Blog

Africa Doesn’t Want to Be a New-Cold-War Breeding Ground

On Oct. 17, the head of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), U.S. Marine Corps General Michael Langley visited Morocco. Langley met with senior Moroccan military leaders, including Inspector General of the Moroccan Armed Forces Belkhir El Farouk.

Since 2004, AFRICOM has held its “largest and premier annual exercise,” African Lion, partly on Moroccan soil. This past June, 10 countries participated in the African Lion 2022, with observers from Israel (for the first time) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Langley’s visit is part of a broader U.S. push onto the African continent, which we documented in our dossier No. 42 (July 2021), “Defending Our Sovereignty: U.S.  Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity,” a joint publication with The Socialist Movement of Ghana’s Research Group.

In that text, we wrote that the two important principles of Pan-Africanism are political unity and territorial sovereignty and argued that the “enduring presence of foreign military bases not only symbolises the lack of unity and sovereignty; it also equally enforces the fragmentation and subordination of the continent’s peoples and governments.”

In August, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield travelled to Ghana, Uganda and Cape Verde. “We’re not asking Africans to make any choices between the United States and Russia,” she said ahead of her visit, but, she added, “for me, that choice would be simple.”

That choice is nonetheless being impelled by the U.S. Congress as it deliberates the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, a bill that would sanction African states if they do business with Russia (and could possibly extend to China in the future).

To understand this unfolding situation, our friends at No Cold War have prepared their briefing No. 5, “NATO Claims Africa as Its ‘Southern Neighbourhood,’” which looks at how NATO has begun to develop a proprietary view of Africa and how the U.S.  government considers Africa to be a frontline in its Global Monroe Doctrine. That briefing can be downloaded here.

Keep reading

College students turn more liberal, OK speech death penalty

Calls for diversity on campuses and in Main Street businesses and banning hate speech, even that protected by the First Amendment , are no longer issues to fight over for college students.

Now, it’s a reason for the electric chair .

In a remarkable shift showing how students, many lining up for President Joe Biden’s loan forgiveness plan, have turned left since the 2020 election, a new Yale survey suggests that America’s best and brightest are giving up on key constitutional freedoms and even embracing socialism.

In the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale University national student survey, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates and provided to Secrets, big majorities want companies to require employees to declare support for workplace diversity just to get a job.

And when it comes to speech, nearly half believe the death penalty is OK to shoot down hate speech.

Keep reading

Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb

I have covered enough wars to know that once you open that Pandora’s box, the many evils that pour out are beyond anyone’s control. War accelerates the whirlwind of industrial killing. The longer any war continues, the closer and closer each side comes to self-annihilation.  Unless it is stopped, the proxy war between Russia and the U.S. in Ukraine all but guarantees direct confrontation with Russia and, with it, the very real possibility of nuclear war.`

U.S. President Joe Biden, who doesn’t always seem to be quite sure where he is or what he is supposed to be saying, is being propped up in the I-am-a-bigger-man-than-you contest with Russian President Vladimir Putin by a coterie of rabid warmongers who have orchestrated over 20 years of military fiascos. They are salivating at the prospect of taking on Russia, and then, if there is any habitation left on the globe, China.

Trapped in the polarizing mindset of the Cold War — where any effort to de-escalate conflicts through diplomacy is considered appeasement, a perfidious Munich moment — they smugly push the human species closer and closer toward obliteration. Unfortunately for us, one of these true believers is Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“Putin is saying he is not bluffing. Well, he cannot afford bluffing, and it has to be clear that the people supporting Ukraine and the European Union and the Member States, and the United States and NATO are not bluffing neither,” E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned. “Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will be annihilated.”

Annihilated. Are these people insane?

Keep reading

US biolab accidents going unreported

Directors of America’s biolabs have admitted to hundreds of dangerous accidents in the past two decades, but even incidents involving exposure to deadly viruses have been kept from public view, an investigation by The Intercept has revealed.

“People have it in their minds that lab accidents are very, very rare, and if they happen, they happen only in the least well-run overseas labs,” Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright told the media outlet. “That simply isn’t true.”

The erroneous public perception could stem from the fact that, as The Intercept found, Americans don’t hear about US biolab accidents. The outlet obtained more than 5,500 pages of laboratory incident reports from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), compelling the agency to release the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Many lab mishaps are reported to the NIH, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, but the agency doesn’t pass on the information to the public, even in cases involving Level 3 and Level 4 biolabs.

