Vanessa Bealey

The history of the oppression of Palestinian Christians is often ignored

Quinn Coffey – A final, and particularly striking comment was made by Rev. Ateek’s in his 2010 address to the Christ at the Checkpoint conference, ‘Jesus was a Palestinian who was born under occupation. Jesus lived under occupation. Everything he taught, everything he said was done under occupation, exactly the way we live today.’

I am going to be writing about the Christian Palestinian oppression by Zionist Christians in Palestine over the next few days but I wanted to share this movie about the fate of Palestinian Christians from 1947 onwards:

The Stones Cry Out Movie

Website here.

Christianity was born in Palestine two thousand years ago. From there it spread throughout the Middle East and to the rest of the world. Yet many are unaware Christians still live in the land.

For more than 60 years the Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, have suffered displacement, expulsion, wars, occupation and oppression.

The voices of Palestinian Christians have all too often been drowned out in the turmoil of events.

This is their story, in their voices, from the Nakba of 1948 until today.

About the film

In 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinian villagers were driven from their homes in what was officially dubbed “Operation Broom”, intended to literally sweep tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in the fertile hills and valleys of the Galilee, and make way for settlers in the newly created state of Israel.

Elias Chacour, now the Archbishop of the Galilee, was just a little boy when Israeli troops ordered his family out of the Christian village of Kifr Bir’am. He left the village with a blanket on his shoulder, walking to his new home, a cave.

Today Kifr Bir’am is an Israeli national park, the houses of the village are crumbling, the church is abandoned.

After the Galilee came the expropriation of the West Bank in 1967, the settlements, the wall. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, is now hemmed in by the wall, cut off from Jerusalem, and robbed of much of its agricultural land.

All too often media coverage of the conflict in Palestine has framed it as a fight between Muslims and Jews, largely ignoring the fact that Palestine was the birthplace of Christianity, that Palestinians are both Muslims and Christians, and that Palestinian Christians have played a critical role in their land’s history and the struggle to maintain its identity.

From 1948 up to today, through wars and uprisings, leading Palestinian Christians, including the late President of Beir Zeit University Gabi Baramki, Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi, civil society activist Ghassan Andoni, Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah and others recount the unwavering and sometimes desperate struggle of all Palestinians to resist Israel’s occupation and stay on their land.

Watch:

[…]

Via https://beeley.substack.com/p/palestinian-christians-a-history

Etruscan funeral procession

Episode 6 Etruscan Burial and Mourning

The Mysterious Etruscans

Dr Steven L Tuck (2016)

Film Review

Tombs of Etruscan elites are decorated with detailed carved depictions of their burial ceremonies. In addition to lying in state and funeral processions, these often involved  athletic games, dancers, sacrifices and community-wide ritual meals.

During the processions, priests often dressed as underworld demons* while family members, joined by professional mourners, carried possessions to be buried with the deceased and led the animals to be sacrificed.

The late 4th century saw a marked increase in military and demon imagery in tombs, as the Etruscan continuously lost battles, first to the Greek city of Syracuse and subsequently to the Romans. The Romans began a protracted war against the Etrurian League in 476 BC and by 396 BC had conquered the city of Veii, the only city powerful enough to lead the other 11 city-states militarily.

While only priests engaged in funeral dancing, the funeral games were open to all serious athletes. Animal sacrifice was performed above the tomb to enable the blood to seep into the burial chamber and carry the deceased to the afterlife. Banquets from the meat of the sacrificed animal were shared with the wider community.

Etruscan funeral games

The painted frescoes in Etruscan tombs feature Greek-style figures, with the head appearing in profile with frontal eyes. The skin tone also follows the Greek convention, with white for women and red for men. Etruscan tombs also display Greek-style human sculptures, in terra cotta, rather than marble, to allow for greater detail in facial expression and hand movements.

