Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 376

Saudi Arabia and Iran Among Six New BRICS Nations

Al Jazeera

Johannesburg, South Africa – Saudi Arabia and Iran are among six countries invited to join BRICS as new members next year, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced on the final day of a summit of the group that considers itself a counterweight to Western powers.

The group encompassing five major emerging economies – China, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and India – which makes decisions by consensus, agreed on “the guiding principles, standards, criteria and procedures of the BRICS expansion process”, during the three-day annual summit held in Johannesburg this week, Ramaphosa said on Thursday.

Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to join as full members from January 1 next year.

“This membership expansion is historic,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“The expansion is also a new starting point for BRICS cooperation. It will bring new vigour to the BRICS cooperation mechanism and further strengthen the force for world peace and development.”

A senior adviser to Iran’s president on Thursday welcomed the country’s admission to the grouping.

“Permanent membership in the group of global emerging economies is considered a historic development and a strategic success for the foreign policy of the Islamic republic,” Mohammad Jamshidi wrote on X, which was previously known as Twitter.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed hailed what he called “a great moment” for his country.

“Ethiopia stands ready to cooperate with all for an inclusive and prosperous global order,” Abiy said on Twitter.

“We look forward to develop this cooperation to create new developmental and economic opportunities and elevate our relationship to the aspired level,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said at the summit on Thursday.

Later, he told Saudi channel Al Arabiya that the kingdom welcomed the invitation and would review the details in order to make an “appropriate decision” ahead of the proposed joining date.

The core group of five BRICS countries has been discussing the issue of expansion for more than a year, Ramaphosa said, and the new members were invited this week after an agreement was reached at the summit.

The expansion of the group is part of its plan to build dominance and reshape global governance into a “multipolar” world order that puts voices of the Global South at the centre of the world agenda.

The inclusion of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran and Egypt marks the first MENA representation in the group, and the inclusion of Argentina was championed by member Brazil.

Expansion was pushed heavily by Russia and China, analysts said, as they are facing pushback from Western nations in the form of sanctions.

Other BRICS countries were initially more ambivalent, but leaders came out in vocal support of the plan this week.

The grouping of emerging economies has been in formal existence for 15 years. Some experts told Al Jazeera that it has not achieved much and the diffuse nature of their political and social interests means BRICS leaders do not always agree on issues. Some say that has prevented them from becoming a more powerful or effective entity.

“What [BRICS is] trying to achieve in a way is being opened up for more discussion,” Danny Bradlow, a professor with the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, told Al Jazeera ahead of the summit. “As long as it was just the five countries, they were talking about the reform of global economic governance or global governance generally … But they haven’t done very much about that.

“Getting agreements among the five has not been all that easy,” he said. “If they expand membership, that makes it even more complicated. But it also depends on who they take on as the new members.”

More than 40 countries had expressed interest in joining BRICS, and 23 formally applied to join the club, which already represented a quarter of the global economy and 40 percent of the world’s population.

Some 50 other heads of state and leaders are attending the summit in South Africa, which concludes on Thursday.

[…]

Via https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/8/24/saudi-arabia-iran-to-join-brics-as-grouping-admits-six-new-members

Global Campaign Against Ocean Dumping of Nuclear Wastewater Worldwide Urgent Actions against Japan’s ocean dumping of nuclear wastewater on Aug 24th.

Antinuclear

1. The USA

Los Angeles, Aug 23rd, 12 – 1 PM @ Japanese ConsulateNew York, Aug 23rd, 12 – 1 PM @ Japanese Consulate  (E 49th St & Park Ave.)Washington DC, Aug 25th, 11am @ Japanese EmbassySeattle, Washington, Aug 26th, 2pm @ Seattle Downtown  ‘West Lake Park’

Organized by Global Candlelight Action

2. UK

North Wales, Aug 25th, 5pm @ Bangor pier

Organized by PAWB ( People Against Wylfa B) and CADNO

3. Germany

Berlin, Aug25th, 5 pm @ Brandenburg GateFrankfurt, Aug 26th, 3 pm @ Rathenauplatz (Goetheplatz)Hamburk, September 9th

Organized by Global Candlelight Action

4. Fiji

Suva, Aug 25th, 10am @ Japanese Embassy

Organized by PANG, Alliance for Future Generations, Pacific Conference of Churches; FWRM, DIVA for Equality and others joining the March including the largest Indigenous women’s network.

5. Japan

Tokyo, Aug 22nd @ Japanese PM houseTokyo, Aug 23rd @ TEPCOFukushima Iwaki, Aug 27th

Organized by Japanese CSOs alliances

6. Switzerland

Zurich, September 16th

Organized by Global Candlelight Action

7. Canada

Civil Zoom rally, on August 24, 5 pm

Organized by  civil society in Canada

8. Australia

Melbourne, Aug 26th (Sat), 5 pm @ Korea Society of Victoria

Organized by Global Candlelight Action

9. Korea

Seoul, Aug 23rd, 7pm @ Japanese EmbassySeoul, Aug 24th, 7pm @ Japanese EmbassySeoul, Aug 26th, 6pm @ Korea Press Center17 local cities nationwide in Korea hold a press conference and rallies from Aug 22nd~31st

Organized by Korean civil society alliances / Korean Peoples’ Action to Stop Dumping of Fukushima Daiichi Radioactive Water(KPA-SDFDRW)

Via https://antinuclear.net/2023/08/24/global-campaign-against-ocean-dumping-of-nuclear-wastewater-worldwide-urgent-actions-against-japans-ocean-dumping-of-nuclear-wastewater-on-aug-24th/

Helicopter Pilot Forced to Get COVID Vaccine Grounded After Experiencing Rare Strokes

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Tim McAdams, a 59-year-old pilot and health enthusiast loved his work teaching pilots to fly Airbus Helicopters — until Airbus required him to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Three weeks after he got his second Pfizer shot, Tim had two cerebellar strokes — a rare stroke in the cerebellum that accounts for only 1-4% of total strokes.

Tim McAdams, a 59-year-old pilot, health enthusiast, husband and father was content with his job training pilots for Airbus Helicopters — a job he held for over a decade — until Airbus mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for its employees.

Up to that point, Tim and his wife Beth McAdams had approached the vaccine as a question of “risk management,” they told The Defender in an interview. Because Tim was fit, healthy and had no family history of illness, they didn’t think he needed to get the shot, despite repeated urging by Airbus.

