Long ago, the U.S. government stopped listening to other countries’ governments, as reflected in its recent series of vetoes in the Security Council and in its unprecedented isolation in the world. But recently, and more dangerously, the U.S. government officials have stopped listening to themselves. This is not an entirely new phenomenon for key people … Continue reading "When Did America Stop Listening to Itself?"

The post When Did America Stop Listening to Itself? appeared first on Antiwar.com.

Well, okay, two graphs.

Oh and remember, much of the inflation was spurred by the disastrous Covid spending prior to Biden taking office.

But still.

The DNC strategy of the early debate next month gives them the ability to pivot, remove and replace, if he isn’t given sufficient stimulants or otherwise freezes up.

The graphs (WSJ):

https://x.com/toddzywicki/status/1792191368229708036?s=46&t=QVRahZjR0Wj-QYIIJUNMOA

The poet Dana Gioia recently argued that “Poetry is not merely important to Christianity. It is an essential, inextricable, and necessary aspect of religious faith and practice.” He proceeds to observe “the curious fact that one-third of the Bible is written in verse.” As the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar observed decades ago, however, curious though the proportion of verse to prose in the sacred scriptures may seem, it should not necessarily lead us to conclude that scripture must be understood as “a poetical book.” The “Bible’s external poetic form,” von Balthasar notes, may not lead to the discovery of the intrinsic and essential poetic dimension Gioia suggests, much less to one with meaningful “theological import.” For, von Balthasar writes, in the time and place of many of those books’ composition, “prose . . . such as that of the Greek historians . . . does not yet even exist.” Perhaps oral culture merely necessitated the use of verse; in most languages, prose develops only when the conditions for the widespread use of writing and printed documents emerge.

Von Balthasar was merely entertaining objections on his way to arguing that form is indeed primordial to scripture as it is to everything else—and there is no going behind it. We must contemplate the form of divine revelation and of the Bible just as we contemplate the form of a work of art, he concludes. Michael Edwards in The Bible and Poetry endorses an approach to scripture that is at least somewhat similar in spirit, in this enthusiastic, oddly constructed, and boldly eccentric (if not heterodox) essay. Two-thirds of the way through his excursus, Edwards, in discussing the revelation of Saint John, makes the following hesitant interjection: “all creatures are offering to God a sacrifice of praise and—may we add?—of poetry.” 

Do not let the rhetorical question fool you. Edwards’s insistence on reading poetry in the Bible as poetry and, for that matter, receiving the whole of scriptural revelation as a poetic sacrament (a term to which I shall return), is full-throated and dogmatic even as it calls into question what most Christians would understand by the term dogma.

A Case for Poetic Reception

The volume is divided into two extended arguments. In the first four chapters, Edwards makes the case for a poetic reception of the Bible, in comparison with which he judges “systematic theology” to be an “error.” That case is rooted in his own conversion experience and his understanding of what the experience of reading the Bible and being a Christian ought to be, but makes positive advertence to such quasi-modernist figures as William James and Henri Bremond, while specifically casting John Henry Newman and Jean-Luc Marion as foils. In the remaining seven chapters, Edwards guides us through poetic moments in the scriptures, beginning with the Psalms, Isaiah 6, and the Song of Songs, and continuing with a discussion of poetry in the New Testament, with particular attention to Luke. Most of these chapters offer a fairly loose account of the poetic qualities of the scriptural language, but the final chapter, “The Eyelids of Dawn,” leads us from poetry to poetic theory.

I will address these two arguments in reverse order, because the exegetical reflections on the nature of scripture seem the most fruitful parts of Edwards’s argument, while the opening salvos need to be set in a context Edwards does not himself provide if their claims are to make for compelling reading—and even then, there are problems.

Edwards’s chief aim in the second, larger part of the volume is to introduce the reader to what Fredrich Schiller would have called the “ludic,” or playfully poetic, qualities—for they are many—of the Bible and to do so in a manner that will no longer allow us to set those qualities to the side as ornamental and inessential as we go in search of abstract truths in which to believe. One of his more provocative statements to that end runs as follows:

The poem, as a body of a special sort, represents the rough sketch of another body, the sign of the transformed body. And if the body of the poem is mysterious, it suggests that the body of the world, the effect of the word of God, is likewise so, and that it too opens to that which transcends it. The strange body of the poem corresponds to the strange body of the material, and more than material, world. In this perspective, all poetry is metaphysical.

The poem is a body, a whole whose organic parts constitute a true unity. Were we to reduce the whole to the parts, we would, as Wordsworth once protested, “murder to dissect.” But Edwards’s language goes beyond this. The body, the inviolable whole of the poem, also symbolizes the glorified body of resurrected humanity and also the body of the world. The poem opens onto salvation history and the order of the world, but even then, it is not done, for the poem also speaks of the spiritual body of God insofar as he reveals himself.

If this language sounds familiar, it should: John Crowe Ransom expressed something similar in that early classic of the New Criticism, The World’s Body (1938). There, Ransom saw the modern scientific civilization of the West as seeking to “murder to dissect” everything; it reduced all things to abstract, mathematical units and treated the whole living body of things like an indifferent heap, a corpse. For Ransom, the best poetry resisted this extractive rationalism by refusing to dissolve the whole or, better, by restoring that whole to us. Poetry, he wrote, “only wants to realize the world, to see it better . . . the world which is made of whole and indefeasible objects, and this is the world that poetry recovers for us.”

For Ransom, the bodily whole of the world was its texture of experience, its complexity that resists digestion into the useful units of science or business. What Ransom sought to recover was the fullness of reality, one that included the “irrelevant” or incomprehensible qualities of things otherwise ignored in an efficient but impoverished rational civilization. Edwards’s remarks go much further. The poem is a body that speaks of the natural world, yes, but also of the spiritual world that transcends it—that rich economy of “wholes composed of wholes,” as Jacques Maritain wrote in a related context. Ransom wants poetry to restore to us the fullness of embodied experience. Edwards claims it restores to us the presence of fullness—not just natural reality, but the reality of grace, revelation, and salvation. We will have to return to this claim in taking up his early chapters, but  I first want to highlight what it leads Edwards to do in the larger part of this volume.

Poetry and Faith

Edwards’s exploration of the Bible is piecemeal, partial, and given to magnificent assertions delivered as mere asides and never to be argued, but all this cannot really be judged a fault. He does his level best to show us that the “poetry of the Psalms is not mere clothing” and that the particular strength of the Psalms is the inseparability of the words of the poem from the faith that inspires them.

This organic unity is found across scripture: “our way of seeing is disrupted by this refusal of abstraction.” Isaiah 6, with its vision of the six-winged seraphim who comes, “having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar,” to perform the circumcision of the prophet’s “unclean lips,” is exemplary (it is the “primal scene”) of the whole of Scripture. The Bible is poetry in the sense of being purified speech, impossible to uninspired man and impregnable to the merely abstractive reason. We have to receive it without reduction, which means we, too, are called to read it with circumcised or purified eyes. We are called to receive it in awe and stand silent, lest we fall into the heresy of paraphrase.

