Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 92
April 5, 2025
Pentagon Admits Strikes Have Limited Success in Yemen, Coming at High Cost
By Kyle Anzalone
Department of Defense officials are telling Congress behind closed doors that it does not believe the new military campaign in Yemen has degraded the Houthis’ military capabilities. Within a month, the operations will cost over $1 billion.
According to the New York Times, the Pentagon informed Capitol Hill that the new operations against the Houthis – or Ansar Allah – have had “limited success.” The Houthis have reinforced their underground bunker, frustrating the White House.
The private assessment to Congress is far different from the public messages from the White House. “These Houthi strikes have been incredibly successful,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Last time I was at this podium, there were more than 100 successful strikes. There have now been over 200 successful strikes – Iran is incredibly weakened as a result of these attacks.”
On March 15, President Donald Trump announced that he would restart President Joe Biden’s bombing campaign in Yemen at an accelerated pace. In January 2024, Biden ordered his Pentagon to attack the Houthis after the group closed the Red Sea to Israeli-linked shipping in an effort to pressure Tel Aviv to end its genocide in Gaza.
Biden’s attacks on Yemen proved ineffective as Ansar Allah expanded the blockade of shipping to US-linked commerce. The group has also attacked US warships in the region and conducted direct missile and drone strikes on Israel.
In January, Hamas and Tel Aviv reached a ceasefire and hostage, leading Ansar Allah to lift its blockade and end attacks on US ships and Israel. After Tel Aviv broke that agreement, the Houthis announced they would reimpose their blockade on Israeli-linked shipping.
In a now infamous Signal chat, Trump’s top national security officials discussed resuming the bombing of Yemen. Vice President JD Vance was the only participant in the chat to dissent, claiming that the bombing campaign benefited Europe at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Vance did not note that the primary beneficiary of the policy is Tel Aviv. In the Signal chat, several officials celebrated the bombing of an apartment building in Yemen’s capital city, believing an Ansar Allah official was inside the structure. That target was hit with intelligence from Tel Aviv.
Officials speaking with the Times confirmed that the Department of Defense continues to use Israeli intelligence to generate targets in Yemen.
During the first week of bombing Yemen, at least 25 civilians were killed in the US strikes. Yemeni officials say a total of 60 civilians have died from the American bombs.
Following the US resumption of the bombing of Yemen, the Houthis have also restated targeting US warships and Israel with missiles.
Trump administration officials have stated that its bombing of Yemen will successfully deter Ansar Allah, even though that policy failed under the previous administration. They argue that heavier strikes will erode the Houthis’ military capabilities.
While the Pentagon said the renewed bombing campaign has not degraded the Houthi power, it has come at a significant price.
The Times reports that the Pentagon has spent $200 million on munitions to strike Yemen. The additional deployment of two aircraft carrier strike groups and B-2 bombers will push the total cost of the operations to over $1 billion next week.
The price of striking Yemen is so high, in part due to Ansar Allah’s air defense capabilities. In recent weeks, the Houthis have downed multiple Reaper Drones. This has led the Pentagon to use longer-range missiles to strike Houthi targets.
Some Defense officials have expressed concern that the administration is using too many munitions in Yemen and degrading the military’s ability to fight a potential war with China.
[…]
Will Trump Grant Apple a Tariff Exemption Like He Did in 2018?
Apple is at the center of the trade wars as investors wonder whether it will receive U.S. tariff exemptions. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
By Laila Maidan
Before buying Apple’s stock, know that chances of a tariff exemption are slim
In 2018, Washington came to the table willing to bend. This time, policy frictions mean exemptions are less likely.
This time, Trump passed tariffs through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) without a process that allowed companies to request exemptions, according to a note from Morgan Stanley — which added that if Apple were to receive one, it would need to come directly from the president. For that reason, the investment bank pegs the chances of an exemption at only 20%.
[Ed Apple is a US company that moved its manufacturing operations to China in the early 2000s because specialized Chinese electronics workers are wiling to work for far lower wages than US workers. I think Trump is hoping his tariffs will inspire he company will move at least some of it manufacturing operations back to the US].
Latin American Governments Pay a Price For Challenging Israel’s Genocidal War
Colombian President Gustavo Petro [Source: x.com]John Perry
Governments in Latin America have been at the forefront of opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and several of those which have done so suddenly face new threats, even including attempted coups. Adrienne Pine, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, said during a recent webinar hosted by the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition that “anybody who stands with Palestine is going to be attacked in Latin America by the U.S. and by Zionists.”
[…]
Of the 165 countries that recognize Israel, only four have officially cut diplomatic ties with the country since it began its Gaza offensive, and all of them are Latin American: Bolivia, Belize, Colombia and Nicaragua (Venezuela severed its ties with Israel in 2009 while Cuba broke off relations during the Yom Kippur War of 1973).
A further eight countries have withdrawn their diplomats from Tel Aviv since October 7, 2023, of which Chile, Brazil, and Honduras are from Latin America.
This article looks at the experience of three governments in the region which have strongly opposed Israel’s genocidal war—Nicaragua, Honduras, and Colombia. All are suffering attacks that appear to be either in direct retaliation for their actions or which suspiciously coincide with them. All three have progressive governments which have historic reasons for challenging Israel, adding to their condemnation of its recent actions.
[…]
As well as extensive trading relationships, Israel has often backed repressive regimes or undermined progressive governments. In “Israel’s Latin American trail of terror” Aljazeera summarises its grisly history in the region, from training death squads in El Salvador to supplying the arms used to massacre Guatemalan campesinos.
[…]
In Nicaragua, it supplied arms to the “Contra” forces that attempted to overthrow the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s. In Honduras, it helped prevent President Mel Zelaya from returning to power after he was ousted in the 2009 coup.
[…]
In Colombia, it sold massive quantities of arms to paramilitary groups which destabilized the country during decades of widespread violence.
Nicaragua is a “platform for terrorism”Israel’s history means it is well placed to retaliate when Latin American governments attack it as genocidal. The example of Nicaragua is the clearest. The country was the first to join the action taken by South Africa in bringing Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the beginning of this year.
It followed this by taking its own ICJ case against Germany, for supplying arms to Israel. The ICJ’s provisional ruling had the initial effect of reducing the flow of German weapons until Israel later signed a “commitment” that they would not be used in violation of the genocide convention.
Most recently, on October 11, President Daniel Ortega announced the breaking of diplomatic relations with Israel, calling Prime Minister Netanyahu a “son of the devil” and comparing him to Hitler.