Greek profile with frontal eyes

Occasionally the deceased was cremated and the remains stored in elegant ceramic and terra cotta urns. Towards the end of independent Etruscan rule, individualized death masks were fabricated for the deceased, a tradition borrowed by the Romans.

From the third century on (with the decline of the Etruscan aristocracy), women are less prominent in tomb decorations. According to Tuck, women tended to be more esteemed in dynastic monarchies owing to their ability to produce heirs.

*According to the Roman historian Livy.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/239710/239617

Critics who rail against the hypocrisy of wealthy global elites jet-setting on carbon-spewing private planes while pontificating about the need for the rest of us to cut our climate footprints just got a boost from a new study.

This means that a small sliver of global elites, or 77 million people, have produced as much carbon as the 5 billion people that make up the bottom 66 percent by wealth, per the study.

The study also estimates that it would take roughly 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99 percent to produce as much carbon as the wealthiest billionaires do in just one year.

The study was based on research compiled by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and examined the emissions of various income groups up to 2019. In summary, it suggested that the private jet-setting class of global leaders and policymakers, who take private planes to lead summits addressing the assumed dangers of climate change, may warrant charges of hypocrisy.

The majority of these jets were attributed to private flights undertaken by participants for the WEF meeting.

Klara Maria Schenk, a transport campaigner for Greenpeace’s European mobility campaign, called the private jet use at Davos a “distasteful masterclass of hypocrisy,” given that the WEF claims to be committed to the Paris Climate Target of keeping climate warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Davos has a perfectly adequate railway station, still these people can’t even be bothered to take the train for a trip as short as 21 [kilometers]. Do we really believe that these are the people to solve the problems the world faces?” Ms. Schenk said.

Mr. Kerry’s family quietly sold off its Gulfstream G-IV jet last summer.

However, Mr. Kerry has defended his use of a private jet while being a prominent figure seeking to draw attention to climate change. In 2021, Mr. Kerry defended his decision to fly to Iceland to accept the climate change leadership award.

“If you offset your carbon, it’s the only choice for somebody like me, who is traveling the world to win this battle,” Mr. Kerry said at the time.

The president’s special climate envoy drew criticism from Republican lawmakers.

Dr Eddy Betterman

Up until the point when the European Medicines Agency (EMA) granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for the use of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “vaccines” in children, excess deaths among children throughout Europe were negative, new data shows. Then, once the EUA was granted for the jabs to go into children, excess deaths among children started to soar.

Put a different way, children across Europe were generally safe and healthy all throughout the “pandemic” – except for being forcibly kept away from their friends, in some cases where individual countries enforced stay-at-home and social distancing orders – and only started dying once the government began pushing kids to get jabbed for COVID along with the adults.

Once Operation Warp Speed was launched by the Trump regime, excess deaths among everyone began to skyrocket. In Europe, excess deaths in kids rose steadily up through the end of 2021, and have continued to rise ever since as long-term damage from the shots takes hold.

(Related: Pfizer’s newly approved COVID injection “booster” or whatever was never tested in humans, only in mice – and in just eight of them.)

COVID jabs kill kids

In 2020 during the early days of the “pandemic,” excess deaths among children aged 0-14 across Europe were -511, meaning 511 fewer children died than normal. This continued up through week 21 of 2021 when -330 excess deaths were reported.

The moment the EMA extended EUA for COVID jabs to go into children – this occurred on May 28, 2021 – excess deaths started to rise. By the end of 2021, there were 685 reported, which may not sound like much in the overall scheme of things but it is significant in that fact that the upwards trend has only continued ever since.

Throughout 2022, another 1,385 excess deaths were reported among kids in Europe, followed by another 753 or so in 2023, as of week 45.

“This means that 2,823 more children have died than expected across Europe ever since the EMA extended Emergency Use Authorisation of the COVID-19 vaccine to children,” reports The Exposé.

“But 841 fewer children died than expected during the entire alleged pandemic up until the point the EMA extended Emergency Use Authorisation of the COVID-19 vaccine to children, with minus-841 excess deaths being recorded.”

