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The Blogging Hounds

In the wake of Hurricane Helene’s destructive path through North Carolina, the Trump campaign has reportedly sounded the alarm over what it sees as a clear threat to voter turnout in the region.

With 26 of the 28 counties hit hardest by the flooding having voted for President Trump in 2020, campaign insiders are concerned that more than 530,000 Trump voters in western North Carolina could be left unable to vote in the upcoming election.

Veteran investigative reporter Paul Sperry broke the story, writing on X: “SCOOP: Trump campaign fears >530k Trump voters in western NC cd be disenfranchised by Helene. In fact, 26 of 28 counties hit by flooding voted for Trump in ’20. ‘There’s a 4-to-1 disparity (vs Biden/Harris voters). We’re very concerned,’ a Trump insider said. NC = 16 electoral votes.”

The liberal media are already signaling how the storm could swing the election, but many conservatives are asking: are they preparing to cheat again?

Politico’s latest report reads almost like a gleeful prediction, saying: “Helene hit Trump strongholds in Georgia and North Carolina. It could swing the election.”

Politico reported:

Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference. And Helene has pushed this contest into novel territory: It’s the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election, based on a POLITICO’s E&E News analysis of data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The challenge for Trump: The parts of western North Carolina and eastern Georgia that were flooded by the monster storm are largely Republican. In 2020, he won 61 percent of the vote in the North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster after Helene. He won 54 percent of the vote in Georgia’s disaster counties.

According to Newsweek, registered Democrats in North Carolina have taken an early lead in returning mail-in ballots, raising Republican concerns about election integrity after officials implemented rule changes in counties severely impacted by Hurricane Helene.

According to VoteHub.us, which sources data from the North Carolina State Board of Elections, a total of 22,910 mail-in ballots have been submitted so far, with 9,075 returned by Democrats, compared to 5,595 by Republicans and 8,240 by unaffiliated voters.

Out of the 284,245 mail-in ballots requested, 261,335 have yet to be returned.

Of the outstanding mail-in votes, 93,285 belong to registered Democrats, 65,333 to Republicans, and 102,717 to unaffiliated voters.

Starting on October 9, the “Team Trump Bus Tour” will travel across North Carolina. The goal: to energize the conservative base and ensure every Trump supporter makes it to the polls despite the challenges.

This tour is filled with high-profile conservative figures, including Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and former Trump administration officials like Hogan Gidley and Kash Patel.

[…]

Via https://theblogginghounds.com/2024/10/10/report-trump-campaign-sounds-alarm-over-potential-disenfranchisement-of-more-than-530000-trump-voters-in-flood-ravaged-western-north-carolina/

CBS has come under fire for deceptively editing Kamala Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview – replacing her word-salad answer from a pre-interview teaser with a completely different answer in the version that aired.

When asked by host Bill Whitaker why it seemed like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t listening to the United States, Harris originally replied:

“Well Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”

The clip received the standard reaction to Harris feigning intellect:

But in the version that aired, Harris’ answer was: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

The Trump campaign has demanded that the network release the full interview.

“On Sunday, 60 Minutes teased Kamala’s highly-anticipated sit-down interview with one of her worst word salads to date, which received significant criticism on social media,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary. “During the full interview on Monday evening, the word salad was deceptively edited to lessen Kamala’s idiotic response.”

“Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air?” she asked. “The American people deserve the full, unedited transcript from Kamala’s sit-down interview. We call upon 60 Minutes and CBS to release it.”

Trump also posted about it on Truth Social, writing “I’ve never seen this before, but the producers of 60 Minutes sliced and diced (“cut and pasted”) Lyin’ Kamala’s answers to questions, which were virtually incoherent, over and over again, some by as many as four times in a single sentence or thought…” Trump suggested that the network helping Harris may have been a “major Campaign Finance Violation,” and is a “stain on the reputation of 60 minutes that is not recoverable.”

Trump also called for an investigation.

[…]

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/political/spliced-60-minutes-under-fire-deceptively-editing-kamala-harris-interview-trump-demands

A report by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich on his prison conditions in the Göttingen high-security prison Rosdorf, in response to the author Kerstin Heusinger, Germany correspondent of the French-language online publication BAM! With exclusive photos from the courtroom and sketches:

7:00 am Court Hearing for the Civil Rights Activist and Lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich

Heavily armed officers with pistols and submachine guns equipped with bulletproof vests welcome me. They try to convince me to put on a bulletproof vest, which I consistently refuse. They then have me sign a waiver that releases them from liability if I am injured or killed by gunfire.

One of the officers searches my body and then forces me to kneel on a stool as he does every time while he puts shackles on me.

He ties a wide leather belt around my waist and then puts handcuffs on me, which are attached to the belt with chains, which in turn are secured with a large padlock.

The ankle shackles force me to take very small steps, which makes it difficult to get in and out of the transport vehicle. If I stumbled like this, I wouldn’t be able to catch my fall and would probably break my wrists.

Prison officials told me that they had never seen a defendant be held in pre-trial detention for more than 11 months for a simple offence (and not for a serious crime or an act of terrorism), held in solitary confinement and, most importantly, brought to court hearings handcuffed and shackled.

In the court, I was taken to the basement, to a tiled cell with a simple wooden bench, the basement is cynically called “the cellar.” Renewed body search. Then I have to wait until I am led into the courtroom in handcuffs. Every time the trial is interrupted, I am handcuffed again and taken “to the basement” again.

Every time I returned from the court, I was completely stripped in a transit room to conduct a thorough body search.

Harassment, Humiliation, Punishment

Mr. D., the deputy director in charge of pre-trial detention, ordered my complete isolation on the grounds that my legal advice to other detainees could incite them to revolt.

Rosdorf prison is divided into two areas: criminal detention (400 inmates) and pre-trial detention (80 inmates), where I have been imprisoned since 13 October 2023.

The pre-trial detainees are spread over 4 levels. Those who are considered particularly dangerous or at risk will be isolated at level A0, where security will be increased and additional restrictions will be imposed. I was accommodated there.

Like the other inmates of level A0, I am strictly forbidden to speak to any other inmate.

For 11 months I have had no internet access, no computer and no cell phone. I’m only allowed to watch TV. My only contact with the outside world is my lawyer and the 3 hours per month for visits or phone calls with my family. Yes, a total of 3 hours per month.

My isolation goes so far that even my daily walk in the yard has to be done alone. This hour-long walk will be suspended if I am caught communicating with another inmate, even if it is only a hand signal. Yes, if I exchange a greeting with a fellow inmate through the bars of a window, even if I just nod my head – he and I will be punished immediately.

All disciplinary measures will be imposed without giving reasons and without the possibility of appeal.

Everyone is Guilty!

