The first volunteer due for injection with Israel’s coronavirus vaccine says he is feeing optimistic, and described his participation in the trial as “a historic opportunity.” Continue reading “Volunteer set to receive 1st Israeli vaccine candidate: ‘A historic opportunity’”
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces a new month-long lockdown for England after being warned that a resurgent coronavirus outbreak will overwhelm hospitals in weeks without tough action. Continue reading “Boris Johnson announces new four-week virus lockdown in UK”
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman presented the first-ever US passport to list Jerusalem as part of Israel, giving the new travel document to Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky at a ceremony at the US Embassy in Jerusalem Friday.
Zivotofsky, an 18-year-old Jerusalem-born US citizen, was the center of a nearly 18-year legal battle to secure implementation of the 1995 Jerusalem Act, which instructed the US government to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.
While the legal battle culminated in an unsuccessful appeal to the US Supreme Court, which ruled in the 2012 case Zivotofsky v. Clinton in favor of the State Department, and again in 2015 in Zivotofsky v. Kerry, the Trump administration moved to drop the policy of refusing to list Jerusalem as an Israeli city, allowing recipients of official documents, like passports, to choose “Jerusalem, Israel” as their listed place of birth.
Friedman credited Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with securing the change to State Department policy.
“I would like to thank Secretary Michael Pompeo for his leadership. It’s no secret that under prior stewardship the State Department would not alter the passport designation even after Jerusalem was recognized as Israel’s capital. Secretary Pompeo cut through that bureaucracy and brought our passport policy in line with our foreign policy and common sense.”
Source: Arutz Sheva
Another terror attack has apparently been carried out in France, the third in two weeks and fourth in 2 months, leaving a Greek Orthodox Priest dead.
The AFP reported that the priest was shot at a Greek Orthodox church in Lyon. He was shot with a sawed-off shotgun, according to reports, which means the attack was likely a gruesome scene.
The alleged perpetrator of the attack is on the run. France is already on its highest terror alert due to the two other terror attacks, which both involved knives, and one of which was also carried out in a church.
In a tweet the Ministry of the Interior warned citizens that an incident was underway in the 7th arrondissement in Lyon.
French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly infuriated Muslims around the world when he said he would defend the right to freedom of expression, including the right to show Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, a gesture that’s considered serious blasphemy by the Islamic faith. A decision to share the cartoons in class as part of a discussion on freedom of expression led to the decapitation of teacher Samuel Paty by an 18-year-old Chechen national.
BREAKING – Massive manhunt for the terrorist who shot an Orthodox priest in a Greek church in #Lyon is now underway.pic.twitter.com/zBhYOzRNst
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) October 31, 2020
A manhunt for the suspected terrorist is reportedly underway.
Source: ZERO HEDGE
The small Orthodox church is situated in a residential area of Lyon which was especially quiet due to the new lockdown measures introduced in France on Friday to stem the growing coronavirus pandemic.
In Paris, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin opened a crisis cell meeting to consider the situation.
Prime Minister Jean Castex spoke of “the government’s determination to allow each and everyone to practice their worship in complete safety and in complete freedom.”
Today: Greek Orthodox Priest shot and wounded in rue St-Lazare in Lyon Greek while leaving church.
Three victims in the Notre Dame cathedral in Nice last week. We can finally give them a face. It is always terrifying to approach the beauty of these faces, of their stories, with the horror that Islamic terrorists reserve for them in death.
It has been the same feeling for me, a non-Jew, with all the Israeli victims of Arab terrorism.
Three Christians murdered inside a French church because they were Christians and few in the West who understood the tragedy – its meaning, the symbols, what this blood tells us – right before our eyes.
Nadine Devillers. She was beheaded near the baptismal font. She has a crutch and held her mask in her hand. The sacristan, Vincent Loquès. And Simon Barreto-Silva. The latter, after the stab wounds, had managed to drag herself out of the basilica and pronounce the last words: “Tell my children I love them”.
Civil war is not a threat in France anymore, it is already underway. The solution is simple.
They must impose an indefinite quarantine on Islam, expel hundreds of Salafist imams, close many mosques, ban all foreign funds linked to Islamization, remove French citizenship from Islamists with double passports and send them back to the sewer from which they come. The heart cries for all these deaths and for our inability to defend democracy from these monsters.
A civilization that cannot defend itself is dead.
The question is: why? Because “civilization” has no more meaning in Western Europe.
