Welcome to Venezuela!  As Jesse Watters on Fox said: “He was convicted for having beaten [Hillary] Clinton in 2016 and for going to beat [Joe] Biden in 2024.” This was no surprise. But who and what was really on trial? RELATED: Twelve Corrupt Jurors It is the law itself. And the legal system, ignoring the Constitution to the end, has testified against itself, although it probably hasn’t realized it yet. In the meantime, the rule of law has suffered a terrible blow. And it is up to the courts of appeal to rescue it.  Even more, it is up to the people. It is the people in the end who will decide whether our law is to be politicized at its core or if it will once again stand for preserving the liberties of the people. It’s good to sum up what is exactly wrong with this monstrous case. Megyn Kelly noted on April 30: There is no New York law that makes a crime of paying off a newspaper or a person to not write a story. So, Bragg has decided that Trump’s non-disclosure deal was a violation of federal election statutes, which the state law had incorporated by reference to whatever they might precisely be. As I noted in The American Spectator on May 3, New York’s Constitution specifically forbids legislation to incorporate by reference, and its courts have understood that to mean that one cannot make the basis of criminality a statute of another state or the federal government. (READ THE PIECE: Alvin Bragg Is as Corrupt as the New York Robber Barons) It seemed that the federal violation incorporated in that the statute under which former President Donald Trump has been tried was a federal election campaign statute of some sort. That doesn’t matter much under the New York Constitution. But what does matter is the astonishing direction Judge Juan Merchan gave the jury. Here is a crucial section: Although you must conclude unanimously that the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were. Now, this law under which Trump is being prosecuted was designed to evade the statute of limitations that applied to the bookkeeping issue that is alleged to have happened.  It upped the act to a felony if it was done as part of a conspiracy to another crime.  But even though this whole prosecution falls apart without the other crime, the judge tells the jury it doesn’t matter the exact nature of the unlawfulness at the core.  What that means is that the core crime can be — whatever! There is a small problem with this. It lies in the Sixth Amendment, a part of the Bill of Rights. Among other things, the amendment states: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right … to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation. As fleshed out in an 1875 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Cruikshank, this means that “the accused must be advised of the essential particulars of the charge against him,” not just vague generalities. Otherwise, it becomes inordinately difficult to prepare a defense.   Cruikshank gives as an example a charge of cheating and fraud. The opinion reads: [A]n indictment for such an offence must contain allegations setting forth the means proposed to be used to accomplish the purpose. This because, to make such a purpose criminal, the conspiracy must be to cheat and defraud in a mode made criminal by statute; and, as all cheating and defrauding has not been made criminal, it is necessary for the indictment to state the means proposed, in order that the court may see that they are in fact illegal. But here, it seems to be, whether in a faulty law or a faulty instruction, that the crucial element can be — whatever, and no unanimity is needed for the only fact that makes this prosecutable. Now the jury has delivered its verdict. It is important for us all to note the bizarre twists and turns that took place when the justice system is perverted to accomplish political ends. There is no crime in “paying hush money.” Non-disclosure agreements are not illegal. They do not constitute corruption under law. The only thing that makes any of these acts actionable under law is their being upped to a felony by being referenced to a federal campaign law. There is no law against keeping information from voters unless such information was required by law to be disclosed. Just ask Barry about his withholding of his student records. Just ask Joe Biden of the knowing deceit of the public by his crew about the Hunter laptop — the evidence they knew was true about Biden’s corruption.  But it has not been about law or principle. It has been about power trumping everything and revenge on those who would dare to challenge it. It’s a shameful chapter in our history, one we must learn to make sure doesn’t happen again.  But we the people can retake our laws and our government. We can reject the Venezuela-ization of our country. No one can stop us. As Trump said, the people will have the final say. READ MORE on the New York verdict: This Is Not America. It’s Manhattan. Post-Trump Verdict, Will the American Right Finally Wake Up? A Disgusting, Filthy Corruption of American Justice The Curious Trump Tie: Alito’s Flag and Merchan’s Trial The post Welcome to Venezuela, America appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Totalitarians Try to Win by Force, Not by Political Persuasion

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Where is the public debate in Africa on the draft WHO Pandemic Treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations? In my 24th April 2024 article, I pointed out that if the WHO’s Pandemic Agreement were signed into international law in its current form in May 2024 as scheduled, several of its provisions would greatly harm the peoples of Africa. Among the harms would be the fact that the sovereignty of the continent’s states would be greatly eroded by the centralised management of public health emergencies. Besides, an unprecedented censorship infrastructure would be put in place, thus inhibiting the building of open societies. Furthermore, African states would be under the obligation to divert a significant proportion of their meagre health budgets from their immediate health concerns such as malaria, TB, and malnutrition in order to contribute to the global kitty on “pandemic preparedness.” Yet as I also pointed out in my previous article, along with the Pandemic Agreement, the WHO has scheduled the signing of amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) at the end of May 2024 which should greatly concern African countries. According to the prevailing rules contained in the IHR (2005), the amendments require a simple majority vote from member states for their adoption. Commenting on the potential impact of the Pandemic Treaty and amendments to the IHR, Dr David Bell and Dr Thi Thuy Van Dinh, global public health specialist