The attempted retribution was swift. Four days after Ortega’s speech, the Israeli consul in neighboring Costa Rica, Amir Rockman, gave an interview in which he claimed that “Iranian interests and, in particular, those of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, are installed in Nicaragua.”
He further claimed that “radical Iranian forces and terror groups operate freely” in Nicaragua, although he was not asked for, nor did he provide, any evidence.
Given that some 3,000 kilometers separate Nicaragua from the U.S. border, the usefulness to a “terror group” of being able to operate in a small Central American country is far from clear.
Right-wing outlets opposed to the Sandinista government gleefully elaborated on what Rockman said. Mijal Gur-Aryeh, Israel’s ambassador in Costa Rica, told La Prensa that “Nicaragua had been converted into a platform for terrorism in the region.” A few days later she added that Hezbollah had “bases” in Venezuela and Bolivia as well as Nicaragua.
[…]
Nicaragua’s Sandinista government rejected Israel’s allegations on October 21. While there is, as of yet, no evidence that Israel’s claims have resonance in Washington, if Nicaragua were to be designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” (SSoT) the effects could be very serious.
It could potentially do even more harm to its economy than the current raft of US. sanctions, affecting its rapidly growing tourism industry and perhaps much more. A warning is provided by the severe damage done to Cuba’s economy after it was added to the SSoT list, which added to the already considerable damage caused by the longstanding U.S. blockade.
An SSoT designation also gives license to U.S. and other Western law enforcement agencies to persecute those working in solidarity with a listed country, as has already happened to those supporting Palestine (with solidarity groups often falsely accused of supporting Hamas).
Nicaragua survived an attempted coup in 2018, and Ortega has made no suggestion that a second coup is on the cards. However, both Honduras and Colombia have made such recent claims. We consider Honduras next.
A new “coup attempt” in Honduras?Adrienne Pine’s comments about attacks on countries supporting Palestine followed on from her description of Israel’s role in supporting the neoliberal regime that ran Honduras from 2009 until the Libre party finally ousted it in the 2021 election.
This included spending $342 million on importing Israeli military equipment. In a reversal of her predecessor’s policy, progressive President, Xiomara Castro, has expressed strong support for Palestine. She has recalled her ambassador from Israel and in September, at the meeting of the UN General Assembly, condemned the genocide in Gaza. In what was seen by Washington as a further provocation, Honduras was one of the first countries in Latin America to recognize Nicolas Maduro’s victory in Venezuela’s July 28 election.Following both these moves, Castro has come under intense pressure on different fronts which, she says, amounts to an attempted coup. In response, she has ended the extradition treaty between her country and the United States (the same treaty that allowed her predecessor, Hernández, to be sent for trial in New York). Castro herself has direct experience of a coup, since it was her husband, Mel Zelaya, who was deposed as president in 2009 by the U.S.-backed military and forced out of the country. It is hardly surprising that she is alert to the possibility of a second one.
Who orchestrated the coup attempt? Suspicion falls on Washington’s ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Laura Dogu, who has a track record in this respect. She was the ambassador in Nicaragua prior to the 2018 coup attempt, and since coming to Honduras in 2022, has made strong links with capitalist-class opponents of Castro’s Libre party, just as she did in Managua with business leaders hostile to the Sandinista revolution.
As Pine explained in the webinar, Dogu tried to paint Honduras’s links with Venezuela as related to drug trafficking, and a few days later fuel was added to this fire by the publication of a video showing a drug baron in discussion with Castro’s brother-in-law, allegedly about providing election campaign funding. The video was released by Insight Crime, a thinktank funded by USAID, the Open Society Foundation and similar bodies allied with Washington.
While Xiomara Castro’s victory in the 2021 election was decisive, and she still enjoys strong working-class support, there are abundant risks to her presidency. She faces a tumultuous congress, her vice-president resigned and is now her opponent, and both the military and the police forces are still contaminated by the corruption and impunity they enjoyed under previous neoliberal governments.
Murders of community leaders who stand in the way of big business continue. The most recent was September’s killing of esteemed community leader Juan López. As James Phillips writes in CovertAction, the crime “highlights the inability (weakness) of the Castro government in the face of the powerful corruption that still poisons much of the political economy and daily life of the country.” Castro specifically mentioned the case and her determination to solve it in her speech to the UN.
Castro has not yet been able to break the strong links between the Honduran military and Israel (much less its links with the U.S.). Indeed, it was revealed in April that Honduras was still buying Israeli military equipment of the kind used in Gaza, and that Honduran police officers have been receiving training in Israel. The news came from the Israeli ambassador, presumably intended to embarrass Castro.
Colombia: “The coup has begun”Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro is probably Israel’s strongest critic in Latin America. He not only denounces the Israeli regime as “genocidal,” but has described its actions in Gaza as comparable to Auschwitz. He broke diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv in May this year, provoking an immediate call from Washington urging him to change his mind, accompanied by warnings that this put at risk Colombia’s development and security.
Colombia’s ambassador to the U.S. recently spoke to Jacobin about the significance of his country’s severance of ties with Israel. He noted that previous governments would have made sure to “…brief the United States before it made any public announcement on any policy issue. But this time, when we severed ties with Israel, we didn’t tell the US.”
Yet Petro’s increasingly strident denunciations of Israel, including (in September) likening its military offensive in Gaza to “the horrors of the Holocaust,” and then saying that Netanyahu and his government “embody Nazism,” brought a major backlash. Washington responded by saying that “We cannot accept this. We cannot tolerate this” and the U.S. ambassador in Bogota labelled Petro as anti–Semitic. Nevertheless, like Xiomara Castro, Petro doubled down on his denunciations of Israel when he spoke at the UN General Assembly, saying “When Gaza dies, all of humanity will die.”
Like Honduras, Colombia had close ties with Israel under its previous governments. Petro’s predecessor, Ivan Duque, signed a free trade agreement with Israel in 2020. Colombia’s trade with Israel became second only to Brazil’s in the continent, with the principal export being coal. Petro halted coal exports in August this year, noting that the fuel was being used to make bombs to kill Palestinian children.
On October 1, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro warned of a planned coup in Colombia, accusing its former president Ivan Duque of working with Washington to carry it out. Then on October 9, President Petro claimed that “the coup had begun”, citing the attempt by the National Electoral Council to bring his presidency to an end via an investigation into alleged illegalities in his election campaign finances, allegations which he strongly contests.