Who really believes that a man who is ready to behead a teacher because he has insulted Allah will be stopped by secularism, freedom of expression and cartoons? Official France and the Islamists are not even in the same register.
Georges Bensoussaun called these “the lost territories of France”. Enclaves which, because they are now foreign, have become the breeding ground for a counter-society based on Islamic rules. A counter-country. A counter-civilization.
We must note that Western culture has been impoverishing itsel fat great speed since the Second World War. In French there is an expression describing post-modern life: “Métro, boulot, dodo” (Underground, work, sleep). No room for ideals. No room for values. You cannot fight people who behead for their Allah with a post-humanistic, post-modern and post-religious agenda.
An Islamic Jihadist cell beheaded a priest in a French church in 2017 while just a handful of elderly attended the mass. The three Catholics slaughtered in Nice were the survivors and the remnants of a religion that is rapidly joining the European history museum.
Giulio Meotti is, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter and of “J’Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel” published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.
Source: Giulio Meotti – Arutz Sheva
Outgoing coronavirus project manager Professor Ronni Gamzu predicted on Friday that a vaccine for the virus will be available in several months.
“I am confident that the companies, in the third and fourth phases, will make achievements and that the vaccine will arrive within three to six months,” he said in an interview on the Ofira & Berkovic show which airs on Channel 12.
The project manager also commented on the achievements and failures in fulfilling his role and said, “There’s one thing I feel bad about and that’s the fact that we got into a second lockdown. But it prevented us from reaching a dangerous place.”
Commenting on the difficulty in fulfilling the role, he said, “That’s the hardest job. The decisions here are made in a state of uncertainty. You make tough decisions that affect people’s lives. You sometimes have to make decisions on preventing a lockdown, make decisions on operating systems and make decisions that you know will cause people to go to hospitals. You have to know how to withstand pressure.”
The interviewers noted that Gamzu was against a lockdown while the Prime Minister was in favor of one, and asked who made the final decision.
Source: Arutz Sheva
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told Israeli officials during a visit to Israel this week that the Trump administration has approved selling F-22 stealth fighters to the Jewish state, according to a Friday report.
US President Donald Trump okayed the sale of the F-22 Raptor and precision-guided bombs to Israel, the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported, citing senior sources in Tel Aviv.
Israeli defense officials requested to buy the F-22 — one of the world’s most advanced fighter jets — to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region after the US agreed to sell F-35 fighters to the United Arab Emirates, Haaretz reported on Tuesday.
Esper and Defense Minister Benny Gantz have met three times in just over a month, including Esper’s visit to Tel Aviv on Thursday. Esper also met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Ministry Director-General Amir Eshel and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi during the trip.
“They discussed the imperative to maintain regional security and stability and to confront Iran,” Gantz’s office said.
A source familiar with the meeting, who requested anonymity, told AFP that Gantz and Esper built on the discussions held in Washington last week on “making progress toward upgrading Israel’s qualitative military edge” following “developments in the region.”
Last week and in late September, Gantz traveled to Washington for high-level meetings with Esper and other American defense officials on ways to offset the damage to Israel’s military edge by the proposed sale of the state-of-the-art, fifth-generation aircraft to the UAE.
Esper and Gantz signed an agreement in Washington last week that reaffirmed American commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge, the technical term for military superiority in the Middle East, in light of the proposed sale of American F-35 stealth fighter jets to the UAE.
Though the US has agreed generally to maintain Israeli military supremacy in the region, no deals have yet been signed for specific weapon systems or defense programs. These will likely focus on the sale of additional fighter jets, helicopters and air defense systems to Israel, a senior defense official familiar with the negotiations told reporters last week.
The White House updated Congress on Thursday of its intent to sell F-35s to the UAE.
The informal notification to the House Foreign Affairs Committee revealed that the White House plans to sell as many as 50 units of the Lockheed Martin-made jets for roughly $10.4 billion, a senior congressional staffer told The Times of Israel. Israel has ordered the same number of F-35s from the US, though not all of them have been transferred yet.
Reports of the US intention to sell the aircraft to the UAE began days after Abu Dhabi agreed to normalize ties with Israel following negotiations brokered by the White House.
US and Israeli officials have asserted the F-35 sale was not directly tied to normalization, but White House officials have acknowledged that the peace deal signed last month placed the UAE in a better position to purchase the advanced aircraft, which only Israel has in the Middle East.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially voiced opposition to the sale, but last Friday reversed his position, issuing a statement saying it would not oppose US plans to provide “certain weapon systems” to the UAE.