and international law expert respectively, write: “Together, they reflect a sea-change in international public health over the past two decades. They aim to further centralise control of public health policy within WHO and base response to disease outbreaks on a heavily commoditised approach, rather than WHO’s prior emphasis of building resilience to disease through nutrition, sanitation and strengthened community-based health care.” In his Inaugural Lecture titled “Taming the Tyranny of the Barons: Administrative Law and the Regulation of Power,” University of Nairobi’s Law Prof. Migai Akech pointed out that most tyranny is perpetrated by bureaucrats at the level of subsidiary legislation (“statutes”) rather than at the level of the constitution. He went on to point out that our interactions with bureaucrats “are often fraught with tyranny that takes forms such as delays, broken promises, and extortion.”URGENT! Keep Alex Jones in the fight against the NWO! Please pray & contribute at DefendJones.com today! It seems to me that in the field of global public health, the Pandemic Agreement is intended to play a role similar to that played by a country’s constitution, while the International Health Regulations (IHR) a role equivalent to that of the subsidiary legislation. Of great relevance to my reflections in the present article is Prof. Akech’s further observation: … the proliferation of international regulatory mechanisms over the last two or so decades has…created a democracy deficit in the international arena. Our interactions across borders…have led to a realization that our interests/grievances cannot be addressed by separate national governance systems. As a result, the making of these governance decisions has shifted to global institutions, often without our participation or accountability to us…Yet these institutions exercise immense powers and regulate vast sectors of our social and economic lives. Their decisions directly affect us, in many cases without any intervening role for national government action. Here as well, a need arises to democratize the exercise of power. Below I mainly focus on three salient issues touching on the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR); namely, the opaque nature of the negotiations on draconian provisions, dire threat to human rights, and attempts to violate the statutory four-month window for states to interrogate the draft amendments before a vote. Thereafter, I address the urgent need for African states to guard their sovereignty from erosion by conflicted global public health legislation and policy, before making some remarks on the wider question of public health imperialism. Opaque Negotiations on Draconian Provisions Contrary to the democratic principle of public participation, negotiations for the amendments to the IHR have been extremely opaque. In early 2023, the public was provided with a set of draft amendments dated November 2022, after which it heard nothing from the negotiating teams despite their many meetings until a revised draft was released in mid-April 2024. UK Solicitors Ben Kingsley and Molly Kingsley have provided a helpful comparison of the November 2022 and April 2024 draft amendments, as have Dr David Bell and Dr Thi Thuy Van Dinh. Below is an outline of Ben Kingsley and Molly Kingsley’s comparison and contrast of the 2022 and 2024 draft amendments to the IHR: The WHO’s recommendations remain non-binding.An egregious proposal that would have erased reference to the primacy of “dignity, human rights, and fundamental freedoms” has been dropped.Proposals to construct a global censorship and ‘information control’ operation led by the WHO have been dropped.Provisions that would have allowed the WHO to intervene on the basis of a mere ‘potential’ health emergency have been dropped: a pandemic must now either be happening or likely to happen, but with the safeguard that to activate its IHR powers the WHO must be able to demonstrate that a series of qualitative tests have been met and that rapid coordinated international action is necessary.A material dampening of the expansionist ambitions of the WHO: provisions that had proposed to expand the scope of the IHRs to include “all risks with a potential to impact public health” (e.g. climate change, food supply) have been deleted.A climbdown on mandatory funding for pandemic-related infrastructure and subsidies, and implicit recognition that public spending is a matter for national governments to determine.Explicit recognition that Member States, not the WHO, are responsible for implementing the IHRs, and bold plans for the WHO to police compliance with all aspects of the regulations have been materially watered down.Many other provisions have been diluted, including surveillance mechanisms that would have installed the WHO at the pinnacle of a global system of surveillance identifying thousands of potential new pandemic threats on which it could act; provisions that could have expedited regulatory approvals for new medicines including vaccines; provisions which would have encouraged and favoured digital health passports; provisions requiring forced technology transfers and diversion of national resources. Thus as Dr David Bell and Dr Thi Thuy Van Dinh have also observed, the draft amendments to the IHR dated 16th April 2024 have watered down many of the draconian measures that health freedom advocates have flagged for over a year now: The latest version of the IHR amendments released on April 16th…removes wording that would involve member states “undertaking” to follow any future recommendation from the Director General (DG) when he or she declares a pandemic or other Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) (former New Article 13A). They now remain as “non-binding” recommendations. This change is sane, conforms with the WHO Constitution and reflects concerns within country delegations regarding overreach. The shortened review time that passed in rather ad hoc fashion by the 2022 World Health Assembly will apply to all but four countries that rejected them. Otherwise, the intent of the draft, and how it is likely to play out, is essentially unchanged. Furthermore, the April 2024 draft amendments to the IHR are still being negotiated, so the possibility of the original 2022 amendments carrying the day cannot be ruled out; and as I show below, they still constitute a threat to human rights. Dire Threat to Human Rights In 1948, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), with its oft-quoted first article: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Then in 1966, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Together, these three instruments constitute what is commonly known as the international bill of human rights. The UN has