It then emerged that, not long before the last election, Ivan Duque purchased Israeli “Pegasus” software and used it to spy on political opponents. While this leak (like the similar one in Honduras) may have been intended to remind Petro of his military’s continuing connections with Israel, it appears to have backfired. Petro has accused Duque of using state money illegally and of money laundering, citing as evidence that half of the $11 billion dollar payment was unaccountably sent to Israel by plane, in cash. Nevertheless, the news strengthened the impression that Petro, like previous presidents, is surrounded by corruption.
This is one of several similarities between Petro’s situation and that of Xiomara Castro in Honduras. First, there are questionable attempts to link Petro with drug cartels via accusations against his relatives.
Second, like his Honduran counterpart, he faces constant right-wing resistance to his attempts at radical transformation of his country, up to and including “lawfare” against his presidency itself.
And in a third similarity, the weakness of Colombia’s justice system in tackling corruption was illustrated by the fact that a case against Chiquita Brands International for financing paramilitaries could only be brought to its recent conclusion in a U.S. court, just as happened in Honduras in the case against former president Hernández. Of course, the two countries also share a long history of close ties between their security systems and the U.S. military, including the hosting of large U.S. military bases.
When Whales Walked
When Whales Walked
PBS (2024)
Film Review
Aimed at ages 8-18, this documentary traces the fascinating evolutionary history of crocodiles, birds, whales and elephants.
Crocodiles
Because early crocodile fossils are relatively rare, scientists use changes in DNA structure to trace their evolutionary changes. By calculating degrees of difference between fossil and modern crocodile DNA, they can calculate the number of years separating modern animals from their ancestors.
The first crocodiles appeared 230 million years ago during the Triassic Age, when al the Earth’s continents were a single land mass called Pangia. Predating dinosaurs, crocodiles were land predators were land predators who walked on their hind legs. They subsequently evolved into a greyhound-like creature, walking on four legs and built for speed. Following a mass extinction event that wiped out most land and sea animals, massive volcanic activity broke Pangia apart. It also substantially increased volcanic activity, substantially increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, leading to a mass extinction event.
Patagonia in South America was a great place for the surviving crocodiles, where they diversified into multiple species, including the 14 modern species.
Birds
Over 150 million years ago birds evolved from dinosaurs and still possess the same claws and tooth-like beak. However unlike birds, most dinosaurs lacked wish bones, the structure making flight possible.
Bird diversification expanded when crocodile evolution ended. There are more species (10,000) among birds than any other vertebrates, and they have colonized every habitat on earth.
In 1960 paleontologists finally discovered a dinosaur with a wishbone. It had feathers for warmth, clawed wings it used to kill prey and a short tail (like most birds). I
Whales
Bowhead whales can live up to 200 years. Blue whales are bigger than dinosaurs and have hearts the sized of small cars. Fossil whales are identified based on special ear bones in whales that help them detect sounds under water. The earliest whale fossil was a land mammal with webbed feet that that walking on four and spent time in the water. It took whales 10 million years for them to become fully aquatic.
Whales are extremely intelligent and live in a family social structure (parents, babies, grandparents, aunts and uncles) similar to humans. They communicate via low frequency vibrations that travel for miles and experience grief, anger and empathy.
Elephants
Sixty million years ago, elephant ancestors were the size of a rabbit and had incisors that gradually became tusks. Fifty-six million year-old ancestor fossils the size of a small dog have been discovered in Morocco.
The modern elephant species Elephants first appeared in Kenya’s Turkana Basin in Kenya 17 million years ago. These fossils are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 the size of modern elephants. Modern day elephants appeared seven million years ago.
Like humans, they also made numerous migrations (as family groups) out of Africa (fossil footprints have been in the desert near Abu Dhabi). Their first exodus was 18 millions years ago when all the continents were still connected. a million years ago some elephants made it all the way to Japan. The extinct elephant species known as woolly mammoths adapted to the cold of Siberia and North America.
Elephant fossils have been found on all continents except Austrailiaa,South America and Antarctica.
April 4, 2025
Opinion: A weaker dollar and lower rates are part of Trump’s plan. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Getty Images
By Brett Arends
Three things can happen right now in the financial markets. Two of them are not too disastrous.
Lower interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds? Check.
U.S. dollar down? Check.
An economic panic that makes people easier to manipulate? Check, check, check.
This isn’t just me talking. This is Team MAGA itself. As we observed here just a week ago, U.S. President Donald Trump wants and needs both the U.S. dollar and long-term U.S. interest rates to fall.
The turmoil that has followed Trump’s “liberation day” batch of tariffs is delivering exactly that.
Meanwhile it was Trump’s own close adviser Elon Musk who said the quiet part out loud last fall, shortly before the election, when he stated that panic and “necessary hardship” would be on the administration’s agenda.
We told you about that, too.
So why people are acting so surprised is anyone’s guess. This isn’t an accident. This is “mission accomplished.” Trump needed this sort of turmoil to enact his economic agenda, and he’s getting it.
How much pain is being felt by Trump, by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick or by Tesla boss Musk? All four are billionaires. When you’re that rich, stock-market turmoil isn’t a hardship or even a risk. It’s an opportunity.
For everyone else — investors, business owners, workers — it’s another matter. With apologies to the late football coach Woody Hayes, roughly three things can happen right now in the financial markets. Two of them are not too disastrous.
‘Big, beautiful’ trade concessionsThe first would be that foreign governments from Brussels to Beijing trim their sails to Trump’s maelstrom, announcing the kind of “big, beautiful” trade concessions that would allow the president to call off the tariff storm while claiming a win. The concessions might be more show than substance, but who cares?
From where we’re sitting now, this would be a pretty decent outcome.
Republican politicians might decide that they’re more scared of a sea of red ink than a sea of red hats.
The second possibility would be a sudden outbreak of constitutionalism, political responsibility or at least self-preservation among the 273 Republicans currently drawing salaries as U.S. representatives and senators. They — and maybe they alone — could actually force Trump to change course.
As I mentioned in a column just before Trump took office in January, the president does not control the nation’s “fifth estate” — the financial markets. They will be heard. If the White House won’t listen, sooner or later Capitol Hill will — especially if economic conditions worsen.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, not previously suspected of being in the pay of “international globalists,” has already publicly questioned the constitutionality of a president unilaterally imposing taxes. Presumably Paul will soon be primaried by Team MAGA for his impudence. “Senator Laura Loomer” might have a nice ring to it.