Asked to comment on the Congressional notification, Netanyahu told reporters Thursday that it followed extensive talks between the US and Israel during which Jerusalem received “more than just security” in the assurances from the US that its military superiority in the region would be maintained.
“We are facing a joint threat,” he said, apparently suggesting that the US could sell such weapons to the UAE with Israel’s blessing, given their common enemy of Iran.
The proposed sale of the F-35 to Abu Dhabi has become a hot-button issue in Israel in light of allegations that Netanyahu had told the United States that Jerusalem would not oppose such a move as part of a normalization agreement with the UAE brokered by the White House. Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that the F-35 sale was part of the deal with the Emiratis.
Gantz has publicly accused Netanyahu of holding negotiations regarding the sale of advanced weapons by the US to countries in the region behind the back of the Defense Ministry.
Source: TOI
Around 100 Druze broke into a hospital in northern Israel on Friday evening and snatched the body of a community leader who died of COVID-19 in order to hold a mass funeral in defiance of law enforcement.
The rioters from Majdal Shams, a town near the Syrian border, stormed into Safed’s Ziv Medical Center where Sheikh Abu Zain Al-Din Hassan Halabi had passed away hours earlier.
Government officials had been seeking to prevent a mass funeral due to the already high morbidity rate in Majdal Shams, which is designated as a “red zone” by the Health Ministry and is currently under a local lockdown.
The two sides were working on a compromise, which would have seen the funeral held at an outdoor gymnasium in Majdal Shams with a limited number of participants. Opponents of the compromise broke into Ziv hospital before an agreement was reached.
Video said to be from the scene showed the rioters throwing aside police barricades, shoving security personnel, pounding on the hospital door, marching down the medical center’s hallways and carrying the body through a parking lot.
עשרות תושבי מג’דל שמס פרצו לביה”ח זיו בצפת, ולקחו את גופתו של מנהיג דת דרוזי שמת מקורונה@rubih67 pic.twitter.com/BWwlAuy44X
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 30, 2020
After securing Halabi’s body, his followers set out on a funeral procession from the town of Mas’ade to nearby Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.
Some attendees were from the Galilee region of northern Israel, and the mixing of those participants with residents of Majdal Shams risked further spreading the virus to the wider Druze population in the north, Channel 12 reported.
Yesh Atid MK Gadeer Mreeh, who is Druze, condemned the incident.
“This behavior isn’t befitting of the esteemed status of the late honorable sheikh,” she wrote on Twitter. “All of us must listen and act in accordance with the Health Ministry instructions.”
Druze residents of Majdal Shams and the Golan are Syrian in origin, and are permanent residents of Israel but not citizens, unlike Druze in other areas of Israel, who have historically made major contributions to public service in the country, especially in the realm of security.
Mass community events are believed to have played a significant part in Israel’s virus outbreak, especially religious events among some ultra-Orthodox groups and weddings in some Arab communities.
Government ministers decided Friday to extend the closure of Majdal Shams, and impose a weeklong local lockdown on the northern Arab Israeli locality of Bu’eine Nudeidat due to the high virus infection rates in both areas.
Meeting after the co-called coronavirus committee decided early Friday morning to reopen synagogues on Sunday as some students return to school, the ad-hoc Ministerial Committee for Restricted Areas decided to impose severe limitations in the two towns until next Thursday.
Outgoing coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu told ministers Friday that the closure on Majdal Shams should be extended as infection rates there had not dropped sufficiently. He also pushed for the closure on Bu’eine Nujeidat, which has also seen a sharp rise in cases.
Speaking at the meeting of the coronavirus cabinet, Gamzu said that seven other cities with high infection rates, mostly with majority Arab populations, may need to face similar lockdowns: Taybeh, Kafr Kanna, Manar, Deir al-Asad, Kafr Kassem, Kafr Qara and I’billin.
In addition to a closure of almost all businesses, entry and exit from both Bu’eine Nujeidat and Majdal Shams will be restricted. The nationwide opening of schools for grades 1-4 will be delayed there but kindergartens, which reopened last week, will continue to operate.
Last week, Majdal Shams, located near the Syrian border in the Golan Heights, became the first Israeli town to face a citywide lockdown since Israel lifted hot zone restrictions from all areas except for one Jerusalem neighborhood, as part of the so-called traffic light plan. Under the plan, areas are graded by morbidity rates and assigned a color-coded designation. Red zones, those with the highest infection rates, are to be locked down and activities there heavily restricted.
