The “Deep State” and the Unspoken Crimes of the U.S. Empire, Operation Gladio

 

The “Deep State” and the Unspoken Crimes of the U.S. Empire, Operation Gladio

The key institutions of Western societies have lost their credibility.  They fail to merit either the respect or loyalty of the domestic populations they purport to serve. 

Testing the validity of this assertion requires examination of Western institutions from a holistic rather than fragmentary perspective. This is easier said than done. 

There exists a massive amount of near real-time web based information available for us to process daily if we are attempting to keep abreast of world events.  This often leaves us diligently evaluating recent events, while lacking the opportunity to step back and assemble these discrete events into a more comprehensible whole.

The assassinations of the entire elite level of progressive leadership in the United States during the 1960s (JFK, Malcolm X (image right), MLK & RFK within a 5 year period).  In Europe this includes the later assassinations of Aldo Moro and Olaf Palme.

Following is but a partial list of the crimes of the U.S. empire (with the routine complicity of many Western European governments) over the decades since the end of WWII.  It is important to briefly review them as the intersection of these orchestrated criminal actions casts light on the lack of legitimacy of Western governments and institutions:

Operation Condor , the Phoenix program and ongoing material aid and military training support for dictators, torture and death squads in numerous non-Western nations,

The extensive history of CIA and Western involvement in global narcotics trafficking including importation of drugs into the United States

US government criminalization of drug use by the poor in conjunction with CIA importation to create the apartheid-like prison-industrial system

Covert and overt U.S. foreign policy operations involving the destabilization, overthrow and/or assassination of many dozens of foreign leaders of former colonies with assistance from Western European intelligence and/or military

U.S. corporate financial support for the Nazi regime before and during WWII (trading with the enemy), followed by post-war recruitment and incorporation of Nazi war criminals by the CIA and other U.S. government agencies

The failed plot to overthrow FDR by U.S. oligarchs prior to WWII

CIA & FBI programs to undermine and destroy progressive social and political change within the U.S. such as COINTELPRO, MKUltra, Operation Mockingbird and Operation Chaos

Creation of the Mujahideen and continued logistical support, training and arming of related evolving jihadist forces (i.e. al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra), used by the West in ongoing efforts to destabilize secular nations in the Middle East

The instalment of former Nazis, Nazi collaborators and fascists into governing and institutional positions of power across Western Europe following WWII

The continuing failure to abide by the stipulations of a single legal treaty entered into with Native American tribal nations

Many decades of maintaining an institutionally based apartheid system restricting access by African Americans to housing, voting, job opportunities and access to basic public services such as equal education

Many dozens of U.S. led/or sponsored outright military invasions of sovereign nations in violation of both domestic and international law

The U.S. manipulation and rigging of ostensibly democratic election processes in Europe and throughout Latin America since WWII

The publicly state justification of the use of sanctions to bring about the deaths of half a million Iraqi children framed as an acceptable policy decision

The routine outright police murders of unarmed minority American civilians and the mentally ill

The utilization of both NATO and the United Nations to sanction, destabilize and/or militarily intervene in nations that remain independent of Western control

Ongoing Western looting of the natural resources of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East facilitated by the IMF, World Bank and related Western financial and military institutional structures

The proposed murder of U.S. citizens in the Northwoods document, and the actual murder of European citizens under NATO/CIA run Operation Gladio

This litany of institutionally based criminality has taken place in service to the larger foreign and domestic policy agendas of the U.S. and allied Western European governments.  The United States has played the primary coordinating and leadership role among Western nations and intersecting institutions since the end of WWII.

This is of course but a very partial list of the crimes of the U.S. empire and Western Europe since the end of WWII.  However, it is clear by the breadth of this subject matter that any one, or even several subject areas, will provide only a partial view of the larger puzzle that depicts the institutional structures and behaviors by which the West dominates and controls the entire planet.

We are fortunate to have a global community which includes researchers who have focused in great depth on the various aforementioned crimes sponsored by Western governments and their institutions.  Many such individuals have sacrificed a great deal personally to do so.  Some have given their lives in the pursuit of truths that powerful violent institutions prefer be kept hidden from public view.  Their efforts provide exhaustive detail regarding particular historical actions and policies of Western institutions.  However, it is critical that we assemble these discreet puzzle pieces into a discernible image that can unify and shed light upon the whole.

Let us return to the assertion that Western governments and institutions by simple objective evaluation of this history currently lack all legitimacy.

While the intersection of institutionalized Western criminality and war crimes cited in our partial list should be enough to persuade an impartial observer, one particular example from our list can stand alone.  Operation Gladio is an individual puzzle piece that helps unite and shed light upon many other disparate pieces.  This is precisely why it is seldom acknowledged, much less discussed in Western MSM or academia.  Even a cursory examination of Operation Gladio offers us a much more comprehensible image of the essentially illegal and amoral nature of many important Western institutions.

Gladio offers us a rather frightening glimpse into the thought processes and ethics of the assemblage of oligarchic Western elites and institutions that continue to literally rule our world.  These powerful Western hierarchical institutional structures evolved over many centuries.

They evolved from control situated in earlier periods under the auspices of popes and feudal monarchies.

They evolved through various forms of parliamentary and dictatorial rule.

Their current manifestation today is one in which massive global corporations rule in tandem with entrenched Western military, intelligence and economic institutions, all of which function beyond any practical popular input much less control.  Oligarchic rule, carried out through these institutional structures is the reality, in spite of the West’s much publicized devotion to liberal democracy.  Examination of Operation Gladio exposes the rot at the very core of the structures of Western rule.