The treatment of pre-trial detainees is particularly poor and borders on torture. Mr. D., who manages the pre-trial detention and also works as a social worker, makes no secret of his convictions: He believes that you are guilty if you are in pre-trial detention.

His disregard for the presumption of innocence is the main reason for my placement in solitary confinement.

He committed serious and intentional breaches of duty, which I witnessed. These violations were covered up by the prison management. With two exceptions, the security officers carry out the orders they receive without remorse, like robots.

On 8 August 2024, I asked for an interview with the deputy director of the prison. I told her that during my absence for the trials, personal belongings and documents had disappeared from my cell. The cells are usually searched regularly according to strict rules. These thefts occurred outside of the official inspections that are recorded.

Persecution: Dr. Reiner Fuellmich Refers to the Redzep Case

The full seriousness of the situation is shown in the attacks on a pre-trial detainee, Kevin Redzep, who was seriously injured. He allowed me to publish his name and story. He is from Montenegro and although he is intelligent and speaks several languages, he cannot read or write German fluently. He was placed in a ward where there were several violent inmates or who were accused of premeditated murder. He was called a “gypsy” by his fellow prisoners, threatened and asked Mr. D. for help, who refused to take him to the endangered prisoners. The next day, Kevin Redzep was attacked by three fellow inmates while walking. He was so badly injured in the head with a glass bottle that the zygomatic bone above his left eye was crushed and his eyesight was endangered.

On 9 July 2024, Kevin Redzep had to undergo surgery before returning to Rosdorf prison before recovering. There was another physical altercation with five or six prison officers, who threw him to the ground and injured him again in the head. Mr. D. then ordered the isolation of Kevin Redzep, who was already severely traumatised.

Kevin Redzep, who wanted to sue Mr. D, the penitentiary and the state of Lower Saxony for bodily harm, asked me for help. When Mr. D. learned that I had advised this prisoner and found him a lawyer, Kevin Redzep disappeared. It is believed that he was transferred to another prison. Since then, lawyer Wörmer, my lawyer, has been trying in vain to find him, hoping that he is still alive.

Ray of Hope

Despite the disciplinary sanctions they face, the pre-trial detainees show solidarity with me. They encourage me. For example, they call out to me: “Don’t give up, keep going.”

Some prison officials have seen through the hoax with the pandemic and know that my trial is a sham justice orchestrated by the intelligence services. They let me know that and wish me a good outcome.

What helps me the most is the enormous support of the international public.

I receive a large number of letters that are not even read by the prison administration. I read all the letters and am infinitely touched by the affection they show. I try to answer as far as I can.

Sometimes I see the vigils and the people greeting me as I sit in the transport vehicle to the court.

I feel the remarkably strong connection to all those who support me. It is this connection that allows us to overcome adversity together.

Twice a week, I have to go to the medical service to be examined because I refused to take blood. I have argued that any medical act, especially any invasive medical act, constitutes a violation of physical integrity if the patient does not voluntarily give consent. I am therefore regularly examined because a prisoner suffering from tuberculosis could possibly have infected people with whom he came into contact.

One of the prison’s doctors expressed his sympathy for my work. He also explained to me that the medical staff felt that the health of many detainees was incompatible with detention. However, the prison management prefers to ignore this fact.

Having personally seen what happens in pre-trial detention – the suspension of the fundamental rights of the accused, their difficulties in gaining access to a defence that really cares about their fate – I am convinced that prisons only benefit those who profit from them, with pre-trial detention being more lucrative than post-trial detention.

I have not met any defendant whom I would describe as “evil.” I have met many, really many pre-trial detainees who seem innocent to me, or who need therapeutic treatment above all, as a prison doctor admitted.

If we didn’t need some prisons for some sociopaths, for example, for those responsible for the pandemic, the wars, the massacres like in Gaza and for the corrupt people of the system, I would be in favour of the abolition of prisons.

[…]

Via https://expose-news.com/2024/10/11/persecution-in-prison-by-dr-reiner-fuellmich/

Irish peacekeepers serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, on patrol along the Blue Line in the vicinity of UN Post 6-52 in southern Lebanon in July 2011. (UN Photo/Pasqual Gorriz)

By Mick Hall

An Irish-Israeli diplomatic crisis has been defused after Israel withdrew its invasion force from firing positions metres from a U.N. post in south Lebanon staffed by Irish peacekeepers.

Irish President Michael D. Higgins had called Israeli demands for U.N. peacekeepers to abandon their posts as its invading army crossed deeper into Lebanese sovereign territory “an outrageous threat.”

The incident underlined how Israel is increasingly alienating itself on the international stage while continuing to undermine institutions and instruments of international humanitarian law.

Satellite images published by Irish state broadcaster RTE showed two dozen Israeli Defense Force (IDF) military vehicles, including tanks, located just 60 metres from the boundary of U.N. outpost 6-52 last Saturday as it exchanged fire with Shia resistance group Hezbollah.

[The Washington Post reported Friday that Israel has wounded U.N. peacekeepers after Al Jazeera reported Thursday that “United Nations peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix tells UN Security Council that safety and security of peacekeepers in Lebanon is ‘increasingly in jeopardy’ as Israeli forces open fire on UNIFIL posts in country’s south, injuring two.”]

Since Monday 30 Irish soldiers stationed at UNP6-52, approximately 1km from the Lebanese town of Maroun El-Ras, had been bunkered down and isolated from their 300-odd comrades at Camp Shamrock, which lies West of Bint Jbeil and 7km from the border with Israel.

Israel’s actions prompted accusations from Hezbollah, Lebanese media, and Irish Defence Minister Micheál Martin who said the IDF was using the Irish troops as cover, or human shields, as it extended its invasion. When asked by a journalist if Irish peacekeepers were being used as such, Martin said, “they’re certainly availing of the cover that that presents.”

The U.N. had been communicating with the Israeli permanent mission to the U.N. in New York over the ongoing situation. On Tuesday U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres announced the Israeli forces had moved away from the Irish position after high-level talks.

A force of over 347 Irish soldiers is stationed in Lebanon, 332 of whom are attached to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and stationed at Camp Shamrock (UNP 2-45), where RTE reported constant Israel drone activity above the camp last week.

They help make up a force of 10,000 UNIFIL international peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, which patrol the so-called Blue Line, a demarcation negotiated before Israel was forced from the country in 2006 following its invasion in 1982.  More than 30,000 Irish troops have served in UNIFIL since its establishment in 1978.

UNIFIL this week instructed all battalions to limit movements as Israel continues to encroach farther into Lebanon, attacking Hezbollah targets and killing thousands of Lebanese civilians as they go. UNP6-52 is in the most precarious position of the 29 U.N. posts, all within 5km of the Blue Line, it said.