Israel began a month-long lockdown on September 18 that “succeeded in bringing down surging infection rates” but also paralyzed much of the economy and public life, as well as shuttering the entire education system.
The general decline in the number of tests over the past several weeks, however, has led to expressions of concern from health officials.
There were 630 new coronavirus “cases” confirmed on Thursday, taking the total number of infections in Israel since the start of the pandemic to 313,590.
According to ministry data, there were 11,254 active cases in Israel, including 410 COVID-19 patients in serious condition — 190 of them on ventilators — and 101 in moderate condition.
There were three additional fatalities overnight, taking the national death toll to 2,511.
Header: Prayers at Nabi Shu’ayb – Hittin Druze village – photo by Nabil Asakly
Source: TOI
“The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism.”
This country that at one time was populated with mostly intelligent, hard working, self-responsible, and tough individuals, has become a country filled with idiots, weaklings, and fools. I do not say this lightly, nor am I attempting to berate all, but most of those that populate America today were taught to become weak and ignorant, to become divided and hateful, to ignore tradition, to disrespect truth and honesty, to throw aside family, to become robotic drones, and self-aggrandizing socialists. While this result was planned by the ruling segment of society, and implemented over a long period of time, it was nonetheless voluntarily accepted by the masses.
Due to the current attitudes evident today, the acceptance of all-consuming immorality, war, torture, theft, redistribution of private wealth, and disregard for fellow men and property, are apparent, and there is widespread and pitiful sensitivity among the herd that borders on lunacy.
While there are many aspects of this plot to take over humanity, the final attempt it seems hinges on using a non-threatening ‘virus pandemic’ as the tool to instill so much fear into the hearts and minds of this pathetic and weakened population, that it not only bends to tyranny, but breaks completely apart leaving only a captured and servile herd awaiting its own destruction.
To date, the test that has been the most effective in gauging the compliance mindset of the people has been the all-inclusive mandating of wearing worthless masks, and pretending that this is what will save humanity from certain ‘virus’ death. This trick is so absurd as to border on mental psychosis. It has been helpful that the general population’s memory is no longer than that of a gnat, and that any group knowledge of history is not only lacking but nearly completely absent.
The evil and murderous Anthony Fauci, the same Trump administration official that is now demanding mask wearing, said in March on national television on “60 Minutes,” that people in the United States should not be walking around with masks, as there is no reason to wear masks. He said that wearing a mask might make people feel better, but does not provide protection, and in fact there are many unintended consequences to wearing any mask. What he said is true, but is vastly understated. Wearing a mask does not protect from the spread of a virus, and cannot due to the fact that virus particles are many times smaller than the holes even in an N-95 mask. Viruses come from inside the body, and wearing a mask causes much stress, and therefore causes the natural immune system to weaken due to having to defend against all the ill effects of masking. This actually allows for more viral spread, not less. In addition, wearing masks dramatically impedes the intake of oxygen, which is very harmful and in fact with long-term use, can deplete so much oxygen to the brain as to cause permanent harm. Oxygen depletion of up to 21%, and the re-breathing of carbon dioxide and other harmful agents due to wearing masks, can be deadly. First and foremost, it is very damaging to the immune system, which is the best defense against any virus or sickness. The brilliant Dr. Judy Mikovits explains these risks in her latest interview with Ryan Cristián of “The Last American Vagabond.”
Mandating the wearing of masks is nothing more than a test of obedience, and the dumbed down American population bought this scam and complied almost en masse, which allows the claimed controlling elite to continue to advance their agendas of tyranny knowing that the sheep will obey so long as they are kept in fear.
Now, with this asinine election coming right at the outset of the flu season, this purposely-manufactured ‘virus pandemic’ will be ratcheted up in intensity, and many more draconian measures will be the result.
Vaccines and flu shots will be said to be the cure for this pandemic, when in fact, they will only enhance the sickness and death, and cause this plandemic to proceed without proper resistance. Mask wearing will cause extreme problems that will bring on more carnage, and the shots and vaccines will allow for the injection of multiple viruses, very dangerous adjuvants, and many other poisons into non-suspecting and ignorant citizens. In addition, there could easily be tracking and tracing elements, and DNA altering agents, given with these vaccines that contain nanoparticles introduced by the injection of hydro-gels.
