The Most Revolutionary Act

Uncensored updates on world events, economics, the environment and medicine

The Most Revolutionary Act

Author Archives: stuartbramhall

Unknown's avatar

About stuartbramhall

Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

The French Revolution and the Colonies

Posted on by
Reply

A Secret World War: How the Haitian Revolution Crushed Slavery Worldwide -- Secret History ...

Episode 13: The Revolution and the Colonies

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

In early 1791, the free mixed race residents of St Dominque* (who were recognized as French citizens) hired a lawyer to present a proposal to abolish slavery to the French National Assembly. The proposal  was supported by a handful of prominent revolutionaries, including Mirabeau, Henri Gregoire and Lafayette.* They advocated ending the slave trade first and then gradually ending slavery over 7 years – to enable slaves to “learn how to be free citizens.”

Fifty of the 1789 grievance lists had demanded an end to slavery. However most of the first National Assembly was very pro-slavery, deriving the wealth that qualified them as deputies from the slave trade and slave plantations. They argued that coffee and sugar were essential to the French economy and that France could never compete effectively against the English by employing free labor to produce it. In the end, the National Assembly specifically exempted the colonies from the Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

St Dominque had a roughly equal number (25,000-30,000) of whites and free people of color. Although the latter owned approximately one quarter of the plantations and slaves who ran them, they were barred from participating in a number of occupations, riding in carriages, dressing or styling their hair like white colonists.

Undaunted, in 1790 free Black leader Vincent Ogé returned to St Domingue to organize an armed uprising among local free Blacks that occupied the city of Grande Riviere. While some escaped to the Spanish part of the island, most were captured, with 23 executed and 13 sentenced to lifetime service as galley slaves.

In 1791 the National assembly granted full citizenship (and vote) to all French free men of color born born to two free parents. The following year they extended it to all free women of color. However the law never took effect in the French colonies.

In 1792, in the largest slave revolt in history the slaves of St Domingue won full emancipation by declaring independence from France.

*St Domingue subsequently became Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

**In French Guiana, where he owned property, Lafayette secretly oversaw a 1785-92 initiative in which the colonies slaves were emancipated.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/149323/149349

‘Playground of choice’: Iran mobilises to drive US troops out of Iraq

Posted on by
4

https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/article_page/public/images-story/PMF.jpg.webp?itok=9QGQTHcH

Members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) chant slogans ahead of a funeral of the group’s slain members at PMF headquarters in Baghdad, on 4 January 2024 (AFP)
By Sean Mathews
The US has the cudgel of the American dollar to prevent its expulsion from Iraq, but will the Biden administration use it?
When Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani arrived in New York City in September for the UN General Assembly, a delicate truce was in balance between the two foreign powers that loom over Baghdad.

Iraqi paramilitaries, backed by Iran, had frozen their attacks on US troops in the country. Iraq’s new leader arrived in New York City amid the lull. He was feted on a circuit of swanky receptions with western businessmen and diplomats on the sidelines of the General Assembly, as he pitched Iraq’s oil-rich but corruption-riddled economy as an investment destination.

Four months later, the Iraqi leader is condemning Iran and the US for launching deadly strikes in his country and his investment pitch to the global elite at Davos Switzerland is overshadowed by his call for the US military and its coalition partners to leave Iraq.

Since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October and the war in Gaza, Iranian-backed militias have launched at least 70 attacks on USforces in Iraq.

In early January, the US hit back with its most powerful response yet, launching a drone strike in Baghdad that killed Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, also known as Abu Taqwa, a senior commander in the Popular Mobilisation Units, an umbrella organisation of Iraqi state-funded and Iran-aligned, Shia militias.

Baghdad hit out at the strike as “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”. But no sooner was Iraq chastising the US for the strike, when Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles into the Iraqi city of Erbil, killing four people, including a prominent Kurdish real estate developer and his one-year-old daughter.

Baghdad slammed Tehran’s allegation that the house struck in Erbil was an Israeli Mossad “spy centre”. At Davos, Sudani called the strike “a clear act of aggression”. Iraq has recalled its ambassador to Tehran and says it will file a complaint at the UN Security Council.

The dual rebukes of Iran and the US underscore the tightrope Baghdad is walking as the war in Gaza seeps out beyond the besieged Mediterranean enclave’s borders.

‘It doesn’t look good to be discussing a drawdown when the Iranians are attacking US soldiers’

– Former senior US official

Across the region, Tehran and Washington are flexing their muscles, vying to outflank each other in a deadly proxy war. The shadowy conflict has taken on different flavours that reflect local and geopolitical realities.

In Lebanon, the US is trying to de-escalate fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, with both sides wary of being dragged into a wider conflict. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen have made themselves targets of US air strikes as a response to their attacks on commercial shipping.

But the conflict is perhaps at its most intense, and complex, in Iraq.

“The Iraqi government is weak, divided and fundamentally can’t control conflict on its borders from foreign powers,” Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at the Chatham House think-tank, told Middle East Eye.

“It emerged as the playground of choice, where the US and Iran can fight it out. The risk of escalation here is lower for both. And they can show force and compete for influence.”

Syria, through Iraq

For Iran and its Iraqi allies who dominate Baghdad’s government, the war in Gaza has presented an opportunity to drive home their goal of expelling the US from Iraq.

A former senior US official and an Iraqi official told MEE that there has been increased coordination between Iranian-backed paramilitaries in Iraq and Lebanese Hezbollah with that aim. According to media reports, a top Hezbollah official, Mohammad Hussein al-Kawtharani, arrived in Baghdad earlier this month to oversee the operations.

“Instead of attacking Israel, what we are seeing in Iraq are more attacks on US forces,” Andrew Tabler, a former Middle East director at the White House’s National Security Council, told MEE.

The pressure building in Baghdad to expel US troops has been underlined by Sudani’s public calls for an exit since the assassination of Abu Taqwa. If he follows through, experts say it would present a strategic victory for Iran.