But this raises a problem because much of Scripture is allegorical or otherwise figural in character. It cannot simply be read in itself as an autonomous form, but must be read into. Does this not violate its poetic integrity? This question explains Edwards’s turn to the Song of Songs. Read literally, it will appear as a poem of nuptial romance. But if we pay attention to some subtle features of the language, we discover that this literal nuptial poetry opens itself to the romance of God and his bride, the Church. This allegorical reading is not, then, a violation of the text but an entrance into “the depth of the dialogue.” 

So, also, as Edwards turns to the New Testament, he delights in three particular features that indicate a poetic reception is necessary. First, that the gospels are “biographies” rather than treatises. Second, that the prose of the New Testament, including the expository passages of the Epistles, frequently breaks into poetry, as in Paul’s hymn in Philippians 2. But, third, and most importantly, Edwards shows us (without quite articulating) that the typological reading of the Bible is binding on us. Hannah’s canticle in 1 Samuel is echoed, fulfilled, and transcended in the canticle of Mary (the Magnificat). We have to see the poetic texts rhyming with one another in order to understand their meaning.

From all this, I hope it is clear that Edwards creates a great problem for himself in his use of the word “poetry.” As he uses it, poetry means a number of things together, perhaps totally unified, but that may be distinguished. Poetry could be a) “ludic” speech, the world’s body, that refuses to let its meaning be separated from the form of its saying; b) lyric elevation, where our everyday language suddenly halts in its pursuit of argument in order to express praise (doxology) in a manner that seems raised above time; c) rhetorical figures of speech, which are a particular focus of Edwards’s attention, where the form of expression, the order and patterning of words, deepens feeling, meaning or both; and d) verse, where language itself is patterned not merely by grammar but by the ordering of sound and syllable. In his final chapter, Edwards introduces still another possible definition: poetry as e) an “uncertain intuition” that reveals “another dimension in language.” This last is the German romantic theory of language Charles Taylor explores in his two most recent books, The Language Animal and Cosmic Connections.

Not all of these definitions are like the others. Some of them would have to apply to all poetry as does the “ludic” quality, but some, such as the use of rhetoric, apply to poetry but also refined speech of any kind. All lyrics are poems, but not all poems are lyrics. Does poetry become revelatory because of the rhetoric, the meter, or the lyric intensity? If all three together, then how come not all three are always present? Almost none of the poetry that Edwards discusses is actually in verse (whether in its original language or in translation), that is, organized according to an audible pattern of measured speech.

A century ago, Henri Bremond noticed that the poetry of the English romantics seemed to express a mystical vision, a vision of cosmic wholeness and presence. Rather than investigate the matter by considering how steeped in the reading of Plato and neo-Platonism the romantic poets were (Shelley, for instance, translated the Symposium), such that they could hardly help but give expression to the world in a loosely Platonic vision, Bremond simply concluded that all true poetry expressed a quasi-mystical vision. Bremond’s book making this argument, Prayer and Poetry, is on the whole quite beautiful, but one has to concede von Balthasar’s judgment of it as “superficial.” A kindred dilettantism haunts Edwards’s book.

This dilettantism would be unobjectionable if the book consisted only of its rhapsodic final seven chapters where we are urged to recover what Santayana called the “innocence of the eye” that sees things whole. But in the first four, his treatment of the Bible as poetry will raise both questions and readers’ eyebrows. Beginning in the nineteenth century, some modern exegetes attempted to “reduce” the Scriptures to poetry, by which they intended morally edifying, figuratively communicating, fictions. Edwards would have us receive scripture as poetry, but not in order to reduce it to non-literal meanings we can contain or dismiss. He speaks of his own conversion to Christianity, which was not brought about by argument, but by the exemplary splendor of whole lives lived in the enthusiasm of faith, in the following of Christ. For Edwards, “atheism” does not mean the propositional denial of the existence of God, but to live “without God,” the refusal to live in his presence. It is not a creed, not a judgment, but a way of being.

All this strikes me as correct. It is what people mean when they say Christianity is primarily an “encounter” rather than a statement of belief in propositions. Faith is grace’s animating presence in the soul. Edwards wants to interpret this understanding of faith on poetic terms, by which he means the reception of the formal whole without selective reduction to parts. This also seems correct. But then he makes a fateful move. Because poetry is not reducible to any paraphrase, Edwards concludes that every act to enter into the poetry of the Christian faith that would generate “systematic theology” is, as we saw above, an “error.” He critiques Newman for bracketing his overwhelming experience of God in order to justify belief in God as reasonable. He critiques Marion for finding the presence of Christ in the Eucharist rather than in scripture. For Edwards, we do not need arguments, but the experience of presence found in the Bible’s poetic beauty; we do not need the developed sacramental theology of the Eucharist, because we have the presence of the words of scripture. In this, he approaches Martin Luther (at least in Philip Carey’s controversial interpretation of him): the Bible itself is a sacrament whose grace changes us, and nothing can be added to, or subtracted from, that power.

With such a sacramental vision of scripture, Edwards feels justified in dismissing Saint Thomas Aquinas and Descartes along with everyone else as so many errant system-builders, the monumental, unbridgeable differences among them notwithstanding. Edwards echoes Marion in stating that God reveals himself only insofar as he reveals himself, but then looks askance at everyone who wastes words trying to understand what it is we are seeing. Edwards is right that we must see the form whole and he is right that poetic form leads beyond itself to give intimations—more than intimations—of the supra-formal reality of God.

Where he errs is in thinking that this is the end of the story. Rather, it is the beginning of many volumes. In von Balthasar’s Glory of the Lord, the theologians begin just with the premise that there is no getting away from, or beyond, form. We must receive scripture whole, the Church whole, history whole, the same way we receive a work of art as an irreducible whole. This leads us not to fall silent after a few words, but to seek to see the form as best we may and to see the different attempts made in the history of the life of the Church to describe it without ever comprehending it. The Summae of Aquinas are one especially rich example of that, the philosophy of Descartes an embarrassing and insincere failure.

Edwards errs on this point because he misunderstands what it means for a theologian to make a commentary on scripture. For Edwards, commentary is always one step down the road toward the replacement of the body of scripture with unwarranted abstractions that depart from the spirit of the text. With the poet J. V. Cunningham, he laments: “The text was loss. // The gain is gloss.” But, as Rémi Brague has argued, the commentary tradition, in the classical and Christian worlds, suggests just the opposite. The original text is an inviolable poem indeed, but like the myths as Plato understood them, they contain boundless depths. We retain the original text and let it speak for itself; we stand before its form; and then we crowd the margins with our ever-partial attempts to explore and better understand what we can never supplant or exhaust. Edwards’s poetic account leaves him in a church of one; the commentary tradition is the poetic contemplation of the actual Church.