“But when my employer mandated it, I thought, ‘Well now all of our retirement plans, everything could be in jeopardy if I have to try to find another job,’” Tim said.

He didn’t qualify for a medical exemption and had no religious beliefs that would exempt him, so they felt he had no choice.

Tim got his first Pfizer shot on Oct. 17, 2021, and the second on Nov. 7, 2021. Three weeks later he had two cerebellar strokes, a rare stroke in the cerebellum that accounts for only 1-4% of total strokes.

“I woke up in the middle of the night, dizzy, throwing up and with difficulty moving my legs. My wife took me to an urgent care facility and they diagnosed me with vertigo,” Tim said.

 

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The hospital sent him home with drugs for nausea. The next night, he said, it happened again. They returned to urgent care.

Although the doctors still thought he was suffering from vertigo, they wanted to observe him overnight in the hospital. But, Tim said, “They only wanted to send me to a hospital within their hospital [system], which was a two-hour ambulance ride away,” even though there were approximately 15 hospitals closer to them in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, metroplex.

“Patient care was not the priority,” Beth said.

Beth and Tim returned home instead. But the next morning when the symptoms returned, they went by ambulance to the nearest hospital. Doctors there told Tim he had suffered two strokes, one on each side of his brain.

“Cerebellar strokes, in themselves, are very rare to begin with,” Beth said. “And then to have them bilaterally was very very strange. We were just shocked. I mean shocked is all I can remember,” because Tim was such a healthy person and had never had any health issues at all.

‘You’ll never ever get a doctor in this facility to admit the vaccine had anything to do with it’

In the hospital, the McAdams asked the doctors repeatedly what could have caused this rare event, but “they always shrugged.”

It didn’t dawn on them that the vaccine could have caused the strokes until Tim’s doctors began questioning them about recent events. They asked whether Tim had fallen, suffered any injuries or done anything at all they could possibly think of that was outside the norm in the previous three months.

“And I told the doctor, ‘Well, the only thing is three weeks prior I got the second shot of the vaccine,’” Tim said. The doctor responded, “‘No, that had nothing to do with it.’ And he walked out.”

“The thing that got me,” Tim said, “is they were telling me they had no idea why it happened, but they were really quick to eliminate only one possible cause, the one change that had happened.”

After the doctor left, a nurse who had been in the room spoke up. “For political reasons, you’ll never ever get a doctor in this facility to admit that the vaccine has anything to do with it,” the nurse said. “But I think it does, and I encourage you to research that and contact VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System).”

Another nurse told Beth that she worked all over the metroplex and had seen countless vaccine injuries. The nurse told them vaccine injuries were “definitely prevalent and needed to be investigated,” but the doctors were “not willing to have a conversation about it, not even willing to say, ‘Well, we’re not sure.’”

That nurse also encouraged them to report Tim’s injury to VAERS.

After that, things took a turn for the worse. While showering in the hospital, Tim started to feel his legs shake and give out. He lurched for the door, seeking help.

Beth said, “I heard this clunk where he opened the hand lever of the bathroom door, opened it a little bit and let out the most horrific moaning scream I’ve ever heard.”

Tim was rapidly becoming paralyzed on his left side as the nurses dragged him to his hospital bed.

“I’m looking at him. Tim can’t talk, he can’t even raise his hand, barely. He’s trying to grab three of his fingers to tell me that he thinks it’s the third stroke,” Beth said.

But it wasn’t another stroke. Tim was suffering from brain swelling, which they treated with drugs and Tim soon returned to normal.

But a few days later, the swelling returned. Beth was awakened in the night by a call informing her Tim was being rushed into surgery for an emergency craniotomy.

After the surgery, he remained in the acute-care hospital. “It was such a wild 80-some days in the hospital because along the way he developed double pneumonia and lung failure,” Beth said.

Tim was intubated a number of times and eventually given a tracheotomy and a feeding tube. His vocal cords were damaged in the process.

Eventually, Tim began to recover.

Getting the story out to warn others

After the ordeal, Tim had to learn to do everything from scratch — to breathe on his own, walk and talk. He was in a rehab hospital for 30 days regaining those basic functions. “​​They got me out of the bed into a chair and into a wheelchair and a walker,” Tim said.

Outpatient rehab followed. Tim was able to return to a greater degree of physical normalcy, and he continues to improve. But he still struggles with fine motor skills, loss of balance and dizziness multiple times a day.

“Fortunately, cognitively, he is 100% there, thank God,” Beth said. “It’s the coordination and putting things together. The thoughts are there, but he can’t speak them as fast, so it’s speech coordination and mobility, which is typical for this type of stroke.”

Tim was able to return to work. He couldn’t fly but could teach in a flight simulator. On the job, he began suffering headaches and high blood pressure and had to make the decision to stop working.

“That’s very disappointing to me because it means that at least for a few years, I can’t go back to work because I can’t risk my health. And of course, I spent 40 years in this career and I love flying.”

This was difficult to come to terms with, Tim said. He was anxious at first to get recertified to fly. But his doctor pointed out that “in my business, I don’t have the luxury of having a second pilot — it’s what we call ‘single pilot.’”

The doctor told Tim, “If this had happened when you were flying, you would be dead. And so would everybody that was with you.”

“So with that thought in mind,” Tim said, “I’m thinking, well, maybe I’m better off not flying. I don’t want to put myself or anyone else in jeopardy.”

“At this point, Tim wouldn’t be physically able to fly anyway,” Beth said. “Life is different today in many ways,” Beth said.

Tim is on disability, which has hurt their finances. They downsized, sold their home and moved out to the country where things are less expensive.

[…]

Tim’s primary care physician for more than 15 years, and who helped him recuperate and make decisions about work, blamed Tim’s stroke on the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

Tim said the doctor himself got a blood clot in his leg after being vaccinated, lost one patient and had two patients — Tim and another person — who had strokes, all in a very small family practice in Colleyville, Texas.

As they settle into their new home and new normal, the McAdams are starting to connect to others and share their story.

 

Watch the #CHDBUS interview with Tim:

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/pilot-tim-mcadams-covid-vaccine-stroke/

COVID jabs linked to 2,500% increased risk of early onset dementia

Steve KirschExecutive summary

No doubt about it: the COVID vaccines are causing a very significant increase in the likelihood of people developing sudden dementia.

I just got off the phone with a charge nurse at a rehab/long term elderly care facility. She’s been a nurse for 32 years and has never seen anything like this in her history.

