Because the U.S. Government flaunts itself as being a democracy instead of a dictatorship and it coups and invades and overthrows and replaces (“regime changes”) Governments that it declares to be dictatorships instead of democracies (the “New Cold War” isn’t about “capitalism versus communism,” but about “democracy versus dictatorship”), a crucial question now in all international political discussions is: Is the U.S. Government ACTUALLY a democracy, or does it instead only pretend to be one? In other words: Is the U.S. Government’s position in “the New Cold War” fraudulent?
The June 2022 issue of the peer-reviewed academic journal, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, contained an article that answers this question with empirical data which has definitively crushed all of the U.S. Government’s references to itself as being a “democracy.” It is therefore significant not only because it proves that the U.S. Government is a dictatorship, but also because it proves that the U.S. position in “the New Cold War is fraudulent. The article is therefore of significance not just to Americans, but globally.
The article, which was specifically about and addressed to America, closed by saying: “We think it is time that social scientists stop pushing the equivalent of the Ptolemaic solar system. They need to recognize what almost everyone else does: that we live in a money-driven political system. No one is going to make progress by adding epicycles to voting models.” In other words: political ‘scientists’ and ‘historians’ who continue to perpetuate the U.S. regime’s claim to being a democracy (one-person-one-vote instead of one-dollar-one-vote) are now archaic: they are equivalent to the physical philosophers who had preceded the first physical scientist or “physicist” Galileo’s empirical demonstrations and the resulting first scientific theory (and subsequently Darwin doing the same thing in the biological sciences), that the Bible is not a book of history but instead a book of mythology mixing lies with truths in order to perpetuate and expand a particular clergy. But, now, the issue isn’t about control of the State by the clergy, but instead it’s about control of the State by the aristocracy — the nation’s super-rich. That’s what’s at issue in today’s America. Science is finally now extending outward, from its existing base, first in physics, and then in biology, to demonstrate such powerful empirical political realities as this in society — encroaching now upon the U.S. regime’s fraudulent dogma that the U.S. Government is a “democracy” instead of a “dictatorship” (a dictatorship such as it invades abroad and tries to overthrow and replace, by a ‘democracy’, some foreign nation’s Government — to add a new vassal-nation to the American empire’s ‘allies’ or actual colonies). This Emperor has no clothes, is what this academic article displays. But this particular “Emperor” represents not the clergy (such as in the time of Galileo and of Darwin), but instead the aristocracy — the super-rich (the imperialists, in the “New Cold War”).
The article’s title is: “How money drives US congressional elections: Linear models of money and outcomes”. Its “Abstract” or summary says that “the relations between money and votes cast for major parties in elections for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from 1980 to 2018 are well approximated by straight lines.” In other words: Billionaires and other super-rich individuals can and do purchase electoral outcomes with their enormous political donations in America. It’s a “straight-line” relationship between money and winning: the candidate who is backed by the most money has the biggest (a huge) likelihood of winning; the candidate who is backed by the least money has the least (a minuscule) likelihood, and most of that money to the winning candidates comes from the few super-rich. The way to be politically successful in today’s America is, now clearly, to be more corrupt than your competitor — to be offering the Government for sale to the highest bidders (and to deliver on the promises that the politician makes to these individuals, so as to be able to remain in public office and continue to serve those masters). (And, then, after public office, come the biggest private benefits, to those former office-holders.) America is an aristocracy, not a democracy; it is one-dollar-one-vote, not one-person-one-vote. That’s what the article demonstrates.
Even more crushing is the same three authors’ (Thomas Ferguson, Paul Jorgenson, and Jie Chen) further analysis from these same data, their article “Big Money — Not Political Tribalism — Drives US Elections”, which exposes the fraudulence of the two American political Parties’ supposed ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’ appeals, as being instead actually the aristocracy’s distractive political theater pumping those divides, as being, in reality, instead — at the structurally deeper level — between Republican versus Democratic Party billionaires, with Republican billionaires financing White-power appeals, and Democratic billionaires financing Black and other minority (and feminist) power appeals, all so that the nation’s population-at-large won’t be fighting instead against the aristocracy itself, which is the sole real beneficiary of this system of exploitation of the masses (exploitation of workers and consumers). Thus, the aristocracy’s victims — the public, the consumers and workers, the people who are NOT in the aristocracy — look elsewhere than at the aristocracy, to see their enemy. This latter paper isn’t behind a paywall, and it shows the same straight-line graphs relating money to power that the first-mentioned one here (which IS paywalled) did. So, one can readily see visually, here, how profoundly corrupt America’s Government actually is. (Those graphs are stunning, because the data are.)
I have previously posted articles summarizing, and linking to, a vast range of other empirical evidences, of many different types, all likewise pointing very strongly toward America’s being an aristocracy instead of a democracy, and these are some of them:
All of those data should be compared to the opposite view, the U.S.-regime-imposed view, which is expressed by America’s political ‘scientists’ and ‘historians’, who continue to perpetuate the U.S. regime’s claim to being a democracy (one-person-one-vote, instead of one-dollar-one-vote — which is America’s reality). Not only politicians, but also scholars, are beneficiaries of billionaires’ donations — the donations funding professorial chairs, college endowments, and ‘non’-profit foundations and ‘charities’. Such private interests thus control the public interests, to produce a deeply corrupt (privatized) body-politic.
On which side of this debate, about the aristocracy and the public, do you stand, and why? And what do you think should be done about it? Do you favor the aristocrats, or the public? This is not a political question, but a meta-political one. It transcends existing political Parties, and all existing political prejudices. It requires authentically scientific thinking about public policies. Above all, such questions concern the existing one-dollar-one-vote (aristocracy), versus the possibility of one-person-one-vote (democracy) emerging (or re-emerging). But can dictatorship ever transform into democracy? If so, how? Of course, history provides answers, and it shows that, at least for a while, the American Revolution did transform an aristocracy here into a democracy (albeit, a limited one): it conquered Britain’s aristocracy on its land. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if one prefers aristocracy to democracy), an American aristocracy has recently risen here. America now has its own aristocracy. In science, only history provides answers. There have also, in some other countries, been revolutions overthrowing the local nation’s own aristocracy. All evidences in science are historical facts — nothing else than that. And the articles which are linked-to here are scientific: they are analyses which are based only on the relevant historical facts, displaying what history (not myth) shows. One thing that all of human history shows is that every aristocracy is based on myths. America’s aristocracy is no different. Social science is now puncturing that myth — exposing that fraud. This is significant globally, not merely locally.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
Throughout your lifetime, you or someone you trusted has unwittingly given up many aspects of your biometric and other personal data so that your digital identity can be created. Over time, this digital identity is being progressively defined and is replacing your actual physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual identity. What you are allowed to do, and not do, will increasingly depend on your technological identity rather than your moral character, intellectual and/or physical abilities, your emotional suitability, religious beliefs and the many other attributes that define your unique personality.
Starting with your birth certificate, which identifies your name, birth date and birth location, as well as parenting, an endless series of details about your personal life has been accumulated and stored, sometimes with your knowledge and consent. Far more often it has been done without either.
Do you remember having your photo taken for a student and/or employee identity card, your vehicle license and/or a passport? Do you remember being finger and/or palm-printed, submitting to an iris scan, agreeing to a recording of your voice, offering data for ‘two-factor’ authentication, and requesting an ancestry search by submitting a sample of your DNA? Most often you had no choice: It was ‘legally required’. Other times, you were probably offered something in return, such as admission to an educational institution, ‘secure’ access to an account or information you wanted. But whatever other price you paid, you also paid an ‘identity cost’.
Moreover, none of that information has ceased to exist and there is a lot more interest in it now than there was when you, or someone, innocently agreed to tender it all those years ago. And it is being added to all of the time with information you have surrendered or that has been obtained about you, up until this morning. In addition, it will be added to by information gathered about you tomorrow.