Operating under the aegis of NATO with CIA input/supervision, Operation Gladio utilized false flag terrorism, mainly bombings but also shootings, in service to what it defined as the “strategy of tension.”  This “strategy” was seen as a way to manipulate European public perception, thought, opinion and voting behavior away from progressive political parties and leadership, and toward the conservative pole of the political spectrum.  Some Gladio operatives have testified that the intent was to force the public to seek a stronger more authoritarian police and State presence in order to protect citizens from political violence.

Critically important is the fact that the violence carried out by Operation Gladio operatives was routinely blamed on the left, on communist or socialist political parties, and/or on groups advocating progressive or revolutionary change.  However, the many decades of violence were in actuality carried out by right wing cells within NATO’s Gladio stay-behind army units.  Thus Operation Gladio was by definition orchestrated false flag terrorism carried out not by “leftists,” but rather by a multiplicity of Western institutional structures in Europe in coordination with the CIA.

The Gladio units were originally organized under the supervision of the CIA and NATO, ostensibly as a way to respond in guerrilla warfare fashion to a possible future Soviet invasion of Western Europe.  However, lacking cooperative Soviet troops to kill and terrorize the population of Western Europe, the CIA and NATO took up the task of doing the killing and terrorizing themselves.

Gladio’s terrorism was conducted in order to shape the minds of the European public, and thus manipulate the political landscape in favor of the goals of U.S. and European elites.  This is the reality of Operation Gladio, and it is also why knowledge of its actions is critical to our understanding of present day terrorism.

In the process of authorizing and conducting false flag bombing attacks, Western elites and institutions intentionally killed, maimed and/or psychologically terrorized thousands of European citizens.  This violence was carried out with the top-secret collusion of select members of Western European governments, as well as through loyal right-wing cadres within their intelligence agencies, judicial branches, and various police services.  Operation Gladio was of course hidden from the public, since it constitutes both treason as well as murder conducted by the very Western government institutional structures sworn by law to protect their citizenry from such crimes.

Although its false flag violence was based in Western Europe, Operation Gladio offered a domestic propaganda benefit to CIA operations in the United States.  Mass protests and progressive groups in the United States were tarred in the public mind through guilt by association with the Gladio terror events in Europe.  The false reality created by Gladio intentionally portrayed leftists in Europe as “violent murderers of innocent civilians.”  This narrative was endlessly amplified by corporate media in the U.S. where it meshed rather seamlessly with both the FBI’s COINTELPRO activities and the CIA’s Operation Chaos program on the domestic front.

The critical conclusion we arrive at from reviewing the history of Operation Gladio is that Western elites used a great many institutions of State to intentionally target and kill their own citizens for political purposes, and then conspired to hide that fact.  The importance of this reality cannot be overstated.  Failing to widely publicly expose and discuss the history of Operation Gladio has left all citizens of Western nations vulnerable to the continued use of State sponsored false flag terrorism in new and varied manifestations.

When we examine Operation Gladio from a more macro perspective we must remain cognizant of both past and ongoing U.S. and Western European assaults on Third World governments.  That people of color around the globe have been the targets of Western imperial violence for over 500 years is simple historical reality.  What Operation Gladio demonstrates decisively is that Western elites saw the cold blooded murder of their own citizens as no more an obstacle to their plans for global control than the murder of countless residents of the many Third World nations which were still struggling to free themselves from Western domination.

Consider that Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Northwoods document requested authorization to conduct false flag terror operations in the U.S. in order to justify an invasion of Cuba.  Only JFK’s fateful refusal to comply stopped those proposed Gladio-style false flag operations from occurring on U.S. soil.

Historical knowledge of both Operation Gladio and the Northwoods document should be at the forefront as we attempt to analyze the numerous false flag terror events in Western Europe and the United States that have occurred since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Official narratives often leave us with rather disturbing questions regarding the true nature of such attacks.  With the loss of the Soviet Union as a military danger and its replacement by Islamic terrorism, the identity of the official enemy changed.  However, we would be remiss if do not question whether the dynamic of false flag terrorism might continue as a tool to manipulate the public mind.

The perceptions, thinking and consciousness of the citizens of Western Europe and the US have been powerfully shaped by the new narratives emanating from events of 9/11, and from subsequent terror attacks.  Although these events are routinely blamed upon Islamic jihadist groups, knowledgeable observers find that numerous questions remain unanswered regarding the true identity of the perpetrators, often including the nature of their connections to Western intelligence structures.

Yet in spite of the historical reality of Gladio never has NATO been subjected to legal action and criminal prosecution for conducting the false flag bombings and murders of civilians in Western Europe.  Unaccountable and unpunished, with its Gladio units still possibly in place, NATO instead offers possible cover for the continuing conduct of false flag terrorism in Europe.  On the US domestic front the CIA also has never been subjected to legal action and criminal prosecution for its role in advising/coordinating Operation Gladio bombings and terrorism.  Nor has the Northwoods document been treated to widespread public discussion and analysis.

The total impunity enjoyed by NATO, the CIA and all the interconnected Western institutional structures of police, military, politicians and judiciary exists for a very specific reason.

In the words of convicted Operation Gladio bomber Vincente Vinciguerra, the reason is simple:

” . . .  because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.”

This is because, as Vinciguerra openly acknowledges, it was the institutions of the State itself who were responsible for the Gladio bombings and for hiding the truth of those bombings.

For the State to investigate, prosecute and punish itself for terrorism is of course unimaginable.  To do so would be an admission that Western institutions have in fact been for many decades morally and legally bankrupt, and have been operating to systematically murder their own citizens while engaging in a cover-up.  Such an admission would validate my contention that the institutions of the West currently lack all moral and legal legitimacy, therefore such an admission cannot occur.

It is clear from this history that what is required to move toward the restoration of any semblance of legitimacy to Western institutions would be the investigation and criminal prosecution on charges of murder, treason and cover-up for all parties, individual and institutional, involved in Operation Gladio.  This would need to take place in every country in which it operated in Europe, and would need to also address the organizational and operational support of the CIA.

