SC282-11

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57694.htm

Brzezinski's Warning

The Vilnius Summit Communique is a crude attempt to NATO-ize Washington’s list of enemies in order to enlist broader support for the impending global conflict. The intended targets of this campaign are Russia and China, the main opponents of the so-called “rules-based order”. Neither of these countries pose a direct security threat to NATO or the United States, but their sudden re-emergence on the Asian continent makes them Washington’s de facto enemy. The United States is determined to dominate Central Asia, which means that all potential rivals must be contained or crushed. The purpose of the Vilnius Communiqué is to identify these rivals, divulge their alleged offenses, and denounce them in the harshest terms possible. This is how NATO makes its case for war and lays the groundwork for future hostilities. This is an excerpt from the Communique:

The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area… Russia bears full responsibility for its illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine, which has gravely undermined Euro-Atlantic and global security and for which it must be held fully accountable. We continue to condemn in the strongest terms Russia’s blatant violations of international law, the Charter of the United Nations, and OSCE commitments and principles. We do not and will never recognize Russia’s illegal and illegitimate annexations, including Crimea. There can be no impunity for Russian war crimes and other atrocities, such as attacks against civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure that deprives millions of Ukrainians of basic human services. All those responsible must be held accountable for violations and abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law, particularly against Ukraine’s civilian population…. Vilnius Summit Communiqué, NATO

The strident tone of the announcement is intended to quash any counter-argument or opinion. The author’s approach is rigid and inflexible. Russia is portrayed as a serial offender with whom negotiations are impossible. Thus, diplomacy is reflexively precluded with a wave of the hand. The only way to deal with a war criminal is though military force. That is the underlying message of the Communiqué. Peace talks must be avoided at all cost so that Russia can be dealt a strategic defeat in Ukraine. That remains the primary objective. Here’s more from the Communiqué:

Russia must immediately stop this illegal war of aggression, cease its use of force against Ukraine, and completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its forces and equipment from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters. Vilnius Summit Communiqué, NATO

There is a delusional quality to the Communiqué that has drawn a fair amount of criticism from all quarters. Why would the authors embarrass themselves by making demands that they can’t back-up on the battlefield? After 17 months of fighting, reasonable people can agree that Russia is winning the war, and winning it handily. There will be no “unconditional withdraw of Russian forces and equipment” nor will Ukraine recapture the territory it has lost. Zelensky was given the opportunity to accept those concessions early-on, but chose to follow Washington’s diktat instead. Now Ukraine is hopelessly divided and no longer exists as a viable, contiguous state. That was Zelensky’s choice not Putin’s. Here’s more from the Communique:

We will continue to ensure our collective defense from all threats, no matter where they stem from, based on a 360-degree approach, to fulfill NATO’s three core tasks of deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security.” Vilnius Summit Communiqué, NATO

This is how NATO’s mandarins have decided to announce the organization’s transformation from a regional security alliance to a global gendarmerie free to conduct military operations wherever Washington’s dominance is challenged. There is considerable disagreement on this issue among the members, many of who think that NATO should limit its activities to the European theater. So, it is instructive that the above excerpt was put in the Communique at all. What it shows is that NATO policy is not decided by the individual members or their respective parliaments, but by the billionaire elites who have a stranglehold on Washington and who have decided that NATO is the preferred vehicle for prosecuting their war on China. This is a clip from Time Magazine:

NATO is continuing to gradually move toward the Asia-Pacific region to counter China’s increasing power…..

For the second consecutive year, Japan and South Korea, which are not NATO members, were invited to attend the annual summit. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida walked away with a so-called “partnership program” with NATO, a five-page agreement that aims to strengthen defense cooperation between Japan and the alliance, up to the fielding of joint exercises. The NATO joint communique stated in no uncertain terms that China is a potential threat that needs to be taken seriously…. NATO, it seems, is making a concerted decision to add Asia to its docket at a time when the alliance has its hands full managing Europe’s largest war since 1945….