Your bank account(s), academic and employment records, health records (including vaccination record), legal record (including traffic violations), internet search history, and any other information compiled by or submitted to a government authority, corporation or other entity has been recorded, compiled and systematically stored in data banks of which you have never even heard. And they are being used to generate your ‘social credit score’ which, depending on the country in which you live, is already or will be soon, used to determine what you can, and cannot, do.
In addition, facial recognition technology is vastly expanding the capacity of the surveillance state, and those corporations and entities that work with it, to identify and track you. And it is doing this already in the most obvious places such as on the street and in shopping centres. See, for example, ‘Microsoft partners with banks to introduce facial recognition: More invasive technology’.
Beyond that, of course, existing technologies already enable many aspects of your unique identity to be imitated precisely. Think you voice is unique? Not once they clone it so they can present some technological imitation as your voice. See ‘Voice Cloning for Content Creators’.
And you are no doubt well aware of simple ways that photos of you can be replicated. Or altered by ‘photoshopping’, to put you in an entirely different context or location.
Does this matter?
This has all been done, fundamentally, so that one day soon now you can be locked in the technological prison that is being created around you. This technological prison, being promoted under the guise of ‘smart cities’, is being built around you as cities are converted to ‘smart’ by installing 5G and the other technologies necessary for comprehensive surveillance and control. But the Saudis are building a ‘smart city’ in the desert too. You can watch their promotional video here: Neom.
Despite the positive spin endlessly put on these projects by governments and corporations – see ‘Smart cities: The cities of the future’ – the fundamental outcome is that you will require a digital ID to do those particular things that the elite has decided you will be allowed to do. And you won’t be able to do anything else. This is usually called ‘slavery’ except that, in this new technological world, virtually all of the slaves will be transhuman with no independent will of their own.
How has this happened?
In a report published by the World Economic Forum in 2016, the authors wrote ‘Consistent with the World Economic Forum’s mission of applying a multi‐stakeholder approach to address issues of global impact, the creation of this report involved extensive outreach and dialogue with the financial services community, innovation community, technology community, academia and the public sector…. The mandate of this project was to explore digital identity and understand the role that Financial Institutions should play in building a global standard for digital identity. Identity is a critical topic in Financial Services today. Current identity systems are limiting Fintech innovation (as) well as secure and efficient service delivery in Financial Services and society more broadly. Digital identity is widely recognized as the next step in identity systems. However, while many efforts are underway to solve parts of the identity challenge and create true digital identity, there is a need for a concerted and coordinated effort to build a truly transformational digital identity system.’
By 2018, another report by the World Economic Forum was proclaiming ‘Our identity is, literally, who we are, and as the digital technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution advance, our identity is increasingly digital. This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us.’
But one primary motivation for their interest in digital identity was reported in a World Economic Forum article in August 2022. Citing research conducted by the consultancy Cebr – see ‘The digital trust index’ – the World Economic Forum noted that ‘our global digital economy can unleash trillions of dollars of opportunities. But if we don’t know for certain who we are interacting with online, we cannot have trust. Digital identity must therefore be the foundational element to our digital economy….’ Moreover, according to the WEF: ‘Consumers also told us they would trust banks and financial services firms the most to create and maintain an identity system.’
Of course, the World Economic Forum is not the only institution planning our digital identity prison. In a 2019 report, the United Nations stated ‘We recommend that by 2030, every adult should have affordable access to digital networks, as well as digitally-enabled financial and health services, as a means to make a substantial contribution to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.’
In addition, that long-standing bastion of economic exploitation known as the World Bank has had a long-running involvement in digitizing identity, publishing a report on the subject in 2017 which was updated in 2021 and, unsurprisingly, linked to its notion of ‘sustainable development’: ‘Every person has the right to participate fully in their society and economy and to be recognized as a person before the law. Yet, as many as 1 billion people across the world do not have basic proof of identity, which is essential for protecting their rights and enabling access to services and opportunities.’
This report goes on to outline a set of ten principles – universal access, accuracy, security, privacy… – to guide the nature of digital identity, in various categories, that sound wonderful.
But fundamental issues are left unaddressed.
Why the rights to participation in society and the economy, and recognition before the law, suddenly requires ‘basic proof of identity’ and is ‘essential for protecting their rights and enabling access to services and opportunities’ is not explained. Nor is it explained why those same rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 – on which the world has so spectacularly failed to deliver since that time (and particularly for those billions of people marginalized by the global capitalist economy) – will now be magically delivered by a digitized identity.
As is often the case, the delusional rhetoric sounds good despite being a vast distance from the truth.
But the World Bank continues its rhetoric in a more recent report: ‘Vulnerable and marginalized groups are often the least likely to have proof of their identity, but also the most in need of the protection and services linked to identification.’
Moreover, according to the World Bank, experience has supposedly ‘shown that there are key actions countries can take to unlock their own paradigm shift towards building digital ID and G2P [government-to-person] payments ecosystems that empower people and support sustainable development outcomes’.
Of course, the documents go on to outline why identity is important to access certain rights and services – banking, voting, owning property, particular transactions… – but do not specify why a digital version of identity is necessary. A sleight of hand made necessary by the complete absence of any genuine reason for moving beyond long-accepted means of establishing identity, where they are appropriately useful.
Beyond international organizations such as these, major Non-Government Organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, as well as corporations, are predictably behind the moves to digitize identity for reasons explained in the ID2020 Manifesto. For example, as Peggy Johnson of Microsoft Corporation noted: ‘… it’s exciting to imagine a world where safe and secure digital identities are possible, providing everyone with an essential building block to every right and opportunity they deserve.’
Again, why rights and opportunities, theoretically long-ago enshrined in a multitude of human rights laws, should now somehow be accessed through a digitized identity is, obviously, not explained.
With such a predatory list of sponsors – the World Economic Forum, World Bank, United Nations, major corporations, particular NGOs – clearly endorsing digital identity and the complete absence from any consultation process of those of us who might identify (not digitally, of course) as ‘ordinary’ people, it is obvious why those who understand the rapidly advancing technocratic agenda have issued a multitude of warnings about participating in the ongoing efforts to digitize your identity.
What, precisely, is at stake?
Your identity itself. Your freedom. Your privacy. Your human rights generally, including the right to choose what you eat and how you obtain it. And everything else that matters to you. Gone forever, if this global push is successful.
And while digitizing your identity in this way might appear to be technologically savvy and even more convenient – after all, opening a door without a key is a pretty slick move hey? – the problem is that once your identity is linked to other more important functions, control of your life is soon easily taken from you.
As John Adams noted in a recent interview by Martin North, once you link a microchipped identity with the soon-to-be-introduced Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the Central Bank can simply reprogram your personal chip (or the chips of millions of people) to prevent you from engaging in a particular type of commerce if you do not comply with whatever mandatory requirements are in force at the time. Beyond this, of course, what else will the chip be used to control? Do you know? Watch ‘Australia’s banks want you MICROCHIPPED!’
And what if, as planned, your identity chip is linked to your driver’s licence and your car? How far do you think you will be able to travel from home? To go shopping for food? To travel to work? Will you be allowed to go on holiday?
Beyond these simple examples, what if your digital identity is linked to your health records (including vaccination status), your legal records, and anything else they decide to add – such as carbon credits – so that you can be given a ‘social credit score’? Perhaps you will be deemed unsuitable to be a parent and have your children taken away.
But the answers to these questions, as well as others, are already known and you can watch a fuller explanation of just how securely you are already locked in this digital ID prison in this video presentation by technology expert Aman Jabbi – see ‘Facial Recognition: Digital ID or Digital Dictatorship?’ – who spells it out in gruesome detail.