This is not about some obscure ancient history from the 1970’s and 1980’s.  The link between Operation Gladio and present day terrorism is as disturbing as it is clear.  Today NATO, multiple Western European governments and the government of the U.S. are suspected by increasing numbers of the world’s citizens of continuing to use false flag terrorism in order to validate their ongoing “war on terror.”

This war is at least in part designed to destroy the remaining secular governments of the Middle East while manipulating the control of petroleum the resources of the region.  In the course of pursuing such policies Western governments and institutions have now maneuvered the entire planet to the brink of nuclear war between the West and Russia.  Yet in spite of the danger posed to all of humanity the U.S. continues a publicly stated quest to achieve full spectrum dominance.  Given post-WWII history and our current state of affairs Western governments and institutions clearly exist as criminal entities which function outside the rule of all recognized morality and law, domestic and international.

Even the limited amount we know of the history of Operation Gladio should destroy in the mind of any thinking person the utter and complete fantasy that Western leaders would “never harm their own people” to achieve their larger strategic goals.  Western elites in fact did so for many decades.  They systematically killed their own citizens and they lied about it.  There is a great deal of evidence that they continue to do both while hiding   behind the mask of false flag terrorism.  Our failure to adequately investigate and prosecute Operation Gladio paved the way for our current wave of false flag events used to manipulate Western public perception and behavior in support of endless war in the Middle East.

From the U.S. government’s official account of 9/11, which requires belief in the temporary suspension of the laws of physics in conjunction with the magical suspension of fighter jet intercept protocols, 9/11 can be seen as a logical continuation of Operation Gladio’s “strategy of tension.”  9/11 is false flag State terrorism writ large. It is by definition the “big lie.”  It makes both the Reichstag fire, and Operation Himmler look like the work of small time amateurs.  It is perhaps more than simply ironic that so many former Nazis made their way into U.S. intelligence services after WWII, given the many decades of politically useful false flag events in the West that have followed.

The State kills its own citizens and blames a foreign or domestic enemy.  The population looks to the state for protection and surrenders their democratic rights to an ever more militaristic, invasive and repressive State.  State power increases along with corporate profits in many sectors of the permanent wartime economy of the U.S.  The bewildered populace lives in fear and is psychologically vulnerable to the next false flag terror event which in truth the government, rather than “terrorists,” actually control.  In the instance of the 9/11 attacks it is the State itself that is the terrorist entity.  The official Islamic enemies exist very simply as Oswald explained his own role, that of the designated “patsy.”

Since we have mentioned Oswald, the puzzle piece that is the JFK assassination, carried out by our deep state, fits quite well alongside the later false flag operations of Operation Gladio and 9/11, as well as intersecting the assassinations of European leaders such as Aldo Moro and Olaf Palme.  These assassinations all appear to be activities of the unaccountable deep state institutional structures which exist outside of view, law and morality, and which serve to connect elites in Western Europe and the United States.

One cannot admit this information into one’s consciousness, without reaching the logical conclusion that Western governments and institutions have become quite literally massive criminal enterprises which routinely violate the very laws, international and domestic, they ostensibly exist to enforce.  Given this state of affairs, it is rather difficult to view electoral politics as the way forward if justice, meaningful institutional change and a planet not rendered uninhabitable by nuclear war are our goals.  Our institutional structures have shown themselves to be irredeemably corrupt.

The recent election cycle in the United States has writ this large into the consciousness of anyone with a pulse.  If the two nominees of this past election are the “best candidates” with the “best platforms” the two major political parties can field, it is without doubt an absolutely definitive indictment regarding the deadly gangrenous condition of our electoral charade.  Cognitively amoral and behaviorally psychopathic elite policies are hardly a new phenomenon.

For centuries such behavior has typified Western elites regardless of how polished their public personas.  Such are the political scoundrels we peasants are graciously allowed to choose between every four years.  There does appear to be a silver lining to the recent Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton carnival of the absurd.  It would appear that for growing numbers of Americans of all persuasions the ability to continue to believe in the fairy tale that is the U.S. electoral process has finally been shattered beyond repair.

Before closing let us step back for a moment and imagine a world that might have been.  A world in which progressive leaders in the U.S. and abroad had not been assassinated or overthrown in favor of fascists; dictators hadn’t been armed, taught torture techniques and supported against the interests of their own people decade after decade; and the CIA prevented rather than facilitated the international drug trade.

Imagine a world in which corporations and oligarchs weren’t allowed to own the mass media and so were not allowed to weaponize the news, reducing it to simplistic pro-war mass culture propaganda, all while buying the services of the political candidates who will support their ongoing war profiteering.  Imagine a world that could have been in which the political organizing of the masses wasn’t systematically infiltrated, disrupted and shut down by the institutions of State; Third World nations were allowed to develop independently of Western subversion and control; and the massive amounts of Western taxpayer money spent on war and violence went instead toward the public good.  This is the world that has been stolen from humanity by violent unaccountable oligarchic interests ruling through long discredited and massively corrupt Western institutional structures.

The history of Operation Gladio, including the failure of Western institutions to publicize and prosecute its murderous activities, unmasks our elites as capable of “doing literally anything” in their quest for power and domination.  However, we are ourselves complicit.  A public that can find any legitimacy whatsoever in economic and political institutions that systematically engage in and profit from endless war, while the 8 richest people possess as much wealth as the bottom half of the entire earth’s population, one fears, can make themselves “believe literally anything.”

Gary Weglarz recently retired from practice as a clinical social worker.  He worked with, and learned from, Alaskan Native peoples who were attempting to heal the damage inflicted by the collective intergenerational trauma of colonization.  Currently he is engaged in research and writing regarding the relationship between past mass trauma in Western societies, and the subsequent colonial violence that has characterized Europe and her colonies. 