She told me that they would rarely see anyone suddenly exhibit dementia behaviors like sudden onset hallucinations for no reason (nothing showing in the labs); maybe around 2 a year.

Now, just in the last 12 months, she’s seen this happen nearly 50 times, which is a 25X fold increase in the dementia rate.

By the way, she also told me that their local funeral home that picks up bodies from her facility mentioned to her that they had 150 deaths last month, but in a normal July they would get 7 deaths. [ I have a call into this funeral home; no call back ].

It’s very noticeable by people who work at nursing homes, but most are not able to talk about it without losing their jobs. I finally found someone who will talk on video. Stay tuned.

The medical literature shows that COVID virus can also increase the risk of dementia, but the COVID vaccine is far more efficient, doing it at a rate that appears to be at least 25X that of the virus (this nurse had never seen any of these 50 cases post-COVID). This is why the nursing homes are all noticing this post-vaccine, rather than post-virus.

A VAERS search shows that COVID vaccine is causing dementia reports to be filed in people as young as 18 years old. No other vaccine in the 33 history of VAERS is doing anything close to this kind of damage. I’ll show you the chart.

Introduction

I did a survey recently on death rates in elderly care facilities and geriatric practices.

In the survey, I was interested only in the number of deaths each year to see if the vaccine rollout changed anything.

I got plenty of deaths… the responses were that the deaths more than doubled each year in 2021, 2022, 2023 vs. the pre-COVID baseline with 2023 looking like the highest death rate on record. I didn’t find this surprising. The COVID vaccines have been a huge contributor to this as I wrote about earlier.

But I left a “Notes” field in the survey for people to mention anything else they wanted me to be aware of.

I read through the comments just now and noticed that 20% of the people who commented spontaneously noted a huge increase in dementia in their facility after the jabs rolled out.

In particular, the new cases were high but also the onset age was much lower than normal.

Because these reports were completely unprompted (there was no mention of dementia anywhere in the survey), I suspect this is happening in every nursing facility and people are just assuming “that’s odd” and thinking it is just a coincidence and not giving it a second thought.

Nope. No coincidence.

The COVID vaccines are basically destroying the minds of the elderly.

This is so tragic that we are doing this to our elderly.

Even more tragic is that:

the elderly care facilities will never public acknowledge or report this (not surprising since sudden dementia is not a reportable event),the mainstream medical community will deny it is happening (otherwise, they’d look if they admitted it),and the mainstream media will never write a story about it (because they were the ones pushing the narrative).

But you can verify for yourself it is happening in every nursing home if you can befriend a resident or employee at your local facility.

Or you can just read what they are saying here in the Notes field.

Here are the unprompted comments regarding dementia cases received on my survey

These are the comments; I added the bold emphasis.

And keep in mind when you read these reports that this is all unprompted recall. The survey didn’t mention dementia at all!

At first I thought it was odd, but after seeing this being noted in nearly 20% of the responses, it’s crystal clear that these were not “coincidences.”

I am a nurse at this convent. All except 1 of these deaths were nuns who were vaccinated and boosted per CDC recommendation. I’ve also witnessed a huge uptick in dementia.There are 5 residents in our facility. The other 2 residents that had the 2 shots each have had strokes and are not well. They can’t walk nor feed themselves. They both have advanced Dementia now.My mother is in a memory care unit at vista springs Northview in Grand Rapids Michigan. Covid boosters were administered (the second round) in or around October/December 2022. Within a couple months the facility which houses 30-35 residents 10 plus died within a three week period. All in their sleep. Jan, feb of march 2023. I am just a family member but I’m noticing these things. Many aides who are not vaccinated realize what’s going on, but they are too scared to say anything. Most of the residents (from what aides said) were all double vaxxed and boosted. My mom got the first booster against my wishes. She did not receive the second booster. She did get the first two shots. Also- I am noticing very young residents in the memory care unit. 60s and 70s. Dementia. It seems very strange to me that this age group would all have dementia. Many of the younger dementia patients were teachers. I don’t know if there is any correlation. just seems very odd. I have no hard data. Just observation. Thank you for all you are doing.I am a daughter of a resident. This facility is Assisted Living on one side and memory care on the other. I could probably get you the death rates per year possibly… but My mother is in this facility. I lived in California. I come to visit twice a year and now I have moved back to Michigan to care for my mom. Most people who lived in this facility were pretty healthy and could for the most part care for themselves. After the vaccines seemingly very together and healthy people died every time I came a couple of them were gone. My mother started falling and other people she knew took falls. One man who she was really good friends with started having neurological problems and then he and his wife died one day apart from each other. My mom is now in memory care. She is unable to do most things. She can barely feed herself at this point. Her motor skills are affected. Many people I knew who were quite normal in Assisted Living were also moved to memory care… however some seem to be hallucinating and creating havoc and fighting… The first time I came and saw my mother in Memory care.. I felt like I was in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s nest. One man was bent over touching the floor in his wheelchair doing a wheelie – but he was so drugged out it was like they were all on Thorazine. People in wheelchairs leaning over the sides of the sleeping. A woman stole the pizza I brought for my mother and told me her family owned the place and how dare I bring food in there and stole my pizza. I knew her before and she was a lovely lady… but now she hallucinates about men with hair coming out of their mouth and other orifices… there is always someone after her and hitting her. It makes me cry to see my mother in a place like this… but I believe they all have prions disease. This all happened after the shot and more and more from the regular assisted living are coming into the memory care with dementia. People who did not have dementia the last couple years all the sudden, they all have it.

[…]

It’s not just dementia that is up. Deaths are way way up in 2023. From 7 a year in a normal year to 50 so far in 2023.

There was a second entry from that same reporter:

I wanted to add to the survey I filled out yesterday. I just lost a 61 yo patient last night, due to respiratory failure. When the mortuary arrived to pick up the deceased, I struck up a chat with them. They (2 men) informed me that in July, they picked up over 150 bodies- the most ever, and I don’t reside in a large county..!

This nurse said prior to the COVID vaccine, they would see 7 deaths a year in their 99 person facility. This year, they’ve seen over 50 deaths so far, suggesting they will have 75 deaths for the entire year, a 10X increase in death rate from the pre-COVID baseline. This is statistically impossible if there isn’t something causing these deaths (it’s on the order of 1e-50 of an increase like this happening by chance).