By the end of 2022, there will be more than twenty billion data collection (not just simple surveillance) cameras (of many types) in the world keeping track of the nearly eight billion people on Earth. As Jabbi observes: Under the guise of privacy, security and convenience, ‘We are being monitored everywhere and all the time’ by the ‘Internet of Eyes and Ears’ linked to artificial intelligence and a vast array of technological devices, such as smart street poles and lights which gather data via facial recognition cameras and environmental sensors, display digital signage, use speakers to instruct the immediate population how to behave, include ‘drone charging stations’ because drones ‘are going to be the new aerial police’ with everything wirelessly connected to each other and the Internet of Things (IoT). This comprehensive network will be used to collect your data and control your behaviour, including by use of LED (light-emitting diode) incapacitators (which Jabbi calls ‘puke guns’) which emit high-intensity beams of different frequencies that can make you vomit or inflict other forms of behavioural control. In short, behavioural compliance will be enforced not by human guards, but by artificial intelligence and electromagnetic weapons.
The digital identity they say is a new chapter in the social contract. It’s a social contract that nobody signed up for and nobody wants. But they are… going to force this on us.
Every entity, person, device and thing is going to have a digital identity and once you sign on to a digital identity, the only way you can access healthcare or your bank finances, ability to travel, ability to access the internet, to go to social platforms or do anything in your life, to buy food, you need a digital identity. And how will that digital identity be authenticated? Through your face. So your face is the key to unlocking access to life.
And this key is going to be linked to a new type of financial system which is going to be a combination of carbon credits, your social credits or social score… ‘reputation capital’, and then of course your status with respect to vaccines and boosters…. And if you don’t have enough carbon score and you don’t have enough social score or you haven’t taken your latest booster, your face will not be able to unlock your digital identity and therefore you cannot access stuff.
You’ll be locked out of the whole new matrix system. And this is what they call central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)….
This is essentially the key to understanding what sort of a new world that is going to be upon us once the final switches are turned on….
Your digital identity is really a digital prison and your face is used to unlock the digital prison if you behave well….
And how are they going to implement this? There is a new protocol called ‘Zero Trust in Cyber Security’… so by default we are going from a world of implicit ‘allow’ to default ‘deny’.
So as an example, when you log into your computer you type in a password… and you have access to your browser, your files, your applications but now this zero trust is about ‘default deny’ which means ‘we don’t trust you and for everything you need to do you’ll be denied initially until you can prove that you’re trustworthy’ and that trust will come from face recognition and from digital identity. (If you want to read more about ‘digital trust’, here is the Callsign report: ‘The digital trust index’.)
Beyond the above, by using ‘geofencing’ (both digitally and geographically), your access to everything, including who you can contact, how you can travel and how far, what media you can access or book you can read… can be controlled through your digital identity. ‘So the goal is to lockdown humanity in these smart cities and not allow them to move anywhere…. So the digital identity is inside the Trojan horse of security and privacy. I can’t stress this enough…. And this will result in total control of humans because people will comply in order to unlock access to life.’ In addition, ‘they can even be monitoring the emotional state of a child and the algorithms can decide whether child abuse is happening at home and then they can come for the children, which they will.’
Jabbi also points out that in late April 2022, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations took over the internet which means that, soon enough, ‘If you don’t accept a digital ID, you cannot get onto the internet and you cannot open your phone’. And he emphasizes that ‘Banning facial recognition means nothing because neither your government, nor your state or local officials are doing facial recognition so banning it is pointless because facial recognition is going to be done in the cloud on Amazon and Google servers with artificial intelligence algorithms, with cameras installed by private companies on public lands which are now owned by private corporations.’
Apart from Aman Jabbi, other scholars have also thoughtfully researched what is happening regarding digital identity and how it relates to other features of the overall elite plan.
As outlined in this primer, and as many of our partners and colleagues have documented, the World Bank and a wider network of global actors are promoting a specific model of digital ID. This model privileges economic identity, is disconnected from legal status, and steers attention away from civil registration. Contrary to the human rights and inclusive development language used to promote this vision of digital ID, this model threatens a range of fundamental rights, from the right to social security to the right to privacy. The purported benefits remain mostly unsubstantiated in the absence of serious baseline studies, cost-benefit and value for money analyses, and impact assessments. Meanwhile, researching and revealing the impacts of these systems has mostly been outsourced to an already overburdened and under-resourced community of human rights organizations, advocates, scholars, journalists, and other civil society actors.
The report includes three recommendations for addressing concerns about digital ID, given the transformational nature of the change intended: 1. detailed investigation and research, consideration (particularly of possible harms and their mitigation), cost-benefit analysis and impact assessments; 2. thorough discussion in democratic fora based on detailed knowledge of plans, actors involved in the scheme and roles played by foreign governments and international organizations; and 3. engagement of all stakeholders, including us, not just ‘technical experts’ in the deliberations.
Researcher Lynn Corey has also written an insightful four-part series of reports which are published on her website and as a book. In the second report – see ‘The Global Landscape on Vaccine ID Passports Part 2: How Your Digital Identity is Moving to The Blockchain for Full Control Over Humans’ – Corey identifies key players driving the long-term plan that is currently being implemented, particularly noting the importance of central banks but also other key elite agencies such as the World Economic Forum and United Nations. Their aim is to institute ‘complete digital control… over the world and all human beings’ and Corey observes that different agents ‘have their areas of expertise when it comes to building the digital identities, which is the key to making this all happen.’
Investigative journalist Jesse Smith bluntly observes:
With the evidence being provided openly, there is little reason to doubt that humanity is being ushered into a new era of surveillance and control through digital ID systems. This effort is being pushed by governments, banks, multinational corporations, and global governance organizations like the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, and the United Nations.
But digital IDs only represent one aspect of the digital revolution….
A whole world is being created to enslave us in a perpetual digital panopticon including the metaverse, digital currency (CBDCs), mass surveillance, AI and biometrics, and body implants while blockchain technology records everything we do.
Beyond these scholars and organizations, there are other fine analysts who have explained why digital ID promises to inflict great harm on humanity. You can watch, for example, the excellent video report by James Corbett: ‘The Global Digital ID Prison’ and read the critique by Derrick Broze ‘Exposing The “Digital ID Is A Human Right” Scam’.
In addition, we also have the experience of India to consider, as documented in the report ‘Busting the Dangerous Myths of Big ID Programs: Cautionary Lessons From India’ which offers this summary before going on to expose how India’s digital ID system, introduced some years ago, has spectacularly failed to deliver gains for ‘ordinary’ people in twelve key areas, noting that ‘ID systems often promise a technological solution for a political problem’.
Around the world, the quickly expanding ‘Big ID’ industry has driven the adoption of centralized digital identity programs that severely undermine human rights. Governments, companies, and international agencies sell the idea of implementing a Big ID project as the silver bullet for solving a host of problems…. without ever presenting evidence that these tools will actually be effective at meeting people’s needs.… Aadhaar, India’s flagship Big ID project, is a clear example of this approach. Despite all the positive propaganda in its favor, Aadhaar has had a disastrous impact.
Despite the solidly documented negative experiences in relation to digitized identity and the many expert warnings against it, a range of powerful elite agents has a comprehensive program to impose this technocratic nightmare upon us. Consequently, it will require many people resisting strategically if it is to be defeated.
The bottom line is simple: Every time you submit to participation in some technological convenience, you give up some control over your own life. And there is no easy way to reclaim it, assuming that you even can.
This does not mean that we do not face a profound threat. We do. But it means that we cannot rely on reason or thoughtfulness alone to get us out of this mess: You cannot reason with insanity. And because the Global Elite controls international and national political processes, the global economy and legal systems, efforts to seek redress through those channels must fail.