But some of Paul’s colleagues might also decide, later if not sooner, that they are more scared of a sea of red ink than a sea of red hats. In the 2024 congressional elections, 22 House Republicans won by less than 10 percentage points, and 15 won by less than 5 points.
Meanwhile, some 54% of Americans own retirement accounts. Many of these people typically vote Republican. They will be going to the polls in 20 months’ time for the U.S. midterm elections.
Some 99% of Americans also depend on a healthy economy for their livelihoods, whether they have investments or not. Republicans in Congress might want to ponder Thursday’s stock-market shock in more detail.
For instance, the S&P 500’s 4.8% fall on Thursday slightly exceeds the U.S. market benchmark’s 4.7% plunge seen on the day Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.
And despite Bessent’s quip that the stock market had “a Mag Seven problem, not a MAGA problem,” the turmoil is not restricted to big, powerful companies, least of all those run by technology tycoons.
Small-company stocks fell by more than big-company stocks: The S&P Small Cap 600 Index dropped more than 7% on April 3. Shares of “Main Street” companies that reflect the real economy were in the eye of the storm. Homebuilders’ share prices fell 6%. Shares of smaller regional banks and savings banks fell 10%. FactSet reports that 58 publicly traded companies are headquartered in Ohio: On April 3, their shares fell 5.9% on average.
One day’s stock-market action alone won’t matter too much. But stocks tend to be forward-looking. Falling share prices tend to anticipate tougher times ahead.
What is most disturbing is the third possibility — namely that neither foreign governments nor America’s legislators decide there is anything they can do, or want to do, and Trump continues to carry out his economic agenda without constraint. I’m willing to wager good money that nobody really knows where this would lead — including the current occupant of the White House.
[…]
The U.S.-Israeli Alliance Has Sowed Disaster For Israel
[Source: radiohc.cu]Jeremy Kuzmarov
Without U.S. support Israel’s leaders could have been compelled to seek a just resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict instead of pursuing a Greater Israel
In his 1983 book The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky argued against the grain that the Israelis had compromised their country’s security in choosing to ally with the U.S. and were sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
According to Chomsky, Israeli leaders felt invincible because of U.S. weapons supplies and pursued a rejectionist course toward the Palestinians when a durable peace was needed to guarantee Israel’s security.
As Israeli politics shifted more to the right, messianic proponents of a Greater Israel took over the government and carried out repeated military aggression that antagonized Israel’s neighbors and made its people more vulnerable to attack.
Chomsky was a Zionist in his youth who had worked on a Kibbutz in the late 1940s but became disillusioned by the racism toward Palestinians that he saw as pervasive in Israeli society.
Chomsky felt that the Zionist project could have been successful if it adhered to the vision of Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber and Albert Einstein of a bi-national state where Arabs and Jews learned to live together peacefully and with mutual respect.
Chomsky did not believe that the Israeli lobby had manipulated U.S. leaders into supporting Israel—rather he believed that the U.S. executive branch supported Israel because it functioned as a strategic proxy that helped the U.S. in its goal of trying to dominate the Middle East and exploit its oil resources.
Over the years, Israel performed much of the dirty work for the U.S.—as when it humiliated U.S. nemesis Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1967 Six-Day War; helped undermine the Assad dynasty in Syria, and assisted in U.S. regime-change operations directed against Iran, which had escaped the clutches of U.S. neo-colonial control under the Shah following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.[1]
Chomsky was attacked for years by neo-conservative intellectuals and other academics for being supposedly a closet anti-Semite and far-left extremist (Chomsky identified with anarchism and libertarian strains of socialism).
But today it seems even more clear that Chomsky was correct in his analysis and that the U.S.-Israeli alliance—by which the U.S. poured (and continues to pour) billions of dollars in weaponry each year and assisted Israel in developing into a military technological powerhouse—has been a catastrophic one, not only for the Palestinians, but also for Israelis and Jews the world over.
The Fall of IsraelDr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally renowned expert on world geopolitics who has published a new book with Clarity Press called The Fall of Israel: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy & Military.
The book affirms many insights that Chomsky made in Fateful Triangle while tracing Israel’s moral degradation under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Steinbock starts The Fall of Israel by juxtaposing the brutality of Israeli attacks in Gaza with the mass protests directed against widening social inequality, political corruption and the attempt by Netanyahu’s government to impose judicial reforms designed to eviscerate what was left of Israel’s democracy.
Steinbock writes that “the common denominator of the destruction of the Gaza Strip and the mass protests against Jewish autocracy is the fall of Israel.”[2]
That fall is reflected in increasing suppression of dissent, historical revisionism in education, routinization of torture, and widespread anti-Arab settler pogroms. It is further epitomized by a halt in Israel’s tourism industry as a result of the Gaza War, the downgrading of Israel’s credit rating, and an increased brain drain.
Hamas and Hezbollah shelling in response to Israeli attacks has displaced an estimated 200,000 Israelis from their homes; foreign laborers are exiting the country and the cancelation of 150,000 Palestinian work permits in the West Bank has brought construction to a standstill.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, Israel’s economy shrank by 20% on an annualized basis, a figure that may grow worse if countries like Turkey sustain boycotts on imported goods that Israel depends on.[3]
Like Chomsky, Steinbock links Israel’s degradation to its alliance with the U.S., emphasizing that Israel’s militarization has been “enabled by the symbiotic bilateral ties with Washington and massive U.S. military aid.”[4]
U.S. neo-conservatives and Jewish donors have hastened the empowerment of right-wing proponents of a Greater Israel atop Israel’s government who hold a racist contempt for Palestinians and support the construction of illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories to drive Palestinians further off their land.[5]
Steinbock quotes a prescient 1968 essay by Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Israeli orthodox Jew and public intellectual called “The Territories,” which envioned Israel’s supposedly glorious triumph in the 1967 Six-Day War over Egypt and Nasser—when it acquired the West Bank and Gaza—as a “dark prelude to endless colonial wars that could turn Israel into a police state, subvert democratic institutions, foster corruption, transform Palestinians into an exploited underclass and the Israeli military into suffering from the kind of colonial demoralization seen previously in Algeria and Vietnam (and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan).”[6]
Leibowitz proved to be prophetic, though Steinbock notes that the seeds of self-destruction started even earlier with the 1948 Nakba, or ethnic expulsions, of about 700,000 Palestinians during Israel’s independence war, which set the groundwork for today’s calamities.