He was actively involved in Central American solidarity efforts throughout the 1990’s, traveling with human rights delegations to Nicaragua, El Salvador and Colombia.  He currently lives in France. 

Regime dos Psicopatas. Moro Promete ‘Modelo’ da Lava Jato no Ministério da Justiça

 

Regime dos Psicopatas. Moro Promete ‘Modelo’ da Lava Jato no Ministério da Justiça

O juiz federal Sergio Moro disse nesta terça-feira (6) que atuará no comando do Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública, a partir de 2019, utilizando o modelo da Operação Lava Jato para combater o crime organizado.

“A ideia é replicar no ministério as forças-tarefas adotadas na Operação Lava Jato”, disse o juiz em Curitiba, na primeira entrevista coletiva concedida desde 2014, quando assumiu operação.

Questionado sobre como atuará no assassinato longe de ser elucidado – e devidamente punido – da ex-vereadora Marielle Franco e de seu motorista, Anderson Gomes em março deste ano, o novo ministro alegou nao ignorar “o problema”, demonstrando grau de indignação sem lugar a duvidas bastante abaixo, neste crime hediondo, em relação aos outros casos, longe de hediondos, que destacaram midiaticamente o novo pop star dos tribunais de primeira instancia nacionais.

“Não desconheço o problema que envolve o assassinato da ex-vereadora Marielle Franco e do senhor Anderson Gomes”.

Com toda a certeza bastante “confortante”, “encorajadora” sobretudo aos familiares de ambos os assassinados, a “posição” do juizeco em questão, não?!

Para concluir genialmente: “Eu acho [grifo nosso] que é um crime que tem que ser solucionado”. Eureca! Ele “acha” que o crime de uma militante de esquerda, mulher, negra e pobre, deve ser solucionado. Bravo, Moro! O Verde-Amarelo vive, de verdade, novos tempos!

“By the way”, pupilo de Tio Sam que aparece em cabos secretos liberados por WikiLeaks rebolando freneticamente diante dos “lords” do bem-dizer de Washington, a ver se ficou claro: Vossa Alteza pretende utilizar no referido Ministério a “indústria das delações” da Lava Jato que, periciada na Espanha no segundo semestre do ano passado (devidamente abafada pela canalhada da grande midia de imbecilização em massa), veio a detectar “panela” de advogados no comércio indiscriminado de testemunhas?

Alias, seu Ministério podera muito bem, movido pela euforia social e midiatica anticorrupção, dedicar-se a investigar tal “indústria” com base na “panela”, que tal?

E o modelo seguira tambem a linha de relacao promiscua com a imprensa, “que comprava tudo” da Operação Lava Jato segundo palavras de vossa ex-assessora de imprensa, Christiane Machiavelli?

“As facilidades fizeram com que a imprensa ‘comprasse’ a Lava Jato quase que imediatamente. Denúncias do Ministério Público eram publicadas em reportagens quase na íntegra, assim como os inquéritos da PF e as decisões de Moro.

“Foram poucos os jornalistas que se valeram daquele mundaréu de elementos para fazer o papel que cabe à imprensa: o de usar os dados para construir investigações mais aprofundadas.”

Disse Christiane em recente entrevista ao sitio The Intercept, sobre a operacao desmoralizada em todo o mundo, duramente criticada pelos mais renomados juristas internacionais pela seletividade descarada, incriminando sem provas da maneira mais visivelmente tendenciosa.
Mais um belo cardapio, acima, para a sociedade e os meios de comunicacao extravasarem toda a sua raiva contra a corrupção. Que tal?

Tudo, uma grande farsa! “Não penso, não existo, apenas assisto – Rede Globo e Record do Bispo”, dizem-nos, pelo menos, 57 milhões de ignorantes, mentalidades pautadas por meios que elas mesmas alegam lavar cerebros. E dizia o filosofo: o pior cego, é o que não quer ver.

Chile, September 11, 1973: The Horrors of ‘the First 9/11’ Are Routinely Overlooked

 

Chile, September 11, 1973: The Horrors of ‘the First 9/11’ Are Routinely Overlooked

Each September large memorials are held for the 9/11 attacks on the US. Yet few recall the far more destructive 9/11 that occurred 28 years before.

This article was originally published in September 2017.

On September 11, 1973, Salvador Allende’s democratic government in Chile was ousted by United States-backed forces in one of the Cold War’s defining moments. Allende himself was killed during the coup while his presidential palace, La Moneda, was extensively bombed. Many thousands of Chileans were either murdered, “disappeared”, imprisoned, and coerced to emigrate or enter exile. Allende’s widow and family were forced to go into hiding in Mexico for many years.

In replacing Allende the Americans installed General Augusto Pinochet, one of the most notorious of the post-Second World War dictators. During the next 17 years of Pinochet’s dictatorship around 40,000 Chileans were tortured – often under the most sadistic fashion and overseen by doctors in the Josef Mengele style (the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz). The doctors would ensure the victims would remain alive for as long as possible, administer medication to resuscitate them, so the torture could then recommence.

A Chilean who suffered such treatment in these chambers, but survived and later became an international lawyer, was asked where these doctors are today? He replied, “they’re practicing in Santiago”. There have been a number of Mengele-style doctors not only walking free in Chile, but resuming employment unhindered.

There have been no calls from the United States or Israel to bring these Nazi-style physicians to justice. Indeed, the Pinochet regime was already protecting Nazi war criminals such as SS Colonel Walter Rauff, creator of the gas chambers, and Mengele himself.