Image by Oleksandr and licensed via Adobe Stock.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said the new fortifications will prepare the frontier with Belarus and Russia in case of war

Poland will build a defense line along its borders with Belarus and Russia, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced. He added that work has already begun on ‘East Shield.’

Amid the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow, the Polish leadership has repeatedly talked up the need to better defend the country against a perceived Russian threat. Last month, President Andrzej Duda suggested that Warsaw would be happy to host US nuclear weapons there, if asked to take part in NATO’s sharing scheme. Prime Minister Tusk was quick to downplay the idea, with Moscow warning of countermeasures should American weapons of mass destruction appear on its border or that of its key ally, Belarus.

Speaking at a military commemorative event in Krakow on Saturday, Prime Minister Tusk stated that Warsaw “will invest ten billion zlotys (€2.3 billion) in the security of our border with Belarus and Russia.”

“We have begun these works, to make Poland’s border a safe one in times of peace, and impenetrable for an enemy in times of war,” the official added, noting Poland’s strategic position on the eastern flank of NATO and the European Union.

The project envisages the creation of new fortifications and fences, as well as changes in landforms and special afforestation along the 400-kilometer-long (249-mile) frontier.

Tusk also said he expected the European Investment Bank to fund Poland’s satellite monitoring tools to the tune of 500 million zlotys. The system is expected to form part of a joint European air defense infrastructure.

On top of that, the head of government warned would-be saboteurs that “Poland will be merciless to those who seek destabilization of our country.”

Back in January, neighboring Estonia announced its intention to build approximately 600 bunkers along its border with Russia, with fellow NATO members Latvia and Lithuania also on board.

The “Baltic Defense Line” aimed at repelling “possible Russian aggression,” was originally budgeted at €60 million ($65 million), with construction expected to begin next year.

Meanwhile, in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted that the “claims that we are going to attack Europe after Ukraine – it is utter nonsense and intimidation of their own population just to beat the money out of them.”

He also pointed out that it was NATO that had been inching ever closer toward Russian borders, and not the other way around, with the US-led military bloc having already “come very close.”

SOS: Stop the World Health Organization’s Tyrannical May 27 Power Grab

By: Robert Williams

Gatestone Institute

May 13, 2024

(Emphasis added)

The proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) give the WHO Director General the authority to declare not just an actual but a potential international public health emergency and set out binding recommendations on how to address it, whether individual states agree with him or not.

Worse, no criticism of the new WHO regime and its decisions to declare potential or actual pandemics, lockdowns and treatment, including vaccines, will be allowed under the amended IHR… In other words, the government lies, obfuscations and cover-ups that so dominated the last pandemic will become normalized, and all criticism outlawed.

Already, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (not a medical doctor) has castigated critics of the planned amendments and new Pandemic Treaty as conspiracy theorists who spread “fake news, lies and conspiracy theories.”

Since the UN claims that to “owns the science,” it is now brainwashing the public into believing that “climate change” threatens global health. This view makes it likely that you will one day find yourself in a WHO-mandated lockdown to mitigate the effects of the “climate crisis,” along with limits on where you go, how you may get there, what you do, and what you can own.

The US is already seeing forerunners of this in the Biden administration’s unconstitutional executive orders, possibly including his attempts to ban internal combustion engine vehicles and gas stoves; mandating dishwashing machines that may need repeated cycles to clean dishes, and new stricter regulations on air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, and even leaf-blowers — and this is only the beginning.

The WHO is not elected, has no democratic legitimacy, is not accountable to anyone and has no control mechanisms to restrain its reach. After the horrifying failures of the WHO during Covid-19, the answer is not to give the organization more power, but to disengage from it entirely.

The UN and the WHO evidently want unlimited control. If they are not stopped right now by national governments that refuse to approve the new Pandemic Treaty and proposed International Health Regulations amendments, unlimited control is what they will have — and it is we who will have given it to them.

Most countries have not initiated any mainstream critical public debate about how Covid-19 was addressed. The governments responsible for the outrageously botched response to the virus have not been held accountable. Communist China, despite having unleashed the virus on the world by deliberately lying about its human-to-human transmissibility, has not suffered a single negative consequence. Nothing has been done either about the duplicitous role played by World Health Organization (WHO), which parroted Chinese Communist Party propaganda about the virus, even after having been informed in writing early on by Taiwan that the virus was highly transmissible.

The WHO, still led by the reportedly corrupt Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, covered up for China, and repeatedly praised China for, in effect, having murdered more than seven million people worldwide, including more than one million just in the US .

No one has held to account either China’s way of handling the virus by recalling protective gear so it would have enough for itself; made billions exporting “useless” defective protective gear, for sending its citizens abroad to infect the world while it closed down its own borders and tried to isolate Wuhan, where, in a laboratory, the virus seems to have begun. China imposed lockdowns, literally: physically barring 25 million of its own citizens from leaving their apartments. Some who were locked in from outside burned to death in a fire; others, including scientists who tried to warn about the lethality of the virus, or mentioned China’s role in spreading the virus, or expressed any skepticism about cures, were either arrested, silenced, or “disappeared”.

The same governments and organizations that lied and covered up how Covid-19 was mishandled are now in the process of finalizing negotiations on amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR) and the new Pandemic Treaty that together will give the WHO Director General unprecedented power over public global health.

At present – at least until the World Health Assembly, the parent organization of the WHO, meets in Geneva from May 27-June 1, the WHO is able to declare a public health emergency of international concern, but now the organization’s recommendations are not binding. So far, so good.

The proposed amendments to the IHR, however, give the WHO Director General the authority to declare not just an actual but a potential international public health emergency and set out binding recommendations on how to address it, whether individual states agree with him or not.

This means that the WHO will be able to declare whatever it deems to be an actual or potential health emergency and mandate lockdowns, medical examinations, require vaccination or other prophylaxes, place individuals under public health observation, implement quarantine or other health measures.

In addition, the IHR will adopt the worldwide use of digital vaccine passports. Already in June 2023, the European Union and the WHO announced “a long-term digital partnership to deliver better health for all.”

“This partnership will work to technically develop the WHO system with a staged approach to cover additional use cases, which may include, for example, the digitisation of the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis. Expanding such digital solutions will be essential to deliver better health for citizens across the globe.”

The proposed amendment to the IHR, will ensure a “global digital exchange of health information” under WHO.

Worse, no criticism of the new WHO regime and its decisions to declare potential or actual pandemics, lockdowns and treatment, including vaccines, will be allowed under the amended IHR:

“WHO shall collaborate with and promptly assist States Parties, in particular developing countries upon request, in countering the dissemination of false and unreliable information about public health events, preventive and anti-epidemic measures and activities, in the media, social networks and other ways of disseminating such information.”

In other words, the government lies, obfuscations and cover-ups that so dominated the last pandemic will become normalized, and all criticism outlawed.

