• Autism: Meaning & Maneuvers
    Achieving First Principles Healing

    Dr. Syed Haider
    Fire and movement - Wikipedia
    So many more people are on the autism spectrum every passing day.

    Maybe all of us are.

    How would we even know what normal is, if no one left alive is really normal compared to our ancestors?

    For one thing people used to be able to put up with a great deal more pain and discomfort. Quite naturally: as they were just hardened to it by a lifetime of what we would now consider constant suffering. Even in third world countries today all manner of dental and surgical procedures are commonly done without anesthesia, even on children (I’ve experienced this first hand and it became quite clear that the experience of pain is complicated, involving physical, social and psychological factors like the expectation of pain by both the inflicter of some injury, that would in many situations lead to it, and the one experiencing, or not experiencing it).

    In addition to their tolerance for discomfort our ancestors could sit with rapt attention through multi-hour debates and speak spontaneously at a level not found outside classical literature, let alone any contemporary off-the-cuff speech.

    Now, we’ll come back to discomfort tolerance and communication in a moment, but first I would like to submit that there is a deeper meaning to everything that happens in accord with the ancient aphorism: as above, so below.

    as above, so below — Deep Living
    If we find a problem at one level, like the mental, the same problem will be reflected at every other level great or small: physical (biochemical, epigenetic, hormonal), emotional, psychological, energetic, spiritual, societal, etc.

    As Above, So Below | Microcosm and Macrocosm | Technology of the Heart
    I know it seems I’m all over the place, but bear with me. After briefly introducing autism, we’ll combine all these seemingly disparate ideas:

    Autistic children cannot deal with even the most innocuous seeming stimuli. They cannot interpret incoming signals appropriately and they cannot communicate back to the world at large.

    They are hypersensitive and at the same time shut away so deep inside such a thick shell that they can’t be reached, or reach anyone else.

    What’s the connection between these two seemingly opposing symptoms and what might it all mean?

    Since the Industrial Revolution all of us in advanced societies (much more likely to be affected by autism) have experienced a dramatic increase in comfort and security (the myriad services now available at the touch of a button put to shame the luxuries of ancient emperors) along with a corresponding rise in distaste for any discomfort leading to society-wide anesthetic, bandaid approaches to every discomfort or dis-ease.

    The problem with a bandaid for a festering wound is that the wound keeps festering, in fact it worsens over time.

    Anyway, getting back to autism, the key to understanding the link between the two signal symptoms of hypersensitivity and the inability to communicate, is that pain/discomfort is itself a message without which we cannot safely navigate the world - just ask any diabetic with numb feet about the immense degree of self-care and vigilance required to still have feet every year.

    PAIN MESSAGING

    Lack of pain receptors would rapidly lead to progressive dis-ease and death as you could not avoid what is harming you, in fact you wouldn’t even know if something was harming you.

    Pain is meant to communicate the danger of continuing to do what is causing the pain, because it is damaging you. The instinctive response to pain is to flinch away from it, to somehow put a stop to the source of pain.

    Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP) is a rare genetic disorder that illustrates the problem:

    “From an evolutionary perspective, one of the reasons scientists believe CIP is so rare is because so few individuals with the disorder reach adulthood. “We fear pain, but in developmental terms from being a child to being a young adult, pain is incredibly important to the process of learning how to modulate your physical activity without doing damage to your bodies, and in determining how much risk you take,” (Dr Ingo) Kurth (who studies CIP) explains.

    “Without the body’s natural warning mechanism, many with CIP exhibit self-destructive behaviour as children or young adults. Kurth tells the story of a young Pakistani boy who came to the attention of scientists through his reputation in his community as a street performer who walked on hot coals, and stuck knives in his arms without displaying any signs of pain. He later died in his early teens, after jumping from the roof of a house.

    ““Of the CIP patients I’ve worked with in the UK, so many of the males have killed themselves by their late 20s by doing ridiculously dangerous things, not restrained by pain,” says Geoff Woods, who researches pain at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. “Or they have such damaged joints that they are wheelchair-bound and end up committing suicide because they have no quality of life.””

    -The curse of the people who never feel pain, by David Cox


    CIP patient
    Modern industrialized people have become enabled to mirror CIP patients to a limited degree. We generally do not allow any pain or discomfort to arise without covering it up, or trying to (rather than dealing with the source itself).

    COMS DOWN

    Walk into any pharmacy and you’ll find bandaid remedies for: headaches, coughs, colds, rashes, pink eye, ear aches, reflux, allergies, tummy aches, constipation, diarrhea, period discomfort, and in the back, accessible only via prescription will be the bandaids applied to what comes of using the more accessible bandaids on the above laundry list of complaints: hypertension, heart disease, asthma, COPD, autoimmune diseases, cancer, etc.

    It only stands to reason we will experience some sort of negative consequences for interrupting the crucial, natural feedback loop of pain.

    The minor complaints most of us develop during childhood or shortly thereafter are just precursors to the more severe ones, the early warning signs if you will.

    Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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    And we don’t just paper over physical complaints but emotional, psychological, energetic and spiritual ones as well - all are covered up as soon as they arise. None are addressed at their deepest roots.

    Modern infrastructure and technology have allowed us to feel less and less of the natural world, to provide a greater and greater buffer between ourselves and our environments, both external and internal.

    As we’ve become accustomed to more and more comfort and convenience we have shied more and more away from any discomfort or inconvenience.

    Modern medicine does nothing so well as smother the bodies ability to communicate pain to us, at least for a time.

    Constant access to modern media and infrastructure in general (temperature control, pharmacies, restaurants, clubs, movie theaters, parks, so many things to buy and see and do to distract you) does nothing so well as allow us to smother our body’s, heart’s and mind’s abilities to communicate physical, emotional and mental/psychological pain to us, at least for a time.

    However, over time the pain not only comes back, but it comes back stronger and stronger yet again as it is constantly beaten back time and again, eventually overcoming our ability to muffle its message, or shifting to a new more painful message, in the form of some new more severe ailment.

    An “autism-lite” society is the outcome of a constant progression away from any experience of discomfort and the healthy communication it teaches.

    We are progressively more unable to withstand even the slightest discomforts and unable to communicate appropriately to the outside world in return because we are not used to listening to the feedback the world is sending us, including what’s coming from the other people in it.

    We are meant to be in communication with everything all the time.

    If it gets hot out our bodies respond by doing something that communicates to our brain to respond in some way to the environment at large: we feel the heat, we sweat, we seek shade, we rest more in the midday, we drink more. Those responses are a communication to the world and to ourselves. If the responses are natural and spontaneous we will be in a synchronized, healthy and balanced state. If unnatural or unnaturally automated (temperature control, or worse just ignoring how we feel) we will be out of sync, unhealthy, imbalanced.

    In the natural state if it gets dark, our entire physiology goes down with the sun and we sleep.

    If it gets light all our hormones rise with the sun and we wake up.

    If someone gets upset with us, we suffer emotional discomfort and address the way we interact with them that has led to their being upset, or if we’ve really done nothing wrong then assess and deal with why we feel guilty as though we have, or why we can’t stand up for ourselves as we should.

    The ability to communicate eloquently in so many ways is what makes us human.

    Speech is what separates us from the animals.

    Speech, like all communication is a two way street. If one way is always blocked the other way won’t properly develop.

    Even if only positive signals are accepted and not negative ones we’ll develop dysfunctional communication, but in practice numbing the negative also numbs the positive (one of the many unfortunate “side effects” of “anti-depressants”).

    When we can’t communicate properly we won’t be able to avoid harming ourselves in our “relationships” to everything in our environment since there will be no intact negative feedback system.

    And perhaps most importantly communication ability can continue to develop over time, regardless of age. We can always become more and more sensitive.

    When we start listening carefully and acting on what we learn, we will uncover deeper layers, learn more, and eventually develop subtle and not so subtle feedback loops that gently guide us away from what is harming us, and towards what benefits us.

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    Of course there’s also a lot going on mechanistically with autism, but maybe it all follows the same theme.

    Perhaps it all illustrates the idea that what’s present at one level is reflected at every other.

    Interestingly, the other things that naturopaths and functional medicine healers have noticed contribute to autism (and other modern chronic diseases) also disrupt a human beings incredibly complex, sophisticated, intricate, and oft-times delicate communications systems:

    Toxins like those found in vaccines, heavy metals, chronic infections/infestations, exogenous hormones, chemical laden water/air/food, light after dark, unnatural EMFs, inappropriate or excessive negative emotions and toxic relationships, etc.

    Also nutrient deficiencies of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, sleep, sunlight, positive emotions and beliefs, healthy intimacy, a connection with the earths bioelectrical fields, nature in general, etc.

    So, in the modern world, in a number of ways (physical, mental, emotional, energetic), we have quite successfully shut ourselves down from feeling anything real. We’ve metaphorically plugged our ears from hearing the increasingly frantic and emphatic communications from our own bodies belying their discomfort with a constant toxic barrage and chronic nutrient deficiencies.

    4,900+ Hands Covering Ears Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free ...
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    The louder the messages get the more mightily we mute them, increasing our medications, ruminations, dissipations (could ADHD, OCD, panic disorder and more actually be somewhere on the “spectrum” too?).

    In place of Nature’s messages we have shut her out and covered her up, while we injected and affected ourselves with all manner of unnatural, alien and unintelligible messages that our bodies, hearts, minds and souls were never meant to be exposed to and cannot properly interpret or respond to.

    At a deeper level perhaps our discomforts reveal our very selves. What makes you uncomfortable says something about who you are (there is a spiritual maxim that teaches other people are a mirror for you. What annoys you about them points to your own imperfections).

    Pain is the great teacher.

    Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Quote: “Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls
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    It teaches you about yourself and everything else.

    When I spent years covering up my headaches with painkillers I was little aware of why I got them, and had no pressing reason to figure it out.

    When I understood that pain is not bad, in fact it’s good, ie the headaches were there because my body was trying to protect me from harm, I swore off the painkillers and started to experience them without an easy out.

    I quickly came to understand many of the factors involved (hunger, stress, missed sleep, anger, constipation, etc) and was highly motivated to take care of them.

    I had struggled to control anger outbursts for years, but when I now finally made the connection that they often led to headaches that I just had to suffer my way through without a painkiller, the anger quickly became severely disincentivized and naturally began to dissipate.

    Similarly I became more careful about combining any of the factors involved in germinating headaches.

    Imagine my surprise when I later realized that NSAIDs like my goto high dose Motrin/ibuprofen actually contributed to two of my main triggers: anger and constipation (in addition to engendering in some people: depression, anxiety, paranoia, and psychosis. By the way in case you’re wondering, Tylenol is no better).

    Everything is connected: numbing yourself out physically numbs you out emotionally, but rather than leaving you numb your body tries to amplify the signal, the emotions break through even stronger than before, until you stop fighting them and let them out naturally and learn to live with them and deal with them in the moment.

    Of course no one’s perfect, least of all me. Sometimes I miss sleep, but if I do I better make sure I don’t also skip a meal and let myself get too stressed out or angry the next day. Maintaining a relatively healthy balance keeps the headaches at bay. And over time I have become more resilient. I rarely get headaches anymore and when I do they are much less severe than they used to be when I regularly medicated them (that drop in severity happened relatively fast too, within a few weeks).

    I went from being numbed out and stumbling through life harming myself at every turn, completely unaware of important negative feedback loops, to waking up and realizing what was happening.

    Syed Haider has entered the chat.

    I had finally joined the conversation.

    has entered the chat Memes & GIFs - Imgflip
    The world is speaking all the time and no one is listening.

    The utter extremity of our societal condition is the autist whose parents, society and industrialized world have transferred their communication dysfunctions at every level to one particularly sensitive to them and because of that their epigenetic, biophysical, biochemical, emotional, psychological, energetic and perhaps even spiritual planes are all incomunicado.

    They are not just “neurodivergent”, they haven’t just veered onto another course, they are missing from the map.

    It’s not the only way to go missing, we all go missing all the time: into our phones, laptops, TVs, food, other people, pharmaceuticals, street drugs, you name it we can use it to check out and so we do.

    We’re all a little bit autistic nowadays.

    Because everything, everywhere, all at once is involved in creating autism.

    And all of us are all too human after all (how many “alls” can one fit into a sentence or three?).

    But it’s also all just a matter of cause and effect.

    There’s nothing inherently mysterious about it. We can list out all the likely causes as I’ve done. Basically whatever has changed for the worst in the last 70 or so years.

    And so it can be fixed.

    Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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    EXITING THE MAZE

    It’s complicated, time consuming, difficult; it takes a lot of commitment from patients and caregivers, but the results are astounding, life-changing and so well worth it.

    Natural, comprehensive autism (and other severe chronic disease) treatment is now available at mygotodoc (patients will be able to choose to see either me or Hakim Shabaz for the consults, but we will both work together on every case).

    In the past we’ve made our asynchronous consults available without charge for anyone who needed them and couldn’t pay our already low fees (our prescription fees plus partner pharmacy fees, when combined, are always the lowest in the industry).

    But now, for the first time ever, our 1 on 1 consults for comprehensive natural healing will be done on a pay what you can basis. And they will be longer than any consults we’ve offered before at 2+ hours for the intake. Because that’s the only way to get to the bottom of things in highly customized care plans, and convince patients of what needs to be done.


    However it’s important to realize that regardless of ability to pay or not, deep healing is always quite dear compared to a cheap bandaid (then again bandaids don’t work, so it doesn’t matter how cheap they are).

    You always get what you pay for, even when you can’t pay, because everyone who wants an unusual, outstanding result has to sacrifice something dear in the end, whether or not that includes money, it will usually include time, habits, beliefs, plans, comforts and whatever it takes to divert some resources towards enabling the natural protocols (though much less than most would expect given the results).