In South Korea as of today, 72 people have died recently after taking a flu shot. The deaths keep going up while the South Korean government and mainstream media outlets attempt to cover up this travesty, and continue to call for more and more to take these poisonous shots. At the same time, the ‘Covid” vaccine trials are horrendous, with many dangerous side effects being encountered. These are rigged trials, but even so, they are exposing the monumental risk involved with these experimental toxins not meant to stop any virus, but to cause much more sickness and death to be used as propaganda to scare the people even more than has happened to date.
This coming year could be a culmination of terror expressed in the form of additional disease, lockdowns, planned economic collapse, civil unrest, local and global travel restrictions, food shortages, and mass death due to the government’s development and advancement of tactics meant to subdue large populations.
Whatever is necessary should be done to stop this madness in its tracks, or we will all become slaves to an oligarchic system made up of evil monsters intent on global domination.
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
Source: Gary D, Barnett – LewRockwell
EU member states will be allowed to use only official EU-approved COVID-19 vaccines, Brussels said in response to remarks by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that Budapest was negotiating for shots with Russia and China.
“There is no question that any vaccine that is, or could be, made available on the territory of the European Union would have to comply both with the quality standards that are expected for these types of products in the EU and follow the approval procedures” currently in effect, European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said at a press conference on Friday, asked about Orban’s comments.
While not calling out Orban by name, Mamer’s comments came after Hungarian PM said Budapest was talking to Beijing and Moscow and hoping to have two or three different vaccines by early next year.
It appears that Brussels will not allow Hungary to do so, however, as the bloc has signed agreements with AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, and Johnson and Johnson for “safe and effective vaccines” against the coronavirus, once they complete the clinical trials.
“We are not in negotiations with either Russian or Chinese companies,” Mamer added. “That is the European vaccine strategy. All member states have signed up to this process.”
Johnson & Johnson had paused its trials in mid-October, citing an “unexplained illness” in one of the participants. AstraZeneca had also halted their trials over a UK volunteer experiencing complications, but restarted them even after a Brazilian volunteer died on October 20.
Russia was the first in the world to register a coronavirus vaccine. Dubbed ‘Sputnik V’, it is based on the adenoviral vector platform previously studied and considered safe, and is currently undergoing phase-three trials. Moscow has applied for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Emergency Use Listing program, which would allow accelerated approval of the vaccine for use.
Brussels and Washington have objected to the Russian vaccine, ostensibly on the grounds of safety. The US also appears to have leaned on governments to pressure them away from ‘Sputnik V’. On October 16, the US embassy in Kiev announced that Ukraine “will NOT be buying Russia’s [COVID-19] vaccine, which has not passed clinical trials for safety!”
Meanwhile, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed distrust of Western pharmaceutical companies, accusing them of being “all about profit.” Duterte said he would seek a deal to buy the vaccine from China or Russia, which Manila was prepared to pay for.
Some 2,000 doses of the Russian vaccine were sent to Venezuela in early October, after the authorities in Caracas asked for help due to US and EU sanctions ravaging the country’s healthcare system.
The virus, which was first detected in China in December 2019, quickly spread around the world, with the WHO declaring a pandemic in March. Almost 45.5 million people have been infected so far, with 1.18 million deaths attributed to the virus. Much of Europe and the US have locked down in an effort to slow the spread, with disastrous economic consequences.
The EU’s Mamer did acknowledge that “at some point” vaccines produced outside the bloc “may” be considered for distribution, but declined to elaborate.
Header: In this handout photo taken on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020, and provided by Russian Direct Investment Fund, an employee shows a new vaccine at the Nikolai Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, Russia. Russia on Tuesday, Aug. 11 became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine. (Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr/ Russian Direct Investment Fund via AP)
Source: RT
An antibody cocktail can only be effective against the novel coronavirus during the early stage of the disease, professor of the School of Systems Biology of George Mason University (Virginia, USA) Ancha Baranova said at the VTB Capital Investment Forum “Russia Calling!”
“If an individual is tested using the PCR method for the presence of the coronavirus and the result is obtained in a week, then for some methods of treatment [it is] already a rather meaningless test. I will give a simple example: you’ve probably heard about an antibody cocktail US President Donald Trump was treated with. Well, this antibody cocktail can only work effectively in the early stage of the disease,” she said.
The scientist noted that if there is a delay in the detection of the disease, then after seven days, when the results of some PCR tests arrive, this medicinal treatment cannot be used anymore.