Just last month, Germany woke up to revelations that the country’s public health authority had lied about Covid. Newly released documents obtained by investigative journalists after a two-year court battle, showed that Germany’s public health authority, also known as the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) advised the German government that the flu posed a greater risk than Covid, masks would be useless, and that lockdowns were more dangerous than the virus and could lead to increased child mortality. None of these concerns were addressed in practice. The German government – as most other governments – instead chose draconian, totalitarian measures inspired by China.

In addition, the RKI’s concerns were never communicated to the German public.

Already, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (not a medical doctor) has castigated critics of the planned amendments and new Pandemic Treaty as conspiracy theorists who spread “fake news, lies and conspiracy theories.”

The power grab will not only give the corrupt WHO unprecedented powers, but also benefit the special interests who effectively control WHO — primarily Communist China.

Gebreyesus is a long-time friend of China, which secured the director general’s job after Beijing threw its weight behind his candidacy, over the emphatic objections of Ghana and Ethiopia.

Gebreyesus, a former foreign minister and health minister of Ethiopia, who was accused in 2017 of being “fully complicit in the terrible suffering” caused by three cholera epidemics in Sudan and Ethiopia, used his role at the WHO to aid China’s global campaign for economic dominance. He even appointed Beijing’s ally, Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, as a WHO “goodwill ambassador.”Gebreyesus further repaid his debt to Beijing when the Covid-19 pandemic began. He failed to challenge Chinese misinformation about the outbreak, delayed declaring an international emergency, and protected China’s economy by discouraging governments from introducing travel controls. “This,” the Sunday Times wrote, “allowed the virus to spread across the globe in the crucial early weeks.”

The WHO is not elected, has no democratic legitimacy, is not accountable to anyone and has no control mechanisms to restrain its reach. After the horrifying failures of the WHO during Covid-19, the answer is not to give the organization more power, but to disengage from it entirely.

The WHO’s illiberal designs to silence all dissent as “disinformation” represent a corruption of both science and freedom of speech – an outcome that is hardly surprising given the outsize influence that China evidently wields on the body and UN member states. Just look at the willingness with which ostensibly liberal Western governments implemented authoritarian measures from the Chinese Communist Party.

Once the new legal instruments are passed, there will be nothing to stop the WHO from making insane decisions based on their corrupted view of science. One such view, totalitarian in its mindset, is that there is one true science, apparently the WHO’s, and there can be no discussion of it. “We own the science and we think that the world should know it,” Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications at the UN, said at the 2022 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. She also revealed that the social media platforms already “know” that the UN “owns” the science:

“You know, we partnered with Google, for example, if you Google climate change, you will, at the top of your search, get all kinds of UN resources. We started this partnership when we were shocked to see that when we Googled climate change, we were getting incredibly distorted information right at the top. So we’re becoming much more proactive.”

Since the UN claims that to “owns the science,” it is now brainwashing the public into believing that “climate change” threatens global health. This view makes it likely that you will one day find yourself in a WHO-mandated lockdown to mitigate the effects of the “climate crisis,” along with limits on where you go, how you may get there, what you do, and what you can own.

The US is already seeing forerunners of this in the Biden administration’s unconstitutional executive orders, possibly including his attempts to ban internal combustion engine vehicles and gas stoves; mandating dishwashing machines that may need repeated cycles to clean dishes, and new stricter regulations on air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, and even leaf-blowers — and this is only the beginning.

The WHO wrote in a press release on March 22 about its new “toolkit empowering health professionals to tackle climate change”:

“Climate change presents one of the most significant global health challenges and is already negatively affecting communities worldwide. Communicating the health risks of climate change and the health benefits of climate solutions is both necessary and helpful…

“Climate change affects health through various pathways, including extreme weather events, air pollution, food insecurity, water scarcity and the spread of infectious diseases. Heatwaves, changing weather patterns and air pollution contribute to a range of adverse health effects, including cardiovascular diseases, respiratory illnesses, mental health issues and malnutrition. Moreover, health systems face increasing strain from climate-related challenges, amplifying the urgency for action…

“By empowering health and care workers to communicate about climate change and health, it aims to drive collective action towards mitigating climate change, building resilience and safeguarding public health.”

The UN and the WHO evidently want unlimited control. If they are not stopped right now by national governments that refuse to approve the new Pandemic Treaty and proposed International Health Regulations amendments, unlimited control is what they will have — and it is we who will have given it to them.

Betrayal of Israel by the US Administration 

Is Almost Complete

The Biden administration does not appear ever to have issued 

the slightest threat, warning or ultimatum to the authors of the war: 

Hamas, Iran or Qatar.

By: Guy Millière

Gatestone Institute

May 12, 2024

The genocidal anti-Semitic attack on October 7, 2023 by the Islamic terrorists of Hamas at first aroused horror throughout the Western world. It took only a few hours, however for the horror to fade — long before Israel had even begun to respond. Demonstrations against Israel, and in support of the terrorist group, Hamas — sometimes “cleaned up” to be labeled “pro-Palestinian” — exploded just hours later on October 8, before hundreds of charred bodies had been removed from their homes. These well-planned and well-funded professional demonstrations, complete with instant Palestinian flags and, later, instant identical tents — rapidly metastasized throughout North America and Europe.

The slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” — calls for the total destruction of Israel, which, by coincidence, happens to be located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – and “Death to America” were chanted by tens of thousands of self-described “progressives,” Muslims and their followers. The campuses of several American and European universities — including, among other places, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and New York University — became sites of acts of pure anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic violence, under the guise of “free speech.” If the demonstrations had been against gays or Blacks, does anyone think that “free speech,” or violence masquerading as “free speech”, would have lasted five minutes? Whatever happened to all those demonstrations against China’s genocide of the Uyghurs, or crushing Hong Kong; or Russia’s scorched-earth war in Ukraine; or Iran’s rape, torture and execution of women, children and, now, rappers, or North Korea’s “murder, enslavement, torture, [and] enforced disappearances”?

“Stop Calling Them ‘Pro-Palestine’ Rallies,'” wrote the Rochester Institute of Technology’s A.J. Caschetta. In blunt Australia, euphemisms were dispensed with altogether in favor of “Gas the Jews” and “F—k the Jews.”

The whitewash of the terrorist group Hamas had begun. European politicians in France and Belgium, supporting Hamas, call it a “resistance movement.”

As Israel’s military response in the Gaza Strip progressed — meticulously crafted to avoid harming Palestinian civilians — many European leaders turned on Israel. They falsely accused it of acting “disproportionately” while Hamas’s widespread use of its own civilians as human shields was almost totally ignored. As Hamas also meticulously plans, the gullible international community accuses Israel of killing innocent civilians, not the Palestinian officials in Gaza who intentionally place them in harm’s way, even shooting at them to keep them from fleeing to safety in the south as the Israelis were urging them to do.

Also ignored is that Hamas officials seize virtually all of the free humanitarian aid, then give it to their terrorists or sell it to civilians on the black market for extortionate prices.