NATO’s rationale for venturing into Asian security affairs is clear enough. The U.S. categorizes China as its “pacing challenge,” a country that seeks to displace Washington as the world’s leading center of gravity. Why NATO’s Growing Interest in Asia Is a Mistake, Time Magazine

The benefits of deploying NATO to the Asia-Pacific cannot be overstated. First, NATO involvement creates the impression that a broad coalition of nations support US warmongering in Asia. Second, the expense of any Asian military intervention will be shared among the 31 members. And, third, a stronger NATO-US alliance divides the world into warring blocs (similar to the Cold War) which is what Washington now seeks since it finally realizes that control of China will remain in the hands of the Communist Party and will not be transferred to Western oligarchs.(as planned) A bifurcated world, preserves Washington’s dominance of the West which is critical to prosecuting its long-term war on Russia and China. Here’s more from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:

The declaration adopted this week by the heads of state and government of the 31 NATO members in Vilnius, Lithuania is a blueprint for global war. Only a fraction of the 24-page document deals with the central issue of the summit, the war in Ukraine. In the rest, NATO declares its intention to impose its will on the entire world. Hardly any continent and region are left out in what the document calls NATO’s “360-degree approach.”….

A central focus of the communique is on China, which is accused of employing “a broad range of political, economic, and military tools to increase its global footprint and project power.” It is damaging the alliance’s security with “malicious hybrid and cyber operations” and “confrontational rhetoric and disinformation,” and is attempting “to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains.”…

the “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization has been transformed into a Frankenstein monster that asserts its interests and “values” in every part of the globe.… Vilnius NATO summit unveils plans for global domination, World Socialist Web Site

There is a striking similarity between the NATO Communique and the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy. In fact, we suspect that the authors may have collaborated on the text. In any event, the laser-like focus on China as an emerging threat is a recurrent theme in both documents as is the inference that the United States –which has grown increasingly uncompetitive over the last three decades– must use military force to preserve its position in the global order. Here’s a brief clip from the NSS:

The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it. Beijing has ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the
world’s leading power. It is using its technological capacity and increasing influence over
international institutions to create more permissive conditions for its own authoritarian model…

Our strategy toward the PRC is threefold: 1) to invest in the foundations of our strength at home – our competitiveness, our innovation, our resilience, our democracy…

In the competition with the PRC, as in other arenas, it is clear that the next ten years will be the decisive decade. We stand now at the inflection point, where the choices we make and the priorities we pursue today will set us on a course that determines our competitive position long into the future.
US National Security Strategy, White House

The NSS refers to “competition” four times in this short excerpt and yet nowhere do we see any indication that Washington is taking steps to improve competitiveness. There is no federal program for improving critical infrastructure. There is no federal program for improving education. There is no federal program for expanding worker training or for supporting the industries and technologies of the future. The United States has basically given up on competition altogether, realizing that the Robber Barons who control the system are determined to extract as much wealth as they can rather than recycle their profits into productive outlets that would make the country more competitive. This is why “the world’s largest economy” can no longer compete with China. China’s state-led model is vastly superior to America’s extractive model.

How do the Chinese feel about all of this? How do they like the idea of being blamed for the voracious greed of US elites who threw the American worker under the bus 3 decades ago so they could make bigger profits on China’s low-paid workforce? How do they like being lambasted for their success or criticized for putting their capital to work on more productive ventures? How do they like the prospect of a hostile military alliance taking root in their neighborhood so they can stir up trouble and provide aid to China’s enemies? Check out this blurb from the Global Times:

NATO’s strategic impulse to meddle in the Asia-Pacific region is also imminent at this summit. Expanding cooperation with the four “Asia-Pacific partners” – Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand – is another major topic of the summit. In this regard, the US media boldly stated that NATO is trying to “deter China’s strategic ambitions.”

This is the second year that Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand have been invited to the NATO summit. In order to firmly rope in these four countries, NATO imitated the “Quad” mechanism of the US, Japan, India and Australia at last year’s summit, and specially created a new name for these four countries called “Asia-Pacific Four (AP4).” This aims to institutionalize the cooperation between these four countries and NATO, and make them de facto new allies of “NATO+” in the Asia-Pacific region….