It is obvious just from these simple figures that something is very wrong with these shots, which are clearly killing children by the thousands. It is just that very few who hold positions of power are willing to acknowledge it, instead blaming other unrelated factors as an excuse.

“As someone said – the ‘vaccines’ are the gift that keeps on giving,” wrote one commenter, also referencing another recent article about the growing number of leprosy cases now being detected among the fully jabbed.

Another cited the following video in which Dr. John Campbell interviewed Andrew Bridgen about an Oct. 20, 2023, debate in the House of Commons about excess deaths.

“Sir Christopher Chope had a lot to do with getting the debate,” this commenter further wrote.

“It is only a half hour debate. Andrew Bridgen will speak for twenty minutes, leaving ten minutes for the minister to respond, but it will be a scripted reply and won’t answer any of his questions. He is confident of getting a three-hour debate.”

“Every MP who pushed the mandates and propaganda on the UK citizens should be in prison for life,” added another. “Deception and unlawfully with full knowledge of harm done to the population of our country.”

“It is tragic that we have almost no such representation in Canada,” commented someone else. “I am keeping hopeful that the UK will become an example that we can point to.”

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2023/11/25/excess-deaths-children-europe-eua-covid-vaccines/

FILE PHOTO ©  Artur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images

The US drugmaker has escalated a dispute with Warsaw over unwanted doses

US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has escalated its feud with Poland over excess Covid-19 vaccine doses that were ordered under a huge contract with the European Union. The company is suing the country over what it claims is an unfulfilled contract for Covid-19 vaccines.

Warsaw was locked into buying tens of millions of doses under a controversial contract the European Commission had signed with Pfizer in 2021 on behalf of EU nations. Pfizer is demanding 6 billion zloty ($1.5 billion) in compensation for 60 million doses that Poland’s government declined, after it stopped taking delivery of the jabs in April 2022.

The entire bloc wound up ordering 1.1 billion doses under the contract, saddling EU states with a vaccine glut as the Covid-19 pandemic waned. The EU prosecutor’s office has already announced an investigation into the procurement process amid allegations of corruption and secret backroom deals while Polish Health Minister Katarzyna Sojka has warned other EU states could be next to face prosecution.

Warsaw has questioned the controversial role of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the Pfizer deal after it emerged she had for weeks privately communicated with the company’s CEO Albert Bourla during the contract negotiations. However, the European Commission claimed last year that her text messages with the big pharma boss on deals worth multiple billions of dollars executive could not be found.

The first hearing in Pfizer’s lawsuit is scheduled to take place in Brussels on December 6. Earlier this year the pharma giant offered to give the EU more time to complete its minimum vaccine purchases under the binding contract, but insisted that the bloc must pay in full for the contractually specified number of doses. Poland since refused to sign a revised EU agreement with the drugmaker.

Sojka told broadcaster TVN24 on Wednesday that there is some hope of resolving the Pfizer lawsuit “in a positive way.”

READ MORE: Pfizer wants EU to keep paying for unused Covid jabs – FT

A Pfizer company spokesman told Politico however that the company decided to go forward with the lawsuit “following a prolonged contract breach and a period of discussions in good faith between the parties,” .

Millions of Poles refused to receive Covid-19 vaccines, and Warsaw halted deliveries of the jabs as an influx of Ukrainian refugees in early 2022 strained the government’s finances.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/587887-pfizer-sues-poland-vaccine/

Eric Zuesse 

Because of Joe Biden’s career-long consistent neoconservatism — he never met a U.S. invasion or coup that he didn’t didn’t like and didn’t assist to happen — he is losing all three of America’s current wars, and each one of them (each of which he inherited from the prior Administrations, because at least since 1980 all U.S. Presidents have been neocons) is a proxy-war by a U.S. client-state or “colony” against an enemy that the U.S. Government has long wanted to “regime-change” (i.e., to take control over):