As the US’s population is approximately 18 times bigger than Chile’s, with an infinitely bigger landmass, the Chilean 9/11 was felt on a far greater scale. Indeed, it was also more destructive. In the US’s 9/11, the White House was not bombed, the President (George W. Bush) was not killed, its people were not imprisoned and tortured en masse after the initial crimes were committed, a brutal dictator and his death squads were not imposed.

Before the Chilean coup in 1973, the country had been a lively, vibrant place where people were welcoming and cheerful. The Pinochet years afflicted upon the population persistent feelings of terror and suspicion.

A few days after the coup was implemented National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger described the situation in Chile as,

“Nothing of very great consequence”.

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with Pinochet in 1976 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Except to the people of Chile that is. Following Allende’s election three years before, Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms over the phone,

“We will not let Chile go down the drain”, to which Helms responded, “I am with you”.

Kissinger, a future Nobel Peace Prize winner, had been implicated in other war crimes such as an open call for genocide in Cambodia in 1969, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”.

Disturbed by Allende’s election victory in early September 1970, US President Richard Nixon ordered the CIA to, “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him”. Allende was not due to take office until two months later. The US State Department suggested to, “let Allende come in and see what we can work out”, – the words “work out” denoting a sinister undertone judging by the record books.

However, President Nixon rejected the State Department’s proposal, protesting the possibility of,

“Like another Castro? Like in Czechoslovakia? The same people said the same thing. Don’t let them do that”.

President Nixon expressed caution saying that,

“We don’t want a big story leaking out that we are trying to overthrow the government”, before warning Kissinger “to be sure the paper record doesn’t look bad”.

Kissinger forwarded to Secretary of State William Rogers that,

“The President’s view is to do the maximum possible to prevent an Allende takeover”.

The aim of the Nixon administration in attempting to overthrow Allende’s incoming government was to destroy independent nationalism, or what was called a “virus” that might “infect” others – the domino effect. After all Henry Stimson, the US Secretary of War during World War II, described Latin America as “our little region over here which has never bothered anybody”.

Chile obviously came under the auspices of “our little region”, despite the fact its capital Santiago is over 8,000 km from Washington. The rights of nations to manage their own affairs is an unacceptable prospect to US planners. We see examples of this to the present day.

In the meantime, “the maximum possible to prevent an Allende takeover” failed as the former physician successfully assumed office in November 1970. The CIA had been sent to work in building support for Allende’s rival, former President Jorge Alessandri, but to no avail. Instead the CIA exerted covert pressure, including paying millions of dollars to opposition groups to speed up Allende’s ousting.

The four-week tour of Chile by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in late 1971 further alarmed policymakers in the US. Allende himself had visited Cuba about a decade before, and had been impressed by the progress made by Castro’s revolution, before again visiting the island nation in 1972.

Image result for allende castro

Fidel Castro with Salvador Allende (Source: teleSUR / Twitter)

By the following year Allende was ousted and killed, with crucial CIA input, as Pinochet went about privatising the Chilean economy to suit American corporate requirements. The “Chicago boys”, neoliberal Chilean economists trained at University of Chicago, were welcomed into the government – and were supported by the IMF and the World Bank.

The Chicago boys’ policies had a disastrous effect on the population as unemployment more than doubled between 1974 and 1975, to over 18%. By 1983 unemployment further rocketed to 34.6%, far worse than the Great Depression in the US.

The population revolted at various stages but this is where Pinochet’s brutal methods of repression came in useful, and was no doubt welcomed by the US government, IMF, and so on. Furthermore, Pinochet was a major drug trafficker who sold cocaine to the US and Europe in the 1980s, amassing a personal fortune in the process, along with his cronies. Pinochet, who also had links to Colombian drug dealers, said

“Not a leaf moves in Chile if I don’t move it – let that be clear”.

Meanwhile, the population continued to slide into poverty and desolation.

THE GODS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE: Top Scientist Claims Anthony Fauci ‘Untruthful’ About Chinese Lab Research

 

Top Scientist Claims Anthony Fauci ‘Untruthful’ About Chinese Lab Research

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, testifies during a Senate Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Hearing on the federal government response to COVID-19 on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Washington. (Graeme Jennings/Pool via …
Graeme Jennings/Pool via AP
2:44

The U.S. government contributed funding to controversial gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, a report alleged Monday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to Democrat President Joe Biden, has previously denied the National Institute of Health [NIH] has ever funded such research.

U.S. Senate Committee on Health

The Intercept reported 900 new pages of previously undisclosed information from the NIH, which The Intercept obtained through a a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, that the EcoHealth Alliance used federal grant money to fund dangerous bat coronavirus research in the Chinese labs. The Intercept reported:

The bat coronavirus grant provided the EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans. Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments.

The grant proposal acknowledges some of those dangers: “Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled.”

Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, reviewed the material and told The Intercept the “viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell.”

Ebright concluded by accusing Fauci and NIH Director, Francis Collins, of being “untruthful” in their previous remarks on the matter.
“The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful,” he wrote.

As Breitbart News reported, Fauci has admitted some funds went to Wuhan but claimed they were never used for “gain of function” support.

As far back as May Fauci told the House Appropriations subcommittee the funds were given to the Chinese lab through the EcoHealth Alliance to underwrite “a modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus.”

Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com

Fact check: A list of 28 ways President Trump and his team have been dishonest about the coronavirus

 

Fact check: A list of 28 ways President Trump and his team have been dishonest about the coronavirus

President Donald Trump holds a photograph of coronavirus as Dr. Steve Monroe,right, with CDC speaks to members of the press at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Friday, March 6, 2020. President Trump’s trip to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, briefly scuttled Friday because of unfounded fears that someone there had contracted the coronavirus, was back on, giving the president another chance to calm growing alarm about the spread of the virus in America. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
President Donald Trump holds a photograph of coronavirus as Dr. Steve Monroe,right, with CDC speaks to members of the press at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Friday, March 6, 2020. President Trump’s trip to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, briefly scuttled Friday because of unfounded fears that someone there had contracted the coronavirus, was back on, giving the president another chance to calm growing alarm about the spread of the virus in America. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
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President Donald Trump has been comprehensively misinforming the public about the coronavirus.