The IDF had requested UNIFIL battalions to retreat from some positions at the weekend where it was moving into, which UNIFIL rejected.

On Saturday, Higgins, who as Irish president is also supreme commander of the Defence Forces, said Irish soldiers were risking their lives on behalf of defenceless civilians in southern Lebanese villages and that Israel’s demand was an insult to those carrying out their mission. He said:

“It is outrageous that the Israeli Defence Forces have threatened this peacekeeping force and sought to have them evacuate the villages they are defending. Indeed, Israel is demanding that the entire UNIFIL operating under U.N. mandates walk away.

“This is not only an insult to the most important global institution to which 193 members are committed, but it is also an insult to the soldiers and their families who have taken risks so we might all live in peace and protect the most vulnerable.”

The rejection of Israel’s request for U.N. forces to withdraw was much to the chagrin of its government and supporters.

On Monday, Washington-based think tank analyst and former director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center, Matthew R.J. Brodsky, even called for the area controlled by the Irish contingent to be carpet bombed and “napalmed.”

The Irish Defence Force on Monday had said troops’ movements had been limited, with supplies estimated to run out within weeks and the current environment not conducive to the movement of large convoys.

In a statement it said Israel had breached the Blue Line in multiple areas, raising “significant concerns, particularly regarding the breaches near our Irish Battalion posts.”

“These incursions have been accompanied by the establishment of a new military zone on the Israeli side, suggesting an intent to expand operations further,” it said.

Israel has been carrying out airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. It has also cut off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, a key route for people fleeing Israeli bombardment that has so far killed more than 2000 civilians, according to Lebanese authorities.

The office for Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said Harris had reiterated to Guterres on Monday that it was “unacceptable that U.N. resolutions and the blue line in southern Lebanon have been breached and violated with IDF military activity.”

Earlier UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Irish media there had been intense shelling between Hezbollah and the IDF at the weekend and warned UNIFIL may order withdrawals from the area if fighting intensified.

Pressuring UNIFIL forces and putting its peacekeepers in danger is a new escalation by Israel in its disdain for the activities of U.N. agencies since Oct. 7, 2003.

It has widely targeted the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) after invading Gaza, targeting its schools and health centres, as well as its employees, while accusing the organisation of being infiltrated by Hamas. Up to this week, it had killed 226 U.N. employees in Gaza over the past year.

However, targeting U.N. peacekeepers would further isolate Israel on the global stage and cause serious fallouts with the countries of origin of any soldiers killed or injured while patrolling the Blue Line.

The Israeli embassy in Dublin said Higgins’ interpretation of IDF requests to evacuate as “threats” were “unfounded and inflammatory,” as the requests for some troops to move were “for their own protection and safety.”

Tensions between Higgins and the Israeli embassy have been building for several months. Last month, Higgins accused the embassy of spying on him, intercepting and leaking a congratulatory letter sent to the newly-elected president of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian.

Israel’s diplomatic relationship with Ireland has been strained for some time. As a former colony of England, support for Palestine among the general population has been high, with its politicians among the most vocal in criticising Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza.

However, much of the current government’s support for Palestinians has been tokenistic, with Harris’ right-wing coalition refusing to bring into law the Occupied Territories Bill (2018), which would ban trade with and economic support for illegal settlements in Israeli-occupied territories.

It was passed by majorities in both the Irish Seanad (upper house) and the Dáil (lower house), which prompted U.S. lawmakers to warn of serious repercussions to the Irish economy if implemented.

The U.N. has historically found it useful to involve Irish troops in peacekeeping missions to sensitive areas like Lebanon and the Congo, partly due to their country’s historic policy of neutrality and history of colonialism, offering a fig leaf to populations they embed with.

Forty-eight Irish soldiers were killed in Lebanon after their initial deployment in 1978 up to 2000, when Ireland completed its first deployment to UNIFIL. It sent its soldiers back as peacekeepers in 2006.

Several Irish peacekeepers were killed in Baraachit in separate incidents between 1986 and 1991, the same southern Lebanese town where an Israeli airstrike struck a municipal building on Monday, killing 10 firefighters in an attack reminiscent of the targeting of essential workers in Gaza over the past 12 months.

In 1986, an Irish soldier was shot dead after being fired on by IDF and Israeli militia forces positioned outside Baraachit. A year later an Irish soldier was killed when an IDF tank in the village fired shells into his U.N. post. In 1989 three Irish soldiers were killed by a land mine and shelling.

Ireland sent its soldiers back as peacekeepers after 2006, when Hezbollah forced Israel out of most of the country in a historic defeat for the Zionist state.

[…]

Via https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/10/idf-in-outrageous-threat-to-irish-un-troops-in-lebanon/

>

Dmitry Orlov

It was a disaster 80 years in the making. At the end of World War II, the United States stood virtually alone as an economic power. Accounting for 50 percent of global GDP, it held 80% of the world’s hard currency reserves. Fast-forward to 2024 and the share of the US in the world economy has shrunk to 14.76% (calculated from figures provided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund).

But even this number is misleading, for fully 20% of the US economy is made of what goes under the acronym FIRE: finance, insurance and real estate. These are unproductive parasites on the productive economy. Another unproductive parasite is health care: ridiculously overpriced, it amounts to almost a quarter of all spending in the US. Neither the resources consumed by FIRE, nor by health care spending, contribute much of anything to the standing of the US within the world economy.

Adjusted for these, the US share of the world economy dwindles to just over 8%. While hardly negligible, this share is nowhere near sufficient to give the US anything like a majority vote or veto power in world affairs. The tragedy of the situation is that the mindset of Americans, particularly those occupying positions of authority in Washington, has been unable to adapt to this development. Their mindset appears to be fixed for all time: they believe that they can still dictate terms to the whole world and finding it increasingly awkward to cover up for the fact that almost the whole world (with some notable exceptions) now feels free to ignore them.

Starting just after World War II, when much of the world’s industry lay in ruins, the US was able to make use of its industrial power, supported by its military might, to tilt the economic playing field in its favor. With the US dollar used as the main currency in international trade and, crucially, in oil trading, it was able to maintaining a chokehold on international finance and trade by alternately tightening and loosening the supply of dollars. While initially making it possible to exchange dollars for gold, this option was cancelled in 1971. In 1986, the US went from a net creditor (a position it had held since 1914) to a net debtor, making its continued ability to borrow from the rest of the world in its own currency a matter of survival. At the same, the dwindling share of the US in the world economy eroded the effectiveness of US financial warfare, inevitably shifting the emphasis to warfare proper. Maintaining its unrestricted borrowing ability, along with the value of the US dollar, has been made possible through increasingly oppressive and violent means, earning the US the title the empire of chaos.