    If you or someone you know has autism, it’s OK.

    Roll up your sleeves, check your assumptions at the door, be ready to work, and you’ll not only help yourself, you’ll help many others by your example.

    If you’re reading this, it’s not too late, in fact you’re just in time to join the party, and get to know yourself and everyone else in ways you didn’t think possible.

    “…we've been able to assist (many) autistic children in achieving sustainable, long-term improvements. Additionally, many others grappling with conditions like ADD, ADHD, and similar challenges (depression, anxiety, panic disorder, psychosis) have benefited from our approach…

    “However, there was one particular case where we couldn't achieve the desired outcome. This was primarily due to the parents' expectation of immediate results within a couple of months. Regrettably, they lost hope prematurely, compounded by the fact that the patient was a teenager. As the child gets older, the challenges in treatment tend to intensify.

    “It's crucial to recognize that as autistic children mature, the complexities of treatment tend to heighten. Hence, it becomes even more imperative to uphold patience and perseverance in our pursuit of solutions.”

    -Hakim Shabaz Ahmed

    I know this all may sound like philosophical mumbo jumbo, but it’s grounded in reality, and proven by practical experience.

    Autistic children are the canaries in the coal mine warning us where we are all headed if we don’t stop this runaway bullet train in its tracks.

    It can seem as though there’s no choice, but you can get off that train even if no one else does.

    Again, it’s important to stress that there is a cause and effect relationship in autism as in all diseases, and there are only so many possible causes.

    Whatever those causes are they can be removed and the body and brain will right themselves over time.

    Some of those causes, like the anger triggering my headaches, may seem inconsequential to some people and yet they may be the most important pressure points available to us in fixing the problem.

    Yogi Berra quote: Little things are big.
    source
    What may help illustrate the point is a remarkable study done in the Northeastern United States on a town that had half the incidence of heart disease compared to age matched controls in the rest of the country.

    Half the people who should have had heart disease had none, but there was nothing apparently different about them or their environment compared to the rest of the country at large.

    They smoked and drank and ate and worked too much, were overly stressed, overweight, had bad air, bad water, bad genes, you name it, they had it or did it.

    So Harvard went there to study them and discovered their one saving grace was a much higher level of emotional intimacy amongst friends and family.

    Enough real healthy intimacy in the heart disease free cohort entirely overrode the negative impacts of everything else.

    And it’s not just heart disease where this matters.

    The number of intimate relationships someone has is the single greatest predictor of their longevity.

    If intimacy can prevent death it can prevent anything else, whether we realize it or not.

    And we are in the midst of an intimacy crisis of epic proportions. Over half of mothers of young children are lonely. Nearly two thirds of young people say they are chronically lonely. Small screens and social media won’t fix this, after all they’re partly to blame for causing it.

    5 Tips on How to Combat Loneliness and Depression
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    When it comes to kids, they are far more sensitive in every way and they have not dissociated themselves from their environment and those in it to the degree adults have.

    They are on a gradual slide starting at birth, taking them from experiencing everything and everyone as interconnected parts of a whole, to experiencing themselves as separate autonomous beings (this begins between 6-9 months of age, but its not an off-on switch, it’s on a spectrum, black to shades of grey to white).

    This means that all children, including the autistic ones, have a much deeper psycho-emotional association with their caregivers, especially their biological parents.

    When their parents have problems in their own relationship the child experiences this as a problem within themselves and the most sensitive children will shut down to escape the overwhelming emotional pain caused by that seemingly external conflict.

    The same actually happens at the other end of life too, just in a different way.

    Dementia can be the ultimate escape from mental pain, which was shunted into physical pain for years, until that became overwhelming and unbearable and the body in it’s fight for self preservation then shuts down the mind to protect against the untenable situation and remain alive as long as possible in a kind of comatose state.

    Hakim Shabaz had treated an entire family for various problems and so they asked him to help their mother with dementia. He warned them that the dementia was likely what was keeping her alive, and removing it would uncover something else, that if not properly dealt with could kill her.

    They insisted on treatment and her dementia did improve, however she developed cancer which killed her shortly thereafter.

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    Not everyone is capable of facing their demons and doing what it takes to deeply heal.

    Children though are far often far more resilient than the elderly.

    Still, treating a serious, intricate and delicate disorder like autism requires really expert guidance that can put together a deeply customized protocol to fit each situation and then navigate rapidly changing circumstances as that protocol is put into effect.

    “Autistic children resemble a delicate (house) of cards – any disruption to one aspect can cause the entire structure to falter. It's akin to solving a puzzle, where adjusting one piece may inadvertently affect another. Providing sustainable, long-term solutions for these children requires a physician with extensive experience, one who has navigated through all stages of treatment.”

    -Hakim Shabaz Ahmed

    Children need close monitoring with ongoing mental, emotional and nutritional support as they age to prevent regression of symptoms due to their predisposition. Some of the deeper causes take a longer time to fully eliminate, eg epigenetic changes that have often been carried down at this point through multiple generations.

    There are many people promising parents help for their autistic children. But most focus on simple one size fits all protocols.

    It is so appealing to believe that there is an easy way out, like just removing mercury (despite the anecdotes describing sudden onset autism after a shot, removing the final straw that breaks the camels back won’t usually allow healing without addressing all the other straws and more, like rehab).

    Sometimes these simple straightforward approaches work, but not always and they don’t always lead to sustained improvements, because the entire modern environment is constantly pushing those susceptible back towards expressing autism.

    Not to say that there will always be an epic struggle to maintain improvement.

    The deeper the detox and more thorough the support, the longer the remission, the more inertia and resilience will develop. It gets harder and harder over time to push someones being back off balance.

    It’s hard to move a boulder at first, but once you get it rolling downhill it will pick up its own speed and eventually become nearly impossible to stop.

    Everyone has two choices when healing: they can try pushing the boulder uphill or downhill. Every simplistic solution is an uphill battle against implacable gravity.

    Perseverance. Symbol and sisyphus symbol as a determined snail pushing a boulder , #spon, #determined, #snail, #pushin… | Perseverance, Perseverance symbol, Prayers
    SIMPLE {{{SHOCK}}} THERAPY

    I interviewed someone once who had seen a child’s autism disappear suddenly after a painful physical trauma.

    He was amazed to discover other stories of spontaneous improvements in autistic children, even complete remissions, after unexpected physical traumas like car accidents.

    This led to a theory of the cause of autism: certain crucial neurological reflex loops linked to autism symptoms require post birth stimulation to fully develop. When they remain un-triggered by significant pain during and after relatively easy births, this might explain all the typical symptoms.

    The therapeutic idea stemming from his theory was that measured application of uncomfortable stimulation might trigger the development of the very missing reflex loops that autistic children require to function normally.

    Despite an interesting theoretical framework, I’m not aware of any clinics or practitioners that have put this theory into practice, so there isn’t much real world proof of the efficacy of the proposed “treatment”.

    It’s also unlikely to gain much acceptance in a culture like ours that is so opposed to discomfort in any form, not least of all because it hearkens back to uncomfortable episodes in medical history like shock treatments.

    To be perfectly clear I’m not advocating shock treatment or anything like it as a general approach for people with autism (again complex chronic diseases like autism require a deeply personalized approach rather than one-size-fits-all).

    Regardless, what it does remind me of personally is cold plunging.

    If you’ve never gotten into literally freezing water before, you’re in for a tremendous nervous system shock the first time you do it.

    Cold Water Immersion: A HOT Recovery Tool? | Biolayne
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    If you don’t jump right back out, but try to stay in, your entire body is screaming at you, you’re hyperventilating and your brain rather than being frozen, is on fire. Pain is assaulting you from everywhere all at once.

    Sometimes this shock therapy snaps people out of nervous system disorders rather quickly.

    I used it over the course of a couple months to end my own long COVID.

    But others tried and didn’t experience the same improvement or if they did they didn’t have lasting benefits.

    Shock therapy of various kinds do work sometimes, just like sometimes other things work: detoxing from heavy metals, treating Lyme and co-infections, resolving EBV, eliminating mold toxicity, balancing hormones and neurotransmitters, replacing missing nutrients, addressing methylation, rebalancing the microbiome, etc - all the functional medicine go-to’s could be listed out on a lengthy and quite expensive protocol document.

    I’ve seen people go through these step by step protocols, often involving hundreds of expensive tests and dozens of expensive supplements and radical lifestyle changes to boot. Many a time people do get better, often their problems seem to resolve, at least for a time.

    There is nothing inherently wrong with these approaches, but they are not always as fundamental or deep-rooted as people assume they are.

    TAP ROOTS

    Rarely do people address every level of their being that is contributing, and usually they miss out on the key emotional, psychological and deeper epigenetic/ancestral roots of their disease.

    “In my experience, the development of autism in children can stem from various (primary) factors. These include adverse epigenetic influences, the transfer of toxins and microbial burdens from the mother to the developing fetus, resulting in DNA alterations. Additionally, imbalances in neurotransmitters, the mental and emotional state of the mother during pregnancy, exposure to electromagnetic radiation, and a lack of interaction with nature all play significant roles.”

    “As the child grows, it becomes imperative to focus on teaching stress management, promoting healthy epigenetic expression, and addressing mental and emotional well-being. It's evident that the issue is far from straightforward, and simplistic solutions … are inadequate. Rather, a comprehensive approach that considers the multifaceted nature of ASD is essential for supporting individuals affected by the condition."

    -Hakim Shabaz Ahmed

    The subconscious mind and heart are usually more powerful instigators of illness than diet, physical toxins and infections (remember the heart disease and longevity examples).

    And as far as the mind goes, what we believe can make us healthy or unwell or even dead.

    In two studies the patients who believed themselves the healthiest had 6X lower chances of dying than those who believed themselves the least healthy.

    The even more shocking bit was that it didn’t matter what their own doctors believed about their health, only what they did.

    The patient’s belief trumped their doctor’s “knowledge”.

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    Another study was undertaken to understand the impact of belief on exercise outcomes.

    Hotel cleaners were split into two groups: one received counseling for half an hour on the importance and benefits of exercise, the second received a presentation of the same duration which explained to them that their daily cleaning activities for work met and exceeded the US Surgeon General’s recommendations for daily exercise.

    cleaning ladies.png
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    After a month the first group had not changed in any way.

    Neither had the second, at least not in anything they did: eg they didn’t change their exercise or eating habits.

    The only thing that had changed was what they believed about themselves.

    And that led to an average weight loss of half a pound a week (2 pounds over a month), smaller waist sizes and lower blood pressures in the second group.

    Without changing anything they did, they had lifted a nocebo effect, opposite of a placebo effect, that was entirely due to their underlying beliefs about themselves (eg I’m overweight/unhealthy since I don’t exercise) and their beliefs about the nature of reality (physical interventions are required for physical results).

    The Nocebo Effect Produces Physical Symptoms - The Pain PT
    The most powerful nocebo effects come from our own doctors, who really should be trying to placebo us, but they don’t know any better.

    The big shot with all the framed documents on the wall, the world expert on autism, will convince most people it can’t be cured.

    And yet all of us, somewhere deep inside, know this is not true, or maybe it’s just that hope spring’s eternal.

    And yet it is not a false hope. People have healed, and if they can do it so can you.

    TRUE AND FALSE

    “Maryam is doing well …

    “Her speech and comprehension is getting better. I'm actually able to have a 2 sided conversation with her. She has learned to give excuses for her actions, give reason for her behaviour, Communicate her needs. She is able to follow instructions. With some coercion she is also able to narrate incidents in bits and pieces and I can get the picture.

    “She is a lot more aware of her surroundings. Able to recall where things were kept.

    “She has become a lot more independent. Dress, bath, brush by herself. Now it's difficult for me to keep track of how many times she passes motion in a day, because she does it all by herself.”

    -Followup during treatment with Hiba A, mother of a recovering autistic daughter.

    False hope is what the pharmaceutical manufacturers peddle: feeding the perennial desire for an easy way out … there’s a pill to help and someday science will solve it.

    False perplexity is what the mainstream media peddles: that we just don’t know what’s causing it or how to fix it … at least not yet, it’s forever just around the corner, just out of reach.

    False despair is what the alternative media often peddles: that it’s all due to those shots you allowed, or the mercury in them, or a handful of other chemical toxins you can’t escape.

    The truth is that the stage is set by deeper influences that allow bit players like mercury to step in and meddle with a persons body and mind. Taking mercury out of the picture just allows another bit player to step into the same role. Taking out all those superficial actors, just allows another acting troupe to show up, because we have to survive in a toxic soup of chemicals, that’s just the way the world is: even in the deepest reaches of the Amazon jungle the toxic environmental chemicals have diffused their way there.

    But real solutions to real problems go deeper than that, and don’t necessarily depend for their efficacy on the complete elimination of superficial elements.

    Real solutions remove the stage itself so the play can’t go on.

    Life takes its place as you exit the darkened theater, blinded momentarily by the immediacy of the real world.

    The shock wears off soon enough and you get back to living.

    BEYOND HOLISTIC: FIRST PRINCIPLES HEALING

    Too often holistic health is not only not truly holistic, but also it’s parts are misapplied without a deep understanding of a patients context, or they’re not applied in the right sequence or they’re not delivered with deep wisdom springing from first principles and practical experiences that come not only from treating many patients successfully, but from realizing the underlying principles in the practitioners own life and health.

    This realization of underlying principles is not a destination, rather it’s an endless journey of physical, emotional, psychological, energetic, and spiritual progress.