Moreover, if we are going to defeat this long-planned, complex and multifaceted threat, we must defeat its foundational components, not delude ourselves that we can defeat it one threat at a time or even by choosing those threats we think are the worst and addressing those first.
This is because the elite program, whatever its flaws and inconsistencies, as well as its potential for technological failure at times, is deeply integrated so we must direct our efforts at preventing or halting those foundational components of it that make everything else possible. This is why random acts of resistance will achieve nothing. Effective resistance requires the focused exercise of our power. In simple terms, we must be ‘strategic’.
If you are interested in being strategic in your resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ and its related agendas, you are welcome to participate in the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.
In addition and more simply, you can download a one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 20 languages (Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish & Slovak) with several more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here:
If this strategic resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group (with a link accessible from the website).
And if you want to organize a mass mobilization, such as a rally, at least make sure that one or more of any team of organizers and/or speakers is responsible for inviting people to participate in this campaign and that some people at the event are designated to hand out the one-page flyer about the campaign.
If you like, you can also watch, share and/or organize to show, a short video about the campaign here:
Finally, while the timeframe for this to make any difference is now in doubt, if you want to raise children who are powerfully able to investigate, analyze and act, you are welcome to make
Resisting the digitization of your identity is an important element of effective resistance to the Elite’s ‘Great Reset’ program.
While there are some elements of this that are very difficult to avoid, such as facial recognition cameras that are virtually everywhere, it certainly includes not signing up for a digital identity or participating unthinkingly in those programs, such as using a QR code, getting a ‘vaccine passport’ or willingly submitting to efforts to palm-print or microchip you, that are linked to it.
But, as I have already noted, just resisting digitization of your identity is not enough.
We must strategically resist the foundational components of the Elite program.
The alternatives are death or slavery.
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
No one, including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine, expect the nation’s war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and retreats. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will bleed for a very long time. This is by design.
On August 24, the Biden administration announced yet another massive military aid package to Ukraine worth nearly $3 billion. It will take months, and in some cases years, for this military equipment to reach Ukraine. In another sign that Washington assumes the conflict will be a long war of attrition it will give a name to the U.S. military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a separate command overseen by a two- or three-star general. Since August 2021, Biden has approved more than $8 billion in weapons transfers from existing stockpiles, known as drawdowns, to be shipped to Ukraine, which do not require Congressional approval.
Including humanitarian assistance, replenishing depleting U.S. weapons stocks and expanding U.S. troop presence in Europe, Congress has approved over $53.6 billion ($13.6 billion in March and a further $40.1 billion in May) since Russia’s February 24 invasion. War takes precedence over the most serious existential threats we face. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion while the proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Our approved assistance to Ukraine is more than twice these amounts.
The militarists who have waged permanent war costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades have invested heavily in controlling the public narrative. The enemy, whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin, is always the epitome of evil, the new Hitler. Those we support are always heroic defenders of liberty and democracy. Anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor.
The mass media cravenly disseminates these binary absurdities in 24-hour news cycles. Its news celebrities and experts, universally drawn from the intelligence community and military, rarely deviate from the approved script. Day and night, the drums of war never stop beating. Its goal: to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the war industry and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions.
In the face of this barrage, no dissent is permitted.CBS News caved to pressure and retracted its documentary which charged that only 30 percent of arms shipped to Ukraine were making it to the front lines, with the rest siphoned off to the black market, a finding that was separately reported upon by U.S. journalist Lindsey Snell. CNN has acknowledged there is no oversight of weapons once they arrive in Ukraine, longconsidered the most corrupt country in Europe. According to a poll of executives responsible for tackling fraud, completed by Ernst & Young in 2018, Ukraine was ranked the ninth-most corrupt nation from 53 surveyed.
There is little ostensible reason for censoring critics of the war in Ukraine. The U.S. is not at war with Russia. No U.S. troops are fighting in Ukraine. Criticism of the war in Ukraine does not jeopardize our national security. There are no long-standing cultural and historical ties to Ukraine, as there are to Great Britain. But if permanent war, with potentially tenuous public support, is the primary objective, censorship makes sense.
War is the primary business of the U.S. empire and the bedrock of the U.S. economy. The two ruling political parties slavishly perpetuate permanent war, as they do austerity programs, trade deals, the virtual tax boycott for corporations and the rich, wholesale government surveillance, the militarization of the police and the maintenance of the largest prison system in the world. They bow before the dictates of the militarists, who have created a state within a state. This militarism, as Seymour Melman writes in The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline, “is fundamentally contradictory to the formation of a new political economy based upon democracy, instead of hierarchy, in the workplace and the rest of society.”
“The idea that war economy brings prosperity has become more than an American illusion,” Melman writes. “When converted, as it has been, into ideology that justifies the militarization of society and moral debasement, as in Vietnam, then critical reassessment of that illusion is a matter of urgency. It is a primary responsibility of thoughtful people who are committed to humane values to confront and respond to the prospect that deterioration of American economy and society, owing to the ravages of war economy, can become irreversible.”
If permanent war is to be halted, as Melman writes, the ideological control of the war industry must be shattered. The war industry’s funding of politicians, research centers and think tanks, as well as its domination of the media monopolies, must end. The public must be made aware, Melman writes, of how the federal government “sustains itself as the directorate of the largest industrial corporate empire in the world; how the war economy is organized and operated in parallel with centralized political power — often contradicting the laws of Congress and the Constitution itself; how the directorate of the war economy converts pro-peace sentiment in the population into pro-militarist majorities in the Congress; how ideology and fears of job losses are manipulated to marshal support in Congress and the general public for war economy; how the directorate of the war economy uses its power to prevent planning for orderly conversion to an economy of peace.”
Rampant, unchecked militarism, as historian Arnold Toynbee notes, “has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations.”
This breakdown is accelerated by the rigid standardization and uniformity of public discourse. The manipulation of public opinion, what Walter Lippman calls “the manufacture of consent,” is imperative as the militarists gut social programs; let the nation’s crumbling infrastructure decay; refuse to raise the minimum wage; sustain an inept, mercenary for-profit health care system that resulted in 25 percent of global Covid deaths — although we are less than 5 percent of the world’s population — to gouge the public; carries out deindustrialization; do nothing to curb the predatory behavior of banks and corporations or invest in substantial programs to combat the climate crisis.
Critics, already shut out from the corporate media, are relentlessly attacked, discredited and silenced for speaking a truth that threatens the public’s quiescence while the U.S. Treasury is pillaged by the war industry and the nation disemboweled.
You can watch my discussion with Matt Taibbi about the rot that infects journalism here and here.
The war industry, deified by the mass media, including the entertainment industry, is never held accountable for the military fiascos, cost overruns, dud weapons systems and profligate waste. No matter how many disasters — from Vietnam to Afghanistan — it orchestrates, it is showered with larger and larger amounts of federal funds, nearly half of all the government’s discretionary spending. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the U.S. debt to over $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the U.S. GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spend more on the military, $813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.
An organization like NewsGuard, which has been rating what it says are trustworthy and untrustworthy sites based on their reporting on Ukraine, is one of the many indoctrination tools of the war industry. Sites that raise what are deemed “false” assertions about Ukraine, including that there was a U.S.-backed coup in 2014 and neo-Nazi forces are part of Ukraine’s military and power structure, are tagged as unreliable. Consortium News, Daily Kos, Mint Press and Grayzone have been given a red warning label. Sites that do not raise these issues, such as CNN, receive the “green” rating” for truth and credibility. (NewsGuard, after being heavily criticized for giving Fox News a green rating of approval in July revised its rating for Fox News and MSNBC, giving them red labels.)