Although there is “‘no food shortage’ in Gaza,” several of Israel’s most steadfastly hostile critics, such as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, nevertheless falsely accuse Israel of causing a “famine” in Gaza.

As early as March 19, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, like so many European political leaders, falsely accused Israel, not Hamas, of “causing a famine” in Gaza. He even added that “100 percent of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity”. Israel is now forced to allow hundreds of trucks into Gaza that Israeli soldiers escort. Gaza, in fact, reportedly receives far more food than the population of Gaza needs. Gee, what could be happening to it?

Soon, all the mainstream European media stopped talking about the horrors of Hamas and instead turned their attention to the suffering Palestinians of Gaza – without noting that the people responsible for their fate and the death count are Hamas. Hamas even freely admits that its strategy is to use human shields. As far as Hamas is concerned, the higher the Palestinian death-count, the better.

The United States has been Israel’s main ally for decades, discounting occasional fluctuations here and there. Historically, American leaders’ support for Israel has been unwavering – until now. In February, America’s Democrat politicians voted to block aid to Israel. As the Israeli author and historian Gadi Taub noted last week:

“The U.S. is holding Israel on a leash by rationing the American-made ammunition on which the war effort depends; it has forced us to supply our enemies with ‘humanitarian aid’ which Hamas controls and which sustains its ability to fight; the U.S. is building a port to subvert our control of the flow of goods into Gaza; it refrained from vetoing an anti-Israel decision at the U.N. Security Council at the end of March; it leaked its intention to recognize a Palestinian state unilaterally; it allowed Iran to attack us directly with a barrage of over 300 rockets and drones without paying any price whatsoever; and then told us that Israel’s successful defense against that strike (which was mostly stopped by a combination of superior Israeli tech and faulty Iranian missiles that crashed all over the Middle East, and to some extent by U.S. interceptors) should be considered “victory”; it consistently protects Hezbollah from a full-fledged Israeli attack; it did all it can to prevent the ground invasion of Rafah, which is necessary for winning the war; it is trying to stop the war with a hostage deal that would ensure Hamas’ survival.

“The U.S. is not protecting Israel from the kangaroo courts in The Hague which now threaten to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and others. Instead, it is goosing those warrants, in part by itself threatening to impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, thus subverting the chain of command and pressuring IDF units to comply with American demands rather than with orders from their superiors. “

By now, most mainstream American media are as negative towards Israel as most mainstream European media.

In the days that followed October 7, the Biden administration generously provided arms and ammunition to Israel, as well as positioning several warships in the area, presumably to keep the conflict from spreading. Yet even then, pressure was put on Israel’s government. US President Joe Biden bizarrely asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “not to be consumed by rage“. Soon, as the Israeli military countered the terrorist threat in Gaza, US pressure on Israel was accompanied by harsh –and curiously public — criticism.

On January 9, despite unprecedented Israeli precautions to avoid harming civilians, Blinken announced, “the daily toll of war on civilians in Gaza is far too high”, and accused the Israeli Defense Forces of “indiscriminate bombing” — an accusation, as Blinken must have known, that could not have been less accurate.

John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, wrote:

“The Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation at al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip to root out Hamas terrorists recently, once again taking unique precautions as it entered the facility to protect the innocent; Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside.

“None of this meant anything to Israel’s critics, of course, who immediately pounced. The critics, as usual, didn’t call out Hamas for using protected facilities like hospitals for its military activity. Nor did they mention the efforts of the IDF to minimize civilian casualties.”

Not only were Blinken’s comments untrue, they seemed intended to give arguments to Israel’s enemies.

On February 7, Blinken went further and said that the October 7 massacre did not give Israel — trying to defend itself in a war it did not start — a “license to dehumanize others.” Unfortunately for Blinken, that is the last thing Israel is doing, but the main thing Hamas, Hezbollah, Qatar and Iran are doing.

On February 8, Biden himself said abruptly, “A lot of innocent people are starving. A lot of innocent people are in trouble and dying. And it’s got to stop.”

All right. If it has “got to stop”, why not demand that Hamas, Iran and Qatar stop it?

On March 25, the Biden administration refused to use the American veto and allowed the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution, proposed by Algeria, demanding an immediate unilateral ceasefire from Israel — with no condemnation of Hamas.

On April 4, Blinken tried to create a false moral equivalence between a terrorist group and a liberal democracy by charging that Israel had no reverence for human life and that if Israel did not do more to protect civilians in Gaza, Hamas and Israel could become “indistinguishable”. He then cited an old Jewish saying — that “whoever saves a life, saves the entire world” – contortedly, grotesquely implying that the Israel’s attempt to defend its own country and people is in contravention of the values of Judaism itself.

On April 4, according to journalist Barak Ravid:

“President Biden laid out an ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their call on Thursday: If Israel doesn’t change course in Gaza, ‘we won’t be able to support you,’ he said, according to three sources with knowledge of the call.”

According to the Times of Israel:

“During a security cabinet meeting after the call, Netanyahu noted that the White House readout similarly didn’t explicitly condition a ceasefire on a hostage deal. It said that Biden told the Israeli premier ‘that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians…'”

The Biden administration does not appear ever to have issued the slightest threat, warning or ultimatum to the authors of the war: Hamas, Iran or Qatar. Hamas in Gaza, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, is now most likely seen universally as the tail wagging the American dog.

Although the UN Security Council resolution of March 25 was not binding, any further ceasefire would mean Hamas won the war, simply by surviving to repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated, as Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said.

Hamas, on October 6, 2023, had a ceasefire with Israel. On October 7, Hamas violated it. Hamas did accept a second ceasefire a few weeks into the war and exchanged nearly half the hostages it held. A ceasefire now, especially a “temporary” one that would surely be pressured into becoming permanent, would just enable Hamas to regroup, rearm, and replenish its supply of terrorists from Israeli prisons.

US Senator Chuck Schumer, after declaring himself a friend and defender of Israel, suggested overthrowing Israel’s democratically elected prime minister, and — as if Israel, and not America, were within his jurisdiction — called for new elections:

“If Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.”

Schumer’s speech, yet again putting America’s outsized foot in the middle of Israel’s domestic policy, and ordering its ally to take direction from the Biden administration — including accepting a terrorist Palestinian state on its borders — and effectively disregard what the Israeli people have democratically chosen — was seen by most in Israel as a vicious blow.

Biden immediately backed Schumer up. “He made a good speech,” the president said in the Oval Office during a meeting with Ireland’s prime minister. “I think he expressed serious concerns shared not only by him but by many Americans”.

Biden, it seems, is frustrated that Netanyahu is objecting to humanitarian aid — which basically resupplies Hamas. Hamas, Israel’s argument goes, released hostages only after unremitting pressure. Relieving that pressure by backing Hamas makes the probability of seeing any more hostages released less likely. Biden is also reportedly frustrated that Netanyahu, for some inexplicable reason, objects to the creation of a terrorist Palestinian state next door.