    It takes a sage, a wise man, a Hakim (as they call them in the Greek medical tradition stemming from Hippocrates), to treat the whole person as they should be treated


    It takes a deep understanding of the source texts of all the great healing traditions and the ability to intuit what’s missing from them via sheer inspiration, allowing a reconstituting of what they truly were when their origin civilizations were ascendant.

    It takes a deep reverence for the inherent wisdom present inside each patient themselves, that is maneuvering around a punishingly toxic environment in order to save them from death or something worse.

    “My son encountered behavioral challenges, displaying traits associated with ADHD and autism. He faced difficulties with toilet training and exhibited highly challenging behaviors.

    “Despite receiving occupational therapy and speech therapy, his developmental progress was much below expectations.

    “Seeking further assistance, we consulted Dr. Shahbaz, who advised a strict dietary regimen, therapies and additional supplementation.

    “Remarkably, the implementation of this new regimen led to noticeable improvements. Within a month, my son achieved toilet training, and his behavioral issues began to diminish. After four months of following the regimen, his speech development showed significant progress.

    “Currently, he continues his therapies alongside the prescribed diet and regimen, and I'm thrilled to report that my son has made remarkable strides in closing the developmental gap.”

    -M. Majali, father of a recovering autistic child

    Pain is not your enemy, and neither is disease.

    Disease is both a message and a maneuver.

    The message is: get this junk out of your life, whatever it is.

    The maneuver is your body’s last ditch efforts to keep you as healthy as possible and ultimately to preserve your very life, no matter what, despite the pain and ongoing damage you’re exposed to.

    Your body is making the best of a very bad situation.

    Share

    Don’t blame your skin for hurting when you shove your hand in the fire, or burning if you leave it there.

    Don’t blame your reflexes for yanking your hand out of the fire.

    Blame the fire.

    Don’t just apply healing salves to your burning hand and a nerve bock to deaden your senses while leaving your hand to shrivel away in the flames.

    Put out the fire.

    It’s not easy, don’t believe anyone who says it is.

    But it is possible, so don’t believe anyone who says it isn’t.