Starting with the staged terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the US attempted to unleash its military might in a contrived “war on terror” in order to sufficiently terrify its adversaries to once again tilt the playing field in its favor. This mission has not been a success. Here is a quote from Le Monde Diplomatique, describing some of its successes.

From the moment of the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, in fact, everything the U.S. military touched in these years has turned to dust. Nations across the Greater Middle East and Africa collapsed under the weight of American interventions or those of its allies, and terror movements, one grimmer than the next, spread in a remarkably unchecked fashion. Afghanistan is now a disaster zone; Yemen, wracked by civil war, a brutal U.S.-backed Saudi air campaign, and various ascendant terror groups, is essentially no more; Iraq, at best, is a riven sectarian nation; Syria barely exists; Libya, too, is hardly a state these days; and Somalia is a set of fiefdoms and terror movements. All in all, it’s quite a record for the mightiest power on the planet, which, in a distinctly un-imperial fashion, has been unable to impose its military will or order of any sort on any state or even group, no matter where it chose to act in these years. It’s hard to think of a historical precedent for this.

What is notable in this quote is what it omits: that the US has failed even in producing chaos. Most nations across the Middle East and Africa (with the exception of Israel/Palestine and Lebanon) are at least superficially stable; Afghanistan is doing much better under the rule of the Taliban and working out large development plans with China and Russia, Iraq is weak but allied with Iran; Syria hasn’t collapsed and once again controls much of its territory. But the conclusion is correct, and uncanny: the US has failed even in imposing chaos.

The failures of the US to foment chaos were not limited to the military sphere: its attempts at sowing political chaos have been similarly ineffective. The color revolution syndicate, once quite successful in overthrowing governments that the US foreign policy establishment found uncooperative, has misfired all around the world — in Russia, Venezuela, Belarus, Georgia and other places. In each case, the US-supplied replacement leader was abandoned as a political corpse: Alexei Navalny (now an actual corpse) in Russia, Juan Guaidó in Venezuela, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Belarus and Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia. But such failures were to be expected and the level of resulting political chaos was controllable. This changed, at first imperceptibly, with the US-instigated Ukrainian coup in early 2014 and then abruptly and permanently with the launch of Russia’s Special Military Operation to demilitarize and denazify the Ukraine in early 2022. That was a signal event for the whole world: it is no longer necessary for anyone to obey the United States!

Examples of disobedience are by now many and varied. The US asked Iran not to ship ballistic missiles to Russia — and Iran does ship them. The US asked China not to supply Russia with manufactured goods and technologies that allow it to skirt sanctions and to conduct its Special Military Operation — and China does supply them. After Nicolas Maduro was reelected in Venezuela, the US asked for this result to be reconsidered and the request was denied. The Houthis in Yemen pay no attention to US efforts to stop them from interfering with Red Sea shipping. US military bases are being asked to leave by several African nations which now prefer to deal with Russia and China. Even Israel no longer bothers to coordinate its actions with Washington, never mind whether or not they hurt Washington’s interests.

Gevorg Mirzayan, Associate Professor of Political Science at Financial University in Moscow, has offered three reasons for this pandemic of disobedience:

• The first is the rapid shift of national governments toward reasserting their national sovereignty. With Western-style globalization discredited by actions of the United States, along with a major weakening of international institutions (again, due to them having been discredited by the US), governments have been forced to rely on their own resources for achieving their goals. In the process, they became much more active in defending their national interests, inspired by the understanding that nobody else will do it for them.
• The second reason was that they were quick to realize that defending their national interests is not as complicated or difficult as it might have seemed at first. Initially, they were fearful of various methods of US retribution — sanctions, humanitarian interventions, bombings, invasions and political ostracism. But Russia demonstrated that they need not fear US and Western sanctions, presenting an example of a developed, internationally integrated economy that could withstand the most powerful Western sanctions in history; all that’s needed is political will and national unity. This unity, in turn, can be achieved through demonstrated correctness of political decisions multiplied by feelings of national pride. Looking at Russia’s results, other nations, such as China, which until now has tried to avoid open conflict with the US, is working up to a level of political determination needed for direct confrontation.
• And then there is the third reason, which is that political figures in the US have, to put it politely, gone completely stupid. The ascent to power of batshit-crazy liberals spouting radical feminism, Critical Race Theory, LGBT nonsense, climate catastrophism, borderless policies, transhumanist nightmares and globalist fantasies has squeezed out the better informed, more practical-minded contenders. As a result, we are seeing the fifth election cycle in the US when none of the candidates are capable of controlling global processes — unable to maintain what various Russian analysts have termed controlled chaos. The controllable chaos they had once tried to create, be it Arab Spring or the color revolutions or attempts to keep Africa and Latin America from drifting away, has rather swiftly spun out of control — out of US control, that is, leaving plenty of room for controlling events from the point of view of more thoughtful, better informed and quicker-thinking politicians in China, Russia, Iran and so on.

But losing control of its adversaries is, to some extent, to be expected and is not even the worst of it. What is even worse is that the Washingtonians are losing control of their allies, upon whose resources they have relied in their now frustrated quest for global dominance.
• Turkey, a large NATO power, is seeking to join BRICS, is working with Russia’s Rosatom to build its Akkuyu nuclear plant and is serving as a major transshipment point for Russian natural gas exports.
• Saudi Arabia has refused to extend its Petrodollar Agreement with the US, which expired on June 9, 2024, and is now trading oil with China in yuan instead of dollars while closely cooperating with Russia as part of OPEC+ and also looking in the direction of BRICS.
• Israel — the closest US ally — has essentially taken the US hostage. Its genocidal operation in Gaza has dealt a serious blow to US relations with the entire Moslem world. And now Israeli leader Netanyahoo is attempting to pull the US into a military conflict with Iran.
• Even smaller countries, such as Hungary, Slovakia and Georgia, are refusing to accede to various US demands.
• The worst mutineer of all, from the US perspective, is the Ukraine. The Kiev regime, deprived of sufficient US military and financial support and sensing Washington’s weakness as it negotiates a period of severe political uncertainty due to Biden’s senility, Harris’s manifest idiocy and Trump’s unpredictability and tempestuousness, are attempting the same gambit as Netanyahoo — to embroil the US in an armed conflict, but not with Iran but with militarily invincible, nuclear-armed Russia. Just as with Israel, the Washingtonians are demonstrating their complete inability to prevent Ukrainian crimes against humanity, nuclear provocations and war crimes.

Given these developments, what would make the most sense for the US is to attempt to cut its losses. It should try to find a mutually agreeable compromise with its allies and to allow its adversaries to deal with those who are completely out of its control. But such geopolitical stewardship requires sober, pragmatic, well informed leadership — which does not exist in the US.