The ratings are arbitrary. The Daily Caller, which published fake naked pictures of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was given a green rating, along with a media outlet owned and operated by The Heritage Foundation. NewsGuard gives WikiLeaks a red label for “failing” to publish retractions despite admitting that all of the information WikiLeaks has published thus far is accurate. What WikiLeaks was supposed to retract remains a mystery. The New York Timesand The Washington Post, which shared a Pulitzer in 2018 for reporting that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to help sway the 2016 election, a conspiracy theory the Mueller investigation imploded, are awarded perfect scores. These ratings are not about vetting journalism. They are about enforcing conformity.
NewsGuard, established in 2018, “partners” with the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as corporations such as Microsoft. Its advisory board includes the former Director of the CIA and NSA, Gen. Michael Hayden; the first U.S. Homeland Security director Tom Ridge and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary general of NATO.
Readers who regularly go to targeted sites could probably care less if they are tagged with a red label. But that is not the point. The point is to rate these sites so that anyone who has a NewsGuard extension installed on their devices will be warned away from visiting them. NewsGuard is being installed in libraries and schools and on the computers of active-duty troops. A warning pops up on targeted sites that reads: “Proceed with caution: This website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.”
Negative ratings will drive away advertisers, which is the intent. It is also a very short step from blacklisting these sites to censoring them, as happened when YouTube erased six years of my show On Contact that was broadcast on RT America and RT International. Not one show was about Russia. And not one violated the guidelines for content imposed by YouTube. But many did examine the evils of U.S. militarism.
In an exhaustive rebuttal to NewsGuard, which is worth reading, Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, ends with this observation:
NewsGuard’s accusations against Consortium News that could potentially limit its readership and financial support must be seen in the context of the West’s war mania over Ukraine, about which dissenting voices are being suppressed. Three CN writers have been kicked off Twitter.
PayPal’s cancellation of Consortium News’ account is an evident attempt to defund it for what is almost certainly the company’s view that CN violated its restrictions on “providing false or misleading information.” It cannot be known with 100 percent certainty because PayPal is hiding behind its reasons, but CN trades in information and nothing else.
CN supports no side in the Ukraine war but seeks to examine the causes of the conflict within its recent historical context, all of which are being whitewashed from mainstream Western media.
Those causes are: NATO’s expansion eastward despite its promise not to do so; the coup and eight-year war on Donbass against coup resisters; the lack of implementation of the Minsk Accords to end that conflict; and the outright rejection of treaty proposals by Moscow to create a new security architecture in Europe taking Russia’s security concerns into account.
Historians who point out the onerous Versailles conditions imposed on Germany after World War I as a cause of Nazism and World War II are neither excusing Nazi Germany nor are they smeared as its defenders.
The frantic effort to corral viewers and readers into the embrace of the establishment media — only 16 percent of Americans have a great deal/quite a lot of confidence in newspapers and only 11 percent have some degree of confidence in television news — is a sign of desperation.
As the persecution of Julian Assange illustrates, the throttling of press freedom is bipartisan. This assault on truth leaves a population unmoored. It feeds wild conspiracy theories. It shreds the credibility of the ruling class. It empowers demagogues. It creates an information desert, one where truth and lies are indistinguishable. It frog-marches us towards tyranny. This censorship only serves the interests of the militarists who, as Karl Liebknechtreminded his fellow Germans in World War I, are the enemy within.
This past May, Rand Paul, the Senator from Kentucky, did something that made a lot of sense. Before a vote to send another $40 Billion to Ukraine, Paul demanded language that would create oversight for that money.
Most of Congress was furious with him for daring to put restrictions on U.S. funding for the proxy forces in Ukraine. One of his peers who was most upset with him was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
As former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter writes for Consortium News, three weeks after Schumer forced that bill through and got the money for the proxy war in Ukraine, something funny happened,
…[O]n July 14, Andriy Shapovalov, a Ukrainian civil servant whose salary was paid for by U.S. taxpayer monies, convened a “round table” in Kiev on ‘countering disinformation.’ Shapovalov …published a list of the names of 72 people whom he accused of deliberately spreading disinformation about Ukraine. Shapovalov labeled them ‘information terrorists,’ adding that Ukraine was preparing legislation so that such people can be prosecuted as ‘war criminals.’”
They want the power to call people war criminals for printing something Ukraine doesn’t like, and you can bet that the U.S. supports this outrageous policy.
Ritter continued,
The “round table’ was organized by the U.S. Civil Research and Development Fund (CRDF Global Ukraine), an ostensible nonprofit organization authorized by U.S. Congress to promote ‘international scientific and technical collaboration.’ It is supported by the U.S. State Department, some of whose officials sat in attendance.”
This committee was organized by a U.S.-backed nonprofit, and State Department officials were in the room.
Who exactly do they want to call information terrorists who should be prosecuted as war criminals? “One of the people singled out by Shapovalov as an ‘information terrorist’ targeted for criminal prosecution as a ‘war criminal’ was none other than Rand Paul,” reported Ritter. So Sen. Paul is being called a war criminal for trying to get some oversight on the billions of dollars sent to Ukrainian Nazis.
The senator from Kentucky isn’t the only U.S. politician on the list. An obscure New York Senate candidate named Diane Sare also appears on the list of information terrorists.
But how did she get on there?
Ritter wrote, “On May 31, Diane Sare, a LaRouche candidate challenging Schumer for his Senate seat in November, filed 66,000 signatures — well over the 45,000 required by law — with the New York State Board of Elections, thereby getting her name on the ballot.” Do you think, perhaps, that Sen. Schumer might have some say on that list?
Everyone in the U.S. should be repulsed at the idea of people being labeled “terrorists” or “war criminals” for standing up to U.S. propaganda about the proxy war in Ukraine. But beyond that, we should be more disgusted by the Senate Majority leader using taxpayer money to seemingly go after his political opponents.
Who is the U.S. and its proxy government in Ukraine to tell people what is and is not the truth? That’s like Fred Durst telling you what is and is not good music.
Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of Behind The Headlines’ new series: The Most Censored News With Lee Camp. He is a former comedy writer for the Onion and the Huffington Post and has been a touring stand-up comic for 20 years.
Why would Black people laud the FBI or criticize protection against self-incrimination? The FBI search of Donald Trump’s home has reawakened Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Progressives love the FBI? Leftists embrace the Espionage Act? Of course, one man is responsible for this madness, and he is none other than Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States. The fallout from the FBI search conducted at Trump’s home shows the rank confusion spread by people who call themselves liberal but who are as dangerous as anyone on the right. From the moment that Trump announced the raid they were in full fascist mode, even as they claimed to be fighting fascism.
Trump did what he usually does, play fast and loose with the truth. Of all former presidents only he would ignore subpoenas and claim to have declassified documents when he hadn’t done so. He can’t get out of his own way and thus makes himself a target. But Democrats should know that the search is seen as nothing more than a personal attack against him. Millions of people who love Trump will love him all the more and conclude that the raid was meant to keep him from running for president again. Liberal dead-enders will be happy, but everyone else will say that something rotten was conducted at Mar a Lago.
Attorney General Merrick Garland says that the documents were subpoenaed but the former president didn’t respond. The FBI search warrant states that the search encompassed three different issues: gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which is part of the Espionage Act; concealment, removal, or mutilation concerning the handling of records and reports; and the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy, which is part of a section dealing with obstruction of justice. The warrant also states a search for information on Roger Stone and on the President of France.
Aside from the item descriptions, no one knows what Trump had or what the FBI found. Leaks from the Justice Department indicate something about nuclear weapons, but no one knows what that means. The lack of information hasn’t stopped the speculation which Trump always causes. There is conjecture that he was selling information to Russia or to Saudi Arabia or was plotting some other treason. There are even claims that documents were buried with his recently deceased ex-wife. It is fascinating that there can be so much guesswork about issues no one can know.