The Nakba and Origins of LikudThe Nakba was rooted in a colonial mentality among Jewish settlers in historic Palestine that went back to Theodor Herzl, the father of the Zionist movement, who envisioned himself as a Jewish “Cecil Rhodes” and the Israeli state as a “rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism [represented by the Arabs].”[7]
[…]
Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, convened a group of a dozen senior military and security figures—including Moshe Dayan and future Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin—who prepared the plans for ethnic cleansing and supervised its execution.[8]
A key figure in the operation was Menachem Begin, Israel’s prime minister from 1977 to 1983, who was the founder of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party (originally called Herut).
Begin traced his lineage to the revisionist Zionism of Ze’ev Jabotinsky which emphasized the importance of armed struggle and saw Italy and its fascist leader Benito Mussolini as an ideological soulmate.
In 1948, Begin was head of the paramilitary arm of the Haganah, the Irgun, which carried out the Deir Yassin massacre when more than 100 Palestinians were murdered and another 650 were driven from their homes.
The New York Times published a letter in December 1948 signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and other prominent Jewish intellectuals that characterized Begin’s Herut Party, the forerunner of Likud, with being a political party “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”[
Likud has always sustained the vision of a Jewish state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River and has been hostile to the peace process and the idea of a Palestinian state. This is in contrast to Israel’s Labor Party, which has been willing to at least consider Palestinian statehood.
Punitive Doctrine and More Ethnic CleansingSteinbock emphasizes that dominant figures in Israel’s military apparatus—notably Ariel Sharon and Moshe Dayan—lay the foundation for Israel’s punitive military doctrine by which brutal reprisals and disproportionate retaliation were adopted in response to terrorist attacks.[10]
After the Nakba, Palestinian fedayeen mounted raids into Israel from Gaza and other border regions. This triggered brutal reprisals by Israeli commando units like those led by Sharon in Qibya in the West Bank in October 1953 where nearly 70 villagers were killed, two-thirds of whom were women and children, and 50 houses were demolished, with some inhabitants still inside.[11]
A missed opportunity occurred in the mid 1950s during the prime ministership of Moshe Sharett, the Henry Wallace of Israel,[12] whose yearning for peace was undermined by right-wing elements in his Cabinet who carried out undercover terrorist attacks in Egypt designed to undermine Sharett’s peace overtures to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Continuing from the pattern of the Nakba, large-scale ethnic cleansing was carried out after the 1967 Six-Day War.
Some 245,000 Palestinians were forced to flee from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Jordan; 116,000 from the Golan Heights to Syria; and 11,000 from Gaza to Egypt, with many becoming dependent on UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees).
[…]
Netanyahu Clan’s ExtremismBenjamin Netanyahu’s father Benzion, a professor of Judaic Studies at Cornell University, worked for a period as an assistant to Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s personal secretary and shared his insistence on the creation of an “Iron Wall” to separate Jews in Israel from the Palestinians.[14]
As an old man in the 1990s, Benzion denounced the Oslo peace agreement as representing the potential ruin of Israel, and supported the invasion of Gaza “even if it brings us years of war.” Benzion sustained throughout his life an Orientalist bias characteristic of the neo-conservatives, stating that “the tendency to conflict is the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence…his existence is one of perpetual war.[15]
Benjamin’s views that have now landed him at The Hague are very reminiscent of his father’s and also those of his grandfather Nathan Mileikowsky, a Russian-born rabbi and early Zionist champion known for his advocacy against socialist Zionism and anti-Zionists.[16]
After migration to Israel, Mileikowsky raised funds for the pre-state Yishuv and collaborated with Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the founding father of religious Zionism whose son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, is the revered spiritual father of Israel’s settlers and the messianic far right.[17]
As a young man Benjamin served in an elite reconnaissance unit of the Israeli military and, after studying at MIT, became connected to powerful neo-conservatives in the U.S. through Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, head of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement who tried to link the fate of Israel, world Jewry and the United States.
[…]
From the start, his career has been overshadowed by dark-money controversies and, in 1997, police recommended his indictment on corruption charges for influence-peddling, foreshadowing the more recent criminal cases against him.[18]
[…]
Netanyahu’s aversion to a two-state solution, ironically, led his government to funnel money to Hamas, which was viewed as an instrument to undermine the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and divide the Palestinian people so they could be conquered. [21]
Netanyahu’s power base has been preserved in part because of his connection to the late Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino owner tied to organized crime, and other U.S. billionaire neo-conservatives like Irving Moskowitz who has financed the settler movement in Israel.
[…]
Extremists in the Cabinet[…]
Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is a devotee of Rabbi Meir Kahane (1932-1990), an FBI informant who founded the ultra-right wing Jewish Defense League, and was filled with hatred toward Arabs.[23]
Advocating for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel, Ben-Gvir first gained notoriety in 1995 by brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin—“we got his car and we’ll get him too,” Ben-Gvir said, weeks before Rabin’s actual assassination.[24]
[…]
Steinbock calls Netanyahu’s Minister of Defense, Bezalel Smotrich, “a vehement opponent of a Palestinian state and self-proclaimed fascist, racist and homophobe who lives in an illegally built West Bank settlement.” In 2021, he declared that David Ben-Gurion should have “finished the job” and kicked all Palestinians out when Israel was founded.
[…]
Resource War and Jared Kushner’s Dream[…]
After October 7, Israel’s intelligence ministry prepared a secret memorandum that called for the transfer of Gaza’s population “outside the combat zone” to Egypt, which was an overt demand for ethnic cleansing. Wealthy U.S. investors like Jared Kushner were salivating at the prospect of developing high-end condominiums and resorts on Gaza’s beach-front property.[30]
[…]
Crucial U.S. Military Support[…]
Since most of those arms were purchased with U.S. taxpayer money through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, American citizens effectively funded most of the carnage in Gaza. The financial flows that made possible the destruction comprised the annual $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid, plus an additional $1.4 billion to buy more weapons.[35]
[…]
Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/04/03/the-u-s-israeli-alliance-has-sowed-disaster-for-israel/
Trying to Block Arms to Israel, Bernie Sanders Denounces AIPAC’s Massive Election Spending
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., leaves the Senate Democrats’ lunch in the U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 25, 2025.Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty
Matt Sledge
As Israel continued its monthlong blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and pounded the enclave with American bombs, in Washington the Senate on Thursday voted down two resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to block the sale of tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs and other offensive weapons to Israel.