ISRAEL’S WAR AGAINST PALESTINIANS

Oddly, the neoconservative candidate who pretends not to be, which is RFK Jr., actually gave the most coherent neocon defense of the U.S.’s basic policy regarding America’s 51st state — the undeclared U.S. state in the Middle East, which is Israel:

“Israel is critical, and the reason it’s critical is that it’s the bulwark for us in the mid-east; it’s almost like an aircraft carrier in the mid-east, Israel is our ambassador, it’s our presence, it’s our beachhead in the mid-east; it gives us ears, eyes in the mid-east, it gives us intelligence; it gives us the capacity to take influence in affairs in the mid-east. If Israel disappeared, Russia and China would be controlling and they’d control 90% of the world’s oil supply, and that would be cataclysmic to national security.”

The basic neocon position is that the top strategic objective of U.S. foreign polices isn’t to protect the American people, but instead to retain America’s position as being the world’s most powerful country, #1 in the global pecking-order, especially militarily, so that in any international disagreement, America’s billionaires — the individuals whom America’s Government serves and is controlled by — will have their way regardless of what international law says, and will stand above prosecution, never under prosecution, but instead under the U.S.-imposed “international rules-based order,” which must come to replace any international-law based order (from the U.N.). Irrespective of the truthfulness of RFK Jr.’s statement in that video-clip (and I think it is loaded with lies), the part of it that asserts “If Israel disappeared, Russia and China would be controlling and they’d control 90% of the world’s oil supply, and that would be cataclysmic to national security,” is wildly neocon and false; and here is why:

That 90% figure is exceedingly unlikely, not only because even under the highest estimates of the percentage of global oil (and gas) that Israel might control or even be able to affect, Israel can’t affect more than about 3% — nowhere near 90%. But furthermore: if Israel’s goal of ethnically cleansing all Gazans out of Gaza will succeed, then not ONLY Israel, but ALSO the United States (which provides Israel the weapons and the backup threats against Iran, etc.) will be so much hated in all Muslim-majority countries, so that no Arab potentate will any longer side publicly with the U.S. That international isolation of the U.S. would be vastly more of a danger to U.S. national security than any other outcome in this war (such as America abandoning Israel, and Israel failing to ethnically cleanse Gaza) could even possibly be.

Moreover: all neocons are rabid for regime-change in both Russia and China — and by that measure, RFK Jr.’s statement there (which falsely argues that continued success of China and of Russia would inevitably turn out to be “cataclysmic” — that international relations can’t possibly be win-win for all of mankind) likewise was archetypally neoconservative).

[…]

Joe Biden never speaks so well as RFK Jr. does; but, if ever he were to give a coherent statement of his policies regarding Israel, then this statement from RFK Jr. is as close as I can imagine it being. And, obviously, if Israel will succeed in annihilating or forcing out all Gazans (which is Israel’s policy), then America’s standing in the world will never recover from that.

[…]

And America’s siding now with Israel’s genocide against Gazans will mean that America is going to lose the war in the Middle East, because Israel will lose that war even if its genocide succeeds.

UKRAINE’S WAR AGAINST RUSSIA

Ukraine was neutral between Russia and America until Obama’s brilliantly executed Ukrainian coup, which his Administration started planning by no later than June 2011, culminated successfully in February 2014 and promptly appointed a rabid anti-Russian to impose in regions that rejected the new anti-Russian U.S.-controlled goverment an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” to kill protesters, and, ultimately, to terrorize the residents in those regions in order to kill as many of them as possible and to force the others to flee into Russia so that when elections would be held, pro-Russian voters would no longer be in the electorate.

The war in Ukriane started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said; but Russia responded militarily on 24 February 2022 in order to prevent Ukraine from allowing the U.S. to place a missile there a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying-time away from The Kremlin and thus too brief for Russia to respond before its central command would already be beheaded by America’s nuclear strike.