The number of the coronavirus infections in Russia, according to the latest data, has increased by 18,283, the highest during the entire pandemic. The total number of infections has risen to 1,599,976.
Header: A health worker dressed in full protective gear, attend to a patient in an intensive care unit designated for people infected with COVID-19 at a hospital, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Source: TASS
Eyal Freedman, 22; lives in Ma’aleh Adumim, flying to New York
Hi, where are you off to?
New York. I came here early, to renew my passport.
Is it a last-minute flight?
Sort of. In principle, I don’t fly anymore, I leave the country less; it’s an ideological thing. From my point of view, there is nothing for me abroad. I stay in the Land of Israel, my people is here, and my country. I was abroad a great deal as a boy. On every vacation we flew to the United States to visit my grandparents, and I had my fill. After high school I attended a yeshiva, became stronger religiously and decided that I have no further reason to leave the country. If something happens and I have to fly, then fine. But not for pleasure. There are pleasures in Israel.
Then why are you flying now?
My grandmother died a few years ago, and my grandfather has been alone for some time. Because of the coronavirus he can’t be in contact with people. Loneliness isn’t something that’s good or healthy, so I’m going to be with him.
Do you find a connection between the studies and reality?
I find many things that parallel reality, and everything falls into place for me. Take coronavirus, a small virus that is causing the world to shut down – where does it come from? I believe that there’s Divine Providence and that there’s a plan. It’s clear that everyone has free will, but there’s a direction we’re headed in as a society and as a world. In the end, we are nothing.
What do you like about your studies?
The learning makes me alive; it gives me a lot of mental power to act with. I feel that during the periods when I am less connected to learning, those powers are not as strong. It’s also a type of learning that gives you a great many tools.
Is there anything you studied that has influenced you in particular?
There is a book by Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, a book of morality. It talks about nekudat habechira, the “point of choice.” How every person is born into a different reality, a different family, and grows up in a different environment, but the Holy One, blessed be He, does not measure a person by the place he has reached. Rather, he sees what the person has coped with and what his point of choice is. Let’s say there’s a person who wrestles with getting up for morning prayers. There are days when he does and days when he doesn’t. So when he actually does get up to do it – it’s a far greater thing than for someone who always gets up to do it.
How does that relate to you?
What I learned is not to judge people, to understand that everyone comes from a different place. And also that the Holy One does not expect us to get to a certain place.
Source: Eyal Freedman – HAARETZ
Prior to the appearance of COVID-related restrictions and lockdowns, neoliberal capitalism had turned to various mechanisms in the face of economic stagnation and massive inequalities: the raiding of public budgets, the expansion of credit to consumers and governments to sustain spending and consumption, financial speculation and militarism.
Part and parcel of this has been a strategy of ‘creative destruction’ that has served to benefit an interlocking directorate of powerful oil, agribusiness, armaments and financial interests, among others. For these parties, what matters is the ability to maximise profit by shifting capital around the world, whether on the back of distorted free trade agreements which open the gates for plunder or through coercion and militarism which merely tear them down.
In the so-called ‘developed’ nations, notably in the US and the UK, along the way millions of jobs have been offshored to cheap labour economies. In effect, societies have become hollowed out. They have increasingly resembled empty boxes whereby the main component lurking inside is a giant mechanical hand of government and media propaganda with the threat of state violence lying in wait. And its only function is to pull the lid shut if anyone ever dares to tear it open and shed light on things. If successful, they will see the immorality, the lies, the hypocrisies.
And they would also be able to identify cynical methods of social control that have assumed a different level in 2020 with constant COVID fear propaganda being pumped out on a daily basis. If we take the UK, the fact is that excess deaths in 2020 are not out of the ordinary when looking back over a 25-year period.
But we continue to see the rolling out of near-endless restrictions and tiered lockdowns across the country based on questionable PCR tests and the designation of healthy, asymptomatic people as ‘cases’. The narrative has shifted from COVID deaths and ‘flattening the curve’ to an obsession with ‘cases’ as the curve became flattened and COVID-related deaths bottomed out.
Even at the height of government- and media-driven COVID paranoia, over 90% of ‘COVID deaths’ were most likely due to the serious co-morbidities listed on the death certificates of the mainly over-75s who make up the vast majority of such deaths.