There are 31 NATO members, but they have … been kidnapped by the panic and tension instigated by the US, becoming “Washington’s axe, spears and shovels.” Wherever NATO goes, wars are likely to break out. These are not only the subjective impressions left by NATO, but also objective facts to a large extent….

NATO must promptly withdraw the black hand it has extended toward the Asia-Pacific region, and it should not even think about squeezing half of its body in the future. Apart from certain… the majority of countries in Asia not only do not welcome NATO but also see it as a terrible monster that should be avoided at all costs. This is because NATO only brings security risks, war threats, and development predicament to Asia….

The transatlantic military alliance… is now extending its reach into the Asia-Pacific region. Its ulterior motives are well-known in the international community. Inciting division and hatred, creating group confrontations, and causing chaos in Europe, they now seek to disrupt the peace in the Asia-Pacific region. We firmly resist this, together with the majority of countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Two Stern Warnings Must be Given to NATO, Global Times

Clearly, China is not happy with these developments, and why should they be? After all, the US never stops preaching about the wonderous symmetry of the “free market” until, of course, some upstart country in Asia uses that free market to its own advantage and becomes the unrivaled engine of global growth. That’s when Uncle Sam does a quick about-face claiming that China’s success is the result of “coercive policies that challenge our interests, security and values.”

But don’t be deceived; it’s just jealousy.

Brzezinski’s Warning

Washington’s grandiose plan to confront Russia and China at the same time illustrates the shortcomings of a policy-making body that has eliminated anyone whose views veer even slightly from the warmongering consensus. (“Groupthink” writ large) It’s interesting to note that the main architect of Washington’s plan to rule the world, Zbigniew Brzezinski, eventually abandoned the idea altogether and called for forging ties with Russia and China. In an article that was written shortly before his death, Brzezinski said the following:

As its era of global dominance ends, the United States needs to take the lead in realigning the global power architecture…

the United States is still the world’s politically, economically, and militarily most powerful entity but, given complex geopolitical shifts in regional balances, it is no longer the globally imperial power….

the United States must take the lead in realigning the global power architecture in such a way that the violence …can be contained without destroying the global order.…

a long and painful road toward an initially limited regional accommodation is the only viable option for the United States, Russia, China, and the pertinent Middle Eastern entities. For the United States, that will require patient persistence in forging cooperative relationships with some new partners (particularly Russia and China)…

The fact is that there has never been a truly “dominant” global power until the emergence of America on the world scene…. During the latter part of the 20th century no other power even came close. That era is now ending. Toward a Global Realignment, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The American Interest)

Brzezinski is right. Instead of creating more enemies who seek to destroy us, the US should be looking for ways to ease the transition to a world in which one center of power no longer dictates policy. That doesn’t mean America should not defend its vital interests. It simply means that policymakers must realize that the world has fundamentally changed and we must change with it.

....

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57692.htm

Across the West, people are dying in greater numbers. Nobody wants to learn why

There’s only one plausible explanation for continuing silence on excess deaths: governments, media and regulators are frightened of what the research may uncover.

During the pandemic, the challenge for each of us was to maintain critical distance: spurning both the tribalism of those insisting Covid was a hoax and the counter-tribalism of those who demanded complete acquiesence to a corporate-political agenda dictated by Big Pharma under the mantle of “Follow the science”.

Fear of living under Big Brother or of dying from plague drove many people not only into the arms of one of these two oppositional camps but fuelled a pandemic mania in which reason and compassion were replaced with either extreme cynicism or extreme compliance. We are still living with the consequences.

There has been a spate of “excess deaths” over the past two years across the West – well above what would normally be expected – and yet this sustained trend is being universally ignored by governments, establishment media and medical bodies. No one is protesting. The cult of compliance is still in the ascendant.

More on that in a moment.

But it is worth first revisiting briefly the climate of intolerance and willed ignorance that predominated at the height of the pandemic, as I documented in real time in a series of essays that upset more of my readers than any I had written before.