Roughly 2,500 US troops are in Iraq to advise and train local forces as part of a coalition to defeat the Islamic State militant group.

They are mainly based in Baghdad and northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. The latter is especially important for providing logistical support to 900 US troops in northeastern Syria.

The US’s legal justification for being in Syria is also based on its agreement with Baghdad.

“Erbil is crucial for supporting Syria,” Tabler said, referring to the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. “The US needs to have the ability to move troops and supplies on the overland route between the Iraqi frontier and Syria.”

Speaking in Davos on Thursday, Sudani said that “ISIS is no longer a threat to the Iraqi people,” and that “the end of the international coalition mission is a necessity for the security and stability of Iraq”.

The Biden administration and Baghdad were already negotiating the future of the US-led coalition in Iraq before the war in Gaza erupted, a former senior US official told MEE, but the war changed Washington’s approach to the talks.

“It doesn’t look good to be discussing a drawdown when the Iranians are attacking US soldiers with missiles and drones. So there is a sense from the administration that we need to pause these talks.”

While the US continues to conduct small-scale raids against IS cells in the region, Washington views its military footprint in northeast Syria as a key counterweight to Iran and Russia, which back the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria.

“The US mission in northeast Syria depends on Iraq,” Joel Rayburn, a former US special envoy for Syria, told MEE.

‘Same foxhole’

The US military presence in Iraq has ebbed and flowed since the invasion 20 years ago. In 2011, the US pulled all of its forces from Iraq, only for them to return in 2014 at the invitation of Baghdad to fight IS.

But in that period, Shia paramilitaries backed by Iran emerged as the most powerful armed groups in Iraq. Trained and funded by Iran, the Popular Mobilisation Units also fought IS.

Some groups, like Kata’ib Hezbollah, have been at the forefront of attacks on the US in Iraq. The group’s founder, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, was killed in the same US strike that assassinated the Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani.

‘The US can’t be expelled from Iraq if it doesn’t want to be’

– Joel Rayburn, Fmr US official

Today, the PMUs boast more than 150,000 fighters. They maintain vast patronage networks and many are incorporated into Iraq’s official state security apparatus, with the Iraqi government paying their salaries. They have been accused of kidnappings, assassinations and suppressing peaceful protests.

The inability of successive Iraqi governments to rein in the sweeping powers of the PMUs has sown discord between Baghdad and Washington. Not only have US forces come under attack from the paramilitary groups, but Washington funds Iraq’s security system. In 2022, Iraq received $250m in military aid from the US.

Despite sporadic outbursts of fighting between the paramilitaries and Iraq’s security services, “the cost of going against the militias for the Iraqi government is far higher than the cost of keeping them,” Abbas Kadhim, head of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told MEE.

“For Washington, it’s an urgency because they are under attack, but it’s not a crisis for the Iraqi state. The militias are fighting in the same foxhole as the Iraqi government.”

Pay raise for Iranian militias

Sudani is supported by the Coordination Framework, a coalition of Tehran-backed Shia political parties that are tied to many of Iraq’s paramilitaries. While Sudani negotiated a six-month truce that saw attacks on US forces in Iraq stop, the PMUs have gained more influence under his rule, experts say.

“Iran-backed militias have a more visible presence on Baghdad’s streets during Sudani’s tenure,” setting up new checkpoints, Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote, adding that they have also deepened their business activities.

This year, Sudani’s government passed a three-year budget that allocated $700m more dollars to the PMUs, which will allow them to add almost 100,000 new fighters to their ranks, according to analysts.

But current and former US and Iraqi officials say Baghdad wants to maintain good relations with Washington.

Sudani has framed his call for quick exit of US-led coalition troops as necessary to preserve “constructive bilateral relations” with the US, which he told Reuters could include training and advising Iraqi security forces.

His comments are a reflection of the unique ties Baghdad maintains to both Washington and Tehran.

The dollar trap

Iran and Iraq share a thousand-mile border.  The two Shia-majority countries have an estimated ten million border crossings annually, with many Iranian pilgrims visiting shrines in Karbala and Najaf. Iraq is the second most important destination for Iranian exports and is dependent on Iran for about 35 to 40 percent of its power needs.

Iran has never shied away from flexing its economic weight over its neighbour. But Iraq’s finances are also intricately tied to the US.

The second largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Iraq depends on its oil revenue to fund its government – including to pay the salaries of Iranian-backed paramilitaries. The proceeds from Iraq’s oil sales are deposited in the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

‘Even the most anti-American leaders in Iraq realise they need some kind of relationship with the US’

– Renad Mansour,  Chatham House

A recent US crackdown on money laundering in Iraq has helped fuel a currency crisis in Iraq, showcasing the immense sway Washington has over Iraq’s finances because of its dependence on the dollar. The US has also backed Sudani’s appeal for international investments in Iraq.

When Baghdad threatened to expel US-led coalition forces from Iraq after the 2020 assassination of Soleimani, the Trump administration threatened to cut Iraq’s access to its dollar reserves and stop issuing sanctions waivers for Iraq to buy Iranian energy, former US officials familiar with the talks told MEE.

The same officials say that cudgel is an option the Biden administration retains if demands for a US exit grow, but some question whether the administration would use it, after trying to reset relations with Baghdad after the tumultuous Trump years.

“The US can’t be expelled from Iraq if it doesn’t want to be,” Rayburn, the former US special envoy for Syria, told MEE.

“If the US doesn’t have a military presence in Iraq, then the US need not do other things on behalf of the Iraqi government. Like facilitating dollar supply from the Federal Reserve, protecting against lawsuits, and issuing sanctions waivers,” he said.

While Iranian-backed militias want to expel the US from Iraq, experts say even the most hardline groups like Kata’ib Hezbollah benefit from Iraq’s economic links to the West.