[…]

Via https://kirschsubstack.com/p/breaking-early-onset-dementia-is

China bans seafood from Japan after Tokyo begins releasing treated radioactive water

 

By Emiko Jozuka, Jessie Yeung and Tara Subramaniam and CNN’s Beijing bureau

CNN

The company said it expects to discharge only around 200 or 210 cubic meters of treated wastewater. From Friday, it plans to then continuously release 456 cubic meters of treated wastewater over a 24-hour period and a total of 7,800 cubic meters over a 17-day period.

TEPCO said that the operation would be suspended immediately and an investigation conducted if any abnormalities are detected in the discharge equipment or the dilution levels of the treated wastewater.

It will send a boat later Thursday into the harbor to collect samples to monitor and ensure the discharged treated wastewater meets international safety standards.

Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused water within the Fukushima nuclear plant to be contaminated with highly radioactive material. Since then, new water has been pumped in to cool fuel debris in the reactors, while ground and rainwater have leaked in, creating more radioactive wastewater.

The plan to release the water has been in the works for years, with authorities warning in 2019 that space was running out to store the material and they had “no other options” but to release it in a treated and highly diluted form.

A controversial decision

While some governments have expressed support for Japan, others have strongly opposed the wastewater release, with many consumers in Asia hoarding salt and seafood amid fears of future contamination.

The US has backed Japan, and Taiwan has agreed that the amount of tritium being released should have “minimal” impact.

However, China and the Pacific Islands have been vocal in their opposition, arguing the release could have broad regional and international impact, and potentially threaten human health and the marine environment.

Before China announced the seafood ban on Thursday, its foreign affairs ministry said the wastewater release would “pass on the risks to the whole world and extend the pain to future generations of humankind.”

Chinese social media was also awash in anger and dismay on Thursday, with a hashtag about the release gaining more than 800 million views on Weibo in just a few hours.

Many users supported the seafood ban, while others called on authorities to take it a step further. “We should ban all Japanese products,” read one top comment.

Many people in China continue to hold ambivalent feelings toward Japan. Despite the popularity of Japanese products and culture in China, calls to boycott all things Japanese are not uncommon whenever old grievances, triggered by current bilateral disputes, re-emerge.

In 2012, a series of anti-Japanese protests in cities across China turned violent after Japan decided to nationalize a group of islands in the East China Sea claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing.

The total ban on Japanese aquatic products and seafood expands on previous regulations that had already halted imports from Fukushima and nine other regions of Japan. Earlier this week, Hong Kong announced a similar ban on food imported from parts of Japan.

Both places – mainland China and Hong Kong – represent Japan’s top two biggest export markets for seafood, according to Japanese custom data, spelling potential trouble for the Japanese fishing industry.

Despite the backlash, Japanese authorities and their international supporters, including the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, argue the release is safe.

Over the years, the wastewater has been continually treated to filter out all the removable harmful elements, then stored in tanks. Much of the water is treated a second time, according to TEPCO.

When the wastewater is finally released, it will be heavily diluted with clean water so it has only very low concentrations of radioactive material. It will travel through an undersea tunnel about 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) off the coast, into the Pacific Ocean.

Third parties will monitor the discharge during and after its release – including the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA has staff stationed in a newly-opened Fukushima office and will monitor the situation for years to come, it said.

[…]

Via https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/23/asia/japan-fukushima-water-release-thursday-intl-hnk/index.html

COVID Lockdowns and Mask Mandates Returning? I’m Not Buying the Psyop Distraction, and Neither Should You

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

For the past few days a very controlled narrative has been spun and spread throughout the alternative media, and especially among the Right Wing media, both the corporate Right Wing media, such as Fox News, as well as most of the Right Wing alternative media.

That narrative states that COVID lockdowns and mask mandates are returning.

To be sure, the Liberal Left corporate media is doing their part to fuel this narrative, by publishing “news” stories about the return of the dreaded COVID “virus” cases.

It appears that Alex Jones was selected to begin this current news cycle to hype up fear and outrage, by claiming that a TSA whistleblower, who was unnamed, was stating that “FULL Covid Restrictions” were coming in September.

EXCLUSIVE: Biden Admin Preparing to Bring Back FULL Covid Restrictions, Rollout to Begin Mid-September

Whistleblowers from the TSA and Border Patrol have raised the alarm to Infowars that the Biden administration is setting the stage for full Covid lockdowns that will begin with incremental restrictions like masking TSA employees in mid-September.

The first source, a high-level TSA official confirmed and known to Infowars, reached out to Infowars and cited a Tuesday meeting in which TSA managers were told new memorandums & policies were being completed that would reimplement masking, starting with TSA & airport employees as early as mid-September.

The TSA official also said next week they will receive new guidelines on how the policy will escalate: by mid-October, mask-wearing will be required by pilots, flight staff, passengers, and airport patrons.

After hearing from the TSA manager, Infowars reached out to our trusted Border Patrol source who is also a manager. This source confirmed the same directives were being given to Border Patrol.

They were told it was not a matter of “if” but “when” official Covid numbers will go back up and they expect by mid-October a return to forced-masking policies that the Biden administration previously only reluctantly ended after massive pressure.

Both whistleblowers were told this rollout will be in tandem with the new Covid “variant” hysteria that the MSM has been reporting on this week. (Full article.)

I chose not to report this “news” because it was 100% dependent upon the credibility of Alex Jones, a controversial person, to say the least, in both the alternative and corporate media.

Even if Alex Jones was 100% sincere in what he was reporting, how do we know that this alleged “TSA whistleblower” was not fed this information for the very specific intention of creating a new news cycle around COVID that promoted hype and fear?

It wouldn’t be the first time that agencies like the CIA used the platform of Alex Jones to do something like this, and it probably won’t be the last time.

The other thing that made me skeptical of this “news” by Alex Jones, was that it completely blamed Biden, who is simply a puppet that follows a script (as well as he can in his demented condition) that is written by the corporate Globalists who control these narratives, and control BOTH the Left and Right politicians.

Let’s PLEASE not forget how the first psyop went down with COVID!

It was Donald Trump, the Right-wing Republican President who got all this started, and as the Scamdemic psyop unrolled, ALL politicians, both on the Right and on the Left, supported ALL the emergency health orders, including masks, lockdowns, and COVID vaccines in the beginning.

The entire country, and in fact the entire world, was UNITED around the COVID scam, with very few of us calling these people out and seeing what was happening from the very beginning.

It was only many months later, mostly after the majority of the COVID shots were injected into the arms of millions of Americans, including babies and children, that some of the Right began to voice some opposition to the COVID shots, and most of that opposition was around MANDATES, but not the actual killer shots themselves.