Hamas would doubtless love as many humanitarian aid workers in Gaza as possible; they would provide Hamas with a fresh batch of human shields to prevent Israel from entering Rafah and removing Hamas’s remaining four battalions and terrorist leaders. Hamas is apparently already killing aid workers to steal food. How much better if they could be used to obstruct Israeli soldiers from entering the tunnels where the remaining hostages are believed hidden.

Netanyahu, accused by his adversaries of needing a war to avoid new elections, is being praised by others as “Israel’s Churchill.” Israelis remember that he was the leader who had the courage to address the US Congress in 2015 to counter President Barack Obama lethal, illegitimate “Iran nuclear deal,” officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Netanyahu, who has not been short on courage, either in combat or in refusing to submit to US pressure to go along with the JCPOA — despite the Obama administration’s interference in an Israeli election — may feel an overriding obligation, as he has said from the beginning, to make sure that Hamas will never again be able to launch another October 7; to take out the terrorist leaders presumed to be concealed in tunnels, as well as the four remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah, and above all, to rescue the hostages — many of whom may have since been murdered.

Meanwhile in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where anti-government demonstrations began again, one of their leaders, Ami Dror, revealed on social media that the demonstrations and riots are part of a plan by the Biden administration to bring down the Netanyahu government.

The US, according to Gadi Taub, is intent on removing the democratically elected Netanyahu and replacing him with someone more, shall we say, compliant:

“In the eyes of the Biden administration Hamas is the smaller problem. The bigger problem is Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. is willing to live with Iran’s proxies everywhere, as part of its “regional integration” policy—i.e., appeasing Iran. But they are unwilling to live with Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition…. Netanyahu clearly does not want to learn from his would-be tutors like U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken how to “share the neighborhood” with genocidaires in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, and Tehran, whom his electorate understands to be bent on murdering them.

“If the Netanyahu problem is too big to contain, then it follows that it must be solved. And it seems that the Biden administration has zeroed in on…finding a local proxy who will impose the U.S. agenda on a reluctant Israeli electorate…..According to the leaders of the Never-Bibi demonstrators, the White House is in constant touch with them for coordination.”

The US State Department has, for more than a year, been providing financial support for protests hostile to the Netanyahu government. They took place every week in Israel for three quarters of 2023, and were accompanied by Israeli military reservists proclaiming that they would refuse to serve — a vow that no doubt helped to invite Hamas’s October 7 invasion.

One cannot leave aside that the Biden administration, through ignoring sanctions on Iranian oil, has allowed the Iran’s regime to earn up to an estimated $100 billion. Some of these funds were most likely used by the mullahs to finance their own militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in addition to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi militias, and of course to accelerate Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Without those funds, the massacre of October 7 would not have been possible, Hezbollah would not have been able to fire so many missiles into Israel from Lebanon, and Iran itself would not have been able to launch more than 300 drones and ballistic missiles at Israel in April, and to attack US troops more than 150 times on, just since October 7, 2023 — evidently in an attempt to drive the US out of the Middle East.

The Biden administration, it seems, does not want a definitive end of the conflict — as with Ukraine as well — especially if the end would entail the defeat of Hamas or Russia. Hamas is a protégé of Qatar and Iran, the world’s two leading state sponsors of terrorism. The Biden administration has been rewarding them — Iran with money and Qatar with renewing its protection by Al-Udeid Air Base, headquarters of America’s CENTCOM, as well as controlling the new terror pier the US has built in Gaza At the same time, the Biden administration is falsely accusing Israel of violating human rights.

As the great historian Bernard Lewis wrote, “America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.”

The Biden administration may even be complicit in the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that might be issued by the International Criminal Court – possibly as a way to dispense with him. So far at least, the US administration has not lifted a finger to stop it.

Without the billions of dollars the Biden administration bestowed on Iran through sanctions waivers, the situation for Israel — and the stability and security of the entire region, including that of the United States — would have been quite different.

On April 1, a strike attributed to Israel destroyed a building defined as an annex of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus and eliminated seven members of the Quds Force, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who had reportedly been directing hostile operations in Israel. Once an embassy – or a school or a mosque or a church – is used to engage in military operations, it loses its status as a site that is officially “protected”. Iran blamed Israel and vowed retaliation. US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said that the Biden administration had “no involvement or advanced knowledge” in the attack, but he did not condemn Iran’s threats to Israel.

A report in the Jerusalem Post noted that Iran informed Turkey of its desire to strike Israel and that Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, in turn, informed the Biden administration. The Biden administration the report adds, asked that the Iranians remain “within certain limits” –implying that the Biden administration accepted Iran’s attack on Israel, the same way he implied that he would accept a “minor incursion” into Ukraine by Russia.

On April 13, Iran in fact launched a massive strike against Israel: 300 attack drones and ballistic missiles launched at a country smaller than New Jersey. Sadly, a 7-year-old Bedouin girl was wounded. Fortunately, apart from that, not much damage was done. American, British, Jordanian and Saudi militaries helped as well.

Biden then told Israel to “take the win” — not to retaliate and risk escalating the conflict. He warned that that the US would not help in any military offensive against Iran. Thwarting an attack, however is not the same as a “win“, and certainty does not prevent an aggressor from trying again.

Israel’s subsequent strikes nevertheless revealed that if Israel decided to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities near Isfahan, they could be hit. Iran seems eager not to have strikes on its territory; presumably that is why it has proxies in the first place — to launch attacks so that any retaliation will have to be absorbed by them, not Iran. The mullahs are, in effect, using their proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and so on — as their “human shields“.

“What happened last night [in Isfahan]”, Iranian FM Hossein Amir-Abdollahian nevertheless insisted “was not a strike”.

The Biden administration has placed the existence of Israel in danger to protect Biden from the dangerous voters of Michigan.

When Israel shows unshakable determination, noted the American journalist Jonathan Tobin, Israel is respected. He recommended, Israel should fight without wavering. It is because Israel appears invincible, he stated, that its enemies do not attack it; Israel must reestablish its invincibility.

Another American journalist, Matthew Continetti, wrote:

“The political heroes of this moment are the men and women who have retained the ability to make clear distinctions … between freedom, equality, and the rule of law and violence, terror, and fear”.

Continetti emphasized the need for “moral clarity”. What is threatened in the Middle East today, he wrote, are the values of our civilization.”[T]he fate of our society, our nation, and our civilization depends on Israeli victory.”

It is to be hoped that the Biden administration, which, right after October 7 had been supportive of Israel, will regain its moral clarity.

“There is no way to describe Biden’s actions except as a complete betrayal of Israel”, wrote political commentator Eric Levine. In a devastating about-face, presumably aimed at the voters of Michigan, the Biden administration is “delaying” precision-guided weapons to Israel. The irony, of course, is that after the Biden administration complained to Israel that its attacks were “indiscriminate”, it is actually forcing Israel to be indiscriminate, and then will presumably blame Israel.