The years long Russiagate investigation is responsible for ordinarily sensible people losing their minds. Hardly anyone recalls that the charge of collusion was actually disproven, that Robert Mueller only indicted for process crimes, such as those which occur when people let down their guard and talk to the FBI. Most Americans who know the name Paul Manafort think he was a Russian spy but don’t know that he went to jail for tax and bank fraud. Propaganda works very well when it is repeated over and over again.
Worse than the silly Trump inspired derangement is the way that those who call themselves left or progressive have chosen to defend federal law enforcement and bad legislation like the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act is a relic from the earliest days of the cold war, and Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Palmer Raids which targeted the left for persecution and prosecution. Barack Obama used it more than all previous presidents combined in order to prosecute journalists who published what the state didn’t want us to know. As for the FBI, its Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, created dissension in the liberation movement, targeted individuals for prosecution, spied on Martin Luther King and told him to commit suicide, and killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark among others. The FBI continues to use informants to entrap Black people in phony terror cases.
It is truly shameful to see Black people exalt the FBI and act as if punishing Trump is the organizing principle of all political activity. The Trump organization is also under investigation by the New York Attorney and the former president refused to answer questions put to him in a deposition. The right to remain silent is one of the most important in American law and should be used a lot more often. But copaganda television shows and Trump hatred have caused their own form of insanity, and his exercise of a fundamental right was widely lampooned. No one should ever be condemned for utilizing their fifth amendment right, not even Donald Trump.
Of course, this spectacle is also used to deflect from Biden administration failures. His approval rating is still low, for the simple reason that he didn’t do what he claimed he would for American voters. He continues to pour public money into the losing effort in Ukraine and needlessly provokes Russia and China. But who is paying attention if there is speculation that Trump put files in Ivana’s casket?
It is time to nip this foolishness in the bud before it goes any further. Trump should not live rent free in our collective consciousness any longer. He cannot be allowed to distract from the current president’s actions or become a rallying point for politics which will inevitably be useless. No one has to follow Trump’s shenanigans any longer or allow the corporate media or the democratic party to make him their focus. Doing so only makes it harder to do the already hard work of recreating Black politics.
Douglas Valentine says that “Zelensky doesn’t go to the bathroom without asking permission from his CIA case officer.”
Alexander Dugin and his daughter Darya and charred vehicle of the Toyota Land Cruiser that blew up with Darya in it on Saturday night. [Source: metro.co.uk]
CIA expert Douglas Valentine, author of the seminal book The Phoenix Program (1990), believes that the CIA was behind the car bomb that killed Darya Dugina, a journalist and daughter of well-known Russian intellectual Alexander Dugin.
Ms. Dugina, 29, was killed on Saturday night when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving in a suburb of Moscow. She was the intended target along with her father, whose promotion of a Eurasian Union has influenced the thinking of Vladimir Putin and members of his inner circle.
Vovk allegedly rented an apartment from where she researched Ms. Dugina, attended “The Tradition” celebration where her father gave a speech and Ms. Dugina was killed, and after planting the bomb, fled to Estonia via Pskov.
According to Douglas Valentine, “Zelensky doesn’t go to the bathroom without asking permission from his CIA case officer. Ten billion dollars comes with a lot of strings attached. The CIA would have been intimately involved in recruiting the woman assassin, preparing the plan every step of the way including escape. That’s just Standard Operating Procedure.”
Valentine admits of course that there is no direct evidence to implicate the CIA in Dugina’s killing and that he’s making an “educated guess,” however, “clandestine ops occur by definition without anyone knowing they happened.” Valentine further told CAM that “the CIA doesn’t conduct a covert operation of this grandiosity unless it’s deniable and worth the risk. That’s known. So there’s rarely any evidence.”
Phoenix Program Redux
Just days before Dugina’s assassination, The New York Times published a front-page article about Ukrainian guerrilla fighters, or partisans, who openly admitted to planting car bombs targeting pro-Russian police officers and politicians behind Russian lines.
Ukraine’s Special Services (SBU) is also known to have set up a Phoenix-style kidnapping and assassination program targeting dissidents, including mayors and local government officials considered sympathetic to Russia.
Valentine told CAM in April that the CIA “is applying the same organizational structure in Ukraine as it used in South Vietnam to conduct an updated version of the typical ‘two tier’ Phoenix program. The top tier is to assure political control, the lower tier to pacify the population.”
Valentine continued:
“CIA foreign intelligence officers advise SBU security service to assure ‘top tier’ internal security and political control; and Ukrainian CIA agents run ops into Donbas, Russia and Belarus, sending illegal travelers, smugglers, and agents to set up agent nets and penetrate the enemy in his territory, [and carry out] sabotage and subversion. SBU and Ukrainian CIA are where hit-lists get authored. CIA officers advise military, militias and mercenaries in deniable political, paramilitary and psychological operations to terrorize and otherwise persuade civilian population to support Zelensky while demoralizing and fighting the enemy.”
Valentine stated that the “original Phoenix was responsible for the planned assassination of between 25,000 to 40,000 people in South Vietnam. Based on the Phoenix organizational model, assassination became a standarized component of military and CIA operations. It has since been perfected, as evidenced by the assassination of Dugina and scores of other examples from Central Americca to Iran to Africa and the Far East.”
The CIA, Valentine added, is “always finding a reason to start a war, so they can send the next generation of young men into battle, to learn how to kill people in the most brutal fashion—that’s Phoenix, always rising from the ashes of war.”
A Russian website of the NemeZida project, which publishes data on Ukrainian servicemen posted in April that Natalya Shaban, born in 1979, served in the Azov-based National Guard. (The National Guard is not the same as the U.S. National Guard; rather, it was formed directly by the hardcore Azov Regiment, with many members not directly members of the Azov.) The April posting displays a copy of Vovk/Shaban’s certificate indicating military unit No. 3057, in which the 12th brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine is stationed. Shaban is the name that her daughter, Sophia Shaban, used when they entered Russia—and the assumption is that Natalya Vovk is the maiden name of Natalya Shaban. The photograph of the National Guard member is a close match with the Natalya Vovk renting an apartment next to Darya Dugina’s residence. ↑
There is a video clip making the rounds showing President Biden speaking at a recent NATO summit about the seven billion dollars the US government had – at that time – provided to Ukraine. Attached to that is another clip showing the horrific state of several US major cities, including in Pennsylvania, California, and Ohio. The video of American cities is shocking: endless landscapes of filth, trash, homelessness, open fires on the street, drug-addicted zombies. It doesn’t look like the America most of us remember.
Watching Biden bragging about sending billions of dollars to corrupt leaders overseas with American cities looking like bombed-out Iraq or Libya is US foreign policy in a nutshell. The Washington elites tell the rest of America that they must “promote democracy” in some far-off land. Anyone who objects is considered in league with the appointed enemy of the day. Once it was Saddam, then Assad and Gaddafi. Now it’s Putin. The game is the same, only the names are changed.
What is seldom asked, is what is in this deal for those Americans who suffer to pay for our interventionist foreign policy. Do they really think a working American in Ohio or Pennsylvania is better off or safer because we are supposedly protecting Ukraine’s borders? I think most Americans would wonder why they aren’t bothering to protect our own borders.
A reported 200,000 illegals crossed the border into the US in July alone. You can believe they are learning quickly about the free money provided by the US government to illegals. They’ll probably get a voting card as well.
Last Friday the Pentagon announced that yet another $775 million would be sent to Ukraine. As Antiwar.com reported, it was the eighteenth weapons package to Ukraine in six months. Has there ever been a more idiotic US intervention in history?