But this is precisely what is supposed to happen when we acknowledge that it is all part of the ‘great reset’ as explained by the recent article ‘Klaus Schwab and his great fascist reset’ which appeared on the OffGuardian website: a transformation of society resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance as entire sectors are sacrificed to boost the bottom line of the pharmaceuticals corporations, the high-tech/big data giants, Amazon, Google, major global chains, the digital payments sector, biotech concerns, etc.
Bohne quotes the World Bank to underline her point:
In order to reverse this serious setback [COVID] to development progress and poverty reduction, countries will need to prepare for a different economy post-COVID, by allowing capital, labor, skills, and innovation to move into new businesses and sectors.”
Economies are being ‘restructured’ and ‘downsized’ and COVID restrictions and lockdowns are being used as a battering ram to implement this agenda.
It is very revealing that Matt Hancock, British minister for health, gave a speech to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Fourth Industrial Revolution in October 2017. Klaus Schwab was also in attendance.
Hancock stated:
And I’m delighted to speak alongside so many impressive colleagues who really understand this, and alongside Professor Klaus Schwab who literally ‘wrote the book’ on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Your work, bringing together as you do all the best minds on the planet, has informed what we are doing, and I’m delighted to work with you.”
If readers take time to read the aforementioned piece, they may well be disturbed by many of the beliefs Schwab holds for the future. And now, three years on from Hancock’s presentation, we are seeing him play an active role in implementing the type of scenario Schwab has set out in his various books and speeches by rolling out further restrictions and phased lockdowns, mass surveillance measures, vaccination projects, authoritarian government and economic devastation.
Hancock really does seem to be taking his cue from the influential Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.
If people in the richer countries are perplexed by the destruction of livelihoods under the pretext of COVID, they need look no further than India to appreciate why governments wage financial and social war on their own people and the type of brutality they are capable of and whose interests they ultimately serve.
There is a plan for the future of that country and most of its current farmers do not have a role in it. India remains an agrarian-based society with over 60% of the population still relying on agriculture either directly or indirectly for their livelihood.
Successive administrations have been making farming financially nonviable with the aim of moving farmers out of agriculture and into the cities to work in construction, manufacturing or the service sector, despite these sectors not creating anything like the number of jobs required. By uprooting the agrarian base, we are seeing a fundamental attack on Indian society.
The aim is to displace the existing labour-intensive system of food and agriculture with one dominated by a few transnational corporate agribusiness concerns which will then control the sector. Agriculture is to be wholly commercialised with large-scale, mechanised (monocrop) enterprises replacing family-run farms that help sustain hundreds of millions of rural livelihoods, while feeding the urban masses.
As is currently happening in the West, small independent concerns (in this case, smallholder farmers) are being driven to bankruptcy. So why would anyone set out to deliberately run down what is effectively a productive system of agriculture that feeds people, sustains livelihoods and produces sufficient buffer stocks? Similarly, why in 2020 are governments facilitating economic destruction?
Politicians are effectively facilitating the needs of global capital and all it entails: a system based on endless profit growth, crises of overproduction and market saturation and a need to constantly seek out, create or expand into new, untapped markets to maintain profitability.
India’s agrarian base is being destroyed at the behest of predatory commercial interests (via the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, World Bank directives and WTO policies) and the peasantry is being dealt a knock-out blow so global agribusiness and retail concerns can capture financially lucrative markets and further incorporate the agri-food sector into their global supply chains.
Looking at the Industrial Revolution in England, historian Michael Perelman has detailed the processes that whipped the English peasantry into a workforce coerced into factory wage labour. Peasants left their land to work for below-subsistence wages in dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of industrial capitalists.
Perelman describes the policies through which peasants were forced out of agriculture, not least by the barring of access to common land. A largely self-reliant population was starved of its productive means.
It was brutal, just like ongoing developments in India. And what we are now seeing are vested interests forcing through a Fourth Industrial Revolution across the world. This too is brutal and is also having dire consequences in places like India as I have previously outlined in the article ‘Coronavirus Capitalism: Entrenching Dispossession and Dependency’.
The encouragement of identity politics, narcissism, apathy and consumerism’s irretrievable materialism, among other things, have undermined ordinary people’s capacity for action. Not so the billionaire class pushing through the ‘great reset’ which is acutely aware of its own interests.
A lack of class consciousness among ordinary people debilitates their ability to unite and recognise that their interests and those of the government and the people they really serve are diametrically opposed. Free from the shackles of mainstream propaganda, ordinary people would be better placed to resist current restrictions and challenge the prevailing narrative on COVID.