Trump has littered his public remarks on the life-and-death subject with false, misleading and dubious claims. And he has been joined, on occasion, by senior members of his administration.

We’ve counted 28 different ways the President and his team have been inaccurate. Here is a chronological list, which may be updated as additional misinformation comes to our attention.

February 10: Trump says without evidence that the coronavirus “dies with the hotter weather”

Trump said on Fox Business: “You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather.” He told state governors: “You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.” And he said at a campaign rally: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that’s true.”

Facts First: Experts were not saying this. They were saying, rather, that it was too soon to know how the coronavirus would respond to changing weather. “It would be reckless to assume that things will quiet down in spring and summer,” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, told CNN. “We don’t really understand the basis of seasonality, and of course we know we absolutely nothing about this particular virus.” You can read a longer analysis here.

February 24: Trump baselessly claims the situation is “under control”

Trump tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”

Facts First: “Under control” is subjective, but by any reasonable definition, the coronavirus was not under control in the US — and there was no way for the government to fully understand how dire the problem was given how few Americans were being tested. There were 53 confirmed cases and no deaths on the day of Trump’s tweet; as of March 11, there were more than 1,000 cases and 31 deaths.

February 25: A senior White House official falsely claims the virus has been “contained”

White House National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow said, “We have contained this, I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight.” Kudlow said again on March 6 that the coronavirus “is contained” in the US. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway made similar though less definitive comments the same day, saying the virus “is being contained.”

Facts First: Experts said the US has not come close to containing the coronavirus. They also said the small number of tests conducted in the United States had prevented the government from getting an accurate picture of how widespread the virus truly is.

“In the US it is the opposite of contained,” said Harvard University epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. “It is spreading so efficiently in so many places that it may be difficult to stop.”

February 25: Trump falsely claims Ebola mortality was “a virtual 100%”

In comments to journalists on both February 25 and February 26, Trump contrasted the fatality rate for the coronavirus with the fatality rate for the Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016, saying “in the other case (Ebola), it was a virtual 100%” and that “with Ebola — we were talking about it before — you disintegrated. If you got Ebola, that was it.”

Facts First: While the Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016 certainly had a much higher death rate than the coronavirus, the Ebola rate was never “virtually 100%”; for the entire epidemic, it was about 40% overall in the three African countries at the center of the situation. It was higher in the early stages of the outbreak, but it was never true that every infected person “disintegrated.”

There were 28,616 “suspected, probable, and confirmed cases” and 11,310 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of mid-September 2014, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers reported that there was an estimated fatality rate of 70.8%. But the rate “fell later in the epidemic with lessons learned in improving treatment,” said Julie Fischer, associate research professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Georgetown University and director of the Elizabeth R. Griffin Program. Still, even at 70.8%, death was never guaranteed for infected people, as Trump suggested.

“It was never 100%. That is just patently untrue,” Fischer said.

February 25: Trump falsely claims “nobody had ever even heard of Ebola” in 2014

Comparing the coronavirus outbreak with the Ebola situation of 2014, Trump said, “At that time, nobody had ever even heard of Ebola.”

Facts First: Some Americans certainly didn’t know a whole lot about Ebola before 2014, but the claims that “nobody” had ever even heard of Ebola and that “nobody” knew anything about it are absurd. Ebola was discovered in 1976. It had been the subject of considerable media coverage in the next three decades, not to mention scientific study.

February 26: Trump wrongly says the coronavirus “is a flu”

Trump, contrasting the coronavirus with Ebola, said: “This is a flu. This is like a flu.”

Facts First: While Trump may have simply meant that the coronavirus has a fatality rate more like the flu than like Ebola, experts have emphasized that the coronavirus is, simply, not the flu. They are different viruses with different characteristics, though they share symptoms, and the coronavirus has a higher mortality rate.

Experts say the mortality rate for the coronavirus is much higher than the approximately 0.1% rate for the seasonal flu, though the exact rate for the coronavirus is not yet known. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress on March 11 that it is “10 times” that of the flu’s 0.1%.

As World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said March 3, the coronavirus “causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza. While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease.”

Also, the behavior of the flu over the course of a year is pretty well-understood, while the behavior of the coronavirus over time is not yet known. And while there are flu vaccines available, there is no vaccine available for the coronavirus (and no proven treatment).

February 26: Trump baselessly predicts the number of US cases is “going very substantially down” to “close to zero”

Trump said: “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” And he said: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Facts First: Clearly, the number of US cases and deaths was going up, not down. As the New York Times noted in its own fact check, both Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat said at the same press conference that they expected “more cases.”

There were 60 total cases in the US on the day Trump spoke here. The “15 people” referred to the cases that did not involve people who had been on the Diamond Princess cruise ship or who had been repatriated from China.

February 26: Trump wrongly says the flu death rate is “much higher” than Dr. Sanjay Gupta said

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN chief medical correspondent, told Trump, “Mr. President, you talked about the flu and then in comparison to the coronavirus. The flu has a fatality ratio of about 0.1%.” Trump said, “Correct.” But Trump later disputed the figure, saying, “And the flu is higher than that. The flu is much higher than that.” — February 26 coronavirus press conference

Facts First: Gupta was right, Trump was wrong. Even if Trump meant that the flu has a “much higher” fatality rate than 0.1% — rather than meaning that the flu’s mortality rate is “much higher” than that of the novel coronavirus — he was wrong, according to Fauci, other experts and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

February 27: Trump baselessly hints at a “miracle”

Trump said: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows. The fact is, the greatest experts — I’ve spoken to them all. Nobody really knows.” He made similar comments later in the outbreak, saying on March 10, “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

Facts First: There was no apparent basis for Trump’s claim that the virus will miraculously “disappear.” (He did immediately soften the claim by saying “nobody really knows,” but still.)