The alternative is to wait for the inevitable worst case scenario to unfold. Deprived of sufficient US support, the Ukraine and Israel will both fail. Taiwan will rejoin China. Countries around the world will go on ignoring the US. Meanwhile, the US will continue borrowing more and more money (over a trillion every three months) to finance its huge and growing budget deficit (now a third of the federal budget) while rolling over its longer-term, lower-interest debt as shorter-term, higher-interest debt. Newly generated dollars, representing nothing of value, will disappear like water into sand, generating negligible economic activity. No matter how the Washingtonians cook the numbers, pretending that dollar inflation is under control (it is not) or that the US economy is still growing (it is not), the American Empire is at an end.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/ac2b6fc6-b089-4450-81b1-d19446a7c4f6

Source: ned.org

By Jeremy Kuzmarpv

On September 13, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) announced that it was appointing Victoria Nuland to its Board of Directors, effective immediately.

Covert Geopolitics has called Nuland the “queen of chicken hawks” and “Lady Macbeth of perpetual war,” as she has “promoted a foreign policy of intervention, coups, proxy wars, aggression, and occupation…in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.”

Nuland served as Acting Deputy Secretary of State from July 2023 to February 2024, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2021 to 2024, and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from 2013 to 2017, as well as U.S. Ambassador to NATO from 2005 to 2008 and as an adviser to Dick Cheney during the Iraq conflict.

Her husband Robert Kagan co-founded the Project for the New American Century in 1998 around a demand for “regime change” in Iraq, a project that was accomplished in 2003 with President George W. Bush’s invasion.

Disturbingly, Nuland expressed glee at one of the greatest acts of environmental terrorism in history, the bombing and destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, telling Congress that “I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now…a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

In a February 2024 interview with CNN, advocating for congressional approval of $95.34 billion for Ukraine, Nuland remarked: “We have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the U.S., to make those weapons.” Basically, she was announcing her support for war profiteering.

Founded in the 1980s to do overtly what the CIA had done for decades covertly, the NED is a non-profit corporation funded by Congress that specializes in mobilizing activist networks and advancing disinformation in countries targeted by the United States for regime change.

The neo-conservativism of the NED has been evident in its appointment to its board of leading war hawks like Henry Kissinger, Frank Carlucci (Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary), Zbigniew Brzezinski, current CIA Director William Burns, Francis Fukuyama and Paul Wolfowitz.

Nuland fits very well within this crowd, particularly as a key architect of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in modern history—the Ukraine War—which NED and the neo-conservative establishment has fervently championed.

In July 2015, journalist Robert Parry wrote an article entitled “The Ukraine Mess That Nuland Made.” It detailed Nuland’s role as a “mastermind” behind the 2014 “Maidan” coup that precipitated a war resulting in more than a million deaths and that has placed the world on the precipice of World War III.

The Maidan coup unseated the democratically elected pro-Russian government of President Viktor Yanukovych and brought in a pro-U.S. regime which waged war on eastern Ukraine after it pushed for autonomy following the imposition of draconian language laws and other efforts to eviscerate the people’s Russian culture.

Nuland pushed for the coup within the State Department and helped hand-pick the post-coup leaders who would sow the seeds of the destruction of their own nation by picking a fight with the Russians they could never win.

These same leaders allowed foreign corporations to take control over their economy and imposed a neo-liberal economic program that resulted in the slashing of social services, attacks on organized labor, and declining living standards compounded egregiously now by the war.

Parry wrote that, “to sell this latest neocon-driven ‘regime change’ to the American people, the ugliness of the coup-makers had to be systematically airbrushed, particularly the key role of neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists from the Right Sektor.”

Nuland was herself present at the scene of the Maidan Square protests with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, and famously handed out cookies. A leaked conversation with Pyatt featured her badmouthing the EU and choosing Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Ukraine’s first post-coup leader, even though he had almost zero support among the Ukrainian people.

“Yats is the guy,” Nuland declared, sounding very much like a pro-consul from a past age of colonialism in which the native viewpoint did not count. All while she professed to be leading a glorious “democratic” revolution.

Parry pointed out that Nuland’s conduct in Ukraine resembled her husband Robert’s and other neo-cons’ conduct with respect to Iraq.

In both cases, a complete disregard for local political considerations and history led to the unleashing of ethnic conflict, with the U.S. supporting elements in Ukraine that had fought the Russians in collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.

Nuland’s appointment to the NED will help to ensure that the mistakes/atrocities of the past are continuously repeated.

The NED engages in a form of social engineering that helps trigger uprisings and revolutions in many countries that often lead to civil wars.

In many cases, it pits young people seduced by the allure of consumerism and an idealized view of Western democracy with older, more established generations committed to preserving their country’s sovereignty from Western neo-colonialism and to securing a stronger social safety net.

As one example, the NED and Nuland were very active in triggering a youth revolt in Belarus against the socialist regime of Alexander Lukashenko, which had been praised even by the World Bank for resisting neo-liberal economic policies that fueled vast inequality levels in much of Western and Eastern Europe.^[1]

In a statement announcing Nuland’s appointment to NED’s Board, NED Director Damon Wilson stated that, “as NED partners face increasing threats from autocrats around the world, Ambassador Nuland’s experiences will help the Endowment sharpen its approach to supporting democracy advocates. Her life-long commitment to democracy will be a valuable addition to the NED Board at this consequential moment for our mission.”

Nuland, however, was never committed to democracy in Ukraine but to imposing leaders who served U.S. imperial interests. The same is true for Iraq, Libya and Syria, where U.S. military and covert operations that she championed empowered Islamic fundamentalists and warlords.

Source: archive.org

Significantly, Nuland began her State Department career in the 1990s working on Russia-related issues under Strobe Talbott, the Clinton administration’s point man on Russia, who oversaw a U.S. campaign to support Russian Prime Minister Boris Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996.

Time magazine proudly proclaimed, “Yanks to the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win.”

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/10/09/cia-cutout-welcomes-infamous-neo-conservative-warmonger-victoria-nuland-to-its-board-showing-its-true-colors/

Donald Trump and Peter Thiel. Source: theguardian.com

Murray Horton

Peter Thiel needs no introduction to readers of CovertAction Magazine or to Americans in general. I refer you to Jeremy Kuzmarov’s “Sugar Daddy of Trump’s VP Pick Has Deep Ties to CIA.” I am going to assume all that material as read and deal with another chapter in the Thiel saga that may not be so familiar to Americans (or, indeed, totally unknown).

Jeremy Kuzmarov’s article was prompted by Thiel’s latest move, namely his bankrolling of J.D. Vance, Trump’s pick as his Republican vice-presidential running mate. The clue is the headline of an article about the same subject in The New Zealand Herald, New Zealand’s biggest newspaper—“Kiwi billionaire Peter Thiel’s money links to J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate.”

