And they go as follows…

“The first question we’d ask is “does the vaccine have a mechanism of action, a biological mechanism of action, that can actually kill a human being?”

And the answer is yes!

“Because the vaccines all use genetic mechanisms to trick the body into making the lethal spike protein of the virus. It is very conceivable that some people take up too much messenger RNA.

They produce a lethal spike protein in insensitive organs like the brain or the heart or elsewhere. The spike protein damages blood vessels, damages organs, causes blood clots. So it’s well within the mechanism of action that the vaccine could be fatal. Someone could have a fatal blood clot.

They could have fatal myocarditis. The FDA has official warnings of myocarditis. They have warnings on blood clots. They have warnings on a fatal neurologic condition in some cases …. So the FDA warnings, the mechanism of action, clearly say it’s possible. That’s one of the first criteria.

“The second criteria is, “is it a large effect?” And the answer is yes!

This is not a subtle thing. It’s not 151 vs 149 deaths. This is 15,000 deaths. So it’s a very large what’s considered “effect size” or a large effect.

“The third one is “is it internally consistent?” Are you seeing other things that could potentially be fatal in VAERS? Yes! We’re seeing heart attacks.

We’re seeing strokes. We’re seeing myocarditis. We’re seeing blood clots, and what have you. So, it’s internally consistent.

“Is it externally consistent? That’s the next criteria. Well, if you look in the MHRA, the yellow card system in England, the exact same thing has been found! In the Uterus system in the UK the exact same thing’s been found.

“So we have actually fulfilled all of the Bradford Hill criteria! I’ll tell you right now that COVID-19 vaccine is from an epidemiological perspective are causing these deaths in a large fraction!” Dr. Peter McCullough

READ MORE - WATCH

An investigative report by Vanity Fair contributor Katherine Eban, based on more than 100,000 EcoHealth Alliance documents, shows a disturbing reality of “murky grant agreements, flimsy NIH oversight and pursuit of government grants by pitching increasingly risky global research”

In 2014, EcoHealth received a $3.7 million NIAID grant to study the risk of bat coronavirus emergence and the potential for outbreaks in human populations. Nearly $600,000 of that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was a key collaborator

The 2014 grant highlights the truth of what critics of gain-of-function (GOF) research have been saying for years, which is that this kind of research never achieves its aims. They say it needs to be done to prevent and/or get ahead of pandemics, but not a single pandemic has ever been averted and, instead, GOF research may actually be the cause of them

EcoHealth president Peter Daszak’s behavior has added fuel to suspicions of a lab leak — potentially of a virus that he himself helped create. In 2015, he warned a global pandemic might occur from a laboratory incident, especially the sort of virus manipulation research being done in Wuhan. Despite this history, in February 2020, Daszak wrote a “scientific consensus statement” published in The Lancet that condemned the lab leak theory as a wild conspiracy theory

It appears those who insist SARS-CoV-2 is of natural origin, despite all the evidence to the contrary, are doing so because they don’t want risky virological research to be blamed for the COVID pandemic. READ MORE - WATCH

VAERS data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention included a total of 1,226,314 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 26,976 deaths and 219,865 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020, and April 8, 2022.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,226,314 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and April 8, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

The data included a total of 26,976 reports of deaths — an increase of 277 over the previous week — and 219,865 serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 2,564 compared with the previous week.

Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 805,921 adverse events, including 12,471 deaths and 79,811 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and April 8, 2022.

Foreign reports are reports foreign subsidiaries send to U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.

Of the 12,471 U.S. deaths reported as of April 8, 17% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 21% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 59% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated. READ MORE

In the U.S., 564 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of April 8, including 334 million doses of Pfizer, 212 million doses of Moderna and 19 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

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