The resolutions marked the second time since November that Sanders forced a vote on arms sales. Once again, they exposed a deep divide among Democrats and blanket Republican support for Israel.
The Senate voted 15-82 on the first resolution, concerning 2,000-pound bombs, with all Republicans present voting against it, along with most Democrats. Sanders was joined by 14 Democrats.
The second resolution, focusing on other weapons, fared even worse. It was defeated 15-83.
The Trump administration officially opposed the resolutions, along with the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Sanders, in a passionate floor speech, denounced AIPAC for its massive spending on last year’s elections.
“History will not forgive us for this.”
“If you are a Republican, and you vote against the Trump–Musk administration in one way or the other, you’ve got to look over your shoulder and worry that you are going to get a call from Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world,” Sanders said. “If you are a Democrat, you have to worry about the billionaires who fund AIPAC.”
He cast his resolutions as a chance to stop exporting weapons that enable what he called “barbarism” in Gaza.
“History will not forgive us for this,” Sanders said. “The time is long overdue for us to tell the Netanyahu government that we will not provide more weapons of destruction for them.”
Changing LandscapeThe votes came only four months after Sanders’s prior, unsuccessful attempt to block arms sales to Israel, but against a vastly different geopolitical backdrop.
Since November, Israel has reached and abandoned a ceasefire with Hamas. Donald Trump has taken over the White House from Joe Biden, while touting his support for ethnically cleansing Gaza. And a Republican majority has assumed control in the Senate.
Sanders’s resolutions had little chance of passing either time, but he has cast both as tests of the Senate’s conscience.
One of the resolutions up for a vote Thursday would have blocked the sale of more than 35,000 2,000-pound bombs, which have been widely criticized by humanitarian groups for the indiscriminate destruction they cause in densely populated urban areas such as the Gaza Strip.
The other resolution targeted the sale of thousands of smaller-diameter — but still powerful — bombs and thousands of bomb-guidance kits and fuses.
Sanders said the situation in Gaza now is even worse than it was during the Biden administration, which humanitarian groups criticized for its half-hearted attempts to pressure Israel.
“What is happening right now is unthinkable. Today it is 31 days and counting with absolutely no humanitarian aid getting into Gaza,” Sanders said. “That is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. It is a war crime. You don’t starve children, and it is pushing things toward an even deeper catastrophe.”
Despite Sanders’s attempt to tie his resolutions to opposition to Trump, many Democrats voted against them. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., voted no, as did Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., who gave a floor speech to rally support against the resolution.
Passing the resolutions, Rosen said, would send a “message to terrorists” of “impunity.”
“If we are serious about stability in the region,” she said, “and the safe and secure state of Israel someday living alongside a peaceful, independent Palestinian state, I urge all my colleagues to vote no on these resolutions.”
Fewer VotesCritics of Israel’s war had hoped that the earlier resolutions in November, while unlikely to succeed, might begin a longer process of building support for Palestinians in Congress. Sanders’s resolutions on Thursday, however, drew four fewer votes than his best showing in November.
One notable defection was of Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who faced a backlash from some Jewish community leaders over his support of Sanders’s first set of resolutions in November.
After defending his earlier votes, Ossoff voted against blocking arms sales on Thursday. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ossoff is considered the Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbent in next year’s election, and the party will also be defending three open seats that Republicans have a chance of taking, according to the Cook Political Report.
Seeming to anticipate electoral concerns from Democrats, Sanders during his speech bemoaned the role of money in politics and the influence of AIPAC, which spent on 389 congressional races last year. The pro-Israel lobby group had urged its members to oppose Sanders’s “dangerous” resolutions in a message before the vote.
AIPAC hailed the vote in a press release.
“We applaud the Trump administration for approving these sales and helping ensure Israel has the resources it needs to win,” the group said. “The majority of Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans reaffirmed profound American support for our ally and rejected the repeated dangerous efforts by Senator Sanders and his allies to weaken Israel and undermine the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
A group that has been critical of Israel, the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, expressed its disappointment after the vote.
“Democrats in Congress have their lowest approval rating in decades,” the group’s executive director Margaret DeReus, said in a statement, “and today’s vote was yet another demonstration of why they have lost the trust of their own voters and the American people.”
[…]
Via https://theintercept.com/2025/04/03/bernie-sanders-aipac-israel-weapons-sales/
Trump’s Three Greatest Betrayals So Far: Trump’s greatest betrayal so far: Accelerating Middle East wars, silencing dissent, and serving Zionist masters
Lance D JohnsonDonald Trump, supposedly the “peace president,” was elected on promises of ending “stupid wars.”However, he has instead escalated U.S. military aggression in the Middle East – turning his back on his campaign promise.Trump’s administration is actively suppressing free speech, deporting protesters, and aligning with Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.Evangelical support for Trump remains unwavering, blinded by Zionist eschatology that justifies any atrocity in the name of biblical prophecy.Trump’s recent bombing of Yemen signals a dangerous expansion toward war with Iran, orchestrated by Netanyahu and the Zionist power structure.Within weeks of taking office, President Donald Trump has shattered his campaign facade as a “peace president,” revealing himself as yet another puppet of the Zionist war machine. While he may posture as a negotiator in Ukraine, his actions in the Middle East expose a far darker agenda—one that prioritizes Israel’s imperial ambitions over American lives, global stability, and basic human decency.
Trump’s war on free speech: silencing critics of IsraelTrump’s administration has weaponized federal power to crush dissent against Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine. Judge Andrew Napolitano and Professor John Mearsheimer recently exposed the chilling reality: “The single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States, at this point in time, is Israel and its supporters here in the United States,” Mearsheimer stated.
Despite Trump’s hollow claim—”I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America”—his regime has intensified crackdowns on pro-Palestinian voices. Protesters face deportation, universities censor criticism of Israel, and any challenge to Zionist narratives is met with state-sanctioned retaliation.
The puppet and the puppeteer: Trump’s subservience to NetanyahuTrump’s fealty to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not just political—it’s pathological. As Colonel Douglas Macgregor bluntly observed, “Netanyahu is practicing American foreign policy through ventriloquy. He’s simply moving Trump’s mouth.”
George Galloway highlighted Trump’s humiliating subservience, recalling footage of the U.S. president pulling out Netanyahu’s chair like a servant. “This is the president of the United States practically waiting at table on a visiting politician,” Galloway remarked, emphasizing the grotesque power imbalance.