Secretly Given New Zealand Citizenship

“Kiwi billionaire”? That’s right, Peter Thiel is a New Zealander, although a distinctly lapsed one. He was given New Zealand citizenship, something he kept secret for years until outed by the New Zealand media. And true to form, he is a controversial figure among his “fellow New Zealanders.” It is a fascinating story of power, money and influence.

The story broke in 2017, when New Zealand media questioned why his company’s purchase of an $NZ13.5 million life-style block in Wānaka (in the South Island) did not require any involvement by New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Office (OIO), which is tasked with approving (or, very rarely, declining) applications from foreigners to buy New Zealand rural land. The reason given by the OIO was simple—Thiel is not a foreigner; he is a New Zealand citizen. That was the first anyone had heard of it.

What’s more, he was granted New Zealand citizenship in June 2011, so it had been kept secret for six years. Bill English, the National Party Prime Minister in 2017, said that Thiel had been given citizenship under the heading of “exceptional circumstances” for those who did not meet residency rules (Thiel had been granted residency in 2006).

[…]

Major Media Interest

The New Zealand media started to take a keen interest in Thiel. The Christchurch Press headlined the front page of its January 25, 2017, issue with “Super-rich buying up NZ boltholes,” with a front-page box titled “Trump’s billionaire buddy a Kiwi citizen,” illustrated by a photo of Trump and Thiel together. And The Press filled the first two pages of its January 26, 2017 issue about him. The front-page banner headline read: “Money Talks: NZ Havens For Sale?” (This was from the days when the Press was a broadsheet; now it is a tabloid, except on Saturdays.)

The article itemized Thiel’s New Zealand properties—a house in Auckland (North Island, New Zealand’s biggest city); a property nicknamed “the plasma house,” in Queenstown (South Island), plus the already-mentioned life-style block in Wānaka (also South Island). It was accompanied that same day with an editorial headed “Stop stonewalling on Thiel questions,” the main one being how did he acquire New Zealand citizenship under “exceptional circumstances”? He did not even have to come to New Zealand to pick up his citizenship—it was granted to him at a private ceremony at the New Zealand Consulate in Santa Monica, California.

And the New Zealand media started digging into Thiel’s core business: “New Zealand spy agencies and our elite Special Air Service soldiers have long-standing commercial links with a controversial big-data company founded by surprise Kiwi Peter Thiel, the Herald can reveal. An investigation into Thiel’s links to New Zealand has found his firm Palantir Technologies has counted the New Zealand Defence Force, the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications and Security Bureau as clients with contracts dating back to at least 2012.”

Unique

The surprises kept coming: “The circumstances of Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel’s New Zealand citizenship were so exceptional they have not been repeated, [Department of] Internal Affairs figures show. Thiel was made a Kiwi by then-Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy in June 2011 under a rarely-used ‘exceptional circumstances’ clause of the Citizenship Act, allowing the technology investor and libertarian to sidestep requirements to have lived—and intend to live—in New Zealand.”

[…]

Art Exhibition Devoted to Thiel

The most quirky manifestation of New Zealanders’ sudden interest in “our fellow citizen” and the scandal surrounding how he came to be one was that there was an art exhibition devoted to Thiel in 2017, which went on to tour the country in following years (I saw it at the Christchurch Art Gallery). This was Simon Denny’s “The Founder’s Paradox.” Denny is an interesting and very political artist. He represented New Zealand at the 2015 Venice Biennale with “Secret Power.”

This “simultaneously looked at the graphic design culture of America’s National Security Agency and New Zealand’s place within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance” (Bulletin 194, December 2018, Christchurch Art Gallery, Anthony Byrt). Nicky Hager went to Venice with that exhibition, named after his 1996 book which first exposed the world of the Waihopai spy base, the agency that runs it—the New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau—and the Five Eyes spy alliance, of which Waihopai and the GCSB are integral parts. I refer you to my recent CovertAction Magazine article.

Denny’s exhibition was about Thiel’s decidedly strange world view, which is one typical of extreme libertarian Silicon Valley billionaires. In his case, it also incorporated his obsession with J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books (his spy software is named Palantir after a magical artifact in the books, an upmarket crystal ball). The exhibition was designed as an elaborately detailed game, illustrating the world view of Thiel and his mates.

[..]

“Then there was the strange story of Wharekauhau Lodge. In the mid-1990s, a group of investors—many of them prominent libertarians—participated in a property deal for a large farm station and luxury lodge in the Wairarapa (lower North Island).

Among them were former New Zealand Finance Minister Roger Douglas and the extreme-libertarian authors of one of Thiel’s favorite books, The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State, the American James Dale Davidson, and the late British peer Lord William Rees-Mogg (whose son Jacob is a key player in pro-Brexit British politics).”

The individuals behind Wharekauhau Lodge (Roger Douglas, et al.) were the subjects of CAFCA’s first ever “not of good character” complaint, back in the late 1990s, under the provisions of the Overseas Investment Act, to what was then called the Overseas Investment Commission [OIC, now the Overseas Investment Office (OIO); and it needs to be pointed out that none of those people is still involved with Wharekauhau Lodge]. To cut a long story short, our complaint was not upheld.

The best mainstream New Zealand media article on Thiel’s New Zealand connection (he is the prime example of a “boltholer,” having purchased here what is referred to by the 1% as “billionaire’s apocalypse insurance”) is Matt Nippert’s “Citizen Thiel” in the New Zealand Herald, February 2018.

He Has Ghosted the Country Ever Since

The irony is that, once Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011, he essentially ghosted the country. By the time the story broke in 2017, it was all very much in the slipstream of his private jet. American writer Max Chafkin wrote a fascinating 2021 book entitled The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power. It offers some insights into Thiel and New Zealand.

[…]

Refused Permission to Build Luxury Lodge

But Thiel has not completely severed his ties to New Zealand. He set about spending several years trying to get permission to build a luxury lodge on his Wānaka land. That did not end well for him. He ran into a foe more formidable than he was used to encountering—New Zealand bureaucracy. “American billionaire Peter Thiel appears to have abandoned his plans for a luxury lodge in Wānaka. The lodge, on the shore of Lake Wānaka, was designed by architect Kengo Kuma and Associates, a company known for designing the Tokyo Olympic Stadium. It includes three interconnected lodge buildings, and two standalone buildings with 11 visitor accommodation suites, housing up to 30 guests.”