    https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/decoding-autisms-meaning-and-maneuvers
    Autism: Meaning & Maneuvers Achieving First Principles Healing Dr. Syed Haider Fire and movement - Wikipedia So many more people are on the autism spectrum every passing day. Maybe all of us are. How would we even know what normal is, if no one left alive is really normal compared to our ancestors? For one thing people used to be able to put up with a great deal more pain and discomfort. Quite naturally: as they were just hardened to it by a lifetime of what we would now consider constant suffering. Even in third world countries today all manner of dental and surgical procedures are commonly done without anesthesia, even on children (I’ve experienced this first hand and it became quite clear that the experience of pain is complicated, involving physical, social and psychological factors like the expectation of pain by both the inflicter of some injury, that would in many situations lead to it, and the one experiencing, or not experiencing it). In addition to their tolerance for discomfort our ancestors could sit with rapt attention through multi-hour debates and speak spontaneously at a level not found outside classical literature, let alone any contemporary off-the-cuff speech. Now, we’ll come back to discomfort tolerance and communication in a moment, but first I would like to submit that there is a deeper meaning to everything that happens in accord with the ancient aphorism: as above, so below. as above, so below — Deep Living If we find a problem at one level, like the mental, the same problem will be reflected at every other level great or small: physical (biochemical, epigenetic, hormonal), emotional, psychological, energetic, spiritual, societal, etc. As Above, So Below | Microcosm and Macrocosm | Technology of the Heart I know it seems I’m all over the place, but bear with me. After briefly introducing autism, we’ll combine all these seemingly disparate ideas: Autistic children cannot deal with even the most innocuous seeming stimuli. They cannot interpret incoming signals appropriately and they cannot communicate back to the world at large. They are hypersensitive and at the same time shut away so deep inside such a thick shell that they can’t be reached, or reach anyone else. What’s the connection between these two seemingly opposing symptoms and what might it all mean? Since the Industrial Revolution all of us in advanced societies (much more likely to be affected by autism) have experienced a dramatic increase in comfort and security (the myriad services now available at the touch of a button put to shame the luxuries of ancient emperors) along with a corresponding rise in distaste for any discomfort leading to society-wide anesthetic, bandaid approaches to every discomfort or dis-ease. The problem with a bandaid for a festering wound is that the wound keeps festering, in fact it worsens over time. Anyway, getting back to autism, the key to understanding the link between the two signal symptoms of hypersensitivity and the inability to communicate, is that pain/discomfort is itself a message without which we cannot safely navigate the world - just ask any diabetic with numb feet about the immense degree of self-care and vigilance required to still have feet every year. PAIN MESSAGING Lack of pain receptors would rapidly lead to progressive dis-ease and death as you could not avoid what is harming you, in fact you wouldn’t even know if something was harming you. Pain is meant to communicate the danger of continuing to do what is causing the pain, because it is damaging you. The instinctive response to pain is to flinch away from it, to somehow put a stop to the source of pain. Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP) is a rare genetic disorder that illustrates the problem: “From an evolutionary perspective, one of the reasons scientists believe CIP is so rare is because so few individuals with the disorder reach adulthood. “We fear pain, but in developmental terms from being a child to being a young adult, pain is incredibly important to the process of learning how to modulate your physical activity without doing damage to your bodies, and in determining how much risk you take,” (Dr Ingo) Kurth (who studies CIP) explains. “Without the body’s natural warning mechanism, many with CIP exhibit self-destructive behaviour as children or young adults. Kurth tells the story of a young Pakistani boy who came to the attention of scientists through his reputation in his community as a street performer who walked on hot coals, and stuck knives in his arms without displaying any signs of pain. He later died in his early teens, after jumping from the roof of a house. ““Of the CIP patients I’ve worked with in the UK, so many of the males have killed themselves by their late 20s by doing ridiculously dangerous things, not restrained by pain,” says Geoff Woods, who researches pain at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. “Or they have such damaged joints that they are wheelchair-bound and end up committing suicide because they have no quality of life.”” -The curse of the people who never feel pain, by David Cox CIP patient Modern industrialized people have become enabled to mirror CIP patients to a limited degree. We generally do not allow any pain or discomfort to arise without covering it up, or trying to (rather than dealing with the source itself). COMS DOWN Walk into any pharmacy and you’ll find bandaid remedies for: headaches, coughs, colds, rashes, pink eye, ear aches, reflux, allergies, tummy aches, constipation, diarrhea, period discomfort, and in the back, accessible only via prescription will be the bandaids applied to what comes of using the more accessible bandaids on the above laundry list of complaints: hypertension, heart disease, asthma, COPD, autoimmune diseases, cancer, etc. It only stands to reason we will experience some sort of negative consequences for interrupting the crucial, natural feedback loop of pain. The minor complaints most of us develop during childhood or shortly thereafter are just precursors to the more severe ones, the early warning signs if you will. Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share And we don’t just paper over physical complaints but emotional, psychological, energetic and spiritual ones as well - all are covered up as soon as they arise. None are addressed at their deepest roots. Modern infrastructure and technology have allowed us to feel less and less of the natural world, to provide a greater and greater buffer between ourselves and our environments, both external and internal. As we’ve become accustomed to more and more comfort and convenience we have shied more and more away from any discomfort or inconvenience. Modern medicine does nothing so well as smother the bodies ability to communicate pain to us, at least for a time. Constant access to modern media and infrastructure in general (temperature control, pharmacies, restaurants, clubs, movie theaters, parks, so many things to buy and see and do to distract you) does nothing so well as allow us to smother our body’s, heart’s and mind’s abilities to communicate physical, emotional and mental/psychological pain to us, at least for a time. However, over time the pain not only comes back, but it comes back stronger and stronger yet again as it is constantly beaten back time and again, eventually overcoming our ability to muffle its message, or shifting to a new more painful message, in the form of some new more severe ailment. An “autism-lite” society is the outcome of a constant progression away from any experience of discomfort and the healthy communication it teaches. We are progressively more unable to withstand even the slightest discomforts and unable to communicate appropriately to the outside world in return because we are not used to listening to the feedback the world is sending us, including what’s coming from the other people in it. We are meant to be in communication with everything all the time. If it gets hot out our bodies respond by doing something that communicates to our brain to respond in some way to the environment at large: we feel the heat, we sweat, we seek shade, we rest more in the midday, we drink more. Those responses are a communication to the world and to ourselves. If the responses are natural and spontaneous we will be in a synchronized, healthy and balanced state. If unnatural or unnaturally automated (temperature control, or worse just ignoring how we feel) we will be out of sync, unhealthy, imbalanced. In the natural state if it gets dark, our entire physiology goes down with the sun and we sleep. If it gets light all our hormones rise with the sun and we wake up. If someone gets upset with us, we suffer emotional discomfort and address the way we interact with them that has led to their being upset, or if we’ve really done nothing wrong then assess and deal with why we feel guilty as though we have, or why we can’t stand up for ourselves as we should. The ability to communicate eloquently in so many ways is what makes us human. Speech is what separates us from the animals. Speech, like all communication is a two way street. If one way is always blocked the other way won’t properly develop. Even if only positive signals are accepted and not negative ones we’ll develop dysfunctional communication, but in practice numbing the negative also numbs the positive (one of the many unfortunate “side effects” of “anti-depressants”). When we can’t communicate properly we won’t be able to avoid harming ourselves in our “relationships” to everything in our environment since there will be no intact negative feedback system. And perhaps most importantly communication ability can continue to develop over time, regardless of age. We can always become more and more sensitive. When we start listening carefully and acting on what we learn, we will uncover deeper layers, learn more, and eventually develop subtle and not so subtle feedback loops that gently guide us away from what is harming us, and towards what benefits us. Share Of course there’s also a lot going on mechanistically with autism, but maybe it all follows the same theme. Perhaps it all illustrates the idea that what’s present at one level is reflected at every other. Interestingly, the other things that naturopaths and functional medicine healers have noticed contribute to autism (and other modern chronic diseases) also disrupt a human beings incredibly complex, sophisticated, intricate, and oft-times delicate communications systems: Toxins like those found in vaccines, heavy metals, chronic infections/infestations, exogenous hormones, chemical laden water/air/food, light after dark, unnatural EMFs, inappropriate or excessive negative emotions and toxic relationships, etc. Also nutrient deficiencies of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, sleep, sunlight, positive emotions and beliefs, healthy intimacy, a connection with the earths bioelectrical fields, nature in general, etc. So, in the modern world, in a number of ways (physical, mental, emotional, energetic), we have quite successfully shut ourselves down from feeling anything real. We’ve metaphorically plugged our ears from hearing the increasingly frantic and emphatic communications from our own bodies belying their discomfort with a constant toxic barrage and chronic nutrient deficiencies. 4,900+ Hands Covering Ears Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free ... source The louder the messages get the more mightily we mute them, increasing our medications, ruminations, dissipations (could ADHD, OCD, panic disorder and more actually be somewhere on the “spectrum” too?). In place of Nature’s messages we have shut her out and covered her up, while we injected and affected ourselves with all manner of unnatural, alien and unintelligible messages that our bodies, hearts, minds and souls were never meant to be exposed to and cannot properly interpret or respond to. At a deeper level perhaps our discomforts reveal our very selves. What makes you uncomfortable says something about who you are (there is a spiritual maxim that teaches other people are a mirror for you. What annoys you about them points to your own imperfections). Pain is the great teacher. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Quote: “Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls source It teaches you about yourself and everything else. When I spent years covering up my headaches with painkillers I was little aware of why I got them, and had no pressing reason to figure it out. When I understood that pain is not bad, in fact it’s good, ie the headaches were there because my body was trying to protect me from harm, I swore off the painkillers and started to experience them without an easy out. I quickly came to understand many of the factors involved (hunger, stress, missed sleep, anger, constipation, etc) and was highly motivated to take care of them. I had struggled to control anger outbursts for years, but when I now finally made the connection that they often led to headaches that I just had to suffer my way through without a painkiller, the anger quickly became severely disincentivized and naturally began to dissipate. Similarly I became more careful about combining any of the factors involved in germinating headaches. Imagine my surprise when I later realized that NSAIDs like my goto high dose Motrin/ibuprofen actually contributed to two of my main triggers: anger and constipation (in addition to engendering in some people: depression, anxiety, paranoia, and psychosis. By the way in case you’re wondering, Tylenol is no better). Everything is connected: numbing yourself out physically numbs you out emotionally, but rather than leaving you numb your body tries to amplify the signal, the emotions break through even stronger than before, until you stop fighting them and let them out naturally and learn to live with them and deal with them in the moment. Of course no one’s perfect, least of all me. Sometimes I miss sleep, but if I do I better make sure I don’t also skip a meal and let myself get too stressed out or angry the next day. Maintaining a relatively healthy balance keeps the headaches at bay. And over time I have become more resilient. I rarely get headaches anymore and when I do they are much less severe than they used to be when I regularly medicated them (that drop in severity happened relatively fast too, within a few weeks). I went from being numbed out and stumbling through life harming myself at every turn, completely unaware of important negative feedback loops, to waking up and realizing what was happening. Syed Haider has entered the chat. I had finally joined the conversation. has entered the chat Memes & GIFs - Imgflip The world is speaking all the time and no one is listening. The utter extremity of our societal condition is the autist whose parents, society and industrialized world have transferred their communication dysfunctions at every level to one particularly sensitive to them and because of that their epigenetic, biophysical, biochemical, emotional, psychological, energetic and perhaps even spiritual planes are all incomunicado. They are not just “neurodivergent”, they haven’t just veered onto another course, they are missing from the map. It’s not the only way to go missing, we all go missing all the time: into our phones, laptops, TVs, food, other people, pharmaceuticals, street drugs, you name it we can use it to check out and so we do. We’re all a little bit autistic nowadays. Because everything, everywhere, all at once is involved in creating autism. And all of us are all too human after all (how many “alls” can one fit into a sentence or three?). But it’s also all just a matter of cause and effect. There’s nothing inherently mysterious about it. We can list out all the likely causes as I’ve done. Basically whatever has changed for the worst in the last 70 or so years. And so it can be fixed. Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share EXITING THE MAZE It’s complicated, time consuming, difficult; it takes a lot of commitment from patients and caregivers, but the results are astounding, life-changing and so well worth it. Natural, comprehensive autism (and other severe chronic disease) treatment is now available at mygotodoc (patients will be able to choose to see either me or Hakim Shabaz for the consults, but we will both work together on every case). In the past we’ve made our asynchronous consults available without charge for anyone who needed them and couldn’t pay our already low fees (our prescription fees plus partner pharmacy fees, when combined, are always the lowest in the industry). But now, for the first time ever, our 1 on 1 consults for comprehensive natural healing will be done on a pay what you can basis. And they will be longer than any consults we’ve offered before at 2+ hours for the intake. Because that’s the only way to get to the bottom of things in highly customized care plans, and convince patients of what needs to be done. However it’s important to realize that regardless of ability to pay or not, deep healing is always quite dear compared to a cheap bandaid (then again bandaids don’t work, so it doesn’t matter how cheap they are). You always get what you pay for, even when you can’t pay, because everyone who wants an unusual, outstanding result has to sacrifice something dear in the end, whether or not that includes money, it will usually include time, habits, beliefs, plans, comforts and whatever it takes to divert some resources towards enabling the natural protocols (though much less than most would expect given the results). If you or someone you know has autism, it’s OK. Roll up your sleeves, check your assumptions at the door, be ready to work, and you’ll not only help yourself, you’ll help many others by your example. If you’re reading this, it’s not too late, in fact you’re just in time to join the party, and get to know yourself and everyone else in ways you didn’t think possible. “…we've been able to assist (many) autistic children in achieving sustainable, long-term improvements. Additionally, many others grappling with conditions like ADD, ADHD, and similar challenges (depression, anxiety, panic disorder, psychosis) have benefited from our approach… “However, there was one particular case where we couldn't achieve the desired outcome. This was primarily due to the parents' expectation of immediate results within a couple of months. Regrettably, they lost hope prematurely, compounded by the fact that the patient was a teenager. As the child gets older, the challenges in treatment tend to intensify. “It's crucial to recognize that as autistic children mature, the complexities of treatment tend to heighten. Hence, it becomes even more imperative to uphold patience and perseverance in our pursuit of solutions.” -Hakim Shabaz Ahmed I know this all may sound like philosophical mumbo jumbo, but it’s grounded in reality, and proven by practical experience. Autistic children are the canaries in the coal mine warning us where we are all headed if we don’t stop this runaway bullet train in its tracks. It can seem as though there’s no choice, but you can get off that train even if no one else does. Again, it’s important to stress that there is a cause and effect relationship in autism as in all diseases, and there are only so many possible causes. Whatever those causes are they can be removed and the body and brain will right themselves over time. Some of those causes, like the anger triggering my headaches, may seem inconsequential to some people and yet they may be the most important pressure points available to us in fixing the problem. Yogi Berra quote: Little things are big. source What may help illustrate the point is a remarkable study done in the Northeastern United States on a town that had half the incidence of heart disease compared to age matched controls in the rest of the country. Half the people who should have had heart disease had none, but there was nothing apparently different about them or their environment compared to the rest of the country at large. They smoked and drank and ate and worked too much, were overly stressed, overweight, had bad air, bad water, bad genes, you name it, they had it or did it. So Harvard went there to study them and discovered their one saving grace was a much higher level of emotional intimacy amongst friends and family. Enough real healthy intimacy in the heart disease free cohort entirely overrode the negative impacts of everything else. And it’s not just heart disease where this matters. The number of intimate relationships someone has is the single greatest predictor of their longevity. If intimacy can prevent death it can prevent anything else, whether we realize it or not. And we are in the midst of an intimacy crisis of epic proportions. Over half of mothers of young children are lonely. Nearly two thirds of young people say they are chronically lonely. Small screens and social media won’t fix this, after all they’re partly to blame for causing it. 5 Tips on How to Combat Loneliness and Depression source When it comes to kids, they are far more sensitive in every way and they have not dissociated themselves from their environment and those in it to the degree adults have. They are on a gradual slide starting at birth, taking them from experiencing everything and everyone as interconnected parts of a whole, to experiencing themselves as separate autonomous beings (this begins between 6-9 months of age, but its not an off-on switch, it’s on a spectrum, black to shades of grey to white). This means that all children, including the autistic ones, have a much deeper psycho-emotional association with their caregivers, especially their biological parents. When their parents have problems in their own relationship the child experiences this as a problem within themselves and the most sensitive children will shut down to escape the overwhelming emotional pain caused by that seemingly external conflict. The same actually happens at the other end of life too, just in a different way. Dementia can be the ultimate escape from mental pain, which was shunted into physical pain for years, until that became overwhelming and unbearable and the body in it’s fight for self preservation then shuts down the mind to protect against the untenable situation and remain alive as long as possible in a kind of comatose state. Hakim Shabaz had treated an entire family for various problems and so they asked him to help their mother with dementia. He warned them that the dementia was likely what was keeping her alive, and removing it would uncover something else, that if not properly dealt with could kill her. They insisted on treatment and her dementia did improve, however she developed cancer which killed her shortly thereafter. Share Not everyone is capable of facing their demons and doing what it takes to deeply heal. Children though are far often far more resilient than the elderly. Still, treating a serious, intricate and delicate disorder like autism requires really expert guidance that can put together a deeply customized protocol to fit each situation and then navigate rapidly changing circumstances as that protocol is put into effect. “Autistic children resemble a delicate (house) of cards – any disruption to one aspect can cause the entire structure to falter. It's akin to solving a puzzle, where adjusting one piece may inadvertently affect another. Providing sustainable, long-term solutions for these children requires a physician with extensive experience, one who has navigated through all stages of treatment.” -Hakim Shabaz Ahmed Children need close monitoring with ongoing mental, emotional and nutritional support as they age to prevent regression of symptoms due to their predisposition. Some of the deeper causes take a longer time to fully eliminate, eg epigenetic changes that have often been carried down at this point through multiple generations. There are many people promising parents help for their autistic children. But most focus on simple one size fits all protocols. It is so appealing to believe that there is an easy way out, like just removing mercury (despite the anecdotes describing sudden onset autism after a shot, removing the final straw that breaks the camels back won’t usually allow healing without addressing all the other straws and more, like rehab). Sometimes these simple straightforward approaches work, but not always and they don’t always lead to sustained improvements, because the entire modern environment is constantly pushing those susceptible back towards expressing autism. Not to say that there will always be an epic struggle to maintain improvement. The deeper the detox and more thorough the support, the longer the remission, the more inertia and resilience will develop. It gets harder and harder over time to push someones being back off balance. It’s hard to move a boulder at first, but once you get it rolling downhill it will pick up its own speed and eventually become nearly impossible to stop. Everyone has two choices when healing: they can try pushing the boulder uphill or downhill. Every simplistic solution is an uphill battle against implacable gravity. Perseverance. Symbol and sisyphus symbol as a determined snail pushing a boulder , #spon, #determined, #snail, #pushin… | Perseverance, Perseverance symbol, Prayers SIMPLE {{{SHOCK}}} THERAPY I interviewed someone once who had seen a child’s autism disappear suddenly after a painful physical trauma. He was amazed to discover other stories of spontaneous improvements in autistic children, even complete remissions, after unexpected physical traumas like car accidents. This led to a theory of the cause of autism: certain crucial neurological reflex loops linked to autism symptoms require post birth stimulation to fully develop. When they remain un-triggered by significant pain during and after relatively easy births, this might explain all the typical symptoms. The therapeutic idea stemming from his theory was that measured application of uncomfortable stimulation might trigger the development of the very missing reflex loops that autistic children require to function normally. Despite an interesting theoretical framework, I’m not aware of any clinics or practitioners that have put this theory into practice, so there isn’t much real world proof of the efficacy of the proposed “treatment”. It’s also unlikely to gain much acceptance in a culture like ours that is so opposed to discomfort in any form, not least of all because it hearkens back to uncomfortable episodes in medical history like shock treatments. To be perfectly clear I’m not advocating shock treatment or anything like it as a general approach for people with autism (again complex chronic diseases like autism require a deeply personalized approach rather than one-size-fits-all). Regardless, what it does remind me of personally is cold plunging. If you’ve never gotten into literally freezing water before, you’re in for a tremendous nervous system shock the first time you do it. Cold Water Immersion: A HOT Recovery Tool? | Biolayne source If you don’t jump right back out, but try to stay in, your entire body is screaming at you, you’re hyperventilating and your brain rather than being frozen, is on fire. Pain is assaulting you from everywhere all at once. Sometimes this shock therapy snaps people out of nervous system disorders rather quickly. I used it over the course of a couple months to end my own long COVID. But others tried and didn’t experience the same improvement or if they did they didn’t have lasting benefits. Shock therapy of various kinds do work sometimes, just like sometimes other things work: detoxing from heavy metals, treating Lyme and co-infections, resolving EBV, eliminating mold toxicity, balancing hormones and neurotransmitters, replacing missing nutrients, addressing methylation, rebalancing the microbiome, etc - all the functional medicine go-to’s could be listed out on a lengthy and quite expensive protocol document. I’ve seen people go through these step by step protocols, often involving hundreds of expensive tests and dozens of expensive supplements and radical lifestyle changes to boot. Many a time people do get better, often their problems seem to resolve, at least for a time. There is nothing inherently wrong with these approaches, but they are not always as fundamental or deep-rooted as people assume they are. TAP ROOTS Rarely do people address every level of their being that is contributing, and usually they miss out on the key emotional, psychological and deeper epigenetic/ancestral roots of their disease. “In my experience, the development of autism in children can stem from various (primary) factors. These include adverse epigenetic influences, the transfer of toxins and microbial burdens from the mother to the developing fetus, resulting in DNA alterations. Additionally, imbalances in neurotransmitters, the mental and emotional state of the mother during pregnancy, exposure to electromagnetic radiation, and a lack of interaction with nature all play significant roles.” “As the child grows, it becomes imperative to focus on teaching stress management, promoting healthy epigenetic expression, and addressing mental and emotional well-being. It's evident that the issue is far from straightforward, and simplistic solutions … are inadequate. Rather, a comprehensive approach that considers the multifaceted nature of ASD is essential for supporting individuals affected by the condition." -Hakim Shabaz Ahmed The subconscious mind and heart are usually more powerful instigators of illness than diet, physical toxins and infections (remember the heart disease and longevity examples). And as far as the mind goes, what we believe can make us healthy or unwell or even dead. In two studies the patients who believed themselves the healthiest had 6X lower chances of dying than those who believed themselves the least healthy. The even more shocking bit was that it didn’t matter what their own doctors believed about their health, only what they did. The patient’s belief trumped their doctor’s “knowledge”. Share Another study was undertaken to understand the impact of belief on exercise outcomes. Hotel cleaners were split into two groups: one received counseling for half an hour on the importance and benefits of exercise, the second received a presentation of the same duration which explained to them that their daily cleaning activities for work met and exceeded the US Surgeon General’s recommendations for daily exercise. cleaning ladies.png source After a month the first group had not changed in any way. Neither had the second, at least not in anything they did: eg they didn’t change their exercise or eating habits. The only thing that had changed was what they believed about themselves. And that led to an average weight loss of half a pound a week (2 pounds over a month), smaller waist sizes and lower blood pressures in the second group. Without changing anything they did, they had lifted a nocebo effect, opposite of a placebo effect, that was entirely due to their underlying beliefs about themselves (eg I’m overweight/unhealthy since I don’t exercise) and their beliefs about the nature of reality (physical interventions are required for physical results). The Nocebo Effect Produces Physical Symptoms - The Pain PT The most powerful nocebo effects come from our own doctors, who really should be trying to placebo us, but they don’t know any better. The big shot with all the framed documents on the wall, the world expert on autism, will convince most people it can’t be cured. And yet all of us, somewhere deep inside, know this is not true, or maybe it’s just that hope spring’s eternal. And yet it is not a false hope. People have healed, and if they can do it so can you. TRUE AND FALSE “Maryam is doing well … “Her speech and comprehension is getting better. I'm actually able to have a 2 sided conversation with her. She has learned to give excuses for her actions, give reason for her behaviour, Communicate her needs. She is able to follow instructions. With some coercion she is also able to narrate incidents in bits and pieces and I can get the picture. “She is a lot more aware of her surroundings. Able to recall where things were kept. “She has become a lot more independent. Dress, bath, brush by herself. Now it's difficult for me to keep track of how many times she passes motion in a day, because she does it all by herself.” -Followup during treatment with Hiba A, mother of a recovering autistic daughter. False hope is what the pharmaceutical manufacturers peddle: feeding the perennial desire for an easy way out … there’s a pill to help and someday science will solve it. False perplexity is what the mainstream media peddles: that we just don’t know what’s causing it or how to fix it … at least not yet, it’s forever just around the corner, just out of reach. False despair is what the alternative media often peddles: that it’s all due to those shots you allowed, or the mercury in them, or a handful of other chemical toxins you can’t escape. The truth is that the stage is set by deeper influences that allow bit players like mercury to step in and meddle with a persons body and mind. Taking mercury out of the picture just allows another bit player to step into the same role. Taking out all those superficial actors, just allows another acting troupe to show up, because we have to survive in a toxic soup of chemicals, that’s just the way the world is: even in the deepest reaches of the Amazon jungle the toxic environmental chemicals have diffused their way there. But real solutions to real problems go deeper than that, and don’t necessarily depend for their efficacy on the complete elimination of superficial elements. Real solutions remove the stage itself so the play can’t go on. Life takes its place as you exit the darkened theater, blinded momentarily by the immediacy of the real world. The shock wears off soon enough and you get back to living. BEYOND HOLISTIC: FIRST PRINCIPLES HEALING Too often holistic health is not only not truly holistic, but also it’s parts are misapplied without a deep understanding of a patients context, or they’re not applied in the right sequence or they’re not delivered with deep wisdom springing from first principles and practical experiences that come not only from treating many patients successfully, but from realizing the underlying principles in the practitioners own life and health. This realization of underlying principles is not a destination, rather it’s an endless journey of physical, emotional, psychological, energetic, and spiritual progress. It takes a sage, a wise man, a Hakim (as they call them in the Greek medical tradition stemming from Hippocrates), to treat the whole person as they should be treated It takes a deep understanding of the source texts of all the great healing traditions and the ability to intuit what’s missing from them via sheer inspiration, allowing a reconstituting of what they truly were when their origin civilizations were ascendant. It takes a deep reverence for the inherent wisdom present inside each patient themselves, that is maneuvering around a punishingly toxic environment in order to save them from death or something worse. “My son encountered behavioral challenges, displaying traits associated with ADHD and autism. He faced difficulties with toilet training and exhibited highly challenging behaviors. “Despite receiving occupational therapy and speech therapy, his developmental progress was much below expectations. “Seeking further assistance, we consulted Dr. Shahbaz, who advised a strict dietary regimen, therapies and additional supplementation. “Remarkably, the implementation of this new regimen led to noticeable improvements. Within a month, my son achieved toilet training, and his behavioral issues began to diminish. After four months of following the regimen, his speech development showed significant progress. “Currently, he continues his therapies alongside the prescribed diet and regimen, and I'm thrilled to report that my son has made remarkable strides in closing the developmental gap.” -M. Majali, father of a recovering autistic child Pain is not your enemy, and neither is disease. Disease is both a message and a maneuver. The message is: get this junk out of your life, whatever it is. The maneuver is your body’s last ditch efforts to keep you as healthy as possible and ultimately to preserve your very life, no matter what, despite the pain and ongoing damage you’re exposed to. Your body is making the best of a very bad situation. Share Don’t blame your skin for hurting when you shove your hand in the fire, or burning if you leave it there. Don’t blame your reflexes for yanking your hand out of the fire. Blame the fire. Don’t just apply healing salves to your burning hand and a nerve bock to deaden your senses while leaving your hand to shrivel away in the flames. Put out the fire. It’s not easy, don’t believe anyone who says it is. But it is possible, so don’t believe anyone who says it isn’t. https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/decoding-autisms-meaning-and-maneuvers
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    A few decades ago, the internet was being introduced and people’s lives changed forever. Now people are saying that the metaverse is the new internet, which means you need to get involved and learn everything you can.