“Even the most anti-American leaders in Iraq realise they need some kind of relationship with the US,” Mansour told MEE. “Iraq is a lifeline for Iran. Its access to US dollars and financial markets is key.”

[…]

Via https://straightlinelogic.com/2024/01/23/playground-of-choice-iran-mobilises-to-drive-us-troops-out-of-iraq-by-sean-mathews/

Polio vaccines introduced RSV into populations and now Pfizer’s RSV vaccines carry health risks

Posted on by
1

Featured image: Albert Bourla, the CEO behind the Covid-19 and RSV vaccine (left).  Source: Closer Magazine

Rhoda Wilson

It has been known for a long time that polio vaccines contained a monkey virus called the coryza virus, which was later renamed respiratory syncytial virus (“RSV”).

In humans, RSV causes mild, cold-like symptoms but may be severe in a small number of people, especially in infants and older adults.

Since August last year, regulators in Western countries have approved Pfizer’s RSV vaccine for use in pregnant mothers that increases the risk of pre-term birth, which carries risks of short and long-term health complications for the baby.

On 21 August 2023, the US Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) approved Pfizer’s Abrysvo vaccine.  It is the first vaccine approved for use in pregnant mothers to prevent lower respiratory tract disease caused by respiratory syncytial virus (“RSV”).

“Pfizer currently is the only company with an RSV vaccine to help protect older adults, as well as infants through maternal immunisation,” Pfizer announced in September.

Two days after the FDA, on 23 August 2023, Abrysvo received an EU-wide marketing authorisation for use in in adults 60 years of age and older and mothers during pregnancy.

In November, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (“MHRA”) approved Abrysvo for both pregnant women and older adults.  The approval came after the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (“JCVI”) recommended in June that the UK introduce routine RSV vaccination for both babies and those over 75.

On 4 January 2024, Health Canada approved Abrysvo for use in adults 60 years of age and older and pregnant mothers.

On 17 January, Medical Xpress reported that The Therapeutic Goods Administration (“TGA”) had approved GlaxoSmithKline’s (“GSK’s”) Arexvy RSV vaccine for adults over 60.

“The recent Australian TGA approval of Arexvy is likely to be the first of several, with other vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna currently in development … The GSK and Pfizer RSV vaccines are similar. They both contain a small component of the virus, called the pre-fusion protein … Abrysvo, the Pfizer RSV vaccine, has been trialled in pregnant women … It has been approved in pregnant women in the United States, but is not yet approved in Australia,” Medial Xpress wrote.

The Highwire’s Del Bigtree examined the newly approved RSV vaccine’s side effects on pregnant women. Using data straight from Abrysvo’s package insert, he highlights the increased risk of pre-term birth and buffer ingredients such as polysorbate 80 and residual DNA from host cell proteins from Chinese hamster cell lines.

The Highwire with Del Bigtree: A Warning for Pregnant Women About the RSV Vaccine,
19 January 2024 (9 mins)

In the video above, Bigtree said that RSV appears to be a problem in the world because of the polio vaccine.  “[RSV] came from a monkey virus, that in the manufacturing of the polio virus, we introduced to the world.”

This has been known for a long time.

Polio viruses for the production of polio vaccines have been cultured on monkey kidney tissue and cell lines. These are naturally infected by monkey (simian) viruses and other microorganisms and agents (protozoans, amoebas). They cause, and/or are a co-factor in, a variety of cancers and other diseases. The methods used to “clean-up” the animal tissue and/or microorganisms of these undesirable contaminants are incomplete.

Within a number of hours (usually 40) most of the microorganisms are inactivated (about 75%) with formaldehyde, but afterwards there is a viable residue of live organisms capable of multiplying and spreading indefinitely. When such inadequately treated vaccines are introduced into populations, even those organisms that were inactivated, may revert back to their original virulence. Most of them are carcinogenic (cancer causing) and cytopathogenic (tissue destructive).

Australian Dr. Viera Scheibner, a research scientist with a PhD in natural sciences, authored or contributed to five books including: ‘Vaccination: The Medical Assault on The Immune System’ (1993) summarising the results of orthodox medical research into vaccinations and their effects; and, ‘Behavioural Problems in Childhood: The Link to Vaccination’ (2000).  She also wrote some 200 short essays and articles published in the British Medical journal (“BMJ”).

In 2012, Dr. Scheibner wrote a response to an article titled ‘Polio eradication: a complex end game’:

Another important consideration in attempts to eradicate poliomyelitis by vaccination is the contamination of polio vaccines by chimpanzee coryza virus, renamed respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Data from ten developing countries, with intense polio vaccination, showed RSV the most frequent cause of [lower respiratory tract] LRT infections (70% of all cases).

Polio vaccines are not only ineffective in preventing paralysis, they carry the risk of contamination with many harmful adventitious microorganisms, of which only some monkey viruses have been researched in more detail. Many other potentially dangerous microorganisms remain unaddressed.

Rapid Response Re Polio eradication: a complex end game, Dr. Viera Scheibner, BMJ, 26 August 2012

[…]

Via https://expose-news.com/2024/01/24/polio-vaccines-introduced-rsv-into-populations/

“Growing Your Own Vegetables is Bad for the Planet”

Posted on by
8

Kit Knightly

Off Guardian

[…]

Apparently, a new study from the University of Michigan has found that “urban gardening” is 5 (or maybe 6, they’re not sure) times worse for the environment than “conventional crops”. [see Carbon Footprint of Homegrown Food Nearly Five Times Greater Than Those Grown Conventionally]

I don’t know how they calculated it, and it doesn’t really matter. If you read the bodies of the articles they even say it only applies to some vegetables in some places and it all depends on how the “infrastructure” is put together.

The details aren’t the point. The point is yet another weapon in the war on food. More regulation, more commercialization, less freedom, all in the name of “fighting climate change”.