adopted numerous other declarations and conventions to promote and protect the rights of vulnerable groups such as children, women, persons with disabilities, and refugees. As such, the authoritarian nature of the amendments to the IHR and the Pandemic Agreement has been contrary to a body of human rights conventions spanning more than seventy years, violating a raft of entitlements such as freedom of thought and expression, freedom of movement, and the right to bodily autonomy with the attendant right to informed consent to vaccines and courses of treatment. For example, as I pointed out in COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in the Light of Public Health Ethics, “Vaccine mandates are instances of state overreach, as they violate human dignity, human agency, and human rights, thereby eroding the very foundation of democratic society.” Furthermore, as I pointed out in my previous article, if the 2022 draft amendments to the IHR are voted in at the May 2024 World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO Director-General would have powers to impose contact tracing or require people to be ‘swabbed’ or examined, order quarantines, lockdowns, border closures, vaccine mandates, and the attendant vaccine passports, as well as prescribe certain kinds of “treatment” and proscribe others, just as we saw during Covid-19, only now with the force of international law. Yet in its own 2019 guidelines titled “Non-pharmaceutical Public Health Measures for Mitigating the Risk and Impact of Epidemic and Pandemic Influenza,” the WHO had indicated that lockdowns were not an effective measure for dealing with pandemics and epidemics. Indeed, while at the height of Covid-19 the WHO encouraged “social distancing,” in its 2019 pandemic influenza guidelines it stated: “…social distancing measures (e.g. contact tracing, isolation, quarantine, school and workplace measures and closures, and avoiding crowding) can be highly disruptive, and the cost of these measures must be weighed against their potential impact” (p.4). Furthermore, it did not use the term “lockdowns” because the term was previously used exclusively for prisons. Besides, it indicated that under no circumstances should border closures, quarantine of exposed people, contact tracing (once transmission is established), or entry/exit screening be deployed (p.3).  It also indicated that workplace closures should only be deployed under extraordinary circumstances, noting that after 7-10 days the harm is likely to outweigh the risk, especially for low-income groups (p.41). Thus just as the WHO itself had cautioned in 2019, the Covid-19 measures that it turned around to encourage governments in Africa to impose on their citizens from 2020 have had a catastrophic impact on the economic, social, and psychological well-being of millions of people on the continent. Regarding lockdowns, for example, King’s College London’s Lusophone African History Prof. Toby Green, in the introduction to his ground-breaking book, The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality, writes: … while the impact [of lockdowns] on the young, poor, and disadvantaged in the Global North was devastating, it cannot be compared to that in the Global South (…). Here, in many countries from South Asia and Africa to Latin America, the lives of hundreds of millions were upended. As early as July, the UN stated that each month 10,000 children were dying from virus-linked hunger as their communities were cut off from markets and food and medical aid owing to the new restrictions, and that 550,000 new children were also being struck monthly by wasting diseases as a direct consequence of these measures taken to halt the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, as countries locked down to protect against Covid-19, day-to-day medical interventions and vaccination programmes ground to a halt. It soon became clear that the death toll arising from the lockdown could far outweigh that from the novel coronavirus. Moreover, as Ben Kingsley and Molly Kingsley observe regarding the April 2024 draft of amendments to the IHR, “a swathe of legacy IHR provisions relating to, inter alia, border control measures of questionable efficacy deployed during the Covid pandemic remain untouched in the interim draft (Articles 18 and 23), including quarantines, isolations, testing and requirements for vaccination, but a proposal originally to have been inserted as a new Article 23(6), which controversially would have created a presumption in favour of mandating digital health passports, has been dropped.” The fact that such draconian measures witnessed during Covid-19 are retained in the April 2024 draft of amendments should be of deep concern to all of us from a human rights perspective, and particularly to the peoples of Africa because they ruined many lives and livelihoods. It is noteworthy that the measures in both the 2022 and 2024 draft amendments to the IHR are contrary to the WHO’s own definition of “health” in its Constitution as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Thus Dr David Bell and Dr Thi Thuy Van Dinh caution against celebrating the changes in the April 2024 draft amendments to the IHR: The proposed amendments should be reviewed in the light of the lack of urgency, low burden and currently-reducing frequency of recorded infectious disease outbreaks and the huge financial requirements on countries – already heavily impoverished and indebted post-lockdowns – for setting up additional international and national bureaucracies and institutions. It must also be assessed in light of the accompanying draft Pandemic Agreement, the apparent conflicts of interest, the concentration of wealth among sponsors of WHO during the COVID-19 response and the persistent absence of a transparent and credible cost-benefit analysis of the COVID-19 response and proposed new pandemic measures from WHO. Procedural Injustice According to the WHO’s own rules in Article 55  of the current International Health Regulations (2005), state parties are entitled to a minimum of four months to consider any proposed amendments to the Regulations. This means that with the scheduled commencement of the 77th World Health Assembly on 27th May 2024, the deadline for the Director General to submit such proposals to the WHO’s member states was 27th January, 2024. However, as I earlier indicated, by mid-April 2024, amendments to the document were still being negotiated. According to an Open Letter to the WHO written by David Bell, Silvia Behrendt, Amrei Muller, Thi Thuy Van Dinh, and others, although the draft WHO Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations contain significant health, economic, and human rights implications, they are being negotiated unprocedurally by