By way of reminder, here is a video I produced that clearly shows that ALL the Republican leaders were on board with the COVID shots as they were being rolled out, and most of them were investing in the new, experimental COVID pharmaceutical products that never would have made it to market without the scare of a “pandemic” and emergency-use orders to put them into the public without proper testing, as unsuspecting victims served as guinea pigs for these new drugs and vaccines.

This is on our Bitchute Channel.

To be able to repeat the 2020-2021 military operation that locked people down, required face masks, and injected as many Americans with a bioweapon shot as possible, is no longer a possible operation, as the country is now divided on these issues, and there is no way the Conservative Right will support a return to these measures, even though they did the first time around.

And then I got further confirmation that this was all a carefully written script to create more hype and fear, when a U.S. Senator actually put out a tweet agreeing with Alex Jones’ “news” about mandates returning, and stated “Over my lifeless body“.

When is the last time you saw a national politician actually make a public statement agreeing with Alex Jones??

Via https://healthimpactnews.com/2023/covid-lockdowns-and-mask-mandates-returning-im-not-buying-the-psyop-distraction-and-neither-should-you/

1971: Bangladesh Declares Independence from Pakistan

Episode 33 Independent Bangladesh

A History of India

Michael Fisher (2016)

Film Review

Bangladesh is the eighth most populated country in the world. Geographically the size of Iowa, its population is half that of the US. Agriculturally rich thanks to alluvial soils deposited by the river Ganges, it’s plagued with immense poverty, corrupt and inefficient government and rising sea levels.

Prior to British occupation, the region had a long history of silk and cotton weaving,* and most early European settlements rose up along Bengal’s early trade networks. Calcutta, which became the center of India’s expanding British economy, was the second largest metropolis in the British Empire (second only to London). For decades, the city was home to the main nationalist networks fighting for Indian independence.

As a direct result of independence, there was a steady transfer of wealth from East to West Pakistan. The former contributed only a tiny minority of  officers and officials to Pakistan’s army and civil service.

The Awami League

In 1953, East Pakistan activists formed the Awami league, whose leaders were imprisoned and whose protests were violently suppressed by Pakistani police. Sheikh Majibar Rahman, who was also active in the Bengali language movement,** was one of the most prominent campaigners for increased East Pakistani autonomy.

In 1971, tensions between East and West Pakistan came to a head following Pakistan’s first fully democratic election. Owing to its far larger population, the Awami League won a majority of seats in Pakistan’s new National Assembly. Pakistan’s military dictator General Yahya Khan responded by dismissing the National Assembly and dispatching the army to “restore order” in East Pakistan.

With the help of the Indian army; the Razakars, an East Pakistan paramilitary force; and the Mukti Bahini, guerilla force India organized from East Pakistani refugees, Bengali nationalists prevailed and established Bangladesh as a sovereign country.

A Stormy Electoral History

Rahman, who advocated a program of “secular socialism and land redistribution, was ineffective in implementing these reforms, in large part due to the 1973-74 famine. His move to consolidate power by making Bangladesh a one party state led to a 1975 military coup and the assassination of Rahman and most of his family.

His daughter Begun Sheikh Hasena, who was away from home, inherited the leadership of the Awami League. She was elected prime minister three times, prior to the military coup by General Ziaur Rahman. After organizing the Bangladesh National Party, he was formally elected president in 1978. Following his 1981 assassination by rival military officers, his widow would be elected twice. A military coup launched by General Hussain Muham Mal Ershad removed her from office in 1983. Ershad subsequently formed the Jatiya Party and won the (likely fraudulent) election in 1986 and 1987. Forced to resign in 1990, Ershad was tried and convicted for corruption.

After he supported the election of Rahman’s widow Khaleda Zia as prime minister in 1991, heavy street protests forced her to appoint a caretaker government to run the 1996 election. This resulted in resulted in Begun Sheikh Hasena’s reelection. Khaleda Zia would replace her in the 2001 election.

Heavy street protests resulted in another military coup in 2007 and the appointment of World Bank economist Fakhruddin Ahmed as martial law administrator. Following major electoral reforms, Begun Sheikh Hasena was reelected in 2008 and 2014 (mainly due to a boycott by the opposition parities).

*The British destroyed East Bengal’s early textile London through large exports of raw India cotton, followed by large imports of cheap industrially woven cotton.

**From the outset, West Pakistani leaders tried to force East Pakistan to adopt Urdu (a Persianized Hindustani language), instead of Bangali, as their official language. Although Bengali and Urdu both evolved from Sanskrit, they are mutually incomprehensible.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/366254/366237

‘Megalomaniac Ambition for Total Control’: Governments Eye New Gates-Funded Biometric Digital ID System

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

The Modular Open Source Identity Platform, modeled after India’s biometric database, is expanding globally despite controversy over consent and data protections, but privacy advocates warn the Gates Foundation-funded digital ID initiative could enable tracking citizens “from cradle to grave.”

Spurred in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and the push for digital vaccine “passports,” a growing number of global governments are considering implementing biometric digital ID programs that would require citizens to obtain digital identification credentials to access public goods and services.

Until recently, concerns about the global interoperability of digital systems and the risk of technological “lock-in” to platforms developed by private actors stymied governments’ plans to implement such programs.

Now, backers of a new open-source platform called MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform) — whose funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar — are touting the platform as a solution to both these obstacles.

Developed at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore in India and modeled after Aadhaar, India’s nationwide digital ID platform and the largest such system in the world, MOSIP “enables countries with low IT capacity to quickly roll out specialized digital identity solutions to their citizens,” according to Identity Review.

Proponents argue the rollout of platforms like MOSIP will help people, especially in low- and middle-income countries, gain access to vital public goods and services.

They also argue the platforms will help the global community fulfill the United Nation’s (U.N.) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which include requiring everyone — including infants — to have a digital identity by 2030 in order to work, vote, and access financial, social and medical services.

But for critics, technologies like MOSIP represent a threat to individual liberty and another step toward a digital panopticon — a widespread rollout of government-mandated surveillance technologies, including “vaccine passports” and other digital identification tools, that spell the end of personal privacy.

What is digital identity?

[…]

Greg Glaser, a California attorney, said, “normal” people think of IDs as a normal thing, but the reality of the biometric digital ID is “far more sinister.”