However, even after at least $360 billion in support to Ukraine’s war against Russia after Russia’s invasion, from the U.S. and its colonies and their IMF, Ukraiine’s prospects of winning against Russia have been declining not increasing throughout the course of the war and are now close to nil.

AMERICA’S WAR AGAINST CHINA

Whereas in 2015, America was, by a margin of 0.29%, larger an economy than China was, China now is, by a margin of 3.4%, a larger economy than America is; and China’s economic dominance on the basis of economic size is increasing every year because each and every year, China grows its economy by a bigger and bigger percentage than America’s does, as a consequence of which, China is leaving the U.S. farther and farther behind each and every year.

Furthermore, whereas in 1980, the EU, which America’s CIA had created, was 4.54% larger an economy than the U.S. itself was, the EU’s economy in 2015 was 1.07% smaller than #1 America’s was, and 0.78% smaller than #2 China’s was: the EU was #3.

Whereas the U.S. was 21.32% of the world’s economy in 1980, it became 15.42% in 2023 — a 28% decline: clearly a declining economic power. So: by the time of 2015, the U.S. decided for war against China, but also against Europe — despite Europe’s declining faster than the U.S. did. That’s the reason why the U.S. Government, which is controlled by America’s thousand-or-so billionaires, sharply ratcheted-up their anti-China propaganda at that time. And it’s also the reason why America’s sanctions against Russia harmed also America’s European ‘allies’: America’s billionaires aim to be #1 again.

[…]

Via https://theduran.com/bidens-america-is-now-losing-three-wars-simultaneously/

Days before the arrests, “two Palestinian paramedics had been arrested by the Israeli occupation forces”, said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from southern Gaza on Thursday.

“This gives a clear sign that there is no immunity inside the Gaza Strip, neither for medical workers, civil defence crews or even journalists, as the attacks have reached all classes in the Palestinian community.”

Al-Shifa Hospital has been a major focus of Israel’s ground offensive in northern Gaza. The army ordered an evacuation of the facility on Saturday, but the handful of staff remaining there say there are about 180 patients still inside.

The Israeli army, which raided the hospital last week, allege that Hamas fighters used a tunnel complex beneath the facility in Gaza City to stage attacks. Hamas and hospital officials have repeatedly denied the claims.

Indonesian Hospital

Meanwhile on Thursday, Munir al-Bursh, the director-general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the Israeli army gave people in the Indonesian Hospital just hours to evacuate the facility in northern Gaza.

He said there are about 200 patients left at the hospital after some 450 patients were evacuated yesterday, and he told Al Jazeera that bombing continues from all sides in the vicinity.

“This hospital is considered to be the main central hospital that is still operating in the north of the Gaza Strip, alongside another two central hospitals,” Al Jazeera’s Abu Azzoum said, adding that there are patients, medical workers and displaced people inside.

“Both hospitals [al-Shifa and the Indonesian hospital] are witnessing a very serious and even critical condition as the Israeli troops are still encircling and even exerting significant control,” our correspondent said.

On Wednesday, the UN’s humanitarian office said the Israeli army “obstructed” a convoy of ambulances transporting 190 wounded and sick patients from al-Shifa Hospital to the south, resulting in the journey taking almost 20 hours.

The lengthy delay at the Israeli military checkpoint dividing north and south Gaza put “the lives of the wounded and sick people in danger”, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

The medical service has earlier said that 14 of its ambulances, two UN buses and other vehicles were involved in the evacuation of the patients, as well as “a number of medical teams” from al-Shifa Hospital.

The PRCS said three paramedics and a companion of one of the wounded patients were detained for more than three hours in the cold, while the patients were transferred to hospitals in the south.

[…]

Via https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/al-shifa-hospital-director-arrested-by-israeli-army-in-gaza

Etruscan goddess Vamp (origin of English words vamp and vampire)

Episode 5 The Etruscan Afterlife

The Mysterious Etruscans

Dr Steven L Tuck (2016)

Film Review

Most details about Etruscan civilization come from the writings of Roman historians, including Cicero and the emperor Claudius.