various committees. The authors of the Open Letter to the WHO further observe that the draft amendments to the International Health Regulations have been developed with unusual haste on the premise that there is a rapidly increasing urgency to mitigate pandemic risk. This, they point out, is despite the fact that the alleged high risk of a pandemic in the short-to-medium term has now been shown to be contradicted by the data and citations on which the WHO and other agencies have relied. The authors of the letter are alluding to the WHO’s contention that shortening the four-month statutory window for countries to review proposed amendments to the IHR is justifiable on the grounds that due to “climate change,” the risk of the outbreak of another pandemic as a result of transmission of pathogens from animals to humans (“zoonotic diseases”) is very high. According to a report prepared by researchers from the University of Leeds, “This agenda is supported by unprecedented annual financial requests for over $10 billion in new Overseas Development Assistance and over $26 billion in LMICs investment, with over $10 billion additional for ‘One Health’ interventions.” However, as I indicated in my previous article, the University of Leeds report illustrates that the risk of such zoonotic diseases is not high, and may even be lower than before, but the impression is easily created of heightened risk due to great improvements in technology for detecting infections (“diagnostic capability”). In sum, while states are entitled to four months to interrogate the draft amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) to be voted on at the end of May 2024, the WHO Director-General did not submit those amendments to WHO member states by the 27th January 2024 statutory deadline. As such, a vote on the amendments to the IHR at the end of May 2024 would be tantamount to procedural injustice, as it would place at a gross disadvantage countries with limited resources requisite for an adequate interrogation of the amendments before the scheduled vote. It is worth noting here that the opaque nature of negotiations is not limited to the text of the IHR, but is also manifest in the negotiations of the Pandemic Agreement. For example, the WHO recently released a revised draft of the Pandemic Agreement dated 13th March 2024, but the WHO has not adequately publicised it to enable the public to interrogate it. This is in stark contrast to the media blitz to promote lockdowns and vaccine mandates at the height of Covid-19. Africa Arise! African states have the ability to effectively demand processes and outcomes that serve their interests in the context of global public health legislation and policy. They demonstrated this at the WHO’s 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva in May 2022. According to Reuters, during that year’s WHA, the US had proposed 13 amendments to the IHR that sought to authorise the deployment of expert teams to contamination sites, and the creation of a new compliance committee to monitor implementation of the rules. Reuters went on to report that the draft amendments were seen as the first step in a broader IHR reform process, with the aim being to amend Article 59 of the IHR to enable the speeding up of the implementation of future reforms from 24 to 12 months. However, Reuters reported that the African group at the WHA in 2022 expressed strong reservations to the US-led amendments to the IHR, insisting that all reforms be tackled together at a later stage. Reuters quoted Moses Keetile, Botswana’s deputy Health permanent secretary, as having told the Assembly on behalf of the group: “The African region shares the view that the process should not be fast-tracked…” Besides, According to the Reuters report, an African delegate in Geneva who was not authorised to speak to the media stated: “We find that they are going too quickly and these sorts of reforms can’t be rushed through.” (see Shabnam Palesa Mohamed’s excellent article for more on WHA 75). Not surprisingly, unnamed diplomats, probably Western ones, were reported to have made the demeaning comment that there was a likelihood that African objections were a strategy to seek concessions on vaccine and drug-sharing from wealthier countries who were seen to be hoarding supplies during Covid-19. Will the countries of Africa again make their voices heard against the current intense pressure to rush the signing of the WHO’s Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR)? Pandemic Politics in the Light of Western Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism In The Invention of Africa, the renowned Congolese philosopher V.Y. Mudimbe writes: “colonialism and colonization basically mean organization, arrangement. The two words derive from the latin word colére, meaning to cultivate or to design.” According to Mudimbe, this is manifested in “the domination of physical space, the reformation of natives’ minds, and the integration of local economic histories into the Western perspective.” This “colonizing structure,” Mudimbe informs us, “completely embraces the physical, human, and spiritual aspects of the colonizing experience” (pp.1-2). …many scholars in Africa have pointed out that colonialism was a three-legged stool. First, the colonisers executed military incursions to effect the initial subjugation of their victims and the occupation of their lands. Second, they used religion to calm down the vanquished peoples with hopes of a blissful life after death. Third, they deployed formal education to destroy indigenous systems of knowledge and to provide a rationale for the colonial project.Nevertheless, the “three-legged” conceptualisation of colonialism does not account for one of its crucial aspects, namely, the imposition of the colonisers’ economic system on their victims. The colonisers achieved this by requiring colonial subjects to pay taxes using money which they could only acquire by working for the European overlords. In Kenya, for example, the British colonisers issued the Hut Tax Regulations in 1901 imposing the Native Hut Tax of 1 Rupee annually on huts used as dwellings by men. By 1903, they had raised the Hut Tax to 3 Rupees. Then in 1910 they issued the Hut and Poll Tax Ordinance to ensure that all males over twenty-five years old who were not eligible to pay Hut tax were nevertheless taxed. In that year, they also included African women who owned huts in the obligation to pay Hut Tax. Those unable to pay these taxes were subjected to forced labour. In short, the British, who had led the campaign to end slavery and slave trade around the world in the nineteenth century, also enslaved the peoples of Kenya and other colonial territories through taxation and forced labour