Glaser said that today, rights, citizenship status, affiliations, standing in court, accounts, privileges, services, land title and more all fundamentally depend on some form of identification.

[…]

Biometric surveillance covers a range of identification measures and technologies, including facial recognition, voice recognition, fingerprint databases, DNA databases, iris scans, heart rate scans, gait recognition — even emotion detection through the analysis of facial expressions and mannerisms.

​According to the Gates Foundation, “Digital ID systems are one of the three pillars of what’s known as digital public infrastructure (DPI)” along with digital payment systems and data exchange systems. They are similar to “the roads and bridges that helped reshape economies in the 19th century.”

“Researchers say DPI can help low- and middle-income countries leapfrog traditional stages of development, lift millions out of poverty, and spur economic growth,” the foundation said.

Such a system “is critical because people need a verified identity in order to tap into DPI’s other benefits, from digital bank accounts and instant payments to mobile phone accounts and personal data management,” said the Gates Foundation.

“If a person cannot prove who they are, how can they take advantage of all of the opportunities society has to offer?” the foundation asked.

According to the foundation, “850 million people around the world … lack any acceptable form of legal identity” and “more than half of those without proof of identity are children whose births were not registered.” One in two women in low-income countries do not have ID, the foundation said.

[…]

MOSIP is aligned with several of the U.N.’s SDGs, including Target 16.9, which calls for the provision of a digital legal identity for all — including newborns — by 2030.

While some claim MOSIP “has been built as a digital public good,” for privacy advocates, the realities of such technologies do not reflect the rosy rhetoric.

Aadhaar, for instance, has already been marked by repeated concerns about its privacy and data protection.

W. Scott McCollough, an Austin-based internet and telecommunications lawyer, told The Defender, “I do not view a mandate to prove my identity as a prerequisite to exercising basic liberties … as anything close to a ‘digital public good.’”

[…]

McCollough also said he’s wary of Gates’ involvement, describing MOSIP as “merely the latest Gates-funded mechanism to total population control. Digital ID, biometrics, CBDC all integrated into an “open” app (powered by a series of APIs) that offers the illusion of autonomy when it is instead the surrender of all self-determinacy to the digital masters.”

[…]

Current rollout of MOSIP

According to the Gates Foundation, 11 countries — nine in Africa and two in Asia — “have signed memoranda of understanding with MOSIP to pilot the system,” adding that “More than 90 million people have been registered for MOSIP-based IDs in the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Morocco as part of national deployments.”

The Hindu reported that other countries using the technology include Burkina Faso, The Republic of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, the Togolese Republic and Uganda.

In The Philippines, “Around 70 million citizens” — 80% of the population — have enrolled, The Hindu reported, while according to The Economist, Morocco integrated an existing fingerprint database into its national MOSIP platform.

MOSIP relies on biometric data to function. The Gates Foundation cited an example from Ethiopia, “where few people had ever had their fingerprints scanned.” As a result, and “To maximize inclusivity, the team gave people several options for sharing their biometric data, including scans of their fingerprints, iris, or face.”

Iris scanners also were implemented in Sri Lanka and the Philippines as part of MOSIP deployments there, while in June, fingerprint scanners produced by Integrated Biometrics completed the compliance of their scanners with MOSIP for Android devices. This added to existing compliance with Microsoft Windows.

MOSIP supported by Gates Foundation, World Bank, World Economic Forum

The Gates Foundation lauds MOSIP for its academic rather than profit-driven roots and for collaborating with global institutes like the Alan Turing Institute and Carnegie Mellon University.

Yet even without explicit corporate backing, MOSIP has received funding and support from several heavyweight organizations. The Gates Foundation, for instance, issued a $7.27 million grant to MOSIP in September 2018, and a $10 million grant in October 2021.

[…]

Eileen Donahoe, a member of MOSIP’s international advisory group, is executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, and a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Endowment for Democracy.

ID2020, founded in 2016, claims to support “ethical, privacy-protecting approaches to digital ID.” Its founding partners include Microsoft, the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF, and the World Bank.

The Good Health Pass Collaborative — a vaccine passport collaboration also involving Mastercard and the WEF — was also supported by ID2020.

India’s government is also involved with the development of MOSIP. According to The Economist, this is part of Indian President Narendra Modi’s objective to turn his country’s digital public infrastructure into “an Indian Belt and Road Initiative,” through which “Indian IT firms can expect bumper development and maintenance contracts.”

MOSIP in May announced it is building an “ecosystem” of biometrics labs, for which it is “partnering with more universities.”

The Tony Blair Institute, chaired by embattled former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, has also endorsed MOSIP and other digital ID programs. The same institute previously supported ID2020’s Good Health Pass initiative.

People ‘risk being shut out of society’ — unless we opt out

MOSIP’s developers promise “security and privacy features that will help protect the data from potential threats.” According to the company, a “consent framework in the platform takes care of user privacy that lets users choose what they want to share and when.”

Other proponents of digital ID have also argued such platforms allow users to have control over their own data in what is called “self-sovereign identity.”

But McCollough said, “Self-sovereign identity is an illusion since your ‘identity’ has validity or ‘currency,’ only after it is recognized by the government to which we are subject.”

Otherwise, individuals risk being shut out of society, McCollough said. “A person that refuses to grant digital permission soon becomes effectively canceled. Just as there was no spoon in the Matrix there is no self-sovereignty to any of this. They pretend to give you control when the next step is a demand you yield ‘permission’ or else.”

Indeed, Aadhaar, the nationwide Indian digital ID system after which MOSIP is modeled, has been beset by privacy-related controversies.

Launched in 2009, Aadhaar eventually enrolled over 99% of all Indian adults, linking them with many public and private services, including bank accounts, electoral identity verification, income tax filings, digital payments systems, government pensions, subsidies and welfare payments — even SIM card registration.

Yet in 2017, Aadhaar generated controversy when HIV patients reported being coerced into providing their Aadhaar ID, leading many to drop out of treatment programs due to privacy concerns.

According to The Economist, “Aadhaar has performed poorly in places with bad internet connections or where manual workers have worn finger pads. The system also suffers security breaches. Experts say it is very easy to access it with false credentials or spoof fingerprints.”

Nevertheless, Gates, on his personal blog, praised Aadhaar — describing it as “a valuable platform for delivering social welfare programs and other government services.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-funded-biometric-digital-id-system/?utm_id=20230823

Dr Andrew Wakefield Was Right All Along

Dr Tess Lawrie

Last month I received an email from Mrs Bridget Wakefield, Dr Andrew Wakefield’s mother. It turned out she lives in Bath, my hometown, birthplace of a Better Way and just a stone’s throw from the World Council for Health offices! She asked whether we could meet.