Like the Sumerians (as portrayed in the epic of Gigamesh), the Etruscans believed the deceased voyaged across the sea to an island paradise. In early civilization, it was fairly typical for the deceased to cross rivers to reach Paradise. In the Bible, four rivers surround the Garden of Eden. Five rivers, including the River Styx, border the Greek afterlife.

Etruscans traveled to their afterlife on the back of a hippocampus, aea monster with a horse’s head and neck and a fish’s body. They were guided by an winged Etruscan deity known as Vamp (origin of the English words vamp and vampire).

The Etruscans’ afterlife featured, dancing, music, athletic games, feasting, flowers that bloomed year-round and weather that was never rainy or cold. There were no buildings, crops, roads, government, religion or crafts in the Etruscan afterlife.

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who founded a famous school in the Greek colony of Cronton in southern Italy, described the Etruscan afterlife as a place of “ideal peace and harmony.” According to Tuck, as the Etruscans adopted aspects of the Greek underworld, it lost if color and was filled with mists.

Hate (Hades) and Persepne (Persephone), the Greek king and queen of Hades, appear in Etruscan mythology after the fourth century. Likewise serpents and demons appear in afterlife depictions in Etruscan tombs. This seems to reflect an increased atmosphere of chaos and pessimism stemming from continual military attacks from Greece and Rome.*

After the fourth century BC, Keru waits at the entrance to the afterlife, along with Vamp. He and various monsters and demons holding snakes try to block admittance to people who don’t belong there.**

In some depictions, the Etruscan Scylla (an attractive woman with a dolphin tail with vicious dogs sprouting from her waist) also guards the afterlife entrance.

*Etruria’s military downfall began in 474 BC, when they allied with Athens to declare war on Syracuse. This led to reprisal attacks on numerous Etruscan cities. In 350 BC they also lost a battle against the Celts in Italy’s northern Po Valley.

**This may stem from Hades’ kidnapping (in Greek mythology) of Persephone and dragging her to the underworld before her time.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/239710/239619

By Jeffrey Tucker

An enduring mystery for three years is how Donald Trump came to be the president who shut down American society for what turned out to be a manageable respiratory virus, setting off an unspeakable crisis with waves of destructive fallout that continue to this day.

Let’s review the timeline and offer some well-founded speculations about what happened.

On March 9, 2020, Trump was still of the opinion that the virus could be handled by normal means.

Two days later, he changed his tune. He was ready to use the full power of the federal government in a war on the virus.

What changed? Deborah Birx reports in her book that Trump had a friend die in a New York hospital and this is what shifted his opinion. Jared Kushner reports that he simply listened to reason. Mike Pence says he was persuaded that his staff would respect him more. No question (and based on all existing reports) that he found himself surrounded by “trusted advisors” amounting to about 5 or so people (including Mike Pence and Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb)

It was only a week later when Trump issued the edict to close all “indoor and outdoor venues where people congregate,” initiating the biggest regime change in US history that flew in the face of all rights and liberties Americans had previously taken for granted. It was the ultimate in political triangulation: as John F. Kennedy cut taxes, Nixon opened China, and Clinton reformed welfare, Trump shut down the economy he promised to revive. This action confounded critics on all sides.

A month later, Trump said his decision to have “turned off” the economy saved millions of lives, later even claiming to have saved billions. He has yet to admit error.

Even as late as June 23rd of that year, Trump was demanding credit for having followed all of Fauci’s recommendations. Why do they love him and hate me, he wanted to know.

Something about this story has never really added up. How could one person have been so persuaded by a handful of others such as Fauci, Birx, Pence, and Kushner and his friends? He surely had other sources of information – some other scenario or intelligence – that fed into his disastrous decision.