“But the Otago Daily Times has reported that the Environment Court confirmed Thiel’s company, Second Star Ltd, had not lodged an appeal to the High Court, after an earlier appeal was declined. In June [2024], Stuff reported that Second Star Ltd appealed a Queenstown Lakes District Council independent panel’s decision to decline consent for the visitor accommodation at Damper Bay to the Environment Court. In a decision from May [2024] Judge Prudence Steven and Commissioner Mark Mabin declined the appeal, largely due to the visibility of the proposed lodge on an Outstanding Natural Landscape site.”

[…]

Thiel’s project was thwarted by a combination of the local Queenstown Lakes District Council (it did not comply with their planning rules) and local environmentalists. The latter definitely did not like Thiel or his well-publicized opinions. A spokesman for the Upper Clutha Environmental Society was quoted as saying: “I suggest that the applicant leave his anti-democratic ideas in the United States when he comes to New Zealand” (The Press, May 25, 2022, “Council planner unmoved by benefits of luxury lodge”).

The question must be asked: What was the attraction of New Zealand to Thiel? Well, as already mentioned, he is a Lord of the Rings nerd, to the n^th degree (although I doubt that he sees himself as a hobbit; more of a lord or, preferably, a king). And this is the country that has built a very lucrative niche tourism industry out of the fact that New Zealander Peter Jackson made his blockbuster Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in this country at the turn of the century.

“Billionaire’s Apocalypse Insurance”

That is a real thing—there has been plenty of international and local media coverage about foreign billionaires wanting to hedge their bets with some prime New Zealand real estate. There is plenty of evidence of “boltholers” (Thiel is not alone) but no credible evidence has ever been found of the bunkers that these people are rumored to have had installed on their New Zealand properties. It is an endless source of fascination—during New Zealand’s extremely strict 2020 Covid 19 lockdown, I was interviewed by phone from Denmark on the subject of billionaires, boltholes and bunkers (that remains my only ever appearance in the Danish media—in Danish, too).

Actually the “insurance” turned out not to be worth much when the apocalypse really did come knocking. In 2020 the Jacinda Ardern Labour government declared a state of national emergency, and immediately slammed the border shut indefinitely, locking out virtually everyone from overseas—including New Zealand citizens who were living abroad or out of the country when it happened. No exceptions were made for the likes of Citizen Thiel. It was a very hard job for citizens to get back into the country.

[…]

What of “Kiwi” Thiel Now?

He is still hedging his bets. In 2022 it was reported that he had applied to buy Maltese citizenship—that country sells passports. And he may not be finished with New Zealand. In August 2024 he told U.S. podcaster Joe Rogan that he was thinking of moving to New Zealand, blaming California’s “confiscatory taxation….‘The extreme thing I keep saying is I can’t decide whether to leave the state or the country,’ Thiel said, adding it was ‘tough’ to choose a new home because much of the world was ‘doing so much worse’ than the United States.”

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/10/10/peter-thiel-donald-trumps-favorite-kiwi-billionaire/

The Expose

The world first started to hear about a novel coronavirus in early January 2020, with reports of an alleged new pneumonia-like illness spreading across Wuhan, China. However, the world did not actually know of Covid-19 until February 2020, because it was not until the 11th of that month that the World Health Organisation officially named the novel coronavirus disease Covid-19.

So with this being the official truth, why does United States Government data show that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) awarded a contract on the 12th November 2019 to Labyrinth Global Health INC. for ‘COVID-19 Research’, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?

The shocking findings, however, do not end there. The contract awarded in November 2019 for ‘COVID-19 Research’ was not only instructed to take place in Ukraine, it was in fact part of a much larger contract for a ‘Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’.

Perhaps explaining why Labyrinth Global Health has been collaborating with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, and Ernest Wolfe’s Metabiota since its formation in 2017.

Why did the Department of Defense pay a company that is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”, to help implement a “Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’?

And why did both the DOD and said company then pay Labyrinth Global Health INC to carry out COVID-19 research in Ukraine at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?

Founded in 2017, Labyrinth Global Health is allegedly a “women-owned small business with deep expertise and a proven track record supporting initiatives for scientific and medical advancement.”

They describe themselves as “a multicultural and international organization with offices in four countries and a team of experts with diverse backgrounds and competencies, including microbiology, virology, global health, emerging infectious disease nursing, medical anthropology, field epidemiology, clinical research, and health information systems.”

One of those offices just happens to be located in Kyiv, Ukraine, which the company dubs “a gateway to Eastern Europe”.

The leadership team of Labyrinth Global consists of Karen Saylors, PHD who is the Chief Executive Officer; Mary Guttieri, PHS who is the Chief Science Officer; and Murat Tartan who is the Chief Financial Officer.

Karen Saylors, PhD, who co-founded Labyrinth Global Health, has allegedly worked in the international public health field for over a decade and has spent many years living in Africa establishing global surveillance networks, “working with partners to improve Global Health policy on infectious disease detection, response, and control”.

At Labyrinth, Dr Saylors specialises in studies that aim to understand and mitigate the biological and behavioural risks of disease transmission. Dr Saylors worked with Oxford University Clinical Trials Network in Vietnam on zoonotic disease surveillance research and continues to coordinate with regional partners on emerging outbreaks in animal and human populations.

But who are the partners that Dr Karen Saylors and Labyrinth Global Health choose to work with? They are none other than the ‘Eco-Health Alliance’ and ‘Metabiota’.

Dr Karen Saylors, Eco-Health Alliance and Metabiota worked together on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)* ‘PREDICT’ program from 2009, while Labyrinth Global Health worked alongside EHA and Metabiota on the PREDICT program from 2017.

Launched in 2009 and funded by USAID, PREDICT was an early warning system for new and emerging diseases in 21 countries. It was led by the University of California’s (“UC”) Davis One Health Institute and core partners included EcoHealth Alliance (“EHA”), Metabiota, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Smithsonian Institution, and as we’ve just revealed; Labyrinth Global Health. PREDICT was a forerunner of the more ambitious Global Virome Project.

The USAID describes PREDICT as having made “significant contributions to strengthening global surveillance and laboratory diagnostic capabilities for both known and newly discovered viruses within several important virus groups, such as filoviruses (including ebolaviruses), influenza viruses, paramyxoviruses, and coronaviruses“.

Here’s one of the many studies published by Eco Health Alliance, Metabiota and Labyrinth Global Health proving the connection –

PREDICT partnered with the non-profit Eco Health Alliance (EHA) to carry out its 9-year effort to catalogue hundreds of thousands of biological samples, “including over 10,000 bats.” A PREDICT-funded 2015 study on “diversity of coronavirus in bats” also included Peter Daszak, president of EHA, among its participants.

Eco Health Alliance is listed as a partner of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“WIV”) on archived pages of its website and was mentioned as one of the institute’s “strategic partners” by the WIV’s Deputy Director-General in 2018.