Keep reading

New York AG Probe Says LAPD Officer Helped Cover Up Allegations of Sexual Assault Against Former CBS Exec

An investigation has allegedly found that a commanding officer in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) tipped off former CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves about a confidential sexual assault complaint against him and worked with the company for months to ensure the complaint did not become public knowledge.

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the results of the investigation in a 37-page report (pdf) published on Wednesday.

In a statement, James said the investigation conducted by her office had found that a complainant had visited an LAPD station house in the Hollywood division on Nov. 10, 2017, to report a sexual assault by Moonves in the 1980s before he was employed at CBS.

The complaint was marked “confidential” multiple times, James said. However, later that night, an LAPD commanding officer with the Hollywood division allegedly called the Senior Vice President of Talent Relations and Special Events at CBS, Ian Metrose, and left the following voicemail: “I know we haven’t talked in a while. I am a captain at LAPD Hollywood. Somebody walked in the station about a couple hours ago and made allegations against your boss regarding a sexual assault.”

The voicemail continued: “It’s confidential, as you know, but call me, and I can give you some of the details and let you know what the allegation is before it goes to the media or gets out. So, all right, talk to you after a while. Bye.”

James’s report claims that the officer who phoned Metrose knew him personally because he had been hired by CBS to work as Moonves security aid at the Grammy awards from 2008 to 2014.

Metrose allegedly alerted his supervisors about the complaint the following day, according to the report, and the LAPD commanding officer allegedly provided Moonves and CBS executives with the unredacted police report, thus revealing the complainant’s identity and personal information.

Keep reading

THE MYSTERY OF TUTANKHAMUN’S METEORIC IRON DAGGER

IN 1922, EGYPTIAN EXCAVATORS LED BY HOWARD CARTER DISCOVERED THE TOMB OF TUTANKHAMUN, AN EGYPTIAN PHARAOH WHO WAS THE LAST OF HIS ROYAL FAMILY TO RULE DURING THE END OF THE 18TH DYNASTY.

Located in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes (modern Luxor), the tomb, KV62, was buried in mounds of debris from the cutting of KV9 for Pharaoh Ramesses V over 150 years after Tutankhamun’s death.

The discovery caused a media frenzy, revealing 5,398 items that included: a solid gold coffin, face mask, thrones, archery bows, trumpets, a lotus chalice, two Imiut fetishes, gold toe stalls, furniture, food, wine, sandals and fresh linen underwear.

Among the artefacts were a set of iron blades that resemble the PeseshKaf, a tool used in the “opening of the mouth ceremony,” a ritual performed for the deceased to enable them to breath, speak, eat and drink in the afterlife.

One of these blades is an iron dagger with an ornamental golden sheath, expertly produced by an ancient metalsmith.

The Howard Carter Archives describes the dagger as having a finely manufactured blade made from a homogeneous metal, while the handle is made of fine gold and is decorated with cloisonné and granulation work, ending with a pommel of rock crystal. On one side of the golden sheath is a floral lily motif, while on the other is a pattern of feathers terminating with a jackal’s head.

Examples in Egypt of contemporary smelting during the 18th Dynasty to produce Iron are very rare, and likely produced low-quality iron to be forged into precious objects. As the other blades found in the tomb are relatively crude, many scholars suggest that the ornamental dagger was imported to Egypt perhaps as a royal gift from a neighbouring territory or kingdom.

Diplomatic documents (the Amarna letters), that date from the 14th century BC mention royal gifts made of iron given to the pharaohs of Egypt from before Tutankhamun’s reign. Interestingly, one of these documents notes that Tushratta, King of Mitanni, sent iron objects to Amenhotep III (possibly Tutankhamun’s grandfather), which mentions iron blades in the lists.

Keep reading

Military whistleblowers say cancer, miscarriages and heart disease all up 300% following covid injection mandates

Three doctors in the armed forces have decided to blow the lid on the United States military’s open deception concerning the negative outcome of Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccination” on American troops.

According to the three whistleblowers, medical billing code data captured by the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), which is run by the Department of Defense (DoD), shows that rates of miscarriage, myocarditis, cancer, Bell’s palsy, female infertility, and many other health conditions are up big time.