And if you’re doubting that’s the agenda here, check out the sheer number of government research agencies which the “supported” the research project:

Support for the project was provided by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, French National Research Agency, U.S. National Science Foundation, Poland’s National Science Centre, and the European Union’s Horizon 202 research and innovation program.

It’s a fairly obvious case of needing a study to support a position, going out and and buying one.

This is one of those stories that exists simply to be a headline, so some pundit can quote it on some political panel on primetime TV and start a conversation about “regulation”.

Since we started with a prediction, let’s end with another one: This is just the first step, and you don’t have to be paying especially close attention to see where it goes from here.

They are never going to make growing your own vegetables illegal, they are just going to make it increasingly difficult.

It will start with licenses, for food safety purposes or something. Maybe an outbreak of a disease will be linked to people sharing food from their allotments.

Licenses will be increasingly expensive, and come with restrictions. You’ll only be allowed to use seeds from specific approved vendors, seeds of GMO plants which “mitigate the impact of climate change”. These seeds will likely be “terminator seeds”, meaning they are sterile in the second generation.

And, in that fashion, growing your own vegetables will no longer be an individual and independent experience, but just another corporate subscription service.

[…]

Via https://off-guardian.org/2024/01/24/growing-your-own-vegetables-is-bad-for-the-planet/

Ocean Freight Rates Skyrocketing

Posted on by
3
Ocean freight rates skyrocketing – WSJ
© Getty Images / Rangsarit Chaiyakun

RT

Disruptions in the Red Sea have reportedly caused container prices to double in just a month

The average cost of a container has more than doubled globally in the past month, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal published on Sunday.

The disruptions caused by the continued Houthi attacks on cargo vessels in the Red Sea are sending shockwaves across global supply chains, delaying shipments and raising transportation costs, the article states.

The data cited by the outlet, which is from London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants, shows that the average worldwide cost of shipping a 40-foot container jumped 23% to $3,777 just in the week ending January 18. That puts the current rate at more than double what was being charged a month ago.

“The increases are being felt far beyond the disrupted trade routes that link China with Europe and the US East Coast,” the WSJ wrote, noting that spot rates to ship a container from China to Los Angeles had soared by 38% in the week through January 18, to $3,860.

“Volatility is back, big time in international container shipping,” Philip Damas, managing director of Drewry, said, as quoted by the WSJ.

Damas explained that many big companies that have longer-term contracts with ocean carriers are paying surcharges of 20% or more on top of contract rates to compensate for higher costs, such as on fuel and insurance.

READ MORE: Red Sea crisis worse for global supply chain than pandemic – maritime firm

The Yemen-based Houthi rebels have carried out dozens of drone and missile attacks in the Red Sea since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October. The militant group has vowed to continue until the hostilities end and the Israeli blockade of Gaza is lifted.

The increased risk of attack in the Red Sea has forced major shipping firms to avoid the Suez Canal, which is the fastest route for moving cargo between Asia and Europe. Maritime traffic through the vital route, which normally accounts for 15% of global commercial shipping, is down 37% so far in 2024 from a year ago, according to figures from the IMF.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/business/591089-houthi-attacks-ocean-freight-rates/

US Launches New Round of Airstrikes in Iraq

Posted on by
5

US launches new round of airstrikes in Iraq

A US fighter plane takes off from an aircraft carrier. ©  Centcom / Twitter

RT

Washington has targeted Iranian-backed militias in response to attacks that injured American troops

The US military has announced that it has carried out “proportionate” airstrikes against “Iranian-backed” militants in Iraq in response to recent attacks on American bases in the region.

The latest airstrikes targeting Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated militia groups in Iraq were launched just after midnight local time on Wednesday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement. The strikes were aimed at Kataib Hezbollah’s headquarters in Iraq, as well as storage and training facilities, and were intended to degrade the group’s ability to mount drone and missile attacks.

“Today, at President Biden’s direction, US military forces conducted necessary and proportionate strikes on three facilities used by the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia group and other Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq,” US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement.

“These precision strikes are in direct response to a series of escalatory attacks against US and coalition personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias.”

Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Yemen have launched dozens of attacks against US forces in the region since the Israel-Hamas war began in October. The latest of those strikes, which the Pentagon called the largest since the conflict began, came when rockets and missiles were fired at a US air base in western Iraq on Saturday, injuring several American troops. One Iraqi soldier stationed at the base was badly injured, according to the Pentagon.

Austin said he and Biden will not hesitate to “take necessary action” to defend US forces and their allies in the region. “We do not seek to escalate conflict in the region. We are fully prepared to take further measures to protect our people and our facilities. We call on these groups and their Iranian sponsors to immediately cease these attacks.”

Iraq’s government condemned the previous round of US airstrikes against Kataib Hezbollah last month, calling them “an unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty.” The US airstrikes in December killed one member of Baghdad’s security forces and injured 18 people, including civilians, according to the Iraqi prime minister’s office.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/591176-us-new-strikes-iraq/

FBI Supervisor Lied to House Investigators About Number of FBI Operatives Embedded in Crowds on Jan 6

Posted on by
Reply

Former FBI DC Supervisor Steven D’Antuono

Jim Holt

As reported earlier on Tuesday, The House Judiciary Republicans sent a letter Tuesday that includes transcribed testimony from former Assistant Director-in-Charge of the Washington Field Office (WFO) Steven D’Antuono.

D’Antuono testified that the FBI had numerous confidential human sources (CHS) in the Trump crowd on January 6.

In fact, they had so many FBI operatives in the crowd they had no idea how many were actually there that day!

D’Antuono had quite a record of failures and lies during his time at the FBI.

D’Antuono was the head of the FBI’s Detroit field office as the bureau was investigating an alleged kidnapping attempt against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

As Just the News notes, trial testimony alleges the “plot” wasn’t just investigated but instigated by the FBI, with the jury hearing that the bureau’s informants gave drugs to those who were eventually charged in the plot before recording their conversations and sometimes outnumbered “plotters” during meetings.