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    3 Key Aspects of the Metaverse: Presence, Interoperability, and Standardization

    4 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Workplace

    5 Companies Investing in the Metaverse

    5 Real-Life Examples of the Metaverse

    A Brief History of the Metaverse

    Should I be Worried About the Metaverse?

    The Metaverse and Medicine

    Top 3 Things to Understand About the Metaverse

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    Understanding the Relationship Between the Metaverse, Crypto, and NFTs

    You will get a ZIP (224MB) file

    $ 5.00

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    Metaverse Made Simple Video Course Whether you have your own business or you work for someone else, the metaverse can make it easier to communicate employee requirements and to make schedules that are easier for everyone to learn and follow. Zoom is getting tiring for many people, so VR and AR are better alternative solutions for those who continue to work online but need a better work-life balance. A few decades ago, the internet was being introduced and people’s lives changed forever. Now people are saying that the metaverse is the new internet, which means you need to get involved and learn everything you can. With this video course you will learn what is the metaverse, why it matters for the future, and how to harness its power. Topics covered: 3 Key Aspects of the Metaverse: Presence, Interoperability, and Standardization 4 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Workplace 5 Companies Investing in the Metaverse 5 Real-Life Examples of the Metaverse A Brief History of the Metaverse Should I be Worried About the Metaverse? The Metaverse and Medicine Top 3 Things to Understand About the Metaverse Top 5 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Future Understanding the Relationship Between the Metaverse, Crypto, and NFTs You will get a ZIP (224MB) file $ 5.00 or
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  • Metaverse Made Simple Video Course
    https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx
    Whether you have your own business or you work for someone else, the metaverse can make it easier to communicate employee requirements and to make schedules that are easier for everyone to learn and follow.

    Zoom is getting tiring for many people, so VR and AR are better alternative solutions for those who continue to work online but need a better work-life balance.

    A few decades ago, the internet was being introduced and people’s lives changed forever. Now people are saying that the metaverse is the new internet, which means you need to get involved and learn everything you can.

    With this video course you will learn what is the metaverse, why it matters for the future, and how to harness its power.

    Topics covered:https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx

    3 Key Aspects of the Metaverse: Presence, Interoperability, and Standardization

    4 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Workplace

    5 Companies Investing in the Metaverse

    5 Real-Life Examples of the Metaverse

    A Brief History of the Metaverse

    Should I be Worried About the Metaverse?

    The Metaverse and Medicine

    Top 3 Things to Understand About the Metaverse

    Top 5 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Future

    Understanding the Relationship Between the Metaverse, Crypto, and NFTs

    You will get a ZIP (224MB) file
    https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx
    #powerpointpresentation #ppt #viral #online #Presentation
    Metaverse Made Simple Video Course https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx Whether you have your own business or you work for someone else, the metaverse can make it easier to communicate employee requirements and to make schedules that are easier for everyone to learn and follow. Zoom is getting tiring for many people, so VR and AR are better alternative solutions for those who continue to work online but need a better work-life balance. A few decades ago, the internet was being introduced and people’s lives changed forever. Now people are saying that the metaverse is the new internet, which means you need to get involved and learn everything you can. With this video course you will learn what is the metaverse, why it matters for the future, and how to harness its power. Topics covered:https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx 3 Key Aspects of the Metaverse: Presence, Interoperability, and Standardization 4 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Workplace 5 Companies Investing in the Metaverse 5 Real-Life Examples of the Metaverse A Brief History of the Metaverse Should I be Worried About the Metaverse? The Metaverse and Medicine Top 3 Things to Understand About the Metaverse Top 5 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Future Understanding the Relationship Between the Metaverse, Crypto, and NFTs You will get a ZIP (224MB) file https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx #powerpointpresentation #ppt #viral #online #Presentation
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  • Metaverse Made Simple Video Course
    https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx
    Whether you have your own business or you work for someone else, the metaverse can make it easier to communicate employee requirements and to make schedules that are easier for everyone to learn and follow.

    Zoom is getting tiring for many people, so VR and AR are better alternative solutions for those who continue to work online but need a better work-life balance.

    A few decades ago, the internet was being introduced and people’s lives changed forever. Now people are saying that the metaverse is the new internet, which means you need to get involved and learn everything you can.

    With this video course you will learn what is the metaverse, why it matters for the future, and how to harness its power.

    Topics covered:https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx

    3 Key Aspects of the Metaverse: Presence, Interoperability, and Standardization

    4 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Workplace

    5 Companies Investing in the Metaverse

    5 Real-Life Examples of the Metaverse

    A Brief History of the Metaverse

    Should I be Worried About the Metaverse?

    The Metaverse and Medicine

    Top 3 Things to Understand About the Metaverse

    Top 5 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Future

    Understanding the Relationship Between the Metaverse, Crypto, and NFTs

    You will get a ZIP (224MB) file
    https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx
    #powerpointpresentation #ppt #viral #online #Presentation
    Metaverse Made Simple Video Course https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx Whether you have your own business or you work for someone else, the metaverse can make it easier to communicate employee requirements and to make schedules that are easier for everyone to learn and follow. Zoom is getting tiring for many people, so VR and AR are better alternative solutions for those who continue to work online but need a better work-life balance. A few decades ago, the internet was being introduced and people’s lives changed forever. Now people are saying that the metaverse is the new internet, which means you need to get involved and learn everything you can. With this video course you will learn what is the metaverse, why it matters for the future, and how to harness its power. Topics covered:https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx 3 Key Aspects of the Metaverse: Presence, Interoperability, and Standardization 4 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Workplace 5 Companies Investing in the Metaverse 5 Real-Life Examples of the Metaverse A Brief History of the Metaverse Should I be Worried About the Metaverse? The Metaverse and Medicine Top 3 Things to Understand About the Metaverse Top 5 Ways the Metaverse Will Change the Future Understanding the Relationship Between the Metaverse, Crypto, and NFTs You will get a ZIP (224MB) file https://payhip.com/b/CHdfx #powerpointpresentation #ppt #viral #online #Presentation
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  • The National Jazz Solo Competition Finals at The U.S. Army Band 2024 American Trombone Workshop featured TJ Pitchford, Pablo Muller Santiago, and Estes Cantarero-George in Division I. #UofSC #GamecockNation #GamecockMusic #Gamecocks #ForeverToThee #MSUSpartans #MSU #GoGreen #ManhattanSchoolOfMusic #MSM #JazzTrombone #Jazz #Trombone #ATW2024 #ATW #Music
    The National Jazz Solo Competition Finals at The U.S. Army Band 2024 American Trombone Workshop featured TJ Pitchford, Pablo Muller Santiago, and Estes Cantarero-George in Division I. #UofSC #GamecockNation #GamecockMusic #Gamecocks #ForeverToThee #MSUSpartans #MSU #GoGreen #ManhattanSchoolOfMusic #MSM #JazzTrombone #Jazz #Trombone #ATW2024 #ATW #Music
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  • https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/the-forever-war-against-the-forever
    https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/the-forever-war-against-the-forever
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  • More Proof mRNA Shots Edit Human Genome
    New Study Again Shows LINE-1 "Junk DNA" Does The Dirty Work

    Dr. Syed Haider
    Could the mRNA shots edit germline DNA?
    Honest scientists have always been worried about retrointegration of foreign mRNA from “vaccine” shots into our own cellular DNA.

    This fear should have been allayed by rigorous genotoxicity safety studies before the mRNA shots where rolled out, but those studies were waived by the Big Pharma controlled FDA (with the DoD behind the scenes pulling all the strings).

    Previous research showed that this could theoretically occur in a human liver cancer cell line inside a controlled laboratory setting utilizing our own bodies reverse transcriptase enzymes that are upregulated in cancer cells.

    Naysayers still argued that this situation was impossible or at least extremely unlikely to occur in our bodies.

    Unfortunately there is now further proof that this really does occur, either right away after vaccination, or if not, then it’s even more likely to occur once a vaccinated individual catches COVID-19, as long as vaccinal mRNA remains present in the body (so far we know it remains in circulation for weeks and in the lymph nodes for months - likely far longer, since all the studies had to be stopped, presumably due to lack of funding, or out of fear of creating unpublishable papers since the news wasn’t looking good).

    Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

    Share

    A new paper by Zhang et al, just released on Feb 13, 2023 proves that at artificially high concentrations in a lab setting, the SARS-CoV-2 virus can retrointegrate into our genome.

    Thankfully during natural infection such high levels of viral RNA do not typically occur, but … (you knew there had to be a “but”)

    … such high levels are induced by mRNA vaccination.

    So what the paper may actually prove in the roundabout way of most modern research (required for publication to ever happen in todays politically charged Big Pharma controlled publishing environment) is that the mRNA in the shots is in fact likely to retrointegrate into our cellular DNA.

    To dig into the details we need to start with a quick basic bio refresher:

    Understanding Genetics
    Nearly every cell in our bodies carries a full copy of our genetic code, or genome (the exceptions are red blood cells that have no genome, and sperm and egg cells that have half a genome since they are meant to combine with half of someone else's genome).

    Our genome is made up of individual genes encoded by DNA and bundled together into 46 chromosomes that are stored in a central compartment of our cells called the nucleus.

    In order to “read" the DNA code and convert it into the structure that makes up our bodies, it is first translated by a “reader” protein that writes it out into a new free floating molecule called mRNA for messenger RNA (the mRNA shots carry this messenger RNA, not modified RNA as some people think).

    The mRNA, unlike the DNA is not stuck inside the chromosome and it can exit the nucleus, going into the larger compartment called the cytoplasm of the cell, where its message is “read” and translated into an amino acid sequence that folds itself into a protein (either a body protein, or in the case of the shots the spike protein, or in the case of an RNA virus infection like SARS-CoV-2, all the proteins of the virus).

    Now going back to the nucleus: some of the individual DNA encoded genes can move around within their chromosomes and have therefore been described as "jumping genes" or technically speaking: transposable elements (TEs).

    Jumping genes!
    Some of these jumping genes (Class 1 TEs) use a copy and paste mechanism and others (Class 2 TEs), like the one in the cartoon depiction above, use a cut and paste mechanism.

    The Class 1 TEs (AKA retrotransposons) that use the copy and paste mechanism do so by translating their DNA into RNA and then converting the RNA back into DNA and inserting it somewhere else in the genome.

    The Class 1 TEs or retrotransposons, include within themselves the genetic code necessary to create their own protein enzyme to convert the DNA back into RNA, which is termed reverse transcriptase.

    Fun fact: retroviruses like HIV can be considered a special subtype of retrotransposon that can not only reinsert inside the same cell, but also travel to other cells “infecting” them and reverse transcribing into their genomes.