It was always unwarranted to press for vaccine mandates, if only because they violated the critically important principle of bodily autonomy. But the demand became completely unhinged once it was clear – as it was much earlier than publicly let on by Big Pharma, the World Health Organisation and national regulators – that the vaccines were doing little to halt virus transmission.

Similarly, it was always unethical to insist that children should be routinely given the vaccine and boosters when it was evident that the virus posed no threat to the overwhelming majority of them – and all the more so given that the mRNA vaccines were based on a new technology whose development had been rushed through on an emergency licence.

By definition, no one could know the long-term effects of mRNA vaccines on humans because there had been no long-term studies. The science was built on a wing and a prayer, which is part of the reason the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation, the British government’s official advisory body on vaccinations, demurred for so long, and despite huge political pressure, on recommending vaccination for children.

And it was always deeply irresponsible to refuse to consider, or even study, other treatments that might have had an impact on the virus. Medical authorities ignored or warned the public off potential prophylactics and immunity-boosting treatments and behaviours – even when those interventions could have complemented the role of the vaccines, rather than serving as an alternative to them.

Nothing could be allowed to dilute the public’s exclusive reliance on vaccinations.

One prize example was Vitamin D, the sunshine hormone that, uniquely, every cell in the human body has a receptor for. Most people in the West are deficient in Vitamin D, many of them severely so, and doctors still have little understanding of what the consequences of that deficiency – beyond osteoporosis – might be.

Even before Covid, there were many studies suggesting that Vitamin D was critical to improving the health of our immune systems, including by warding off and aiding recovery from coronaviruses. That evidence has only grown stronger subsequently.

But definitive proof has been lacking because full-scale controlled studies are extraordinarily expensive and only Big Pharma has deep enough pockets to fund such studies (given that our captured governments refuse to dig deep themselves), but Big Pharma has no interest in proving a cheap hormone like Vitamin D – one it cannot patent or profit from – might offer the public health benefits not only in relation to Covid but for a wide range of chronic health conditions.

The fact that most medical regulators and media commentators continue to prefer to shut down debate about the potential benefits of Vitamin D rather than demand that governments fund research to confirm or refute the growing body of evidence for such benefits should be a scandal. But, predictably, it isn’t.

Blanket silence

I set this out as a preface to this latest scandal on excess deaths, one that – like so much else related to the pandemic and its aftermath – continues to elicit a blanket silence from the establishment media, politicians and, of course, our medical authorities.

The consistent and markedly elevated death rates each month across most of the Western world are not due to Covid and are far above the seasonal five-year average before the pandemic.

Such deaths have been significantly raised since late 2020 or mid-2021. That is all the more surprising because, after early waves of Covid killed off those who were already sick and vulnerable, the expectation was that excess deaths would fall, not rise. That anomaly needs explaining – scientifically.

Despite the backlash inevitably provoked by asking critical questions, I want to examine this development because it highlights something important about the way of our supposedly democratic governments, and the regulatory and adversarial institutions meant to hold them in check, have been hollowed out. We imagine we live in societies where scientific reason and compassion guide our response to a medical crisis. The reality is different. In our societies, one thing rules: money.

The issue of excess deaths is only one of many problems – though probably the most serious – that have emerged in the aftermath of the pandemic. Unless you have made an extraordinary effort to do your own research and managed to evade the internet censors and their algorithms, you will most likely not know about these developments. Neither politicians nor establishment media have publicised them.

Instead troubling data is buried away in obscure, peer-reviewed scientific journals, or has to be squeezed out of government authorities through freedom of information requests – and even then the information is often heavily redacted.

Such data would remain largely unnoticed but for the efforts of a few brave souls daring to draw attention to it – only to be smeared as cranks and crackpots, whatever their formal qualifications.

Dr John Campbell, whose Youtube channel became an invaluable internet resource during the pandemic and since (at least for those trying to sift the wheat from the chaff), has done sterling work shedding light on many of those problems.