in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana, wrote: “The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.” Nkrumah was emphatic that Western multinational corporations take centre stage in the domination of former colonial territories as they exploit the continent’s natural resources. It was not coincidental or accidental that Nkrumah was overthrown less than a year after this book was published. Thus in February 2023, Esther de Haan indicated that “Big Pharma raked in USD 90 billion in profits with COVID-19 vaccines.” Indeed, many of my readers will recall how the same pharmaceutical corporations that sold the Covid-19 vaccines under emergency use authorisation were also at the forefront of promoting their use on the back of the “safe and effective slogan” on legacy and social media – a blatant case of conflict of interests. In the third chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, written a few years before Nkrumah’s treatise on neo-colonialism, Frantz Fanon cautioned that at the time the colonial territories get their independence, the struggle for liberation is far from over because the structures of colonial domination remain intact under the custody of the emerging local middle class to whom the colonisers bequeath political power: The national economy of the period of independence is not set on a new footing. It is still concerned with the ground-nut harvest, with the cocoa crop and the olive yield. In the same way there is no change in the marketing of basic products, and not a single industry is set up in the country. We go on sending out raw materials; we go on being Europe’s small farmers who specialize in unfinished products. Fanon went on to write: The economic channels of the young state sink back inevitably into neo-colonialist lines. The national economy, formerly protected, is today literally controlled. The budget is balanced through loans and gifts, while every three or four months the chief ministers themselves or else their governmental delegations come to the erstwhile mother countries or elsewhere, fishing for capital. Yet Western imperialism maintains its firm grip on the economies of its erstwhile colonies through its domination of the production of knowledge. In “The Politics and Economics of Knowledge Production,” I cited the late Nigerian social scientist Claude Ake’s observation, in Social Science as Imperialism, that science in any society is apt to be geared to the interests and impregnated with the values of the ruling class which ultimately controls the conditions under which it is produced and consumed. He pointed out that the ruling class achieves this by financing research, setting national priorities, controlling the education system and the mass media, and in other ways. This explains why, for example, British colonial education in Africa taught the children of its victims that various Europeans “discovered” various places on our continent, as though our forefathers and foremothers were not living there before the foreign invaders showed up. It also accounts for the way in which many scholars in Africa take great pride in studying in the West, and/or having their books and journal articles published there. In the field of health and healing, the peoples of Africa are now largely subjected to Western neo-colonial medicine, as though they did not have their own systems of healing that responded to their climatic, demographic, social, and economic circumstances. This has been graphically illustrated during the Covid-19 crisis, when people are laughed out of town for suggesting that they have come up with therapeutics to manage the disease. Tragically, due to Western hegemony over knowledge production, many sons and daughters of Africa are now convinced that if a therapeutic or preventive innovation has not been approved by the WHO, it is useless for managing the infection. Even more regrettable is the fact that many scholars in Africa embrace Western narratives and interventions about Covid-19 without due reflection on our continent’s unique circumstances. Similarly, as George Ogola lamented at the height of Covid-19, the media in Africa was merely copying and pasting Covid-19 Western discourses instead of promoting context-specific African interventions. For example, Ogola asked: “…how can the African news media fail to point out the fallacy of state directives for people to work from home, with no prospects of any financial support when 85% of the population work in the informal sector?” The WHO’s Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the WHO’s IHR proceed from the false premise that disease burdens and thus public health priorities are uniform around the world. Yet it is a well-known fact in medical circles that even a single disease affects people in different parts of the world very differently due to factors such as the climate of a locale and the general age of the population in it, the availability of social services such as clean water and sanitation that promote overall well-being, and the economic status of the population. Consequently, the public health priorities of the wealthy countries of the so-called Global North cannot possibly be the same as those of countries of the so-called Global South decimated by centuries of slave trade, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. Indeed, in a 2021 article in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Global public health specialist and former medical officer at the World Health Organization Dr. David Bell and his colleagues illustrate that the impact of Covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa is significantly lower than in other parts of the world, while tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria continue to be major health challenges in the region. More specifically, they observe that deaths from each of these three diseases were much more than those from Covid-19 in all age groups younger than 65 years, and conclude: “…resource diversion to COVID-19 poses a high risk of increasing the overall disease burden and causing net harm, thereby further increasing global inequities in health and life expectancy.” Similarly, in January 2024, King’s College London’s African history Professor Toby Green took issue with the UNDP’s November 2023 claim that 50 million more people fell into extreme poverty due to Covid-19: This claim is not…borne out by Covid data. The African continent has registered fewer than 260,000 Covid deaths in three-and-a-half years, and over 100,000 have been in South Africa alone. On a continent where around 12 million people die every year, this is a 0.75% increase over 3 years; removing South Africa from the equation, this becomes a 0.25% increase. Even accounting for missed diagnoses, mortality impacts have been