[…]

What was Dr Andrew Wakefield’s “crime”?

In 1998 Dr Andrew Wakefield, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and a senior researcher in the University Departments of Medicine and Histopathology at the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine published a paper in the Lancet with his colleagues entitled: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.

Dr Wakefield’s special interest was inflammatory bowel disease and this paper reported a case series of 12 children with developmental disorders whose mothers also described a constellation of bowel symptoms appearing shortly after their child’s vaccination.

Wakefield’s co-authors included specialist physicians in psychiatry, histopathology, radiology and gastroenterology. After carefully documenting their research findings in the paper, the investigators cautiously concluded: “We have identified a chronic enterocolitis in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction. In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps, and rubella immunisation. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and it’s possible relation to this vaccine.”

As a medical researcher reading the paper for the first time, without all the accompanying hubris of 1998, I can assure you that the conclusions of this expert group were entirely appropriate: more research was indeed needed. Words like “may” and “possible” suggested a high level of uncertainty among the researchers about a causal link. At a subsequent press conference, Wakefield suggested that it may be prudent to use single vaccines instead of the MMR triple vaccine until this could be ruled out, which sounds like common sense to me as both a doctor and a mother.

[…]

I now wish I had paid attention to Dr Wakefield’s concerns at the time I was raising my young family, as both developmental issues and inflammatory bowel disease are conditions manifest among my children and those of my peers today. Like autism, the prevalence of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis has sky-rocketed in the last 30 to 40 years with little attention paid by health authorities as to the cause/s of this phenomenon.

University professors among other scientists have since published studies that show that childhood vaccination schedules are associated with serious health effects that continue to be ignored by drug regulatory agencies and pharmacovigilance bodies worldwide. In addition, research studies presenting evidence that questions the safety of the childhood vaccination schedule, such as this 2021 paper by Lyons-Weiler and Thomas, continue to be targeted for retraction. In 2020/21 Professor Brian Hooker and Dr Neil Miller conducted a study comparing the health of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children and found developmental delays, asthma, gastrointestinal disorders and ear infections significantly higher among vaccinated children. I’ve had difficulty accessing their 2021 paper entitled “Health Effects in Vaccinated versus Unvaccinated Children” published in the Journal of Translational Science. Perhaps the doi link will work for you 10.15761/JTS.1000459?

In any event, a book detailing the strong case against childhood vaccination is to be published soon and I shall alert you to it when it is. Be prepared for a barrage of fearful and polarising “anti-vaxxer” propaganda in the press.

So why was Dr Andrew Wakefield vilified?

At the time of the Wakefield study, the UK government had just produced a plan to roll out MMR vaccines to all under-fives around the country. Andrew asked them to hold it back until safety could be assured but was told it was not possible.

According to Mrs Wakefield’s, a freelance Sunday Times reporter by the name of Brian Deer launched an attack on Andrew with such voracity that it was “as if he had been told to destroy the man who was going to upset the vaccine programme”. Amazingly, Deer is still on Andrew’s case having published a book as recently as 2020 about his award-winning investigation that destroyed a doctor’s career. The book is called ‘The doctor who fooled the world’ and is published by John Hopkins Press, the university known for the Covid Vaccine Tracker and other Covid activities.

What curious timing indeed that Deer’s book should come out in the year Covid vaccines were launched. Was this to make sure we all know what happens when the bearers of the mighty pen and power of corporate media declare vaccine-concerned doctors to be “‘anti-vaxxers”?

[…]

How to keep ethical doctors quiet

The corporate media’s demonisation of Dr Andrew Wakefield was relentless and continues today. Andrew’s professional hearing went on for three years and, with the medical council desperate to find him guilty of something, he was eventually found guilty of a “callous disregard for children”.

However, parents of allegedly callously disregarded children totally disagreed and tried to set the record straight. They wrote the letter below which concludes with the sentence “We are appalled that these doctors have been the subject of this protracted enquiry in the absence of any complaint from any parent about any of the children who were reported in the Lancet paper.”

Another letter of support from parents can be found in the supplementary material. The latter is from parents who felt misled by a journalist pretending to help their vaccine-damaged child when the motive for engagement was subsequently revealed to be that of making a documentary to discredit Dr Wakefield. “We would like to make it known that we were tricked into appearing”, the letter says.

Scientific Consensus?

It is incredible that it took 12 years for the paper to be retracted. (In Covid times, this can be a matter of days.) On the Lancet paper, Wikipedia erroneously asserts that “The scientific consensus on vaccines and autism is that there is no causal connection between MMR, or any other vaccine, and autism.” and if you visit the Wiki pages you will see the same old names pop up: e.g. vaccinologist Peter Hotez.

To be clear, there is no scientific consensus on this. As with the covid vaccines, open scientific debate and independent scientific evaluation of the effectiveness and safety of the variety of childhood vaccines never happened.

Now that we have heard that the corrupt Dr Anthony Fauci “[is] the science”, we owe it to ourselves and our children to critically rethink our unquestioning embrace of this barbaric voodoo approach to child “health”. Isn’t this what sticking needles into babies is after all?

Like you, it’s the Covid ‘vaccines’ that woke me up…

What Covid has demonstrated is that the pharmaceutical industry is amoral and corrupt, thriving on our disease and not our good health. It will lie and cheat to make billions at our expense and make us sick to ensure lifelong dependency on its chemicals if it can.

In 2010 the medical council finally ruled that Dr Andrew Wakefield was dishonest and the Lancet retracted the paper. Andrew lost his licence to practice and was demonised henceforth as being ‘anti-vax’ – a term thoroughly exploited during the roll out of the inadequately tested and novel covid-19 vaccines religiously given to two-thirds of humanity in the name of The Science.

I have empathy for Andrew and, now that I know what I know about the power and corruption of the vaccine industry, I seriously doubt that he was guilty of the fraud alleged in Wikipedia. Wikipedia alleges many false things these days and can no longer be considered a trustworthy source. Its founder recently revealed that it is run by the CIA, so it would seem to be part of the agenda to brainwash us with a narrative that makes us compliant and fearful.

On the ‘anti-vax’ issue, I too have recently been labelled ‘anti-vax’ by the corporate media, but a more appropriate term is health revolutionary. A revolutionary approach to health and a re-evaluation of vaccines is long overdue!