Unfortunately, those who might be expected to be pivotal in this – prominent figures and media outlets which claim to be of the ‘left’ – have failed to lead by example and have capitulated to the agenda of those who are driving the COVID narrative, the restrictions, the fear, the rolling out of draconian surveillance and rushed-through vaccines and the economic devastation leading to millions of job losses.
What must be regarded as the ‘establishment left’ has done little more than cheerlead restrictions and lockdowns.
Header: Still Life with Asparagus, Adriaen Coorte, 1697 – Rijksmuseum
Source: Colin Todhunter – OFF GUARDIAN
Nous avons reçu cette reprise toute en mélodie de « Van Gogh, le suicidé de la société » d’Antonin Artaud. Méfiez-vous, des beaux paysages !
Le corps sous la peau est une usine surchauffée,
Et dehors,
le malade brille,
[…]
la guerre à perpétuité explique une paix qui n’est qu’un passage,
[…]
Méfiez-vous des beaux paysages […] tourbillonnants et pacifiques,
Convulsés et pacifiés.
C’est la santé entre deux reprises de la fièvre chaude qui va passer.
C’est la fièvre entre deux reprises d’une insurrection de bonne santé.
Méfiez-vous des beaux paysages […] tourbillonnants et pacifiques,
Convulsés et pacifiés.
Source: lundi.am
The Mossad brought China’s coronavirus vaccine to Israel in recent weeks in order to study and learn from it, Channel 12 reported on Monday.
The report comes as countries and companies around the world race to develop a vaccine, with cyberattacks and espionage reported against a number of developers.
Israel is trying to reach agreements to purchase coronavirus vaccines from several other potential developers, according to a senior Health Ministry official who is in the know.
“There are several diplomatic efforts going on behind the scenes,” he told The Jerusalem Post in a private briefing. “We are trying everything we can to ensure Israeli citizens have access to a vaccine as soon as possible.”
Both the Foreign Ministry and the Health Ministry either declined to comment or referred the issue to the Prime Minister’s Office.
The Prime Minister’s Office had not responded by press time.
One twist in the story is that from February until the end of May, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen led the country’s international efforts to acquire masks, testing kits, ventilators and other medical gear to combat the coronavirus.
Back in May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went out of his way to publicly thank Cohen for leading the joint procurement command center, ahead of its transfer to the Health Ministry.
During his time leading the command center, Cohen was aggressive in purchasing massive quantities of medical supplies and personal protective equipment at a time when such supplies were scarce and there was stiff competition between countries to quickly buy up supplies before others could.
However, even as Netanyahu transferred Cohen’s authority to the Health Ministry, he said, “We do not know what the next day, or the next month, will bring. Since you have acquired the experience, remember it, we may need it again.”
Part of the premise of having the Mossad involved in the spring was that some purchases were made from the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries with whom Israel did not yet have diplomatic relations with.
The Mossad could then be deployed to quietly conduct trade and transportation issues under the radar.
In contrast, Israel has robust diplomatic relations with China which are usually run publicly by the Foreign Ministry.
While no officials would go on record, there were hints that the issue of purchasing a vaccine from China publicly could complicate matters with the US at a time when Washington and Beijing are in the midst of a trade war and verbal war which is now also tied deeply into the corona-crisis.
On the other hand, since the coronavirus originated in China, it was the first country hit and had a head-start on working toward a vaccine.
All of this could be an incentive to carry out the purchase quietly via the Mossad, though in that case it was surprising that the deal was leaked to the media.
At the same time, the Israel Institute for Biological Research on Sunday announced it will begin human trials next week on its coronavirus vaccine, Brilife. The vaccine has received all necessary approvals from the Health Ministry and the Helsinki Committee for medical experiments on humans.
Writing in the British medical journal The Lancet, Kate Bingham, the head of the UK Vaccine Task Force, cautioned that the first generation of vaccines for coronavirus “is likely to be imperfect” and “might not work for everyone.”
She also noted that no vaccine in the history of medicine “has been as eagerly anticipated” and that it is “widely regarded as the only true exit strategy from the pandemic.
“The first generation of vaccines is likely to be imperfect, and we should be prepared that they might not prevent infection but rather reduce symptoms, and, even then, might not work for everyone or for long.”
Bingham also pointed out that the global manufacturing capacity for vaccines was far from being capable of providing the billions of doses that governments would be seeking to purchase.
Source: Arutz Sheva