Some notable videos have covered:

• the mishandling and lack of oversight of Pfizer’s research into its vaccine;
• the astounding admission that Pfizer never actually tested whether its vaccine stopped transmission;
• continuing efforts to obscure evidence demonstrating that natural infection confers superior immunity to the vaccine;
• the troubling discovery that mRNA can remain in the blood for at least a month after vaccination, with no understanding of what it might be doing in that time to our immune systems;
• high variation in adverse reactions caused by different batches of mRNA vaccine, with some off the scale;
• the involvement of US researchers and Pfizer in engineering Frankenstein’s monster-type coronaviruses of the very kind that, it increasingly seems, led to the Covid pandemic in the first place;
• new research demonstrating the lack of evidence for reduction in virus transmission from masking;
• the failure of policymakers to weigh the serious financial, social and possibly medical costs of lockdowns;
• and a causal connection, confirmed by the WHO, between vaccination and the development of autoimmune disease like multiple sclerosis.

There is doubtless much worse, but we cannot learn of it – at least from qualified sources – because any effort to discuss it publicly will almost certainly result in banning by the corporations that run social media, our modern town squares.

For his efforts shining a light into the darkest recesses of the West’s pandemic response, Dr Campbell has been pilloried by the tribe that still identifies with Big Pharma. Arrogantly, they dismiss him as a glorified “nurse”, even though he has written widely read and authoritative medical textbooks.

More to the point, the smears are designed to distract from the fact that, more often than not, Dr Campbell is not speaking for himself but relaying in intelligible language the findings of peer-reviewed studies or interviewing respected experts in their field to draw attention to their work.

Complete mystery

Nonetheless, the issue of unexplained excess deaths is an order of magnitude more serious than even these other matters, which is why Dr Campbell has dedicated so many of his videos to discussing it.

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>

Many, many thousands more people, including young people, are now dying each month across the Western world (where such data is reliably collected) than should be, compared to previous years. And they are dying for entirely mysterious reasons.

Yet:

This deeply troubling phenomenon barely merits a mention from politicians, the media or medical authorities.

Governments are failing to fund research to determine the causes of these extra deaths, even though the rates have been elevated for two years or more.

This reckless, self-imposed climate of ignorance is being sustained even as expert medical bodies warn that we face future pandemics.

It is almost as if Western governments prefer to let large numbers of people die unnecessarily, and potentially at great cost to health care services, rather than learn the truth. It seems these governments are quite happy, if they believe another pandemic is on the way, to risk repeating any mistakes they made during Covid that may have caused those excess deaths.

In a world where we are supposed to “follow the science”, how can that possibly be the case? What is going on?

If we try to understand why a blind eye is being turned to the shocking data showing a sustained and unexplained rise in deaths, it is hard not to arrive at one, and only one, conclusion.

Governments, establishment media and the medical regulators are frightened. They are scared of what they may discover if the research is carried out.

And that suggests something further. That these are not groups with their own discrete or competing interests and agendas.

The media, whatever it claims, is not a watchdog on government or the medical establishment. It colludes with them against the public. In fact, the corporate interests of all three are closely aligned.

Why? Because the government is captured by Big Business. Because the medical authorities are funded by Big Pharma, which can make or break careers. And because the media is owned by billionaires, and serves as little more than the public relations arm of concentrated wealth and as cheerleader for a neoliberalism that normalises the criminal profiteering of drug manufacturers like Pfizer.

Cultivated ignorance

Before I continue further, let me state unequivocally – because sadly, these things need emphasising in our ever-more tribal, polarised societies – that I have no idea what is causing this wave of excess deaths.

The point of this piece is not to pre-judge the matter or adopt a tribal position.

Rather, I’m trying de-tribalise your and my own thinking so that we can better understand why our governments and medical agencies prefer that no research is conducted, and why our establishment media chooses not to expose this glaring failure.

Dr Vibeke Manniche, a member of the Danish medical team whose peer-reviewed research showed that some batches of the mRNA vaccine caused off-the-scale adverse reactions, believes there are likely to be an array of contributory factors. That sounds right to me.