Supporters of this proxy war may celebrate more aid to Ukraine, but the reality is that it is in no way aid to Ukraine. That’s not how the system works. It is money created out of thin air by the Fed and appropriated by Congress to be spent propping up the politically-connected military-industrial complex. It is a big check written by middle America to rich people who run Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Americans watch their budget being stretched to the limit while the Beltway fat-cats loosen their belts to continue enjoying the gravy train.
Bloomberg reported earlier this summer that inflation is costing the average American household more than $5,200 this year. Inflation is a tax on middle class and poor Americans. The wealthy – like those who run Raytheon and Lockheed Martin – always get the new money first, before prices go up. The rest of us watch as the dollar buys less and less.
As Washington salivates over fighting Russia in Ukraine, the rest of America feels like we’re becoming Zimbabwe. How long until it takes a trillion dollars for a loaf of bread? Will there be a run on wheelbarrows?
There is a way out. It’s called “non-interventionism.” The war in Ukraine was caused by the US regime change in 2014 and the neocon insistence that Ukraine join NATO. The State Department and CIA thought it was a great victory to overthrow the elected government, but meanwhile the rest of us get the bill. No NATO and not one more penny for Ukraine!
Since late last year, messenger RNA for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines, including its recently reformulated Omicron booster, has been exclusively manufactured by a little known company with significant ties to US intelligence.
Earlier this week, the United Kingdom became the first country to approve Moderna’s reformulated version of its COVID-19 vaccine, which claims to provide protection against both the original form of the virus and the significantly less lethal but more transmissible Omicron variant. The product was approved by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) with the support of the UK government’s Commission on Human Medicines.
Described by UK officials as a “sharpened tool” in the nation’s continued vaccination campaign, the reformulated vaccine combines the previously approved COVID-19 vaccine with a “vaccine candidate” targeting the Omicron variant BA.1. That vaccine candidate has never been previously approved and has not been the subject of independent study. The MHRA approved the vaccine based on a single, incomplete human trial currently being conducted by Moderna. The company promoted incomplete data from that trial in company press releases in June and July. The study has yet to be published in a medical journal or peer reviewed. No concerns have been raised by any regulatory agency, including the MHRA, regarding Moderna’s past history of engaging in suspect and likely illegal activity in past product trials, including for its original COVID-19 vaccine.
The approval comes shortly before several Western countries, including the UK, plan to conduct a massive COVID-19 booster vaccination campaign this fall. Moderna has also noted that approval for its Omicron booster vaccine are pending in the US, EU, Australia and Canada – all of which are also planning fall vaccination campaigns focused on COVID-19. The company’s CEO, Stéphane Bancel, has called the reformulated vaccine “our lead candidate for a Fall 2022 booster.”
However, unlike the company’s original COVID-19 vaccine, the genetic material, or messenger RNA (mRNA), for this new vaccine, including the newly formulated genetic material meant to provide protection against the Omicron variant, is being manufactured, not by Moderna, but by a relatively new company that has received hardly any media attention, despite its overt links to US intelligence. Last September, it was quietly announced that a company called National Resilience (often referred to simply as Resilience) would begin manufacturing the mRNA for Moderna COVID-19 vaccine products. Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, “Resilience will produce mRNA for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at its facility in Mississauga, Ontario, for distribution worldwide.”
“Reinventing Biomanufacturing”
National Resilience was founded relatively recently, in November 2020, and describes itself as “a manufacturing and technology company dedicated to broadening access to complex medicines and protecting biopharmaceutical supply chains against disruption.” It has since been building “a sustainable network of high-tech, end-to-end manufacturing solutions with the aim to ensure the medicines of today and tomorrow can be made quickly, safely, and at scale.” It furtherplans to “reinvent biomanufacturing” and “democratize access to medicines,” namely gene therapies, experimental vaccines and other “medicines of tomorrow.”
In pursuit of those goals, the company announced it would “actively invest in developing powerful new technologies to manufacture complex medicines that are defining the future of therapeutics, including cell and gene therapies, viral vectors, vaccines, and proteins.” It was founded with the reported intention “to build a better system for manufacturing complex medicines to fight deadly diseases” as a way to improve post-COVID “pandemic preparedness.”
The company initially marketed its manufacturing capabilities as “the Resilience platform”, and offers principally “RNA Modalities”, including RNA development for vaccines, gene editing and therapeutics; and “Virus Production”, including viral vectors, oncolytic viruses (i.e. a virus engineered to preferentially attack cancer cells), viruses for use in vaccine development and gene-edited viruses for unspecified purposes. It is worth noting that, to date, many controversial “gain-of-function” experiments have justified modifying viruses for the same purposes as described by National Resilience’s Virus Production capabilities. In addition, National Resilience offers product formulations and other modalities, such as biologics and cell therapies, to its clientele and the “Virus Production” of its website has since been removed.
National Resilience, being such a young company, has very few clients and there is little publicly available information on its manufacturing capabilities aside from the company’s website. The firm only acquired its first commercial manufacturing plant in March 2021, located in Boston, MA and purchased from Sanofi, followed shortly thereafter by the acquisition of another separate plant located in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Makeovers were announced for the plants, but little is publicly known about their progress. Prior to the acquisitions, the company had been subleasing a Bay area facility in Fremont, California. Reporters were puzzled at the time as to why a company with roughly 700 employees at the time had acquired a total of 599,00 square feet of manufacturing space after having only emerged from stealth less than 6 months prior.
In April 2021, National Resilience acquired Ology Bioservices Inc., which had received a $37 million contract from the US military the previous November to develop an advanced anti-COVID-19 monoclonal antibody treatment. This acquisition also provided National Resilience with its first Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory and the ability to manufacture cell and gene therapies, live viral vaccines and vectors and oncolytic viruses.
Despite being in the earliest stages of developing its “revolutionary” manufacturing capabilities, National Resilience entered into a partnership with the Government of Canada in July of last year. Per that agreement, the Canadian government plans to invest CAD 199.2 million (about $154.9 million) into National Resilience’s Ontario-based subsidiary, Resilience Biotechnologies Inc. Most of those funds are destined for use in expanding the Ontario facility that Resilience acquired last March and which is now manufacturing the mRNA for Moderna’s COVID-19 products. Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, asserted at the time that the investment would “build future pandemic preparedness” and help “to grow Canada’s life science ecosystem as an engine for our economic recovery.” More recently, in 2022, the company has announced a few new clients – Takeda, Opus Genetics and the US Department of Defense.
According to National Resilience’s executives, the company’s ambitions apparently go far beyond manufacturing RNA and viruses. For instance, Resilience CEO Rahul Singhvi has claimed that the company is seeking to build “the world’s most advanced biopharmaceutical manufacturing ecosystem.” Yet, Singhvi has declined to offer much in the way of specifics when it comes to exactly how the company plans to become the planet’s most elite biomanufacturing company.
In an interview with The San Francisco Business Times, Singhvi states that Resilience is looking to fill its massive manufacturing plants with “technologies and people that can set and apply new standards for manufacturing cell therapies and gene therapies as well as RNA-based treatments.” Prior to Resilience, Singhvi was CEO of NovaVax and an operating partner at Flagship Pioneering, which played a major role in the creation and rise of Moderna.
Singhvi has further insisted that National Resilience is “not a therapeutics company, not a contractor and not a tools company” and instead aims “to boost production using the new therapeutic modalities” such as RNA-based treatments, which have become normalized in the COVID-19 era. Whereas contract manufacturers “are like kitchens, with pots and pans ready for any recipe,” “what we’re trying to do is fix the recipes,” Singhvi has explained. One member of Resilience’s board of directors, former FDA Commissioner and Pfizer Board member Scott Gottlieb, has described the company as seeking to act as the equivalent of Amazon Web Services for the biotechnology industry.