very low – which, given Africa’s population pyramid, was predicted by many in March 2020.So how can this negligible impact have ‘caused’ 50 million people to fall into extreme poverty, as stated by the UNDP? Policymakers need to assess other explanations for this catastrophe: principal among them is the impact of Covid lockdowns on the Global South, the harms of which were warned of by many as the pandemic began. Yet due to Western hegemony, the countries of Africa are now under intense pressure to sign up to the WHO’s Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the WHO’s IHR that jointly obligate them to divert a significant percentage of their meagre resources from diseases that decimate their populations to a global fund for “pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” – a manifest case of public health imperialism with its penchant for false universality. As Ben Kingsley and Molly Kingsley point out, “It must…be recognised that the purpose of the IHR amendment exercise has only ever been to expand the scope of the IHR’s and strengthen existing positions and powers; it has never been on the table to narrow the scope or powers that have been in force in various forms for decades, and most recently updated in 2005.” Conclusion In the 19th and 20th centuries, Western imperialism dispossessed the peoples of Africa of huge tracts of land through treaties that it made them sign under duress or deception. For example, the Anglo-Maasai treaties of 1904 and 1911 obligated the Maasai to relocate to reserves in Laikipia and Loita plains. In this way, the British colonisers moved the Maasai away from their own ancestral lands for exclusive occupation by European settlers. We the peoples of Africa must now guard our health sovereignty with all that we have against recolonisation by demanding that no international legal instrument violates our right to sovereignty in its multiple dimensions, public health included. In conclusion, I ask: Where is the public debate in Africa on the draft WHO Pandemic Treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations?How come there is deafening silence on the WHO’s draft Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations in sharp contrast to the media blitz in support of measures such as masks, lockdowns, and Covid-19 vaccine mandates?Are our journalists truly committed to promoting informed, balanced public discourses on public health, or are they beholden to the enslaving agenda of Big Pharma and Big Tech?Where are the scholars of Africa in diverse fields to interrogate the implications of the WHO’s draft Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations? POWERFUL — MUST WATCH: The Globalist System Is Collapsing In Real Time, Warns Bilderberg Expert Daniel Estulin

I fear we are only at the beginning of a long legal and political nightmare that has no good ending. A Manhattan jury’s decision to convict Donald Trump of falsifying business records to break federal election law is being heralded by The Usual Suspects as a moment in which “no one is above the law.” Indeed, both prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who brought the charges, and Judge Juan Merchan, who acted as a member of the prosecution, have proven that they themselves are above the law and can act well outside legal boundaries because no one will set boundaries for them. Beyond the hoopla and celebration by Democrats for this “victory” over their hated adversary, one suspects that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the verdict even after the appeals court and supreme court of New York State will surely uphold it. Should that happen – and I predict it will – then we will be treated to more political angst in which Democrats will claim that SCOTUS is illegitimate and nothing more than a Trump political ally willing to do his dirty work. Beyond the rhetoric, however, we need to understand what is happening and why we should expect this kind of thing to be a future norm in our body politic. When Bragg first indicted Trump a year ago April, I wrote that his actions were reminiscent of something done in banana republics where those in power find ways to jail or kill political rivals. The events afterward confirmed my fears, as Democratic prosecutors, both state and federal, have indicted Trump for various alleged offenses, all done in state and federal districts dominated by Democratic Party voters, almost guaranteeing juries that consist of mostly, if not all, Democrats. Before going further, I need to point out that nothing in this article is an endorsement of Donald Trump for office or even is an attempt to paint Trump as an innocent victim of Democratic Party dirty tricks. Trump has achieved something I would have thought impossible, and that is being the target of questionable criminal charges, yet still making himself appear to be an unsavory character. As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy has pointed out, Trump’s attorneys have been less-than-competent throughout the trial – and perhaps we should not be surprised. Despite Trump’s wealth, his overbearing personality and micromanagement style do not mesh with how good criminal defense attorneys like to present their cases. But to make matters worse, as McCarthy notes, Trump’s attorneys generally stood by while Judge Juan Merchan stacked the deck in favor of the prosecution:Save 40% on Ultimate Fish Oil today and improve your supplement routine & experience the world-renowned powerhouse formula! With Merchan’s help, and not much resistance from defense lawyers, Bragg’s team has shrewdly conflated two very different things: (1) the knowing and intentional burying of politically damaging information through NDAs (non-disclosure agreements), which is legal, and (2) the knowing and intentional flouting of FECA (Federal Election Campaign Act) regulations — which would be illegal if prosecutors could prove it, but of which there is no evidence against Trump. (Emphasis mine) The gist of the case was as follows: Bragg alleged that by arranging for Stormy Daniels to receive $130,000 in exchange for being quiet about her having sex with Trump (and these agreements are legal, as McCarthy has written), the way the payments were entered into his business records amounted to falsification of those records, which normally is a misdemeanor under New York State law. However, if that falsification is done to enable someone to break another law, then the falsification can be charged as a felony. However, one must be able to prove in a proper court of law that the other law actually was broken, and here is where the case falls apart. The law Bragg alleges was broken is federal law, and the Biden Department of Justice already decided not to prosecute Trump on that charge. A