The entire plot was hatched, planned, paid for, and executed by paid FBI informants.

The FBI informants pushed the violent plans to kidnap Whitmer. It was all a setup. And D’Antuono was in charge of the office where they ran the operation. He was then later promoted to the DC office before the Jan. 6 protests and riot.

In the letter released on Tuesday, D’Antuono told House investigators that he did not know how many FBI agents had infiltrated the crowd on January 6.

The letter suggested that “the FBI cannot adequately track the activities and operations of its informants, and that it lost control of its CHSs present at the Capitol on January 6,” D’Antuono wrote.

Later in the interview, he told investigators that “only a handful” of FBI informants were in the crowd that day.

For over two years now, The Gateway Pundit has been reporting on the FBI informants and feds who infiltrated the Trump crowds on January 6, 2021.

And we can report – for certain – that Assistant Director-in-Charge of the Washington Field Office (WFO) Steven D’Antuono is lying about the number of FBI operatives and informants in the crowd on January 6th.

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/confirmed-it-appears-former-fbi-dc-supervisor-dantuono/

Will Disease X Be Leaked in 2025?

Posted on by
2
Dr Mercola

Story at-a-glance

  • The WHO’s pandemic treaty is the gateway to a global, top-down totalitarian regime, a one world government. The reason we can be sure there will be additional pandemics, whether manufactured using either fear and hype alone or an actual bioweapon created for this very purpose, is because the takeover plan, aka The Great Reset, is based on the premise that we need global biosecurity surveillance and centralized response
  • A new contagion will likely be born in 2025, and media are already preparing us for it
  • January 15-19, 2024, global leaders met at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Davos summit where the key topic of discussion was “Preparing for Disease X,” a hypothetical new pandemic predicted to kill 20 times more people than COVID-19
  • In August 2023, a new vaccine research facility was set up in Wiltshire, England, to begin work on a vaccine against the unknown “Disease X”
  • The U.S. Congress introduced the “Disease X Act of 2023” (H.R.3832) in June 2023. The bill calls for the establishment of a BARDA program to develop “medical countermeasures for viral threats with pandemic potential.” The bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Health in early June 2023 but has not yet been passed

The COVID-19 pandemic allowed for an unprecedented shift in power and wealth distribution across the world and, as predicted, it was not to be a one-off event. A new contagion will likely be born in 2025, and media are already preparing us for it.

January 15-19, 2024, global leaders met at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Davos summit where the key topic of discussion was “Preparing for Disease X,”1 a hypothetical new pandemic predicted to emerge in 2025 and kill 20 times more people than COVID-19.2

[…]

Alexis Baden-Mayer, Esq., political director for the Organic Consumers Association, did some digging into the participants of this WEF event, and the two things they all have in common are 1) dumping the AstraZeneca COVID shot on the developing world (primarily India and Brazil) after rich countries rejected it due to its admitted blood clotting risk, and 2) pushing for the implementation of medical AI systems that will eliminate doctors along with patient choice and privacy.

Practice Runs or Responsible Planning?

[…]

Dr. Stuart Ray, vice chair of medicine for data integrity and analytics at Johns Hopkins’ Department of Medicine, dismissed such warnings, telling Fortune magazine5 that “Coordination of public health response is not conspiracy, it’s simply responsible planning.”

I’d be willing to believe him if it wasn’t for a now-obvious trend: Whatever the globalists claim will happen actually does happen at a remarkable frequency, and their prognostic capabilities become easier to explain when you consider that most lethal pandemics have been caused by manmade viruses, the products of gain-of-function research. It’s pretty easy to predict a new viral outbreak if you have said virus waiting in the wings.

With that in mind, recent research from China certainly raises concern, to say the least. According to a January 3, 2024, preprint,6 a SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus — described as a “cell culture-adapted mutant” called GX_P2V that was first cultured in 2017 — was found to kill 100% of the humanized mice (ACE2-transgenic mice) infected with it.7

The primary cause of death was brain inflammation. According to the authors, “this is the first report showing that a SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus can cause 100% mortality in hACE2 mice, suggesting a risk for GX_P2V to spill over into humans.”

However, if this virus mutated as a result of passaging through cell cultures, then it’s not likely to emerge in the wild. It’s another unnatural lab creation, so rather than saying it may spill over from pangolins to humans, it would be more accurate to admit that it may pose a (rather serious) risk to humans were a lab escape to occur.

COVID Dress Rehearsals

In 2017, Johns Hopkins Center of Health Security held a coronavirus pandemic simulation called the SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 scenario.8 Importantly, the exercise stressed “communication dilemmas concerning medical countermeasures that could plausibly emerge” in a pandemic scenario.

Then, in October 2019, less than three months before the COVID-19 outbreak, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with Johns Hopkins and the World Economic Forum hosted Event 201.

The name itself suggests it may have been a continuation of the SPARS Pandemic exercise. College courses are numbered based on their prerequisites. A 101 course does not require any prior knowledge whereas 201 courses require prior familiarity with the topic at hand.

As in the SPARS Pandemic scenario, Event 201 involved an outbreak of a highly infectious coronavirus, and the primary (if not sole) focus of the exercise was, again, how to control information and keep “misinformation” in check, not how to effectively discover and share remedies.

Social media censorship played a prominent role in the Event 201 plan, and in the real-world events of 2020 through the present, accurate information about vaccine development, production and injury has indeed been effectively suppressed around the world, thanks to social media companies and Google’s censoring of opposing viewpoints.

In March 2021, an outbreak of “an unusual strain of monkeypox virus” was simulated.9 In late July the following year, the WHO director-general declared that a multi-country outbreak of monkeypox constituted a public health emergency of international concern,10 against his own advisory group.