In one version of events, his advisors simply pointed to the supposed success of Xi Jinping in enacting lockdowns in Wuhan, which the World Health Organization claimed had stopped infections and brought the virus under control. Perhaps his advisors flattered Trump with the observation that he is at least as great as the president of China so he should be bold and enact the same policies here.

One problem with this scenario is timing. The Oval Office meetings that preceded his March 16, 2020, edict took place the weekend of the 14th and 15th, Friday and Saturday. It was already clear by the 11th that Trump was ready for lockdowns. This was the same day as Fauci’s deliberately misleading testimony to the House Oversight Committee in which he rattled the room with predictions of Hollywood-style carnage.

On the 12th, Trump shut all travel from Europe, the UK, and Australia, causing huge human pile-ups at international airports. On the 13th, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a classified document that transferred control of pandemic policy from the CDC to the National Security Council and eventually the Department of Homeland Security. By the time that Trump met with Fauci and Birx in that legendary weekend, the country was already under quasi-martial law.

Isolating the date in the trajectory here, it is apparent that whatever happened to change Trump occurred on March 10, 2020, the day after his Tweet saying there should be no shutdowns and one day before Fauci’s testimony.

That something very likely revolves around the most substantial discovery we’ve made in three years of investigations. It was Debbie Lerman who first cracked the code: Covid policy was forged not by the public-health bureaucracies but by the national-security sector of the administrative state. She has further explained that this occurred because of two critical features of the response: 1) the belief that this virus came from a lab leak, and 2) the vaccine was the biosecurity countermeasure pushed by the same people as the fix. 

Knowing this, we gain greater insight into 1) why Trump changed his mind, 2) why he has never explained this momentous decision and otherwise completely avoids the topic, and 3) why it has been so unbearably difficult to find out any information about these mysterious few days other than the pablum served up in books designed to earn royalties for authors like Birx, Pence, and Kushner.

Based on a number of second-hand reports, all available clues we have assembled, and the context of the times, the following scenario seems most likely. On March 10, and in response to Trump’s dismissive tweet the day before, some trusted sources within and around the National Security Council (Matthew Pottinger and Michael Callahan, for example), and probably involving some from military command and others, came to Trump to let him know a highly classified secret.

Imagine a scene from Get Smart with the Cone of Silence, for example. These are the events in the life of statecraft that infuse powerful people with a sense of their personal awesomeness. The fate of all of society rests on their shoulders and the decisions they make at this point. Of course they are sworn to intense secrecy following the great reveal.

The revelation was that the virus was not a textbook virus but something far more threatening and terrible. It came from a research lab in Wuhan. It might in fact be a bioweapon. This is why Xi had to do extreme things to protect his people. The US should do the same, they said, and there is a fix available too and it is being carefully guarded by the military.

It seems that the virus had already been mapped in order to make a vaccine to protect the population. Thanks to 20 years of research on mRNA platforms, they told him,  this vaccine can be rolled out in months, not years. That means that Trump can lock down and distribute vaccines to save everyone from the China virus, all in time for the election. Doing this would not only assure his reelection but guarantee that he would go down in history as one of the greatest US presidents of all time.

This meeting might only have lasted an hour or two – and might have included a parade of people with the highest-level security clearances – but it was enough to convince Trump. After all, he had battled China for two previous years, imposing tariffs and making all sorts of threats. It was easy to believe at that point that China might have initiated biological warfare as retaliation. That’s why he made the decision to use all the power of the presidency to push a lockdown under emergency rule.

To be sure, the Constitution does not allow him to override the discretion of the states but with the weight of the office complete with enough funding and persuasion, he could make it happen. And thus did he make the fateful decision that not only wrecked his presidency but the country too, imposing harms that will last a generation.

It only took a few weeks for Trump to become suspicious about what happened. For weeks and months, he toggled between believing that he was tricked and believing that he did the right thing. He had already approved another 30 days of lockdowns and even inveighed against Georgia and later Florida for opening. He went so far as to claim that no state could open without his approval.

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/how-they-convinced-trump-to-lock-down/