state court is NOT the proper jurisdiction to determine if a federal law was broken, as a state jury has no legal standing to decide on federal law. Thus, at best, a New York state jury can only express an opinion as to whether they believed Trump broke federal law, and an opinion is not proof. At the very least, the charges are unconstitutional, as they cobble together federal and state law into an unwieldy set of criminal charges. In other words, Alvin Bragg engaged in legally questionable behavior because he knew that no Democratic judge (and all judges in Manhattan are Democrats) would rule against him. In a recent column, David French of the New York Times, a staunch never-Trump writer, questioned the validity of the charges while simultaneously condemning Trump for his behavior. Wrote French: …the underlying legal theory supporting the prosecution’s case remains dubious. The facts may be clear, but the law is anything but — and that could very well mean that the jury convicts Trump before the election, an appeals court reverses the conviction after the election, and millions of Americans, many of them non-MAGA, face yet another crisis of confidence in American institutions. French, who also is an attorney, continued: Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.’s office, said that the case was “too risky under New York law” and noted that “no appellate court in New York has ever upheld (or rejected) this interpretation of the law.” Numerous legal analysts, including people who are no friends of Trump, have expressed grave reservations about the case, in large part because of the difficulty of linking the falsified records to an additional, separate crime. If Trump were convicted, French goes on, the aftermath would be bleak no matter what happened on appeal: To be clear, an untested legal theory is not the same thing as a weak or specious theory. If Trump is convicted, his conviction could well survive on appeal. The alternative, however, is dreadful. Imagine a scenario in which Trump is convicted at the trial, Biden condemns him as a felon and the Biden campaign runs ads mocking him as a convict. If Biden wins a narrow victory but then an appeals court tosses out the conviction, this case could well undermine faith in our democracy and the rule of law. He wrote further: But there are deeper issues at stake. Our court system does not exist to guarantee political results, no matter how much one might want Trump to lose the election. And defeating Trump with an assist from a criminal prosecution that falls apart on appeal would exacerbate the mistrust that helped make Trump president in the first place and sustains his hold on the Republican Party. (Emphasis mine) This is not the only case Democratic prosecutors have brought against Trump and given the political dynamics and the makeup of potential juries, Trump well could be convicted in any or all of those cases. Furthermore, by using the criminal courts as a pure political weapon, the Democrats have opened the proverbial Pandora’s Box, as Republican prosecutors may well retaliate against Democratic office holders. Even if SCOTUS were to overturn the New York guilty verdict, it cannot declare Trump not guilty, but only remand the case back to trial with new instructions and limitations. Given the political dynamics, one can see Bragg looking for other ways to bring criminal charges against Trump in never-ending legal warfare. I fear we are only at the beginning of a long legal and political nightmare that has no good ending. POWERFUL — MUST WATCH: The Globalist System Is Collapsing In Real Time, Warns Bilderberg Expert Daniel Estulin

One likely victim of such a conflict would be Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, which holds about 70% of the world market share. American-made weapons will soon be bound for Taiwan, American lawmakers are telling Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, sending shockwaves of uncertainty through electronics and metals markets this week. In a pointed “celebration” of Lai’s recent inauguration, Chinese military aircraft and warships have been conducting large-scale drills around the island. China considers Taiwan a strayed member of its territory and hasn’t ruled out the use of force to assert its claim. “China will surely be reunified,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his New Year’s address. “Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Michael McCaul, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Chairman, told Fox that the recent Chinese demonstrations are the most “provocative” yet. If China attacked Taiwan, McCaul predicted during his visit to the region, “it would make Iran shooting into Israel look like child’s play.” “I think right now, we will probably lose,” he said.Power up with Nitric Boost that’s now 40% OFF! This potent formula gives you the massive edge in strength and superior circulation for that unparalleled performance you've been looking for! One likely victim of such a conflict would be Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, which holds about 70% of the world market share. Total industry value is expected to set a record this year at $630 billion—but that could change if China invades Taiwan and, as McCaul warns, “the island doesn’t have the capacity to defend itself” or its industry. “Everybody that has phones, cars—we have advanced weapons systems—everything’s dependent on semiconductors and this island, over time, because we’ve offshored [manufacturing],” McCaul told Fox News Digital. “And the shutdown of what’s happening [in Taiwan], semiconductors, would really shut down the world.” Changes in the market for semiconductors mean changes in the market for many base metals, including silicon, germanium, and gallium, all of which are critical components for semiconductor manufacturing. Gold is also a key component of the production process because of its anti-tarnishing properties. With a semiconductor shortage could come other electronics shortages, squeezing markets for everything from refrigerators to cell phones to electric vehicles. There’s precedent for such a shakeup, which occurred during the semiconductor shortage of the COVID-19 pandemic—and back then, the economic pandemonium didn’t stop short at consumer electronics. “The recent semiconductor shortage isn’t some far-off issue—it affects everyday citizens around the globe,” the Council on Foreign Regulations reported last year. “Supply-chain challenges can yield price hikes for consumers and lost jobs for manufacturers. Companies laid off thousands of workers [during the COVID shortage] because the United States lacked chips.” Such a drop in semiconductor production might initially appear to signal a decrease in demand for component