Whilst the General Medical Council has revealed its true corporate colours during Covid-19, the fact of the matter is that it has been investigating and persecuting doctors who put their patients first for decades. Like Andrew Wakefield, Dr Jayne Donegan is currently enduring a GMC tribunal after firmly sticking to her conviction that “no doctor can ethically deny that children suffer ‘serious, life-changing adverse reactions’ to vaccines”. In addition, there is a list of other doctors who do not agree with the government’s dangerous covid policies who are being “investigated”. I too have been investigated by the medical council on a spurious claim that they could not pursue. No doubt they have dossiers on all who have upheld their Hippocratic Oath during Covid, to do no harm and not give poison to anyone.

[…]

Via https://substack.com/@drtesslawrie

Why Won’t the US Close Guantanamo?

Maha HilalMiddle East Eye

Last month, the US Senate passed the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) for 2024, an appropriations bill defining military priorities, and one that has consistently placed restrictions on remedies to the abuses at Guantanamo Bay.

This year’s bill, like many years prior, includes a prohibition on funds to close the infamous prison camp; a prohibition on funds to transfer the incarcerated men out of the prison; a prohibition on the transfer of detainees to Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and the US; and a prohibition on modifying the prison.

By supporting these measures, federal lawmakers have once again voted to perpetuate the problem of Guantanamo, the violence it is notorious for, and the collective responsibility of the Muslim men detained who have been rendered guilty until proven innocent.

Despite stated opposition from the White House, a veto of the bill seems unlikely.

President Joe Biden, who has made past promises of closing the prison, has taken no action to initiate this process. Rather, he reportedly invested millions of dollars last year in renovating parts of the facility and upgrading its courtroom in a move that The New York Times described as a “retreat from transparency in the already secretive national security cases at the base”.

For the 22nd year, the abuses and lack of accountability at Guantanamo have been codified with no end in sight.

But while the annual passage of the NDAA and its signing by successive presidents have maintained the status quo on Guantanamo, budgetary considerations are far from being the only reason that the forever prison is still in operation and why impunity has reigned.

Ongoing cruelty

This month marks 21 years since the infamous torture memos were drafted and signed by the US Office of Legal Counsel, effectively sanctioning the use of torture and allowing the US to unabashedly and openly conduct war crimes.

According to one memo, in order for the physical infliction of pain to be considered torture, it would have to be “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death”.

After the memos were released, former President Barack Obama made sure to announce that no one would be prosecuted for these crimes and would go on to casually remark some years later that “we tortured some folks“.

Yet the effects of that torture, including confessions made under duress and extreme violence, continue to render the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo guilty and perpetuate their ongoing suffering. Obama’s inaction undoubtedly set a precedent of impunity – one that would be justified over and over again.

Mere weeks before US senators voted the NDAA into law, the UN published a report on the abuses at Guantanamo Bay by the special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Fionnuala Ni Aolain. Ni Aolain was the first independent UN investigator to visit the facility in its nearly 22 years of operation.

The 23-page report, which renewed the global spotlight on Guantanamo, is a scathing critique of the government’s treatment of current and former detainees and a thorough indictment of the US government’s systematic crimes of extraordinary rendition, arbitrary detention, and deliberate and extensive mechanisms to deny individuals their rights.

“Several US government procedures establish a structural deprivation and non-fulfilment of rights necessary for a humane and dignified existence and constitute at a minimum, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment across all detention practices at Guantanamo Bay,” the special rapporteur writes.

With just 30 remaining out of the nearly 800 prisoners the detention centre once held, Ni Aolain is also careful to address post-Guantanamo life for former prisoners, and how their conditions maintain the prison’s cruelty. “For many former detainees, their current experience in their home or third country merely becomes an extension of arbitrary detention in Guantanamo, with some even expressing that they wish to return,” the report states.

But renewed attention on the crimes at Guantanamo has also meant renewed denials by the US government. Despite the formal critiques, American officials blithely dismissed the special rapporteur’s detailed review in a generic response that could have just as easily been written before her visit.

Thoroughly consistent with all its efforts to deny the violence at Guantanamo, the US’s reply was not just a categorical rejection of the report, but a powerful symbolic refusal – at the highest levels – to pursue any remedies, let alone any semblance of accountability, for its victims.

To this end, the US insisted that it disagreed “in significant respects with many factual and legal assertions”, and that it was “committed to providing safe and humane treatment for detainees at Guantanamo, in full accordance with international and US domestic law”.

Despite testimony by countless former prisoners and even former guards at Guantanamo and CIA black sites, the US government continues to double down on its assertions, demonstrating that no individual, human rights organisation or institutional body – much less one without actual authority over the US – could move the US to respond any differently.

Nevertheless, the US stated that it would be “carefully reviewing” the recommendations and “will take any appropriate actions, as warranted”.

What would actually warrant a change though? The US has been continuously condemned for its operations and treatment of those incarcerated to no avail.

In fact, over the last 13 years, the US has been subjected to three evaluations of its human rights records under the Universal Periodic Review process. Every one of the reports repeatedly called attention to the abusive conditions at Guantanamo and urged its immediate closure. And for every official criticism, the US government issued a response denying allegations of inhumane treatment while justifying its policies at Guantanamo and lack of action.

Not only did the brutality continue under Obama, but since 2010, the restrictions in the NDAA, especially in blocking funds to release and transfer Guantanamo detainees, have increased. Obama, like every other president, elected not to veto the bill.

Facade of accountability

Although the US finally allowed a UN torture investigator’s visit to Guantanamo without restrictions, it was not to invite accountability. It was instead to promote the facade of accountability after 22 years by allowing the visit in the first place – only to categorically reject any wrongdoing. In other words, the US is not committed to accountability but to the creation of contested narratives that have long outlived the truth. Government impunity, after all, was built into the War on Terr0r’s legal infrastructure.

It is telling that, in the wake of a UN report on Guantanamo, US lawmakers would pass the NDAA once more with bipartisan support and seemingly no debate either on Capitol Hill or in the media about the provisions related to the detention centre. For years, US lawmakers proudly boasted about prolonging the torture at Guantanamo, but now there doesn’t even seem to be a need to address what has become an inevitability.

If the last 20 years have taught us anything, it is that there has never been, nor is there likely ever to be, any accountability for this disastrous and deeply Islamophobic project that has no conceivable end.

[…]

Via https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/guantanamo-why-us-not-close