Essentially, Resilience bills itself as offering solutions that will allow “futuristic” medicines, including mRNA vaccines, to be produced more quickly and more efficiently, with the apparent goal of monopolizing certain parts of the biomanufacturing process. It also appears poised to become the manufacturer of choice for mRNA vaccines and experimental therapeutics in the event of a future pandemic, which some public health “philanthropists” like Bill Gates have said is imminent.
Perhaps the company’s most noteworthy ambition relates to their claims that they support clients through the government regulatory process. Given the company’s emphasis on speedy mass production of experimental gene therapies, its stated intention of getting the “futuristic” medical products it manufactures to market as quickly as possible seems at odds with the slower, traditional regulatory processes. Indeed, one could easily argue that the approvals of mRNA vaccines for the first time in human history during the COVID-19 crisis were only possible because of the major relaxing of regulatory procedurse and safety testing due to the perceived urgency of the situation.
Resilience seems intent on seeing that phenomenon repeat itself. As previously mentioned, the company claims to allow for the setting and application of “new standards for manufacturing cell therapies and gene therapies” and also says it plans to become a “technology-aggregating standards bearer that helps therapies come to market more efficiently.” It previously offered on its website “regulatory support” and “strategy consulting” to clients, suggesting that it would seek to mediate between clients and government regulators in order to fulfill its goal of having the products it manufactures taken to market more quickly. In addition, upon launch, the company claimed it planned to obtain unspecified “regulatory capabilities.” If so, it is certainly notable that former top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials are either on the company’s board or, as will be noted shortly, played a major role in the company’s creation.
The People Behind Resilience
Resilience was co-founded by Biotech venture capitalist Robert Nelsen, who is known for listening “to science’s earliest whispers, even when data are too early for just about anyone else.” Nelsen was one of the earliest investors in Illumina, a California-based gene-sequencing hardware and software giant that is believed to currently dominate the field of genomics. As mentioned in a previous Unlimited Hangout investigation, Illumina is closely tied to the DARPA-equivalent of the Wellcome Trust known as Wellcome Leap, which is also focused on “futuristic” and transhumanist “medicines.” Nelsen is now chairman of National Resilience’s board, which is a “Who’s Who” of big players from the US National Security State, Big Pharma and Pharma-related “philanthropy.”
However, while Nelsen has been given much of the credit for creating Resilience, he revealed in one interview that the idea for the company had actually come from someone else – Luciana Borio. In July of last year, Nelsen revealed that it was while talking to Borio about “her work running pandemic preparedness on the NSC [National Security Council]” that had “helped lead to the launch of Nelsen’s $800 million biologics manufacturing startup Resilience.”
At the time of their conversation, Borio was the vice president of In-Q-tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA that has been used since its creation in the early 2000s to found a number of companies, many of which act as Agency fronts. Prior to In-Q-Tel, she served as director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council during the Trump administration and had previously been the acting chief scientist at the FDA from 2015 to 2017.
Borio is currently a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, a consultant to Goldman Sachs, a member of the Bill Gates-funded vaccine alliance CEPI, and a partner at Nelsen’s venture capital firm ARCH Venture Partners, which funds Resilience. Nelsen’s ARCH previously funded Nanosys, the company of the controversial scientist Charles Lieber. Around the time of her conversation with Nelsen that led to Resilience’s creation, Borio was co-writing a policy paper for the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security that recommended linking COVID-19 vaccination status with food stamp programs and rent assistance as a possible means of coercing certain populations to take the experimental vaccine.
Borio is hardly Resilience’s only In-Q-Tel connection, as the CEO of In-Q-Tel, Chris Darby, sits on the company’s board of directors. Darby is also on the board of directors of the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation. Darby was also recently a member of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), where members of the military, intelligence community and Silicon Valley’s top firms argued for the need to reduce the use of “legacy systems” in favor of AI-focused alternatives as a national security imperative. Among those “legacy systems” identified by the NSCAI were in-person doctor visits and even receiving medical care from a human doctor, as opposed to an AI “doctor.” The NSCAI also argued for the removal of “regulatory barriers” that prevent these new technologies from replacing “legacy systems.”
Another notable board member, in discussing Resilience’s intelligence ties, is Drew Oetting. Oetting works for Cerberus Capital Management, the firm headed by Steve Feinberg who previously led the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board under the Trump administration. Cerberus is notably the parent company of DynCorp, a controversial US national security contractor tied to numerous scandals, including scandals related to sex trafficking in conflict zones. Oetting is also part of the CIA-linked Thorn NGO ostensibly focused on tackling child trafficking that was the subject of a previous Unlimited Hangout investigation.
Oetting is also the co-founder of 8VC, a venture capital firm that is one of the main investors in Resilience. 8VC’s other co-founder is Joe Lonsdale and Oetting “started his career” as Lonsdale’s chief of staff. Lonsdale is the co-founder, alongside Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, of Palantir, a CIA front company and intelligence contractor that is the successor to DARPA’s controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) mass surveillance and data-mining program. In addition, Oetting previously worked for Bill Gates’ investment fund.
Also worth noting is the presence of Joseph Robert Kerrey, former US Senator for Nebraska and a former member of the conflict-of-interest-ridden 9/11 Commission, on Resilience’s board. Kerrey is currently managing director of Allen & Co., a New York investment banking firm which has hosted an annual “summer camp for billionaires” since 1983. Allen & Co. has long been a major player in networks where organized crime and intelligence intersect, and is mentioned repeatedly throughout my upcoming book One Nation Under Blackmail. For instance, Charles and Herbert Allen, who ran the firm for decades, had considerable business dealings with organized crime kingpins and frontmen for notorious gangsters like Meyer Lansky, particularly in the Bahamas. They were also business partners of Leslie Wexner’s mentors A. Alfred Taubman and Max Fisher as well as associates of Earl Brian, one of the architects of the PROMIS software scandal – which saw organized crime and intelligence networks cooperate to steal and then compromise the PROMIS software for blackmail and clandestine intelligence-gathering purposes. Allen & Co. was a major investor in Brian’s business interests in the technology industry that Brian used in attempts to bankrupt the developers of PROMIS, Inslaw Inc. and to market versions of PROMIS that had been compromised first by Israeli intelligence and, later, the CIA.
In addition to these intelligence-linked individuals, the rest of Resilience’s board includes the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Susan Desmond-Hellmann; former FDA Commissioner and Pfizer board member, Scott Gottlieb; two former executives at Johnson & Johnson; former president and CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals North American branch, George Barrett; CalTech professor and board member of Alphabet (i.e. Google) and Illumina, Frances Arnold; former executive at Genentech and Merck, Patrick Yang; and Resilience CEO Rahul Singhvi.
To Boost or Not to Boost
It is certainly telling that the normally publicity hungry Moderna has said so little about its partnership with Resilience and that Resilience, despite its ambitious plans, has also avoided the media limelight. Considering Moderna’s history and Resilience’s connections, there may be more to this partnership that meets the eye and concerned members of the public would do well to keep a very close eye on Resilience, its partnerships, and the products it is manufacturing.
Given that we now live in a world where government regulatory decisions on the approval of medicines are increasingly influenced by corporate press releases and normal regulatory procedures have fallen by the wayside for being too “slow,” there is likely to be little scrutiny of the genetic material that Resilience produces for the “medicines of tomorrow.” This seems to be already true for Moderna’s recently retooled COVID-19 vaccine, as there has been no independent examination of the new genetic sequence of mRNA used in the Omicron-specific vaccine candidate or its effects on the human body in the short, medium or long term. For those who are skeptical of the outsized role that intelligence-linked companies are playing in the attempted technological “revolution” in the medical field, it is best to consider Resilience’s role in the upcoming fall vaccination campaign and in future pandemic and public health scenarios before trying its “futuristic” products.
After the Crash 