    In humans the only active jumping genes are from CLASS 1 TEs/retrotransposons and are called LINE-1 retrotransposons (LINE stands for Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements).

    LINE-1 retrotransposons were once considered to be junk DNA, they are usually inactivated, but can be turned on in aging cells, cancer cells, virus infected cells and in general in any cell subjected to significant stress.

    Junk DNA, which makes up 98.5% of our genome, is still little understood. It may help regulate the activity of the other 1.5% of the genome that does code for proteins, is likely involved in genome evolution, and has been implicated in disease states like cancer, autism and dozens of genetic diseases.

    So, what’s been shown in this new paper by Zhang et al, is that a lab clone of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, when present in very high levels, does turn on LINE-1, which means it also turns on the LINE-1 reverse transcriptase enzyme, which it then makes use of to reverse transcribe itself into our DNA.

    But even worse: genome sequencing found the viral genetic code transcribed into our DNA not only in cells where LINE-1 was actively turned on, or overexpressed above baseline, but even in cells where it was not.

    Is Sangamo's Gene-Editing Approach a Bust? | The Motley Fool
    Then, instead of studying the LNPs and spike protein RNA used in the shots, the researchers (who valued their careers) used a different mechanism of delivering low levels of nucleocapsid RNA into the cells in the lab to see if they also up regulated LINE-1 expression and were integrated into the cellular DNA.

    Turns out this handicapped experiment did not up regulate LINE-1, or get taken up in detectable quantities by healthy cells, though it did lead to genomic uptake in cells that already had LINE-1 upregulated - which again happens in aging cells, cancer cells, virus infected cells or simply in cells under stress (perhaps from LNP and spike protein induced inflammation?).

    The study authors addressed the discrepancy in retrointegration between the viral clone and their handicapped version of an mRNA shot by theorizing there were:

    "...several possible explanations for the differences in the levels of retrotransposition in infected and transfected cells: (i) The relative abundance of viral RNA is almost 2 orders of magnitude higher in infected than in transfected cells which would increase the probability of association with LINE1 proteins; (ii) virus infection, but not viral mRNA transfection, can induce endogenous LINE1 expression; (iii) multiple factors during SARS-CoV-2 infection can inhibit the antiviral/anti-retrotransposition function of stress granules (48–53), which could increase retrotransposition.”

    The first theory is the most concerning.

    Based on what we know from a 2020 study by Xie et al that showed the very high levels of intracellular viral RNA achieved by infectious clones, we can extrapolate that in the current study by Zhang et al the concentration of mRNA achieved by the SARS-CoV-2 viral clone was likely about 1000X greater than the low levels typically found during a natural infection.

    In fact the levels of mRNA in each cell achieved by the viral clone in the current study are actually far more likely to be achieved by transfection into cells of LNPs in the shots carrying spike protein mRNA than they are during a natural infection.

    Life finds a way. - Reaction GIFs
    So if the authors first theory is correct, that the difference in retrointegration rates simply depends on the intracellular concentration of foreign RNA, then retrointegration is very likely to occur due to exposure to mRNA in the shots, and it is likely to dramatically increase in case someone who has received the shot later becomes infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus - since we know it upregulates LINE-1 expression, or if they are put under other stressors including the development of cancer, or by the stress of long COVID, chronic vaccine injury, autoimmune disease, autonomic dysfunction, POTS, MCAS, etc - all of which are also sadly enough triggered by the shot.

    This is less likely to happen in germ cell DNA - our sperm and egg cells - and lets hope it doesn’t happen, since we already know that the shots likely do transmit altered immunity from mother to child, if they also pass on the mRNA coding the spike protein itself then huge swaths of humanity may be forever genetically altered.

    Heres hoping the label “junk DNA” actually applies in this case…

    But, if you’ve been vaccinated: don’t worry!

    At mygotodoc we routinely reverse vaccine injuries and sincerely believe every disease has a cure.

    Fear is more likely to kill you than the shot (but do stop getting the boosters), and I mean that literally: fear destroys the immune system.

    A healthy immune system can keep any illness in check even if from a retrointegrated virus or viral mRNA fragment.

    There are a lot of unknowns, but don’t let that scare you. Take your health into your own hands and start making positive changes today.

    https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/more-proof-mrna-shots-edit-human


    https://telegra.ph/More-Proof-mRNA-Shots-Edit-Human-Genome-09-17-2
    More Proof mRNA Shots Edit Human Genome New Study Again Shows LINE-1 "Junk DNA" Does The Dirty Work Dr. Syed Haider Could the mRNA shots edit germline DNA? Honest scientists have always been worried about retrointegration of foreign mRNA from “vaccine” shots into our own cellular DNA. This fear should have been allayed by rigorous genotoxicity safety studies before the mRNA shots where rolled out, but those studies were waived by the Big Pharma controlled FDA (with the DoD behind the scenes pulling all the strings). Previous research showed that this could theoretically occur in a human liver cancer cell line inside a controlled laboratory setting utilizing our own bodies reverse transcriptase enzymes that are upregulated in cancer cells. Naysayers still argued that this situation was impossible or at least extremely unlikely to occur in our bodies. Unfortunately there is now further proof that this really does occur, either right away after vaccination, or if not, then it’s even more likely to occur once a vaccinated individual catches COVID-19, as long as vaccinal mRNA remains present in the body (so far we know it remains in circulation for weeks and in the lymph nodes for months - likely far longer, since all the studies had to be stopped, presumably due to lack of funding, or out of fear of creating unpublishable papers since the news wasn’t looking good). Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share A new paper by Zhang et al, just released on Feb 13, 2023 proves that at artificially high concentrations in a lab setting, the SARS-CoV-2 virus can retrointegrate into our genome. Thankfully during natural infection such high levels of viral RNA do not typically occur, but … (you knew there had to be a “but”) … such high levels are induced by mRNA vaccination. So what the paper may actually prove in the roundabout way of most modern research (required for publication to ever happen in todays politically charged Big Pharma controlled publishing environment) is that the mRNA in the shots is in fact likely to retrointegrate into our cellular DNA. To dig into the details we need to start with a quick basic bio refresher: Understanding Genetics Nearly every cell in our bodies carries a full copy of our genetic code, or genome (the exceptions are red blood cells that have no genome, and sperm and egg cells that have half a genome since they are meant to combine with half of someone else's genome). Our genome is made up of individual genes encoded by DNA and bundled together into 46 chromosomes that are stored in a central compartment of our cells called the nucleus. In order to “read" the DNA code and convert it into the structure that makes up our bodies, it is first translated by a “reader” protein that writes it out into a new free floating molecule called mRNA for messenger RNA (the mRNA shots carry this messenger RNA, not modified RNA as some people think). The mRNA, unlike the DNA is not stuck inside the chromosome and it can exit the nucleus, going into the larger compartment called the cytoplasm of the cell, where its message is “read” and translated into an amino acid sequence that folds itself into a protein (either a body protein, or in the case of the shots the spike protein, or in the case of an RNA virus infection like SARS-CoV-2, all the proteins of the virus). Now going back to the nucleus: some of the individual DNA encoded genes can move around within their chromosomes and have therefore been described as "jumping genes" or technically speaking: transposable elements (TEs). Jumping genes! Some of these jumping genes (Class 1 TEs) use a copy and paste mechanism and others (Class 2 TEs), like the one in the cartoon depiction above, use a cut and paste mechanism. The Class 1 TEs (AKA retrotransposons) that use the copy and paste mechanism do so by translating their DNA into RNA and then converting the RNA back into DNA and inserting it somewhere else in the genome. The Class 1 TEs or retrotransposons, include within themselves the genetic code necessary to create their own protein enzyme to convert the DNA back into RNA, which is termed reverse transcriptase. Fun fact: retroviruses like HIV can be considered a special subtype of retrotransposon that can not only reinsert inside the same cell, but also travel to other cells “infecting” them and reverse transcribing into their genomes. In humans the only active jumping genes are from CLASS 1 TEs/retrotransposons and are called LINE-1 retrotransposons (LINE stands for Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements). LINE-1 retrotransposons were once considered to be junk DNA, they are usually inactivated, but can be turned on in aging cells, cancer cells, virus infected cells and in general in any cell subjected to significant stress. Junk DNA, which makes up 98.5% of our genome, is still little understood. It may help regulate the activity of the other 1.5% of the genome that does code for proteins, is likely involved in genome evolution, and has been implicated in disease states like cancer, autism and dozens of genetic diseases. So, what’s been shown in this new paper by Zhang et al, is that a lab clone of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, when present in very high levels, does turn on LINE-1, which means it also turns on the LINE-1 reverse transcriptase enzyme, which it then makes use of to reverse transcribe itself into our DNA. But even worse: genome sequencing found the viral genetic code transcribed into our DNA not only in cells where LINE-1 was actively turned on, or overexpressed above baseline, but even in cells where it was not. Is Sangamo's Gene-Editing Approach a Bust? | The Motley Fool Then, instead of studying the LNPs and spike protein RNA used in the shots, the researchers (who valued their careers) used a different mechanism of delivering low levels of nucleocapsid RNA into the cells in the lab to see if they also up regulated LINE-1 expression and were integrated into the cellular DNA. Turns out this handicapped experiment did not up regulate LINE-1, or get taken up in detectable quantities by healthy cells, though it did lead to genomic uptake in cells that already had LINE-1 upregulated - which again happens in aging cells, cancer cells, virus infected cells or simply in cells under stress (perhaps from LNP and spike protein induced inflammation?). The study authors addressed the discrepancy in retrointegration between the viral clone and their handicapped version of an mRNA shot by theorizing there were: "...several possible explanations for the differences in the levels of retrotransposition in infected and transfected cells: (i) The relative abundance of viral RNA is almost 2 orders of magnitude higher in infected than in transfected cells which would increase the probability of association with LINE1 proteins; (ii) virus infection, but not viral mRNA transfection, can induce endogenous LINE1 expression; (iii) multiple factors during SARS-CoV-2 infection can inhibit the antiviral/anti-retrotransposition function of stress granules (48–53), which could increase retrotransposition.” The first theory is the most concerning. Based on what we know from a 2020 study by Xie et al that showed the very high levels of intracellular viral RNA achieved by infectious clones, we can extrapolate that in the current study by Zhang et al the concentration of mRNA achieved by the SARS-CoV-2 viral clone was likely about 1000X greater than the low levels typically found during a natural infection. In fact the levels of mRNA in each cell achieved by the viral clone in the current study are actually far more likely to be achieved by transfection into cells of LNPs in the shots carrying spike protein mRNA than they are during a natural infection. Life finds a way. - Reaction GIFs So if the authors first theory is correct, that the difference in retrointegration rates simply depends on the intracellular concentration of foreign RNA, then retrointegration is very likely to occur due to exposure to mRNA in the shots, and it is likely to dramatically increase in case someone who has received the shot later becomes infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus - since we know it upregulates LINE-1 expression, or if they are put under other stressors including the development of cancer, or by the stress of long COVID, chronic vaccine injury, autoimmune disease, autonomic dysfunction, POTS, MCAS, etc - all of which are also sadly enough triggered by the shot. This is less likely to happen in germ cell DNA - our sperm and egg cells - and lets hope it doesn’t happen, since we already know that the shots likely do transmit altered immunity from mother to child, if they also pass on the mRNA coding the spike protein itself then huge swaths of humanity may be forever genetically altered. Heres hoping the label “junk DNA” actually applies in this case… But, if you’ve been vaccinated: don’t worry! At mygotodoc we routinely reverse vaccine injuries and sincerely believe every disease has a cure. Fear is more likely to kill you than the shot (but do stop getting the boosters), and I mean that literally: fear destroys the immune system. A healthy immune system can keep any illness in check even if from a retrointegrated virus or viral mRNA fragment. There are a lot of unknowns, but don’t let that scare you. Take your health into your own hands and start making positive changes today. https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/more-proof-mrna-shots-edit-human https://telegra.ph/More-Proof-mRNA-Shots-Edit-Human-Genome-09-17-2
    BLOG.MYGOTODOC.COM
    More Proof mRNA Shots Edit Human Genome
    New Study Again Shows LINE-1 "Junk DNA" Does The Dirty Work
    0 Comments 0 Shares 18591 Views
  • The IDF’s war crimes are a perfect reflection of Israeli society
    Miko Peled, author and former member of IDF Special Forces, explains how Israel indoctrinates its citizens in anti-Palestinian racism from the cradle to the grave.


    Three months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, the atrocities the IDF has committed against Palestinians are too numerous to name. Israel is staging a prolonged assault on the Palestinian people’s very means of existence—destroying homes, hospitals, sanitation infrastructure, food and water sources, schools, and more. To understand the genocidal campaign unfolding before our eyes, we must examine the roots of Israeli society. Israel is a settler colonial state whose existence depends on the elimination of Palestinians. Accordingly, Israel is a deeply militarized society whose citizens are raised in an environment of historical revisionism and indoctrination that whitewashes Israel’s crimes while cultivating a deep-seated racism against Palestinians. Miko Peled, former IDF Special Forces and author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, joins The Chris Hedges Report for a frank conversation on the distortions of history and reality at the foundations of Israeli identity.

    Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
    Post-Production: Adam Coley

    Transcript

    Chris Hedges: The Israeli army, known as the Israel Defense Force or IDF, is integral to understanding Israeli society. Nearly all Israelis do three years of military service, most continue to serve in the reserves until middle age. Its generals often retire to occupy senior positions in government and industry. The dominance of the military in Israeli society helps explain why war, militaristic nationalism, and violence are so deeply embedded in Zionist ideology.