Worse, with the Biden administration now having come down squarely against Israel and on the side of Iran, Qatar and Hamas, they have to feel no inclination to agree to anything. Why should they? Iran’s mullahs have a new proxy, the United States, backing their terrorism for them.

Even worse, at almost the same time as the US told Israel it was withholding arms shipments that Congress had already approved (a move for which Democrats tried to impeach then President Donald Trump), the Biden administration waived sanctions for arms purchases by Lebanon, Qatar and Iraq — countries that host groups working to destroy Israel.

Worst of all, if you are Ukraine, Taiwan, China, Russia, Japan – just about any US ally or foe — you probably cannot avoid thinking something like: We have watched the supposedly mighty US surrender Afghanistan, its ally of 20 years, to a bunch of terrorists, the Taliban. Now we are watching the US surrender its closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, the only democracy there, to terrorists: to Hezbollah in Lebanon with 150,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel, and to Hamas in Gaza by sending “humanitarian aid,” that will used by terrorists.

Israel, meanwhile, surrounded by a terrorist “ring of fire“, is fighting for its existence.

Even some Democrats, such as US Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), are telling the Biden administration:

“Innocent Israelis were the victims of a terrorist attack… We must support Israel in their efforts to eliminate the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered innocent men, women, and children. Hamas does not want peace, they want to destroy Israel. We can talk about a ceasefire after Hamas is neutralized.”

The Biden administration has failed to counter attacks on Israel by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court — all prosecuting Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel Defense Forces officials for alleged but unsubstantiated “war crimes“. Israel and the US are not even affiliated with the ICC . Where are any prosecutions or sanctions by the UN and international courts for war crimes and human rights violations on countries such as Qatar (here and here), China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Yemen and Sudan?

The Biden administration was even considering placing unprecedented sanctions on units in the Israel Defense Forces, based on unfounded allegations coming from an anti-Israel non-governmental organization, DAWN, “Democracy for the Arab World Now.” According to the meticulous NGO Monitor:

“[A] number of DAWN officials, including board members, have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and have voiced support for the Hamas terrorist group. According to the NGO, ‘Many of DAWN’s donors remain anonymous’; however, NGO Monitor was able to identify the sources for approximately 44% of DAWN’s 2022 income, including from Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Arca Foundation.”

The Biden administration also does not even try to cut the funding used for the murder-for-hire program, run the Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas. Palestinians are incentivized to murder or attempt to murder Jews by being rewarded with a salary for life, as well as an apparently supra-official promise of Paradise.

Currently, the Biden administration appears to want three things: Netanyahu OUT – reportedly to be replaced by a puppet who will do whatever the US tells him; a terrorist Palestinian state IN, and to preserve Iran and Qatar’s client, the terrorist group, Hamas. So far, all the pressure from Washington has been on Israel, none at all on Hamas or on its patrons, Qatar and Iran. The fighting could indeed stop tomorrow if either of them or the US seriously ordered Hamas to stop fighting and immediately return the 132 remaining hostages.

Did the Biden Administration even ask?

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has said this is the reason why Western nations do not shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine

The West has no appetite for a direct military confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, UK Defenсe Secretary Grant Shapps has stated. He also suggested that Berlin is unwilling to provide its long-range missiles to Kiev for fear that they would be used to hit Russian targets in Crimea.

Shapps had previously claimed Britain has no problem with its weapons being used by Ukraine to strike the peninsula, which joined Russia in 2014 following a referendum but is still claimed by Kiev.

Earlier this month, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron also gave the green light to UK-made weapons being deployed for attacks deep inside Russia. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry responded by summoning the British ambassador and warning that Moscow reserves the right to retaliate against “any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond.”

Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, Shapps explained that the West does not shoot down incoming Russian missiles over Ukraine because “we don’t want to be in a direct conflict with Russia... we don’t intend to go and fight that war.”

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, the defense secretary said: “The United Kingdom has been very forward-leaning about the way that our weapons are used, including – and other countries didn’t initially do this but then followed our lead – in Crimea, which we see as an integral part of Ukraine.”

Shapps also suggested that the reason Germany has for months turned down Ukrainian requests for long-range Taurus missiles is out of concern that Kiev would use them over Crimea, before adding that he would like to see Berlin lift this supposed self-imposed taboo.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the “American and British handlers of the [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky regime” of “not only providing longer-range missiles and heavy weapons, but [also of] giving the green light for their use against Russia.”

“Once again, we would like to unequivocally warn Washington, London, Brussels and other Western capitals, as well as Kiev, which is under their control, that they are playing with fire. Russia will not leave such encroachments on its territory unanswered,” the spokeswoman stressed.

On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that there had been multiple instances in the past few days in which Western-supplied missiles and guided bombs had been intercepted by Russia's air defenses.

The aircraft with Ebrahim Raisi on board suffered a “hard landing,” according to some media

A helicopter on which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was a passenger encountered a “hard landing” on Sunday, according to reports by Iranian state television and other media outlets.

The Interior Minister of Iran Ahmad Vahidi has reportedly confirmed that the helicopter with Raisi on board had made a hard landing in the city of Jolfa in the northwestern Iranian province of East Azarbaijan.

Several other senior officials, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Governor of East Azarbaijan Malek Rahmati, were traveling with the president, reports claim.

About an hour after the incident, rescue teams reportedly managed to reach the area and began a search operation that is currently ongoing.

READ MORE: Iranian president dies in helicopter crash: Live updates

Foggy weather and the impassibility of the area has made the search operations difficult, IRNA writes. The Iranian news agency, citing the head of the Red Crescent in the country, said the number of rescue teams sent to the area was increased from 20 to 40 teams.

Shortly after the first reports about the incident, news outlet Mehr reported that the president was fine and was traveling by car as part of a motorcade to Tabriz, the provincial capital. However, it later deleted this update.

There were three helicopters in Raisi’s convoy, Tasnim writes, amid conflicting reports. Two of the aircraft, which were carrying some ministers and officials, reached their destination safely. The agency claims that some of the officials who were with the president at the time of the incident were able to contact what Tasnim described as a “center,” which may indicate that the incident had not resulted in serious injury.

Earlier on Sunday, President Raisi was attending a ceremony along with the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, to inaugurate a dam on the Aras River. The facility was jointly built by the neighboring states.

White Ethnicities Are Being Replaced
The Western Tower of Babel Continues Its Collapse

Paul Craig Roberts

What is happening in the US is happening everywhere in the Western world. As the empire itself is rotten, so must be its constituent parts.

In the US white parents have to take their kids out of public schools, because public schools are indoctrination centers where white kids are indoctrinated that they, their parents, and their relatives are racist exploiters of “people of color” and that they are born into the wrong body and need to be sterilized in order to escape the wrong gender, thus further reducing the white birth rate.