‘Catastrophic Contagion’ Exercise

Considering both of these simulations, SPARS (“Event 101”?) and Event 201, foreshadowed what eventually occurred in real life during COVID, when Gates hosts yet another pandemic exercise, it’s worth paying attention to the details.

October 23, 2022, Gates, Johns Hopkins and the WHO cohosted “a global challenge exercise” dubbed “Catastrophic Contagion,”11,12 involving a fictional pathogen called “severe epidemic enterovirus respiratory syndrome 2025” (SEERS-25).

Enterovirus D6813 is typically associated with cold and flu-like illness in infants, children and teens. In rare cases, it’s also been known to cause viral meningitis and acute flaccid myelitis, a neurological condition resulting in muscle weakness and loss of reflexes in one or more extremities.

Enteroviruses A71 and A6 are known to cause hand, foot and mouth disease,14 while poliovirus, the prototypical enterovirus, causes polio (poliomyelitis), a potentially life-threatening type of paralysis that primarily affects children under age 5. So, the virus they modeled in this simulation appears to be something similar to enterovirus D68, but worse.

Vaccine Drug Trials Begin for Deadly Nipah Virus

One known virus that bears some resemblance to the fictional SEERS-25 is the Nipah virus. This virus has a kill rate of about 75%,15 and survivors oftentimes face long-term neurological issues stemming from the infection. Nipah is also said to affect children to a greater degree than adults.16

Incidentally, human trials for a vaccine against the deadly Nipah virus were recently launched.17 Volunteers received their first shots in early January 2024. The experimental injection uses the same viral vector technology used to produce AstraZeneca’s COVID shot.

The trial is reportedly being carried out by the University of Oxford in an undisclosed area where Nipah is actively infecting victims. (India seems to be indicated, as an outbreak in Kerala killed two people and hospitalized three in September 2023.18)

The disease is thought to spread via interaction with infected animals such as goats, pigs, cats and horses. It may also spread via tainted blood products and food. Symptoms can emerge anywhere from a few days after exposure to as long as 45 days.

Initial symptoms include fever, headache and respiratory illness, which can rapidly progress to encephalitis (brain swelling), seizures and coma within just a couple of days. According to the WHO, pigs are known to be “highly contagious” during the incubation period, and it’s possible that humans may be as well, although that has yet to be confirmed.

Training African Leaders to Go Along With the Narrative

Tellingly, the Catastrophic Contagion exercise focused on getting leadership in African countries involved and trained in following the script. African nations went “off script” more often than others during the COVID pandemic, and didn’t follow in the footsteps of developed nations when it came to pushing the jabs.

As a result, vaccine makers now face the problem of having a huge control group, as the COVID jab uptake on the African continent was only 6%,19 yet it fared far better than developed nations in terms of COVID-19 infections and related deaths.20

The Catastrophic Contagion exercise predicts SEERS-25 will kill 20 million people worldwide, including 15 million children, and many who survive the infection will be left with paralysis and/or brain damage. In other words, the “cue” given is that the next pandemic may target children rather than the elderly, as was the case with COVID-19.

Vaccine Against Unknown ‘X’ Pathogen Is Already in the Works

Video Link

In August 2023, a new vaccine research facility was set up in Wiltshire, England, fully staffed with more 200 scientists, to begin work on a vaccine against the unknown “Disease X.”

[…]

In the U.S., Congress also introduced the “Disease X Act of 2023” (H.R.383222) back in June 2023. The bill calls for the establishment of a BARDA program to develop “medical countermeasures for viral threats with pandemic potential.” The bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Health in early June 2023 but has not yet been passed.

The Disease X Act amends a section of the Public Health Service Act with two new clauses that call for “the identification and development of platform manufacturing technologies needed for advanced development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures for viral families which have significant potential to cause a pandemic,” and “advanced research and development of flexible medical countermeasures against priority respiratory virus families and other respiratory viral pathogens with a significant potential to cause a pandemic, with both pathogen-specific and pathogen-agnostic approaches …”

Needless to say, since it’s impossible to customize vaccines using the conventional method of growing viruses in eggs or some other cell media in 100 days, it seems inevitable that all these efforts are about the expansion of gene-based technologies. This, despite the fact that the mRNA technology used for the COVID jabs has proven to be disastrous from a safety standpoint, and ineffective to boot.

Why Manufactured Pandemics Will Continue

At this point, it’s quite clear that “biosecurity” is the chosen means by which the globalist cabal intends to seize power over the world. The WHO is working on securing sole power over pandemic response globally through its international pandemic treaty which, if implemented, will eradicate the sovereignty of all member nations.

The WHO’s pandemic treaty is the gateway to a global, top-down totalitarian regime, a one world government. Ultimately, the WHO intends to dictate all health care. But to secure that power, they will need more pandemics. COVID-19 alone was not enough to get everyone onboard with a centralized pandemic response unit, and they probably knew that from the start.

So, the reason we can be sure there will be additional pandemics, whether manufactured using either fear and hype alone or an actual bioweapon created for this very purpose, is because the takeover plan, aka The Great Reset, is based on the premise that we need global biosecurity surveillance and centralized response.

Biosecurity, in turn, is the justification for an international vaccine passport, which the G20 has signed on to, and that passport will also be your digital identification. That digital ID, then, will be tied to your social credit score, personal carbon footprint tracker, medical records, educational records, work records, social media presence, purchase records, your bank accounts and a programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Once all these pieces are fully connected, you’ll be in a digital prison, and the ruling cabal — whether officially a one world government by then or not — will have total control over your life from cradle to grave.

[…]

Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/01/23/disease-x.aspx

70% of Embalmers Report Strange Blood Clots Starting in Mid-2021

Posted on by
7

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, former Air Force Major Thomas Haviland shared the result of his survey of embalmers, who reported sharp upticks in fibrous clots, micro-clotting and infant deaths from mid-2021 following the mass rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

In a recent survey of 269 embalmers across four major countries and three continents, more than 70% reported finding strange fibrous white blood clots in significant percentages of corpses in 2023 — clots they were not finding pre-pandemic.