Her team are now undertaking as their next project an investigation into the mysterious rise in deaths. It is their private initiative, rather than research funded, organised or assisted by the Danish government. In fact, according to Dr Manniche, Danish authorities have been throwing obstacles in their way.

But why are these authorities so afraid?

The answer is simple. They suspect that any research will implicate them in those excess deaths. They are frightened – rightly or wrongly – that the narrative they constructed around the pandemic, and the powers they accrued to themselves, will unravel.

The reason they are in no hurry to find out why so many extra people are dying is because they fear that significant contributory factors are either the lockdown policies they imposed or the side-effects of the vaccines they championed – or both.

Again, I’m not saying that is what I think. I have no expertise to evaluate all the possible causes, including the ongoing erosion of socialised health care in much of the Western world and its transfer to yet more corporate profiteers – for which our governments areundoubtedly responsible.

But governments and medical regulators have access to the same data and graphs as Dr Manniche, showing a relentless and near-identical rise in excess deaths beginning in spring 2021 in Denmark, Norway and Finland, in the immediate wake of the mass vaccine rollout. Similar graphs are available for other Western states.

The inference that there is a connection between the vaccines and excess deaths may be wrong. But it is not a hypothesis they wish to test. The consequences are far too serious for them. They would rather enforce general ignorance, or perpetrate a deception on the public, than risk undermining their own authority – and the crucial levers they control both to sustain their privileges and to further concentrate their wealth.

There are some uncomfortable lessons here for us all.

The truth is Western governments – all of them – dare not test the evidentiary basis for their insistence on lockdowns and experimental vaccines as the only way out of the pandemic. They dare not do so in the full glare of public scrutiny for fear that the truth will not serve them, and more likely will damage them. So they cultivate public ignorance.

The truth is that the medical regulatory authorities were long ago captured by Big Pharma, and the revolving door it offers, leading to prestigious jobs and lucrative salaries in the industry. So they favour public ignorance too.

The truth is that the media will not hold the feet of governments or the medical establishment to the fire because, whatever the media claim, they are not in the business of enforcing real, systemic accountability. The billionaire-owned media corporations are embedded in the same model of corporate profit as Big Pharma. Indeed, the media’s own corporate profits depend on the advertising and sponsorship of drugs companies – fellow corporations – like Pfizer. So they benefit from public ignorance as well.

World of illusion

We live in a world not, as we are told and tell ourselves, of democratic accountability and transparency. Beyond formal, surface appearances, the system of political, economic and social control is designed to lack all but the most minimal checks and balances, institutional safeguards and oversight.

We live in a world of illusion, of elites that look out for their own, that develop ever more sophisticated technological tools to manipulate and deceive us, and that have progressively rigged the system to accrue to themselves ever more wealth and power.

We are not, as we like to imagine, informed citizens. The system cannot afford to provide us with the information we need to be informed – information that might reveal to us that we have been duped, that the rich steal from the poor to give to themselves, that our rulers have no clue how to fix the biggest problems facing us, aside from lining their pockets with more gold as the ship goes down.

As the last year has demonstrated, our elites had no more idea how to deal with the pandemic than they currently do with the climate crisis, or with the Ukraine war (without risking nuclear conflagration), or with rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence. Faced with the biggest challenges, they are like children – shouting “Follow the Science” or “Green New Deal” to distract the rest of us as they grab as many sweets as they can thrust into their pockets.

For these elites, Covid was a party – quite literally in the case of the British government – in which the biggest corporations not only profiteered but drove small businesses into the ground. Excess deaths are but a hangover, one that must be studiously ignored if the fiction of responsible, accountable, democratic government is to be maintained.

Our world has been carefully constructed to ensure we do not get to peek behind the curtain, to see the con-men at work. Unless we dispel this central illusion – that science, reason and compassion are the forces driving the West – the charlatans will take us with them over the edge of the cliff in their pursuit of suicidal “economic growth” and chimerical “progress”.