metals, like gold. That seems to be the market’s immediate intuition, as shown by mildly ebbing gold prices following the Chinese drills—but a major complicating factor is quickly becoming apparent. China, already one of the world’s largest gold consumers, is busy buying up the precious metal at record rates. The country’s aggressions toward Taiwan will likely continue to drive precious metal prices upward, signaling a second precious metals boom when coupled with the rising market uncertainty and inflation that inevitably follow conflict. “China is unquestionably driving the price of gold,” Ross Norman, chief executive of MetalsDaily.com, told the New York Times. “The flow of gold to China has gone from solid to an absolute torrent.” Some experts suggest the move to amass precious metal stores could signal preparation for larger Chinese military involvement in Taiwan and increasing avoidance of ties with the U.S. dollar, which may be sanctioned in response to Chinese aggression. In short: China is betting on gold, not the dollar. “There is absolutely no question that the timing and the sustained nature of [China’s gold] purchases are all part of a lesson that [the Chinese] have drawn from the Ukraine war,” Jonathan Eyal, associate director of the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, told the Telegraph. “The relentless purchases and the sheer quantity are clear signs that this is a political project which is prioritized by the leadership in Beijing because of what they see is a looming confrontation with the United States.” “If [China] get[s] much closer to bullying Taiwan and countries start to move their investments out of China, [the gold reserves] will give them a bit of padding to be able to ride through some of the difficulties,” added Sir Iain Duncan Smith, co-chair of the UK Interparliamentary Alliance on China. Meanwhile, the President has signed an aid package with $8 billion earmarked for Taiwan and the surrounding region, a move that aggravated US-China relations and will encourage economically painful sanctions on both sides. Such spending could also pull the trigger on domestic inflation, resulting in the continued weakening of the U.S. dollar even as the Chinese economy is strengthened by its gold reserves. This type of monetary policy is why some economists, including Danial Lacalle of the IE Business School in Madrid, are sounding alarm bells at governmental inflation employed as a “policy, not a coincidence.” In this environment, Lacalle warns, it’s a bad idea to bet on inflated currency when choosing investments. “Staying in cash is dangerous; accumulating government bonds is reckless; but rejecting gold is denying the reality of money,” Lacalle said. POWERFUL — MUST WATCH: The Globalist System Is Collapsing In Real Time, Warns Bilderberg Expert Daniel Estulin

'Anyone is at risk of a similar fate,' warns tech entrepreneur. Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk weighed in on Donald Trump’s sham kangaroo court trial Friday following the guilty verdict, blasting it for making a mockery of the US legal system. Responding to an X user pointing out past presidents committed more egregious crimes and didn’t face charges, Musk noted the precedent’s now been set for the government to target anyone politically. “Indeed, great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system,” the X owner wrote early Friday morning. Indeed, great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system.If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter – motivated by politics, rather than justice – then anyone is at risk of a similar fate. https://t.co/zrHCyIZazh— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2024 “If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter – motivated by politics, rather than justice – then anyone is at risk of a similar fate.”Get 40% OFF our flagship product DNA Force Plus now! Try it today and see why so many listeners have made it an essential part of their daily routine! Musk’s concern for the fate of the US legal system was shared by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, who dubbed the politicized Trump verdict “the end of the fairest justice system in the world.” “Import the Third World, become the Third World. That’s what we just saw,” Tucker wrote on X. Import the Third World, become the Third World. That’s what we just saw. This won’t stop Trump. He’ll win the election if he’s not killed first. But it does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world. Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your…— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 30, 2024 “This won’t stop Trump. He’ll win the election if he’s not killed first,” added the former Fox News host. “But it does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world.” “Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family,” he added. On Friday, Musk agreed to host a town hall on X featuring Donald Trump, and also for Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. This will be interesting https://t.co/UbcehLj9V2— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2024

"Officers collected a large knife with a sheath that was inscribed 'Hail Satan' that Sumpter had been carrying," police say A suspected burglar who was carrying a large knife and sheath inscribed with the words “Hail Satan” was shot by an armed homeowner in Texas this week, according to authorities. The disturbing incident unfolded at around 11:30 p.m. on Monday night in Taylor, a city in Williamson County. A homeowner notified the Taylor Police Department (TPD) that man brandishing a knife was attempting to force entry to the residence. While officers were en route, the suspect entered the home and was promptly shot. Authorities say they found the suspect “lying on the front porch with a single gunshot wound to his hip.”Power up with Nitric Boost that’s now 40% OFF! This potent formula gives you the massive edge in strength and superior circulation for that unparalleled performance you've been looking for! He was identified as 23-year-old Austin Sumpter, a resident of nearby Thrall. “Officers collected a large knife with a sheath that was inscribed ‘Hail Satan’ that Sumpter had been carrying,” TPD explained in a press release. Sumpter was taken to a local hospital for treatment, and upon his release on Wednesday, he was arrested and booked into Williamson County Jail. He was charged with Burglary of a Habitation with Commission, a second-degree felony. InfoWars has been documenting the surge of crime across the United States, including carjackings, ‘street takeovers,’ smash-and-grab loot mobs, home invasions, and physical attacks on innocent victims. Robert De Niro Runs From Angry New Yorkers Dan Lyman on X | Gab