Netanyahu does not merely lead Israel—he commands “Jewish international power and capital,” as Macgregor noted. Trump, indebted to this influence for his election, now repays the favor with bombs, sanctions, and unconditional support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
From Gaza to Yemen: Trump’s expanding middle east slaughterTrump’s betrayal is most evident in his military escalation. After cynically criticizing Biden’s bombings, Trump has launched devastating strikes on Yemen, killing civilians under the pretense of protecting Red Sea shipping—a crisis manufactured by Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Dr. Ron Paul condemned the hypocrisy: “Was Yemen in the process of attacking the United States? No. Did the President seek a declaration of war? No.” Instead, Trump’s bombs rained down on women and children, while his administration threatened Iran—a deliberate provocation toward World War III.
Max Blumenthal summarized Trump’s role succinctly: “Trump owns the Gazan slaughter.” The same man who promised peace now fuels a regional inferno, with Israel’s interests dictating every move.
Evangelical delusion: the cult of Zionist eschatologyWhy do evangelicals still worship Trump, despite his warmongering? The answer lies in Prophetic Dispensationalism—a theological cancer that twists scripture to justify Zionist crimes. Many pastors cite Genesis 12:3 (“I will bless those who bless you”) as a blank check for Israeli atrocities, while ignoring Christ’s teachings on mercy and justice.
As one former pastor lamented, “If a Christian was a ‘soulwinner,’ God would ‘hide’ his sins—no matter how vile.” This warped logic now shields Trump, whose sins—mass deportations, censorship, and mass murder—are excused so long as he bows to Netanyahu.
Will Trump become America’s Titus?History offers a grim parallel: In 70 AD, Roman Emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem, scattering the Jewish people. Today, Trump—unwittingly or not—may be the instrument of Zionism’s downfall. Even Alan Dershowitz admits: “Israel’s survival is not guaranteed.”
Will evangelical voters, who propelled Trump to power, realize too late that they’ve enabled a monster? Or will they continue cheering as he drags the world toward Armageddon—all for a theology built on bloodshed and lies?
Israel’s desperate actions in the Middle East can no longer be considered “self defense” – and stating this truth isn’t “antisemitic.” What we are witnessing in real time is the fall of the current regime in Israel, and no amount of Biblical prophecy and right-wing religious bloviating can justify what America is encouraging, supporting with pallets of cash, bombs and relentless arms.
[…]
Via https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-03-26-trump-greatest-betrayal-accelerating-middle-east-wars.html
Facebook faces $2.4 billion legal action in Kenya for inciting violence
© Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesRTPetitioners are demanding that the US tech company set up a fund for Ethiopian victims of violence incited on its platformA Kenyan court has ruled that Facebook’s owner, Meta, can face a $2.4 billion lawsuit in the East African country for allegedly promoting hate speech which fueled an ethnic war in neighboring Ethiopia, a group that filed the case has announced.
The decision by Kenya’s High Court on Thursday comes more than two years after a group of Ethiopian researchers, along with Kenyan human rights campaigners, launched the lawsuit against the American tech giant.
The petitioners argue that Facebook’s recommendation algorithm amplified violent posts and contributed to the two-year conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, which ended in November 2022. Maereg Amare, a chemistry professor, was killed during the conflict after his home address and posts calling for his murder were published on Facebook, according to his son, Abrham Meareg, one of the plaintiffs.
Fisseha Tekle, a former researcher at Amnesty International and claimant in the case who published reports on crimes committed during the Tigray war, also allegedly received death threats on the Meta platform. The other petitioner is the Katiba Institute (KI), a Kenya-based legal non-profit organization.
READ MORE: African region seeks help after armed group seizes townThe plaintiffs are demanding that Meta hire more content moderators in Africa, with better pay and working conditions, as well as establish a $2.4 billion restitution fund for the victims of hate and violence incited on the platform. The petition also asks the firm to alter its algorithm to stop promoting “viral hate” and formally apologize for the murder of Professor Meareg.
However, Meta argues that Kenyan courts lack jurisdiction to hear cases against it because it is not registered as a company in the African country.
Similar allegations were leveled against Meta in 2021, when the social media giant was sued for $150 billion for its role in inciting violence in Myanmar, which contributed to the Rohingya genocide.In a statement on Thursday, the KI said the high court in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, rejected the US-based company’s argument in its latest ruling.
“The ruling shows that the harmful impact of big tech’s discriminatory policies in the African context can be rightfully challenged in our own Kenyan courts,” the institute’s executive director, Nora Mbagathi, stated.
The bloody battle between Tigrayan forces and Ethiopia’s federal government has been named the world’s deadliest conflict in 2022 by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, with over 100,000 people killed. Recent attacks by a faction of the troubled state’s main political party against the interim administration established in 2023 as part of the African Union-mediated Pretoria Agreement that ended the two-year violence have sparked fears of an outbreak of another civil war.
[…]
Via https://www.rt.com/africa/615238-meta-ethiopian-war-content-suit-kenya/
April 3, 2025
RFK Jr Ousts FDA’s Peter Marks, Sending Vaccine Stocks Tumbling
The reaction to the forced resignation of Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s agency responsible for authorizing vaccines, by markets and the pharmaceutical industry is indicative of the influence Big Pharma had over the FDA, said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense chief scientific officer.
Pharma stocks tumbled today after Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the agency within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) responsible for authorizing vaccines, resigned under pressure from his new boss, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“If Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at FDA under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy,” an HHS official said in a statement.
Shares of Moderna, BioNTech, Novavax and Pfizer declined 11%, 7%, 6% and 2%, respectively, on the news, Fast Company reported. STAT News reported that Marks’ departure “is a worst-case scenario realized” for investors and “a biopharma industry that saw him as an ally.”
“Given Dr. Marks’ influence on the development of biologics and uncertainty as to who will replace him and how his legacy might continue, his departure will create a significant near-term overhang,” William Blair analyst Matt Phipps told Reuters.
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry lobbying group, said it was “deeply concerned” Marks’ resignation would “broadly impact the development of new, transformative therapies to fight diseases for the American people.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the reaction to Marks’ departure on the part of the markets and the pharmaceutical industry is indicative of the influence Big Pharma had over the FDA. He said:
“Marks gave an over $100 billion gift to Pfizer and Moderna via the woefully undertested and outright dangerous COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. So, yes, for the short term, I would imagine that some investors would not like his departure from the FDA.