A similar survey conducted in late 2022 revealed that 66% of embalmers began finding the unusual clots in mid-2021, suggesting a temporal link to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began earlier that year.

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, the creator of the surveys, former Air Force Major Thomas Haviland, said he conceived of the project after he watched the documentary, “Died Suddenly,” where embalmers reported observing unprecedented fibrous masses clogging arteries.

[…]

On Jan. 9, Haviland sent his survey results to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health. He has not yet received a response.

Haviland lost his lucrative defense contracting job in 2021 for refusing the mandated vaccine. He then set out to verify the claims of unusual clots by surveying embalmers globally on what they were witnessing in their work so he could quantify how widespread this phenomenon had become.

Haviland to Air Force general: ‘Shame on you’

Haviland served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force before spending 16 years working as an electrical engineer for a defense contractor at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

With a passion for data analysis rooted in his math and engineering training, Haviland helped develop sophisticated aircraft, including the F-16 fighter jet, F-22 Raptor and F-117 stealth fighter.

However, his long military career came to an abrupt halt in October 2021 when he refused to take the mandated COVID-19 vaccine in compliance with federal requirements issued for military, government employees and federal contractors.

Haviland was concerned about the lack of safety and efficacy data on the experimental vaccine. He researched the topic widely, but could not find much official information in the U.S. media or on the CDC website.

However, he found a September 2021 technical briefing (see Table 5) from Public Health England (PHE) showing hundreds of thousands of breakthrough COVID-19 cases recorded among the fully vaccinated, undermining claims that vaccines would prevent transmission.

“The case fatality rate [CFR] [in the PHE document] for the unvaccinated was more than 3.6 times lower than the CFR for the fully vaccinated,” he said.

 

After the final deadline to comply with the vaccine mandate arrived, Haviland sent the Air Force general an email saying, “Shame on you for not standing up for our right to decide for ourselves whether or not to get injected with an experimental drug.”

In a defiant last stand, Haviland copied the email to the base’s 30,000 personnel.

Thirty minutes later — just as he anticipated — his employer called to say he was fired.

[…]

‘Embalmers actually want to tell you what they’re seeing’

To validate the reports systematically and ensure privacy, Haviland crafted a 12-question survey using the SurveyMonkey platform to collect embalmer input anonymously.

The questionnaire asked respondents to specify what types of blood clots they were observing, when the anomalies began appearing, the estimated percentage of bodies exhibiting the fibrous masses and the ages of the deceased.

To maximize participation, Haviland leveraged extensive funeral director professional networks. He sent emails with embedded survey links to the presidents of 50 state and national organizations asking them to disseminate the questionnaire to their hundreds of member funeral homes.

Simultaneously, Haviland directly emailed more than 1,700 individual funeral home addresses obtained through web searches, targeting major metro areas across the 30 most populous U.S. states and funeral directors in Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

This two-pronged outreach strategy aimed to encourage anonymous survey-taking without employer pressure, he said.

To avoid introducing bias, neither the survey solicitation letter nor the survey itself referenced COVID-19 or vaccines.

 

[…]

20% of embalmers flagged increased infant deaths relative to 2019

The 2022 and 2023 embalmer surveys demonstrate largely consistent findings of strange blood-clotting phenomena beginning in the middle of 2021 and continuing through today.

In Haviland’s 2023 survey polling 269 embalmers globally, more than 70% reported seeing white fibrous clots in an average of 20% of corpses.

Hirschman said he began seeing clots early in 2021, and to this day continues to see them in about half of the bodies he embalms. “The older the person is, the more I see.”

Credit: Richard Hirschman
Credit: Thomas Haviland, 2023 Embalmers Survey

Nearly 80% of survey respondents indicated microclotting in about 25% of cadavers on average as demonstrated by “coffee grounds”-like material in blood drainage. Some embalmers saw these clots in a much higher percentage of corpses.

Credit: Thomas Haviland, 2023 Embalmers Survey

Microclotting was seen very rarely (less than 5%) in corpses prior to the COVID-19 or the COVID-19 vaccines, according to survey respondents.

Embalmers reported an overall increase in all types of clotting in all age groups — but especially ages 36 and up — echoing real-world data from insurance industry trends showing increased death benefit payouts for younger people, Haviland said.

[…]

Credit: Thomas Haviland, 2023 Embalmers Survey

[…]

Credit: Thomas Haviland

Hirschman said he has seen a fibrous clot that was removed from a living person, but that he has also seen additional formation of material from blood in an ECMO (a machine that oxygenates blood outside the body) tube post-mortem. The body he was preparing had a clot running the length of the leg.

Hirschman surmised that clot-forming material caused by vaccines could be circulating in the liquid form in blood until some as-yet-unknown process triggers it to solidify into the hardened form found by embalmers.

Hirschman said scientists he is in touch with are working on developing diagnostic tests to determine what’s in the blood causing the clots. “There’s got to be a way they can test if people have this floating around in their body,” he said.

Dr. Ryan Cole, a clinical pathologist with his own diagnostic lab, in a recent interview clarified the difference between clots that form while a person is alive and those that form after death.

“[In] postmortem clots … you can see almost a layering pattern and can tell that the clotting happened as the body was cooling and all those proteins were congealing,” Cole said. “It’s almost looking like rings of a tree.”

But that same deposition pattern is not found in clots that form while a patient is alive, Cole said, such as the fibrous clots reported by embalmers.

“One can analyze and distinguish that difference,” Cole said. “They were in the patient pre-mortem and these patients died with these clots in them.”

Critics of the “Died Suddenly” documentary primarily repeat the truism that “correlation is not causation,” claiming that those who are trying to link the clots to the vaccine rollout are anti-vaxxers, or saying the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be the culprit.