Notably, the relationship between the WIV and the American Biodefense establishment was advanced by EHA policy advisor, David R. Franz, former commander at the US bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick.

WIV’s Dr. Shi Zhengli, a.k.a. “Batwoman,” had also worked with EHA’s Daszak on bat-related studies. As far back as 2005, Daszak and Zhengli were conducting research on SARS-like coronaviruses in bats. Several PREDICT-funded studies on SARS-like coronaviruses and Swine Flu count with both Zhengli’s and Daszak’s contributions. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these is a 2015 PREDICT and NIH-funded study she co-authored entitled: ‘A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence’.

Meanwhile, Nathan Wolfe is the founder of Metabiota and the non-profit Global Viral. He spent over eight years conducting biomedical research in both sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Unsurprisingly, Wolfe is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.  More notably, since 2008 he had been a member of DARPA’s DSRC, Defence Science Research Council, until it was disbanded.

All of these people and organisations have been working for at least the last decade studying coronaviruses and helping to set up Biolabs in Ukraine. All using US Department of Defense funds to do so. You can read much more about this here, here and here.

Putting the Biolabs in Ukraine to one side, for now, let’s return to the subject of Covid-19. If the US Government was funding Covid-19 research before Covid-19 was publicly known to exist then this suggests they either knew Covid-19 existed naturally, or they were involved in constructing this virus in a lab.

But if the contract evidence isn’t enough for you to come to this conclusion (it should be), then perhaps coupling it with evidence that the US National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Moderna had a coronavirus candidate in December 2019 will be.

A confidentiality agreement which can be viewed here, states that providers ‘Moderna’ alongside the ‘National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) agreed to transfer ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates’ developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna to recipients ‘The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’ on the 12th December 2019.

The material transfer agreement was signed the December 12th 2019 by Ralph Baric, PhD, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then signed by Jacqueline Quay, Director of Licensing and Innovation Support at the University of North Carolina on December 16th 2019.

The agreement was also signed by two representatives of the NIAID, one of whom was Amy F. Petrik PhD, a technology transfer specialist who signed the agreement on December 12th 2019 at 8:05 am. The other signatory was Barney Graham MD PhD, an investigator for the NIAID, however, this signature was not dated.

The final signatories on the agreement were Sunny Himansu, Moderna’s Investigator, and Shaun Ryan, Moderna’s Deputy General Councel. Both signautres were made on December 17th 2019.

All of these signatures were made prior to any knowledge of the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus. It wasn’t until December 31st 2019 that the World Health Organisation (WHO) became aware of an alleged cluster of viral pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. But even at this point, they had not determined that an alleged new coronavirus was to blame, instead stating the pneumonia was of “unknown cause”.

All of this requires much further research to fit all of the pieces of the puzzle together, but here’s what we definitely know so far –

• A novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan in December 2019.
• The world did not get to hear about this novel coronavirus until early January 2020.
• The world did not know this novel coronavirus was called Covid-19 until February 2020, when the World Health Organization officially named it so.
• The US Department of Defense awarded a contract for Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services to Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp‘, which is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”.
• That contract involved a Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine.
• As part of this larger contract, another contract was awarded to Labyrinth Global Health for ‘COVID-19 Research’ on 12th November 2019.
• This was awarded at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19.
• Labyrinth Global Health works alongside the ‘Eco Health Alliance’, and ‘Metabiota’, and participated in the USAID PREDICT program. All of these people and organisations have been working for at least the past decade studying coronaviruses and helping to set up Biolabs in Ukraine. All using US Department of Defense funds to do so.
• Information found here points to Eco Health Alliance having a hand in creating the Covid-19 virus.
• Information found here points to Moderna having a hand in creating the Covid-19 virus.
• ‘Moderna’, alongside the ‘National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) agreed to tranfer ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates’ developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna, to recipients ‘The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’ on the 12th December 2019.

*USAID is well-known CIA front operated by US State Department

Via https://expose-news.com/2024/10/10/u-s-d-o-d-issued-contract-for-c-19-research-to-a-company-in-ukraine-3-months-before-c-19-was-known-to-exist/

The many routes of the Camino de Santiago

Episode 16 Medieval Pilgrims and Travelers

The Middle Ages Around the World

Dr Joyce E Salisbury

Film Review

Christian Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage to holy places was extremely popular during the Middle Ages, especially to churches that preserved the remains (bones or items of clothing) of early Christian saints. Thanks to the published chronicles of literate pilgrims, travel itself came to be viewed as a valuable experience.

Pilgrimage to Jerusalem was the most population after the mother of emperor Constantine (306-337) began to identify Christian spaces in a previously pagan Roman city. This unleashed a flood of Egeria, female Spanish pilgrims whose 4th century letters to their families back home describe them retracing steps of important Old and New New Testament figures.

There was heavy traffic in the relics of saints martyred by the Romans, as numerous churches vied for their bones and scraps of clothing to draw pilgrims to their communities.

Pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago (St James) de Compostela in Galicia, Spain was the second most popular Christian pilgrimage. Many Camino pilgrims stopped off to visit the tomb of El Cid (who defended Christian northern Spain from the Muslim armies  – see Medieval Tales of Heroes and Lovers).

Buddhist Pilgrimage

In the 6th century Buddhists went on pilgrimage to Buddha’s place of birth in northern India. Due to the resurgence of Hinduism following the 13th century Muslim occupation, most Buddhist shrines moved further east to China and the Far East.

Kandy Sri Lanka hosts the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, reputed to house one of Buddha’s teeth and the Shedigan Pagoda in Myanmar strands of his hair. In China there are pilgrimages to Longmen grottoes to visit over 100,000 statues and images of Buddha.

Two 13th century Japanese Buddhist nuns, Abutsu and Nijo (who became nuns to escape political turmoil in the imperial court) wrote extensively of their pilgrimages. Abustsu was a poet and lady in waiting unti her husband died and she filed suit contesting his well. Her long lyric poem describes the 14 day pilgrimage for justice she made to the Kamikoto military court. After becoming one of the emperor’s concubines at age 14, Nijo and came into disfavor after she took lovers and bore children by them. Her writings, entitled Confessions of Lady Nijo, describe her 20 year pilgrimage.

Muslim Pilgrims

In Islam the required Hajj (once in a lifetime) is a pillar of the Muslim faith. Ibn Battuta, a 14th century Moroccan cadi (judge) was the most famous Muslim pilgrim. What started out as a Hajj to Mecca turned into a 25 year expedition, which he supported by working as a legal advisor. His recorded observations provide an excellent record of daily medieval life. He married a number of women along the way (under Islam he could only have four at a time, plus concubines) and married four more at the next location.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/13172786/13172821