“Marks’ departure also signals a shift from ‘sick care’ and ‘customers for life’ where, unfortunately, Pharma invests now, to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ where everyone benefits from ending chronic disease in the U.S.”
John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, welcomed Marks’ departure. “The American people are well-served by Marks’ resignation.” Gilmore cited the “institutional failure” of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) “to use the highest standards for evaluating the safety and efficacy of products that are injected in almost all American children.”
Marks has led the FDA’s CBER since 2012 and “played a key role,” The Wall Street Journal reported, in Operation Warp Speed in 2020, leading to the development of the COVID-19 vaccines.
In his resignation letter, Marks wrote: “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
Marks’ ‘support of immunizations conflicted with Kennedy’s skepticism’
According to the Journal, an HHS official gave Marks a choice between resigning or being fired. His resignation is effective April 5. Marks wanted to remain in his position, but “his support of immunizations conflicted with Kennedy’s skepticism.”
“Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety. and security,” Marks wrote in his resignation letter.
Marks said he was “willing to work to address” Kennedy’s concerns on vaccine safety, including through a series of public meetings, but that these proposals were rejected. He also accused Kennedy of spreading “misinformation and lies” during the “ongoing multistate measles outbreak.”
But in a post on X, Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, said that while Marks “claimed he wanted to stop misinformation,” he “refused all offers to meet with the ‘misinformation spreaders’ to settle the question on just who is spreading the misinformation.”
While Marks claimed he was willing to address questions on vaccine safety, he also wrote, “Efforts currently being advanced by some on the adverse health effects of vaccination are concerning.”
One day before Marks’ resignation, Kennedy announced the creation of a new sub-agency under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to focus on vaccine injuries — part of a broader restructuring of public health agencies, including the FDA.
In February, Kennedy promised that under his watch, HHS and CDC would develop a better system for tracking vaccine injuries.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that unnamed sources within the CDC said the agency was planning to study the possible link between vaccines and autism. The story triggered negative mainstream news reports claiming the study isn’t needed.
Last week, The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that HHS had tapped researcher David Geier — a researcher and expert on the connections between toxic exposures and autism — to lead a study of possible links between vaccines and autism. The Post and other media outlets used the opportunity to attack Geier and the need for such a study.
Marks’ resignation also came as the FDA is considering a petition a group of scientists submitted earlier this year, calling upon the FDA to suspend or withdraw the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Marks ‘became a cheerleader for the jab’
Writing on Substack, investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., said it’s “evident there was a significant clash over vaccine safety” that led to Marks’ resignation. She said Marks’ departure “may be an opportunity for the FDA to refocus on its mission of protecting public health rather than rubber-stamping new vaccine approvals.”
Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher agreed. “Those who believe vaccine safety must not be questioned do not belong in our regulatory agencies. When it comes to injectable products, safety is more important than blind faith in vaccine ideology.”
According to The New York Times, while Marks “was viewed as a steady hand by many during the Covid pandemic,” he was criticized “for being overly generous to companies that sought approvals for therapies with mixed evidence of a benefit.”
The Times cited Marks’ role in pressuring two FDA scientists to approve full licensure of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, leading to the researchers’ resignation. Pfizer’s vaccine was fully licensed in August 2021 — one day later, the Biden administration mandated COVID-19 vaccination for military service members.
The rushed licensure of the Pfizer vaccine was the topic of a congressional hearing last year in which Marks testified. In a post on X Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote, “Instead of verifying safety and efficacy of the shots, Marks swept things under the rug and became a cheerleader for the jab.”
“In order to get the vaccines to people in need when thousands of people were dying, we actually allowed the safety to be authorized with just two months of median follow-up, rather than the normal six to 12. But we were confident that that would capture adverse events,” Marks testified at last year’s hearing.
‘It was clear that he did not want to know about our injuries’
While Marks was actively engaged in the licensure of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, he “remained steadfast” in dismissing concerns about injuries related to the COVID-19 vaccines as “misinformation,” Demasi wrote.
In 2023, The BMJ wrote that “more than once” during FDA meetings, Marks “expressed confusion about why it would matter to doctors whether or not regulators acknowledged that a condition might be related to the vaccine.”
Documents CHD obtained last year through a Freedom of Information Act request showed that Marks was aware of COVID-19 vaccine injuries in early 2021 when several vaccine injury victims emailed him for help. Marks blew off scheduled meetings with them.
According to TrialSite News, even though Marks was aware of the growing number of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, “vaccine injury became a political hot potato under the Biden administration,” leading Marks to abandon the vaccine-injured.
Brianne Dressen, co-founder of React19, an advocacy group for the vaccine-injured, sustained serious injuries after participating in a clinical trial for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in 2020 and later sought meetings with Marks but was rebuffed.
“Constant emails and calls with Marks … sent while I was in constant pain, literally begging for help, begging for them to help others, begging for a lifeline. A lifeline that never ever came,” Dressen said.
Dr. Danice Hertz, a retired gastroenterologist from California injured by the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, also communicated with Marks but said he “brushed off anyone who contacted him regarding vaccine side effects.”
“He systematically refused to hear our pleas for acknowledgment and help,” Hertz said. “This is why the medical community is unaware of these injuries and cannot help us. One would think that the FDA would want to know about serious adverse reactions to the novel COVID vaccines. I can say from first-hand experience that they don’t … It was clear that he did not want to know about our injuries.”
Dressen said it “didn’t matter what we said or how we said it, COVID vaccine injuries were not a priority at the FDA. Didn’t matter if it was safety signals for MIS-V, dysautonomia, neuropathy, tinnitus or reports of suicides. It was never enough. We begged, we pleaded, we pushed as hard as we could, and came up with nothing.”
According to Demasi, Marks instead “blurred the line between regulation and promotion” by participating in FDA videos promoting the COVID-19 vaccines and by authorizing COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for children without sufficient testing.
“Without randomized data regarding clinical outcomes, he repeatedly approved COVID boosters for kids as young as 6 months,” Dr. Vinay Prasad, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on Substack, calling these “some of the biggest regulatory errors in the 21st century.”
Demasi said Marks “repeatedly pointed to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) as proof of rigorous safety monitoring, yet failed to improve its efficiency.”
During last year’s congressional hearing, Marks claimed that numerous false reports of vaccine injuries are submitted to VAERS, a government-run database. However, he acknowledged, “We probably have not done a good enough job of communicating sometimes the actual numbers of deaths versus what’s in VAERS.”
[…]
The Most Revolutionary Act
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