February 28: Trump baselessly hints at an immigration link to the virus

Trump said: “The Democrat policy of open borders is a direct threat to the health and well-being of all Americans. Now you see it with the coronavirus, you see it. You see it with the coronavirus.”

Facts First: Prominent Democrats do not support “open borders,” literally unrestricted migration. Aside from that, though, there was no evidence from the coronavirus situation that Democrats’ preferred immigration policies would be harmful to Americans’ health. There was no known US case in which someone brought the virus to the US while immigrating or making an asylum claim.

February 29: Trump exaggerates Tim Cook’s comments about Apple and China

Trump said: “And if you read, Tim Cook of Apple said that they are now in full operation again in China.” Trump also said: “You probably saw that — as I mentioned, Tim just came out and he said Apple is back to normal in terms of production in their facilities in China. They’ve made a lot of progress.”

Facts First: Trump was overstating what Cook told Fox Business. Cook had not said Apple’s production in China was “back to normal” or that plants in China were in “full operation.” Rather, he said that plants in China were “getting back to normal.”

“When you look at the parts that are done in China, we have reopened factories, so the factories were able to work through the conditions to reopen. They’re reopening. They’re also in ramp, and so I think of this as sort of the third phase of getting back to normal. And we’re in phase three of the ramp mode,” Cook said.

March 1: Azar wrongly says 3,600 people have been tested

Azar said: “In terms of testing kits, we’ve already tested over 3,600 people for the virus.”

Facts First: Politico reported: “Two days later, CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat told the Senate health committee that her agency had tested more than 3,000 specimens taken from roughly 500 people — a fraction of what Azar claimed.” Politico reported that a Health and Human Services spokesperson explained that Azar had meant to say that the CDC had processed more than 3,600 tests, not that it had tested more than 3,600 people.

March 2: Trump falsely claims “nobody knew” the number of US flu deaths

Trump said: “You know, three, four weeks ago, I said, ‘Well, how many people die a year from the flu?’ And, in this country, I think last year was 36- or 37,000 people. And I’m saying, ‘Wow, nobody knew that information.'” He said at a campaign rally: “So when you lose 27,000 people a year, nobody knew that. I didn’t know that.”

Facts First: Trump might not have known the number of annual flu deaths in the US, but that doesn’t mean “nobody” else did. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes annual estimates on its website.

The CDC estimates that between 12,000 and 61,000 people have died in the US in each flu season between 2010-2011 and 2018-2019; its preliminary figure for 2018-2019 is 34,157 deaths.

March 2: Trump says a vaccine is coming “relatively soon”

Trump said: “We had a great meeting today with a lot of the great companies and they’re going to have vaccines, I think relatively soon. And they’re going to have something that makes you better and that’s going to actually take place, we think, even sooner.”

Facts First: “Relatively soon” is too vague a phrase to call this claim false, but Trump did not mention that Fauci had told him earlier that day that a vaccine was “a year to a year and a half” away. Fauci similarly told the Senate the next day that the process of getting a vaccine ready to deploy “will take at least a year and a year and a half.”

March 4: Trump falsely claims Obama impeded testing

Trump claimed he had reversed a decision by President Barack Obama’s administration that had impeded testing for the coronavirus, saying that “the Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing. And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion. That was a decision we disagreed with.” He said on March 5: “They made some decisions which were not good decisions…We undid some of the regulations that were made that made it very difficult, but I’m not blaming anybody.”

Facts First: There is no Obama-era decision or rule that impeded coronavirus testing. The Obama administration did put forward a draft proposal related to lab testing, but it was never implemented.

When asked what Obama administration decision Trump might be referring to, Peter Kyriacopolous, chief policy officer at the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said: “We aren’t sure what rule is being referenced.”

Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who was principal deputy commissioner of the FDA under Obama and is now professor of the practice at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “There wasn’t a policy that was put into place that inhibited them. There was no Obama policy they were reversing.”

March 4: Trump wrongly says as many as 100,000 people died of the flu in 1990

Speaking about deaths from the flu, Trump said on March 4: “I think we went as high as 100,000 people died in 1990, if you can believe that.” He said on March 6 that as many as 77,000 people might die in a given year, then added: “And I guess they said, in 1990, that was in particular very bad; it was higher than that.”

Facts First: While the 1989-1990 flu season was considered bad at the time — the CDC declared that it was an epidemic — Trump greatly overstated the number of deaths. A CDC analysis in 2010 estimated that there were 26,582 deaths from the seasonal flu in 1989-1990. (The same analysis found that this number of deaths was exceeded in nine of the 17 subsequent flu seasons through 2006-2007.)

March 4: Trump says “the borders are automatically shut down”

Trump said during a meeting with airline chief executives: “And we’re talking about the effects of the virus on air travel and what they see. In a certain way, you could say that the borders are automatically shut down, without having to say ‘shut down.’ I mean, they’re, to a certain extent, automatically shut down.”

Facts First: Trump did not explain what he meant by “the borders are automatically shut down.” Trump’s travel restrictions on China do not constitute a complete border closure even on China in particular.

Trump’s China policy prohibits entry into the US by non-Americans who have been in China within 14 days — but it makes exceptions for immediate family members of American citizens and permanent residents. And American citizens themselves are free to go back and forth.