In Jean Raspal’s The Camp of The Saints, white Europeans are prohibited from marrying within their white ethnicity. In America’s edition of The Camp of the Saints, white youth are simply sterilized by sex change operations.

The American federal courts have set it up so that parents have no say about the sterilization of their children. Despite this ruthless tyranny, America thinks it is a free society, and conservatives chant “USA, USA, USA.” A country with a population this stupid cannot survive.

The website Axios seems to blame declining white public school enrollments not on the coerced indoctrination of white kids but on whites’ alleged desire for racial segregation. In other words, whites are racist for resisting propaganda that they are racists. https://www.axios.com/2024/05/17/suburban-schools-white-latino-segregation?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

In a few years there will be no place in America for a white person. Their country has been stolen from them. White Americans are such second class citizens that they are not protected by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and are openly discriminated against in employment. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that ignored the statutory language of the Civil Rights Act and imposed illegal and unconstitutional racial quotas to the disadvantage of white Americans, requires companies with 100 or more employees to report annually the racial composition of their work force. Bloomberg News obtained the data for 2020 and 2021 and found that 94% of the 323,094 new jobs created by the companies went to blacks. This constitutes discrimination against whites that goes far beyond coerced proportional representation.

White Americans have been discriminated against ever since Alfred Blumrosen broke the law in the 1960s and imposed discriminatory racial quotas. White Americans did nothing about their loss of constitutional protection. Consequently, after more than a half century of institionalized racism against white Americans, white people cannot even get a job. In 2021 blacks comprised 12.6% of the population and got 94% of the new jobs. Whites comprised 59.3% of the population and got 4% of the jobs. Bloomberg News seems to think that institutionalized racial discrimination against white people is a great achievement. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/#:~:text=The%20overall%20job%20growth%20included,underrepresented%20at%20big%20US%20companies

Whites were intimidated by charges that they are racists. They opposed racial quotas on the basis that it was abandonment of a merit-based system, not on their loss of constitutional protection. The 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause no longer applies to white people. Corporations (and universities and US military) can openly discriminate against white Americans and nothing is done about it.

The loss of Constitutional protection is the first step in extermination. The Biden regime and the ruling elites are determined to replace the white population. This is the reason for the US policy of open borders and the use of US of government tax revenues to recruit immigrant-invaders from 160 countries and fly them into red states. This is being done to Americans–and to Europeans–by their own white leaders, not by blacks or the West’s alleged enemies, the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians.

It is totally clear that the “refugee policy” is a white replacement policy. And the moronic whites keep voting for those who are determined to replace them. The Democrat Party which is committed to white replacement is actually poised to become the dominant party.

How do we avoid the question whether people this stupid deserve their displacement?

China Sells Off Record Amount of Dollar Assets
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240518/china-sells-off-record-amount-of-dollar-assets-as-us-remains-the-worlds-bully-1118514205.html
Paul Craig Roberts

As I pointed out on May 16 — https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/05/16/the-west-has-an-illiterate-financial-press/ — when foreign central banks redeem their US dollar denominated reserves such as US Treasuries, they are paid in dollars. They sell the Treasuries because they are getting out of dollar reserves. As they don’t want the Treasuries, they don’t want the dollars in cash or any other form, so they sell the dollars for other currencies or use them to buy gold.

China has about 800 billion dollars of US Treasuries left to sell. As China sells and as countries use other means of settling trade balances than the US dollar, the demand for US Treasuries and dollar-denominated financial instruments will decline. The Federal Reserve can stabilize the price of Treasuries by creating money with which to buy the bonds, but the Fed can’t create foreign currencies with which to purchase the dollars. The problem becomes a dollar problem.

As the world demand for dollars diminishes, so does the dollar’s value. As US manufactured goods are produced offshore and as the US imports food, US inflation will be a consequence of dollar decline. Tariffs also restrict supply, raise prices, and further reduce the dollar’s purchasing power. The tariffs being imposed on goods imported from China are thus counterproductive.

Inflation and dollar decline mean no lowering of interest rates. Instead, US interest rates will rise. The morons ruling us are destroying their own power base and the living standards of the US population. There is not a single person in “our” government with enough sense to be there.

The pending US financial crisis described in The Great Taking is indeed pending. We are perfectly set up for it.

The globalism the US championed as an instrument for Washington’s hegemony is now destroying its instigator.

The US No Longer Has a Military

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240518/profit-generating-and-woke-brainwashing-whats-happened-to-us-military-1118520874.html

The prime minister will survive, Tomas Taraba has said

The condition of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico is no longer life-threatening, the EU country’s deputy prime minister Tomas Taraba has told British state broadcaster the BBC. There was an attempt on his life earlier this week.

Fico was shot several times on Wednesday as he approached a crowd in the city of Handlova in central Slovakia. The prime minister was rushed to a hospital and doctors have been fighting for his life since.

The assailant, who was detained on the spot, turned out to be 71-year-old left-wing activist Juraj Cintula. He reportedly strongly disagreed with Fico’s decision to stop arms shipments to Ukraine.

The prime minister is “not in a life-threatening situation at this moment,” Taraba said on Sunday. “Fortunately, as far as I know, the operation went well – and I guess in the end he will survive,” he added.

According to the deputy prime minister, Fico was “heavily injured” in the attack. “One bullet went thought the stomach and the second one hit a joint – he was immediately transported to the hospital and then operated-on,” he said.

Milan Urbani, deputy head of the hospital where the Slovak leader is being treated, said earlier on Sunday that the board of doctors had ruled that “the patient is currently no longer in a life-threatening state.”

Urbani described Fico’s condition as “very serious,” saying that the 59-year-old “needs a lot of time and peace to recover.” However, he stressed that the doctors believe that “everything will develop in a positive direction.”

Earlier in the day, around a hundred people gathered outside the hospital in the town of Banska Bystrica to support Fico and thank the doctors who are taking care of him, police said. Well-wishers brought flowers to the rally, according to media reports.

Fico, who returned to power last year, is a polarizing figure both in Slovakia and the EU, due to his position regarding the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which he insists must be settled through peaceful means, and due to his intention to mend relations with Moscow.

READ MORE: An EU country’s leader has been shot, and of course it has to be about Putin

Many Slovak politicians have linked the attempt on the PM’s life to “hateful rhetoric” and to the politically charged climate in the country.

Masonic indifferentism for all…

Bergoglio Doubles Down: All Religions Look at the One God in Different Ways!

It is often difficult to keep up with ‘Pope’ Francis (Jorge Bergoglio), but here at Novus Ordo Watch, we do try. Even though he is 87 years old, when it comes to advancing the Great Apostasy, there is simply no slowing down for him.

On May 18, 2024, the false pope made a trip to the city of Verona in northern Italy. One of his stops there was Montorio Prison, where he addressed the inmates.

Vatican News has released the video footage of the event:

When Bergoglio visits prisons, he often points out that God forgives always, although he never mentions the conditions necessary to receive that forgiveness; and it was no different this time around.… READ MORE