    Israel is the outgrowth of a militarized settler colonial movement that seeks its legitimacy in biblical myth. It has always sought to solve nearly every conflict; The ethnic cleansing and massacres against Palestinians known as the Nakba or catastrophe in the years between 1947 and 1949, the Suez War of 1956, the 1967 and 1973 wars with Arab neighbors, the two invasions of Lebanon, the Palestinian intifadas, and the series of military strikes on Gaza, including the most recent, with violence. The long campaign to occupy Palestinian land and ethnically cleanse Palestinians is rooted in the Zionist paramilitaries that formed the Israeli state and continue within the IDF.

    The overriding goal of settler colonialism is the total conquest of Palestinian land. The few Israeli leaders who have sought to reign in the military, such as Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, have been pushed aside by the generals. The military setbacks suffered by Israel in the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria, and during Israel’s invasions of Lebanon only fuel the extreme nationalists who have abandoned all pretense of a liberal democracy. They speak in the open language of apartheid and genocide. These extremists were behind the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israel’s failure to live up to the Oslo Accords.

    This extremism has now been exacerbated by the attack of October 7, which killed about 1,200 Israelis. The few Israelis who oppose this militaristic nationalism, especially after October 7, have been silenced and persecuted in Israel. Genocidal violence is almost exclusively the language Israeli leaders, and now Israeli citizens, use to speak to the Palestinians and the Arab world.

    Joining me to discuss the role of the military in Israeli society is Miko Peled. Miko’s father was a general in the Israeli army. Miko was a member of Israel’s special forces and, although disillusioned with the military, moved from his role as a combatant to that of a medic. After the 1982 war in Lebanon, he buried his service pin. He is the author of, The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.

    You grew up, you were a child when your father was a general in the IDF. This inculcation of that military ethos has begun very young and begun in the schools. Can you talk about that?

    Miko Peled: Sure, thanks for having me, Chris. It’s good to be with you again and talk to you. So it begins before the military. It begins in preschool. It begins as soon as kids are able to talk and walk. I always say I knew the order of the ranks in the military before I knew my alphabet and this is true for many Israeli kids. The Israeli education system is such that it leads young Israelis to become soldiers, to serve the apartheid state, and to serve in this genocidal state, which is the state of Israel. It’s an enormous part of that. And with me, it came with mega-doses of that because when your father’s a general, and particularly of that generation of the 1967 generals, they were like gods of Olympus. Everybody knew their names.

    On Independence Day, I remember in the schools you would have little flags, not just flags of Israel, but flags of the IDF with pictures of IDF generals, pictures of the military, all kinds of military symbols, and so on. It’s everywhere. When I was a kid they still had a military parade. It’s everywhere and it’s inescapable. And you hear it when you walk down the street, you hear it in the news, you hear it in conversations, you hear it in schools, you read it in the textbooks, and there’s no place to develop dissent. There’s no place to develop a sense that dissent is okay, that dissent is possible. And the few cases where people do become dissenters, it’s either because their families have a tradition of being communist or more progressive and somehow it’s part of their tradition but this is a minority of a minority. By and large, Israel stands with the army, and Israel is the army. You can’t separate Israel from its army, from its military.

    Chris Hedges: Let’s juxtapose the myth that you were taught in school about the IDF with the reality.

    Miko Peled: The myth that I was… Again, this was given to me in larger doses at home because my father and his comrades were all part of the 1948 mythology. We were small and we were resourceful, and we were clever, and therefore, in 1948, we were able to defeat these Arab armies and these Arab killers who came to try to kill us and so on and destroy our fledgling little Jewish state. And because of our heroism – And you talked about the biblical connection – Because we are the descendants of King David, and we are the descendants of the Maccabees, and we have this resourcefulness and strength in our genes, we were able to create a state and then every time they attacked, we were there. We were able to defend ourselves and prevail and so on. It’s everywhere. Then again, in my case, it’s every time the larger, more extended family got together or my parents got together with their friends. And in many cases, the fathers were also comrades in arms.

    The stories of the battles, the stories of the conquests; Every city in Israel has an IDF plaza. Street names after different units of different generals are all over the country, street names of battles, so it’s everywhere. It wasn’t until I was probably 40 or a little less than 40, that it was the first time that I encountered the other narrative, the Palestinian story, and it was unbelievable. Somebody was telling me the day is night and night is day, or the world is flat, or whatever the comparison you want to make, it was incredible. They are telling me that what I know to be true – ‘Cause I heard it in school and I read it in books and I heard it from my father and my mother and friends – That all of this is not true. And what you find out if you go along the path that I chose to take, this journey of an Israeli to Palestine, is that it was one horrifying crime against humanity.

    That’s what this so-called heroism was, it was no heroism at all. It was a well-trained, highly motivated, well-indoctrinated, well-armed militia that then became the IDF. But when it started, it was still a militia or today they would be called a terrorist organization, that went up against the people who had never had a military force, who never had a tank, who never had a warplane, who never prepared, even remotely, for battle or an assault. Then you have to make a choice: How do you bridge this? The differences are not nuanced, the differences are enormous. The choice that I made is to investigate for myself and find out who’s telling the truth and who isn’t. And my side was not telling the truth.

    Chris Hedges: How did they explain incidents such as the Nakba, the massacres that took place in ’48 and ’56, and the massive ethnic cleansing that took place in ’67? How was that explained to you within that mythic narrative? Many of the activities that the IDF has had to carry out are quite brutal, quite savage. The indiscriminate killing of civilians – We can talk about Gaza in a minute – What did that do to society? The people who carried out those killings, and eventually huge prisons, torture, and everything else? But let’s begin with how the myth coped with those incidents and then talk about the trauma that is carried within Israeli society for carrying out those war crimes.

    Miko Peled: My generation, we knew that there were several instances of bad apples that committed terrible crimes. And we admitted, so there was Deir Yassin, which was a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a peaceful village where a horrible massacre took place. Then we knew that Ariel Sharon was a bit of a lunatic and he took the commandos that he commanded in the ’50s and went to the West Bank and went into Gaza and committed acts of terrible massacres. He was still a hero, held in high regard by everyone, but we knew that there were certain instances… And every military, every nation makes its mistakes and then these things happen But there was never any sense that this somehow discounted or hurt the image of us being a moral army.

    There are lots of stories of how soldiers went and they decided to, out of the kindness of their hearts, they didn’t harm civilians. And those same civilians went and then warned the enemy that they were coming. And these same good Israeli soldiers would then pay the price and were killed. So it’s presented as limited cases. Nakba was not something that was ever discussed. I’m sure it’s not discussed today, certainly not in schools. In Israeli schools today, you’re not allowed to mention the Nakba. There’s a directive by the Ministry of Education that even Palestinians are not allowed to mention the Nakba. But nobody ever talked about that. And the Arabs left, what are you going to do? There was a war and all these people left and this is the way it is.

    So none of that ever hurt, in any way, the image of us being this glorious heroic army, descendants of King David, and other great traditions of Jewish heroism. None of that ever hurt itself. So there’s no trauma because we did nothing wrong. If somebody did something wrong, well, it was a case of bad apples, it was limited to a particular circumstance, a particular person, a particular unit, and you get crazy people everywhere. What are you going to do? It’s never been presented as systemic. Today, we have a history so we can look back and if we do pay attention, and if we do read the literature, and if we do listen to Palestinians – And today there’s this great NGO called Zochrot, whose mission is to maintain the memory of the towns and cities that were destroyed in 1948 and to revive the stories of what took place in 1948 – They are uncovering new massacres all the time. Because as that generation is dying off, both the Israelis who committed the crimes and the Palestinians who were still alive at the time and survived, are opening up and telling more and more stories.

    So we know of churches that were filled with civilians and were burned down. We know of a mosque in Lydd that was filled with people and a young man went and shot a Fiat missile into it. All of these horrific stories are still coming out but Israelis are not paying attention, Israelis are not listening. Whenever there’s an attack on Gaza – And as you know very well, these attacks began in the fifties with Ariel Sharon, by the way – There is always a reason. Because at first they were infiltrators, and then they were terrorists, and now they’re called Hamas, and whatever the devil’s name may be there’s always a very good reason to go in there because these are people who are raised to hate and kill and so on. So it’s a tightly-knit and tightly-orchestrated narrative that is being perpetuated and Israelis don’t seem to have a problem with that.

    Chris Hedges: And yet carrying out acts of brutality. The occupation – Huge numbers, a million Israelis are in the states. Large numbers of Israelis have left the country. I’m wondering how many of those are people who have a conscience and are repulsed by what they have seen in the West Bank and Gaza. Perhaps I’m incorrect about that.

    Miko Peled: I don’t know. In the few encounters that I’ve had with Israelis in the US over the years, the vast majority support Israel, support Israel’s actions. It’s interesting that you mentioned that because I got an email from someone representing a group of alumni of Jewish Day Schools. These are Zionist schools all over countries where they indoctrinate the worst Zionism: secular Zionism. And they are now appalled by the indoctrination to serve in the IDF. A very high percentage of these students grew up, went to Israel, joined the IDF, took part in APEC events, and so on. And now they’re looking back and they’re reflecting and they’re feeling a sense of anger that they were put through this and lied through their entire lives about this.

    So that’s an interesting development. And if that grows, then that might be a game changer because these are the most loyal American Jews. The most loyal to Israel. But by and large, Israelis that I meet, with few exceptions, support Israel and they’re here for whatever reasons people come to America: They’re not unique, they’re not necessarily here because they were fed up or they were angry, or they were dissenters in any way, shape, or form. Around DC and Maryland, there are many Israelis. Sometimes you’ll sit in a coffee shop or go somewhere, you hear the conversations, and there’s no lack of support for Israel among these Israelis as far as I can see.

    Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about the armies. You were in the Special Forces elite unit. Talk about that indoctrination. I remember visiting Auschwitz a few years ago, and there were Israeli groups and people flying Israeli flags. But speak about that form of indoctrination and its link, in particular, to the Holocaust.

    Miko Peled: The myth is that Israel is a response to the Holocaust. And that the IDF is a response to the Holocaust; We must be strong, we must be willing to fight, and we must always have a gun in one hand or a weapon in one hand so that this will never happen again. And what’s interesting is, when you talk to Holocaust survivors who are not indoctrinated, who did not get pulled into Zionism – Which there are very, very many – They’ll say the notion that a militarized state is somehow the answer to the Holocaust is absurd because the answer to the Holocaust is tolerance and education and humanity, not violence and racism. But nobody wants to ruin a good myth with the facts. So that’s the story.

    The story is because of Auschwitz, we represent all those that were killed, perished by the Nazis, and so on, and therefore we need to be strong. And the Israeli flag represents them, and the Israeli military represents them. It’s absurd, it’s absolute madness. I went to serve in the army willingly, as most young Israelis do. In my environment, refusing or not going was not heard of, although there were some voices in the wilderness that were refusing and questioning morality. But I never did. Nobody around me ever did until I began the training and you began patrolling. I remember – You and I may have talked about this once – We were an infantry unit, a commando infantry unit. And suddenly we were given batons and these plastic handcuffs and were told to patrol in Ramallah.

    And I’m going, what the hell’s going on? What are we doing here? And then we’re told if anybody looks at you funny, you break every bone in their body. And I thought, everybody’s going to look at us, we’re commandos while marching through a city. Who’s not going to look at us? I was behind. I didn’t realize that everybody already understood that this is how it is, this is how it’s supposed to be. I thought, wait, this is wrong. Why are we doing this? We’re supposed to be the good guys here.

    And then there was the Lebanon invasion of ’82 and so on. So that broke that in my mind, that was a serious crack in the wall of belief and the wall of patriotism that was in me. But this whole notion that somehow being violent and militaristic and racist and being conquerors is somehow a response to the horrors of the Holocaust is absolute madness. But when you’re in it nobody around you is asking questions. You don’t ask questions either unless you’re willing to stand out and be smacked on the head.

    Chris Hedges: Within the military, within the IDF, how did they speak about Palestinians and Arabs?

    Miko Peled: The discourse, the hatred, the racism, is horrifying. First of all, they’re the animals. They’re nothing. It’s a joke, you see, it’s horrifying. They think it’s funny to stop people and ask them for their ID and to chase them and to chase kids and to shoot. It all seems like entertainment, you know? I never heard that discourse until I was in it. Then afterward, when I would meet Israelis who served, even here in the US, the way they joked around about what they did in the West Bank, the way they joked around about killing or stopping people or making them take their clothes off and dance naked, it’s entertainment.

    They think it’s funny. They don’t see that there’s a problem here because racism is so ingrained from such a young age that it’s almost organic. And I don’t think it’s surprising. When you have a racist society, and you have a racist education system that is so methodical, that’s what you get. And the racism doesn’t stop with Palestinians or with Arabs; It goes on to the Black people, it goes on to people of color, it goes to Jews or Israelis who come from other countries who are dark-skinned, for some reason. The racism crosses all these boundaries and it’s completely part of the culture.

    Chris Hedges: You have very little criticism of the IDF, almost none within the Israeli press, although there is quite a bit of criticism right now, of Netanyahu and his mismanagement and his corruption. Talk a little bit about the deification of the IDF within the public discourse and mainstream media and what that means for what’s happening in Gaza.

    Miko Peled: Well, the military is above the law. It’s above reproach, except from time to time. So after the ’73 war, there was an investigation. Earlier this week, there was, in the cabinet meeting… The cabinet meets every Sunday. And the army chief of staff was there and he was… This was leaked from the cabinet meeting. It was leaked that some of the more right-wing partners – It’s funny to say right-wing partners because they’re all this right-wing lunacy in the Israeli cabinet – But the more right-wing settlers that are in the cabinet were attacking the army, were attacking the chief of staff because he decided to start an inquiry because it was catastrophic when the Palestinian fighters came in from Gaza, there was nobody home. They took over half of their country back. They took 22 Israeli settlements and cities.