Returning citizens who have been in Hubei Province in the previous 14 days are subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine, while citizens who have been in the rest of mainland China in the previous 14 days “will undergo proactive entry health screening at a select number of ports of entry and up to 14 days of monitored self-quarantine,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said. Still, this is not a shutdown.

March 4: Trump says he believes there was a coronavirus death in New York, though there hadn’t been one

Trump said: “And then, when you do have a death, like you have had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California — I believe you had one in New York…”

Facts First: There had not been any New York deaths attributed to the coronavirus at the time. (There still had not been any as of the morning of March 11, seven days later.)

March 4: Trump falsely claims the Obama administration “didn’t do anything” about H1N1

Trump said of H1N1, also known as swine flu: “And they didn’t do anything about it.”

Facts First: The Obama administration did respond to H1N1. On April 26, 2009, less than two weeks after the first US cases of H1N1 were confirmed, the Obama administration declared a public health emergency. Two days later, the Obama administration made an initial $1.5 billion funding request to Congress. (Congress ultimately allocated $7.7 billion). In October 2009, Obama declared a national emergency to allow hospitals more flexibility for a possible flood of H1N1 patients.

The Obama administration did face criticism over the pace of the government’s vaccination effort, but “they didn’t do anything” is clearly false.

March 5: Trump misleadingly describes a Gallup poll

Trump tweeted: “Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation.” Pointing to the Gallup poll again at a Fox News town hall the same day, he said the administration got “tremendous marks” in the poll “for the way we’ve handled it.”

Facts First: The Gallup poll was positive for Trump, as 77% percent of respondents did say they had confidence in the federal government’s ability to handle a coronavirus outbreak. But it was not a poll about how the administration had handled the situation: the poll asked about confidence in the federal government’s future acts, not about its actual work to date. Critically, it was conducted from February 3-16, when there were far fewer reported cases and reported US deaths; Trump was still, at minimum, 10 days away from appointing Vice President Mike Pence as his point man on the response.

A Quinnipiac University poll conducted March 5-8 found that 43% of registered voters approved of the way Trump was handling the coronavirus response, 49% disapproved. When the poll asked about confidence in “the federal government” to handle the response, 53% said they had confidence, 43% said they didn’t.

March 5: Trump wrongly claims the virus only hit the US “three weeks ago”

Trump said, “We got hit with the virus really three weeks ago, if you think about it, I guess. That’s when we first started really to see some possible effects.”

Facts First: The US had its first confirmed case of the coronavirus on January 21, more than six weeks before Trump spoke here.

March 6: Azar wrongly claims there is no test shortage

Azar said: “There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been.”

Facts First: Vice President Mike Pence had said the day prior: “We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.” Doctors, health authorities and elected officials in various locations around the country indeed said they did not have enough tests.

March 6: As the number of cases and deaths in Italy rises, Trump says the number is “getting much better”

Trump said: “…I hear the numbers are getting much better in Italy.”

Facts First: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in Italy was continuing to increase at the time Trump made this comment. As of Saturday, March 7, the day after Trump spoke here, Italy had 5,883 confirmed cases and 233 deaths; as of Monday, March 9, there were 9,172 cases and 463 deaths. (The Italian government announced a national lockdown on Monday.)

March 6: Trump falsely claims anybody can get tested if they want

Trump said: “Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is.”

Facts First: That wasn’t true. There were an insufficient number of tests available, as Pence said the day prior, and Americans could not get tested simply because they wanted to get tested. “You may not get a test unless a doctor or public health official prescribes a test,” Azar said the day after Trump’s remark. (Azar claimed Trump was using “shorthand” for the fact that “we as regulators, or as those shipping the test, are not restricting who can get tested.”)

March 6: Trump exaggerates the number of people on the Grand Princess cruise ship

Trump said, of the Grand Princess cruise ship being kept in limbo over coronavirus concerns, “We do have a situation where we have this massive ship with 5,000 people and we have to make a decision.” He later amended the claim slightly, “It’s close to 5,000 people.”

Facts First: Trump was overstating the numbers. There were 3,533 people aboard the Grand Princess: 2,422 guests and 1,111 crew members.

March 6: Trump falsely says US coronavirus numbers “are lower than just about anybody”

Trump said that “we have very low numbers compared to major countries throughout the world. Our numbers “are lower than just about anybody.”

Facts First: Trump was exaggerating. The US did have fewer confirmed coronavirus cases than some countries, including China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, France and Germany. But it had more confirmed cases than big-population countries like India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Russia and Nigeria, plus neighbors Mexico and Canada, plus many other high-income countries.

In addition, the number of confirmed cases is dependent on how many people are tested. The US was conducting fewer tests than some countries with much smaller populations.

March 6: Trump baselessly muses that “maybe” the coronavirus improved US jobs numbers

Trump touted the jobs report for February, which showed a gain of 273,000 jobs. He then said that, instead of traveling abroad, “I think, you know, a lot of people are staying here and they’re going to be doing their business here.” He continued, “And maybe that’s one of the reasons the job numbers are so good. We’ve had a lot of travel inside the USA.”

Facts First: We can’t definitively call this false, but there’s no evidence to back it up. Reports suggest the domestic travel industry is also being hurt by the coronavirus.

In March, US airlines announced they were reducing domestic flights as well as international flights in March, and companies called off US conferences and limiting corporate travel. While industry experts said some particular domestic travel destinations could possibly benefit if the virus causes travelers to opt for local trips rather than international trips, there is no hard evidence for that yet.

March 9: Pence says Trump’s “priority” was getting Americans off the ship

Vice President Mike Pence said “the President made the priority to get — to get the Americans ashore.”

Facts First: Trump may have eventually been convinced to get the Americans ashore, but he had said three days prior to this Pence claim that he wanted passengers to stay on the ship so that “the numbers” of US coronavirus cases would stay low.

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