Cancer rates are particularly concerning, they say, as the normal average number of new cases per year is about 38,700, based on the time period from 2016-2020. In 2021 after Operation Warp Speed was launched, however, the number of new cancer cases that year rose to 114,645.

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch (AFHSB) runs the DMED, which it describes as a “web-based tool to remotely query de-identified active component personnel and medical event data contained within the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS).”

“The database contains every International Classification of Diseases (ICD) medical billing code for all medical diagnoses submitted by the military for medical insurance billing,” reports explain. (Related: Remember at the launch of Operation Warp Speed when Dr. Sara Beltrán Ponce, MD, suffered a horrific miscarriage right after getting jabbed for the Chinese Flu?)

Keep reading

Historian Michael Beschloss: If GOP Wins ‘Our Children Will be Arrested and Conceivably Killed’

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss is officially broken and needs a timeout because lost his damn mind on MSNBC on Wednesday night.

You guys, the GOP will arrest and kill our children! I’m shocked he didn’t say the GOP will also eat them as the parents watch. Or go all Titus Andronicus and feed the kids in a pie to their parents.

Just accept the fact that Americans do not like your policies because they suck.

No one should ever take this man seriously ever again. What a clown:

Well, [Biden] was absolutely candid and he was absolutely right, because, as you know, Chris, six nights from now, we could all be discussing violence all over this country. There are signs that that may happen. May God forbid. That losers will be declared winners by fraudulent election officers or secretary of state candidates or governors or state legislatures.

We could be six days away from losing our rule of law and losing a situation where we have elections that we all can rely on. You know, those are the foundation stones of a democracy.

Keep reading

‘Democracy Dies In Darkness’ – Unless You Want Pelosi Video Released

In a Wednesday article, columnist Philip Bump draws a line from 2020 election deniers, to QAnon, to people who think there’s something fishy about last week’s attack on the Pelosis’ San Francisco house by a mentally ill homeless man who was living at a house with a BLM flag, and who back-dated posts on one of his websites after registering it in September.

Bump writes;

The internet makes all of this so depressingly easy. Not only is it a warehouse of information, it is also the corkboard and the colored yarn. You can forage for evidence of your belief system to your heart’s content and you can see how other sympathetic allies have strung together their own theories.

I frequently come back to Lawrence Lessig’s 2009 essay “Against Transparency” in which he warned that publishing information in the interests of governmental transparency would simply give people scads of material to generate their own narratives. That’s exactly what happened, though Lessig didn’t foresee that the advent of social media would vastly speed up the narrative-building process.

As an employee of a newspaper, I would, in fact, like to see the video that the Capitol Police overlooked, and the body-cam footage. It is the media’s job to question authority and to ensure accountability. It is also the media’s job to present accurate information to the public and to stamp out misinformation. So while seeing that footage would be useful, there is not at this point any reason to believe that the attack on Paul Pelosi was anything other than what various legal documents have suggested.

The lure of conspiracy is too strong to accept that, however, and the public understanding of how logic works is too weak. -WaPo

So – people might continue to spread conspiracy theories despite video evidence, so best not to release it.

In closing, Bump puts conditions on transparency; “More transparency and more information are good when considered responsibly. The challenge is that one can no more control how that information is applied than the people who, say, write magazine articles scrutinized for patterns of numbers by the corkboard set can control getting looped into a delusion.”

So – no transparency for you, if you aren’t qualified to process it.

Keep reading

Scientists worldwide claim all Covid-19 Vaccines contain Nanotechnology & Graphene Oxide

Nanoscience and nanotechnology involve the ability to see and control individual atoms and molecules. Everything on Earth is made up of atoms—the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the buildings and houses we live in, and our own bodies.

But something as small as an atom is impossible to see with the naked eye. In fact, it’s impossible to see with the microscopes typically used in high school science classes. The microscopes needed to see things at the nanoscale were invented in the early 1980s.

Once scientists had the right tools, such as the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) and the atomic force microscope (AFM), the age of nanotechnology was born.

And now scientists from Spain, have declared that nanotechnology, which has the ability to control atoms in your body, has been found in all of the Covid-19 injections alongside Graphene Oxide.

Keep reading