But longtime funeral industry professionals who spoke with Haviland correlate the appearance of the fibrous clots with the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccinations rather than the virus itself.

“They’re not qualified, obviously, to say why or how the clots are forming,” said Haviland. “But they can tell you when they’ve seen something that they’ve never seen before … and the explosion of the clotting took place for them starting in 2021 after the jabs rolled out.”

[…]

Theories on how fibrous clots form

Haviland emphasized that the mRNA vaccine’s spike protein has been found in organs and tissues all over the body and, in some instances, as long as six months after the shot.

Dr. Peter McCullough reported clotting in patients with no previous family history or personal history of clotting as long as two years after the shots.

Haviland shared a theory that vaccine-induced spike proteins damage endothelium — a single layer of cells throughout the body separating tissues from circulating blood — triggering blood clotting responses or, through rupturing, allowing material into the bloodstream that results in clotting.

Dr. Lewis Coleman, an anesthesiologist and author of “50 Years Lost in Medical Advance,” who shared his theory on white lung syndrome with The Defender, said the mRNA’s spike protein disrupts the vascular endothelium, resulting in the “leakage” of tissue factor from connective tissues, fat, muscle and organ tissues into the bloodstream.

Through several complex interactions, this leakage alters the way thrombin, soluble fibrin and insoluble fibrin (all clotting factors) are generated and increases the risk of myocardial infarction, stroke and thrombosis (clotting), according to Coleman.

Vaccine-induced clotting has been linked to the COVID-19 vaccines in numerous studies and anecdotal reports.

Haviland said, “These white fibrous clots seem to be comprised of fibrin platelets and what’s called amyloid protein, which is basically a fancy term for a misshaped, misfolded protein, that then becomes hard for our body to break down.”

Cole asserted the clots are related to the mRNA vaccines, the spike protein and the DNA contamination that “codes for a very sticky protein,” adding, “It’s an amyloid-type protein, not a traditional amyloid.”

Cole credited Resia Pretorius Ph.D., a researcher from Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Professor Douglas Kell from the University of Liverpool, U.K., who showed how the spike protein can cause proteins to clump together in the blood in the absence of platelets.

A low platelet count or thrombocytopenia is another well-documented side effect of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

Cole said:

“We know that spike protein can induce clotting pathways. It can induce unusual clumps of proteins and sugars and proteins and sugars. Almost silk-like patterns of interlaced, intertwining blood agents that you and I have circulating right now. They need to be there. They all have a role and a function.

“But when there’s a pileup on the interstate, they all get blocked up behind that pileup. And that’s what we’re seeing with these clots. These unusual amyloids — fibrin that’s hard to break down — [we’re] finding these a long period of time after they should have been broken down.”

‘It’s hard to find a problem if you don’t go looking’

If it can be substantiated that the COVID-19 vaccines are instigating this blood clot crisis, Haviland urged halting the mass vaccination campaign immediately until experts definitively rule out the dangers.

“I think it would be wise at this point to pull all the vials off the shelves to make sure that nobody is given these shots anymore,” he said, adding,

Haviland supports policy changes cementing the right to informed consent and preventing coercion to take vaccines or medications of any kind.

Broader hopes for Haviland center on transparency reforms and overcoming institutional resistance to confronting evidence of vaccine harms.

“It’s hard to find a problem if you don’t go looking,” Haviland said.

Amid credibility concerns surrounding health authorities, public awareness provides the last line of defense, according to Haviland. He said:

“If our Congress doesn’t do anything, if our regulatory agencies like the FDA and the CDC keep quiet about this and Big Pharma continues to push out mRNA-based products using lipid nanoparticle technology in the future, there’s only one last line of defense left — that’s us, the citizen.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/blood-clots-embalmers-report-mid-2021-covid-vaccines/

The French Revolution Dismantles the Catholic Church

Posted on by
2

French Revolution timeline | Timetoast timelines

Episode 12: Religion and the Early Revolution

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

The Catholic church was the second most powerful institute, after the monarchy, In pre-revolutionary France. Prior to the revolution, all births, marriages and deaths were tracked, not by local government, but by the local parish. Often the priest was the only villager who could read and write, which made him an essential link to the outside world. In many instances, peasants who worked church lands had church officials as their feudal lords.

During the 18th century Enlightenment, the number of priests, monks and nuns, as well as attendance at Easter mass, steadily declined as Enlightenment philosophers questioned the wealth and power of the church.

As the revolution progressed, the National Assembly began (against strong right wing opposition) nationalizing and selling off church lands to help pay the national debt. Six to seven percent of church land changed hands before strong popular opposition stalled the reforms.

In addition to selling off land, the National Assembly became very critical of monks and nuns, especially those from contemplative orders. Bolstered by a scandal involving clergy and monks who patronized brothels, in February 1790 monastic vows were abolished (except for orders that taught or cared for the sick and poor). Some monks, pressured into vows of celibacy, readily agreed with these changes, especially as it was fairly easy for men to find jobs outside the monastery.

The National Assembly also created a Civil Constitution of the Clergy, in which the clergy became government employees and received government salaries. This was great for clergy, who got a pay rise, but not for bishops, who pay was reduced. This mandate also provided for the electoral assemblies of each department to elect their priests and bishops.

In 1791, the National Assembly passed their most controversial religious reform, which required all clergy to take a loyalty oath to the nation, law and king. Louis XVI reluctantly agreed to it. When the Pope condemned it, there was a flurry of retractions. Eventually roughly half the 83 new departments accepted the loyalty oath. Only seven bishops agreed to it.

Rural women began to lead protests opposing it (and the revolution). New priests had to be found in parishes where the priest refused to take the oath – some parishes had two priests (one “juring”* and one non-juring)

By 1792, many outlawed priests were secretly performing masses.

*From the French word jurer “to swear.”

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/149323/149347