    They took over the army base of the Gaza brigade, which is supposed to defend the country from exactly this happening. And there was nobody in the… They took over the base. So he initiated an internal inquiry within the army, and they’re criticizing him and what you see in the Israeli press is two very interesting things: One is something went horribly wrong and we need to find out why, but we should wait because we shouldn’t do it during wartime. We shouldn’t criticize the army during wartime. We shouldn’t make the soldiers feel like they have to hold back because if they need to shoot, they should be allowed to shoot. And the other thing we see is that politically, everybody is eating each other up. They’re killing each other politically in the press. So everybody that’s against Netanyahu and wants to see it is attacking him.

    His people are attacking the others for attacking the government. It seems like there’s this paralysis as a result of this infighting that is affecting the functionality of the state as a state. Israelis are not living in the country, Israel is not the state that it was prior to October 7, it was paralyzed for several weeks, and now it’s still paralyzed in many ways. You’ve got missiles coming from the north, you’ve got missiles coming from the south. You’ve got very large numbers of Israeli soldiers being killed and thousands being injured and the war’s not ending. They’re not able to defeat the Palestinians in Gaza, the armed resistance, and so on.

    So all of this is taking place and you read the Israeli press and it’s like this cesspool that’s bubbling and bubbling and bubbling, and everybody’s attacking everybody else. And the army, it’s true, they are above reproach mostly, but this particular time the settlers are very angry. Another reason is because the the military decided to pull back some of the ground troops, understandably, since they’re being hit so hard. And I remember that happening before when the army pulled back out of Gaza, they were being attacked for stopping the killing, for not continuing these mass killings of Palestinians.

    Chris Hedges: Well, you had what? 70 fatalities in the Golani Brigade? And they were pulled back. This is a very elite unit.

    Miko Peled: Yeah, it’s very interesting because many of the casualties are high-ranking officers. You have colonels, lieutenant colonels, and very high-ranking commanders within Israeli special forces who are being killed. And they’re usually killed in big bunches because they’ll be in an armored personnel carrier or they’ll be marching together. And in Jenin a few days ago, they blew up a military vehicle and killed a bunch of soldiers. So Israelis are scratching their heads, not knowing what the hell is going on and what to do, because number one, they were not protected as they thought they were.

    And I’m sure you know this, the Israeli settlements, the kibbutzim, the cities in the south that border Gaza, [inaudible 00:25:59], they enjoy some of the highest standards of living among Israelis. It’s a beautiful lifestyle. It’s warm, it’s lovely. Agriculture is… And I don’t think it ever occurred to them that Palestinians would dare to come out of Gaza fighting and succeeding the way they did. The army was bankrupt. It was gone, the intelligence apparatus was bankrupt, and nothing worked. And it is reminiscent of what happened in 1973. This is far worse but it is reminiscent. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the October 7 attacks were exactly 50 years and one day after the 1973 October war began and the whole system collapsed. So that’s what we’re seeing right now.

    Chris Hedges: How do you read what’s happening in Gaza, militarily?

    Miko Peled: The Palestinians are able to hold on and kill many Israelis. And even though the Israelis have the firepower and they’ve got the logistics, supply chains are not a problem. Whereas Palestinians, I don’t know where they’re getting supplies. I don’t know where they’re getting food to continue fighting. They’re putting up a fierce resistance. I don’t think that militarily there’s a strategy here. This is revenge; Israel was humiliated, the army was humiliated, and they needed to take it out on somebody.

    So they found the weakest victims they could lay their hands on, and these are the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. And so they’re killing them by the tens of thousands. I don’t think anybody believes in such a thing as getting rid of Hamas. I don’t think anybody believes that that’s possible. I don’t believe anybody takes seriously or believes that you can take too many people out of Gaza and spread them around the world and into other places, even though that’s what they’re saying. But as long as Israel is allowed to kill, and as long as the supply chain isn’t interrupted, they’re going to continue to kill.

    Chris Hedges: And they’re also creating a humanitarian crisis. So it’s not just the bombs and the shells, but it’s now starvation. Diarrhea is an epidemic, sanitation is broken. I’m wondering at what point this humanitarian crisis becomes so pronounced that the choice is you leave or you die.

    Miko Peled: That’s always the big question for Palestinians. And the sad thing is that Palestinians are always being placed in these situations where they have to make that choice. It’s the worst form of injustice. And you know this, you’ve been in war zones. We don’t know how many bodies are buried under the rubble and what that’s going to bring up. And there are hundreds of thousands now who are suffering from all kinds of diseases as a result of this environmental catastrophe. And you remember, what was it? 2016 or something, 2017? The UN came out with a report that by 2020, Gaza would be uninhabitable. I don’t think the Gaza Strip has ever been inhabitable. It’s been a humanitarian disaster since it was created in the late forties and early fifties because they suddenly threw all these refugees there with no infrastructure and that was it, and then began killing them.

    I was talking to some people the other day, as Americans, as taxpayers, wouldn’t we want the Sixth Fleet, which is in the Mediterranean, the US Navy Sixth Fleet, to aid the Palestinians? To provide them support? To create a no-fly zone over these innocent people that are being massacred? As Americans, shouldn’t that be the natural ask, the natural desire to demand our politicians to use? Because American naval vessels have been used for humanitarian causes before. Why aren’t they supporting the Palestinians? Why aren’t they providing them aid? Why aren’t they helping them rebuild? Why are American tax dollars going to continue this genocide rather than stop it and aid the victims?

    These are questions Americans need to ask themselves because it makes absolutely no sense. It is absolute madness that people are allowing their government to support a genocide that’s not even done in secret. It’s not even done in hiding it. It’s on prime time. Everybody sees it. Everybody knows what’s going on. And again, for some strange reason, Americans are allowing their military and their government to aid the genocide. And there’s no question that it’s genocide. The definition of the crime of genocide is so absolutely clear, that anybody can look it up and compare it to what’s been going on in Palestine. So that to me is the greatest question: Why aren’t Americans demanding that the US support the Palestinians?

    Chris Hedges: Well, according to opinion polls, most Americans want a ceasefire. But the Congress is bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. Biden is one of the largest recipients of aid or campaign financing from the Israel lobby. This is true for both parties. Chuck Schumer was at the rally saying no ceasefire.

    Miko Peled: Which is odd. A ceasefire is a very small ask and I don’t know why we always ask for the bare minimum for Palestinians. But let’s talk about ceasefire. Israeli soldiers are being killed as well in very large numbers. How has ceasefire suddenly become an anti-Israeli demand? But it’s a very small ask. I don’t know how it was or where it was that this idea of demanding a ceasefire came up because that is not a serious demand. Ceasefire gets violated by Israel anyway, within 24-48 hours. You know that historically Israel always violated ceasefires. What is required here are severe sanctions, a no-fly zone, immediate aid to the Palestinians, and stopping this and providing guarantees for the safety and security of Palestinians forever moving forward so this can never happen again.

    That’s what needs to be asked. At this point, after having sacrificed so much, after having shown much of what I believe is immense courage, Palestinians deserve everything. We as people of conscience need to demand not to ceasefire, we need to demand a dismantling of the apartheid state and a full stop and absolute end to the genocide and guarantees put in place that Palestinian kids will be safe. I was talking to Issa Amro earlier in Hebron. It’s ridiculous when nobody even talks about what happens in the West Bank. Friends of mine who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, nobody dares to leave the house, nobody dares to text. They’re afraid to walk down the streets. Their safety is not guaranteed by anyone.

    Palestinian safety and security are left to the whims of any Israeli, and that should be the conversation right now, after such horrendous violence. That needs to be the demand. That needs to be the ask when we go to protests when we make these demands like a ceasefire. And even that, Israel is not willing. And these bouts of political supporters of Israel here in America are not willing to entertain a ceasefire. I believe it’s a crazy part of history that we’re experiencing right now and it’s a watershed moment. October 7 created an opportunity to end this for good, to end the suffering of Palestinians, the oppression, and the genocide for good. And if we being people of conscience don’t take advantage of this now and bring it to an end, we will regret this for generations.

    Chris Hedges: The Netanyahu government is talking about this assault on Gaza, this genocide continuing for months. There are strikes, and have been strikes against, now Hezbollah leaders. What concerns you? How could this all go terribly wrong?

    Miko Peled: It’s already gone terribly wrong because of the death and destruction of so many innocent lives is… I don’t even know that there’s a word for it. It’s beyond horrifying. Netanyahu is relying on the restraint of Hezbollah and the restraint of Iran and the restraint of the Arab governments has all been neutralized either through destruct, being destroyed, or through normalization. So he’s relying on that and he knows that he can keep triggering, he can keep bombing Lebanon, bombing Syria, instigating all of these things and it won’t turn into an all-out war. Because at the end of the day, even though Lebanese, Hezbollah, and Palestinian fighters have shown that they’re superior as fighters, they don’t have the supply chains, they don’t have the warplanes, they don’t have the tanks. So more and more civilians are going to be hurt.

    So I don’t think it’s going to turn into a regional war by any stretch of the imagination. And so Netanyahu is betting on that, and that’s why he’s allowing this to go on. And for him, this is a win-win. There’s no way that he can be unseated by anybody that’s around him. There’s no opposition. And as long as this goes on, as long as everybody’s in a state of crisis, he can continue to sit in the Prime Minister’s seat, which for him is the end all and be all of everything. And the world is supporting. The world, as governments of the world, I should say.

    I do interviews with African TV stations, Indian TV stations, and Europeans; Everybody is supporting Israel. Everybody listens to what I have to say, and they think I am a lunatic for supporting terrorism or whatever it is they, however, it is that they frame it. But I don’t see this ending unless there is massive pressure by people of conscience on their governments to force change, to force sanctions, to force the end of the genocide, and the end of the apartheid state.

    Chris Hedges: I want to talk about the shift within Zionism itself from the dominance of a secular leadership to – We see it in the government of Netanyahu – The rise of a religious Zionism, which is also true now within the IDF. And I wondered if you could talk about the consequences of that.

    Miko Peled: Sure. So originally, traditionally, and historically, Zionism and Judaism were at odds. And even to this day ultra-orthodox Jews reject Zionism and reject Israel by and large. But after 1967, there was this new creation of the Zionist religious movement. And these are the settlers who went to the West Bank and they became the new pioneers. And they are today, they make up a large portion of the officers and those who joined the special forces and so on. In the past, in the army, the unofficial policy was that these guys, should not be allowed to advance. The current chief of staff comes from that world, which is a huge change. There are several generals and high-ranking commanders and so on who come from that world. The reason that it was the unofficial policy that these guys should not be promoted was that it’s an incredibly toxic combination, this messianic form of Judaism, which is an aberration.

    It’s not Judaism at all, with this nationalist fanaticism. This combination is toxic and look what it created. It created some of the worst racists, some of the most violent thugs that we’ve seen, certainly in the short history of the state of Israel, although I don’t know that they’re any less violent than the generation of Zionists of my father who are secular. This was a big concern in the past but now they’re everywhere and look at its current government. They hold the finance ministry, they hold the national security ministry, certainly in the military they’re everywhere, they hold many sub-cabinets, and they’re heads of committees in the Knesset, and so on. And they’ve done their work. They worked very hard to get to where they are today, which is where they call the shots. And Netanyahu’s guaranteed to remain in power.

    They’re his support group. That’s why you could have had, as we had earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets and it didn’t affect him because he has his block in the Knesset that will never leave him as long as he allows them to play their game. And this is what’s happening. So in terms of violence and the facts on the ground, I don’t think these guys are any worse again than my parents’ generation who were young Zionists and zealots at the time and committed the 1948 Nakba and ran the country and operated the apartheid state for the first few decades. But it’s a new form of fanaticism being that it is religious as well as fascist. So it’s very toxic. And they have more of a stomach for killing civilians than we’ve ever seen before, even for Israelis. These numbers are beyond belief, even for Israel.

    Chris Hedges: I’m wondering if this religious Zionism probably has its profoundest effect within Israel, in terms of shutting down dissidents, civil liberties, this kind of stuff.

    Miko Peled: Well, Israelis love them. Israelis love these guys because they’re religious but they dress like us. They don’t look like the old Jews with the big beards and everything; They’re cool. They wear jeans. And the reason I say this is because one of their objectives is to take over Al-Aqsa and build a Jewish temple. They’re destroying Al-Aqsa and they conduct these tours. In the old city of Jerusalem, there’s a particular path that you take from where the western wall is up to Al-Aqsa, which is open for non-Muslims. And so they hold tours and there’s several odd times throughout the day. I’ve taken some of these tours to see what it’s about, what these guys do, you know?

    These are prayer tours and hundreds of thousands of Israelis go on these tours. And these are Israelis who are not religious at all, these are secular people. I see the people that go on the tours. To give you an idea of what this is about, you go up on that bridge and then you wait until the tour starts because you have to go in a group. And there’s a massive model of the new temple, of the Jewish temple that is going to be built there. And then you have a huge group of armed police –They’re not soldiers, they’re police but dressed completely militarized. And Muslim Palestinians are not allowed – That accompany the tour all around and they stop and they pray and they stop and they pray and they stop and pray at various places. The whole thing takes maybe an hour. But the interesting thing is that the people who go on these tours are secular Israelis. And then as I was doing this, I was remembering, even as a kid growing up completely secular, we would sing songs about the day that we build a temple.

    Why did we sing songs about building a temple? Because it went beyond our religious significance and became a national significance. And there’s no question in my mind that Netanyahu and secular Israelis would love to see this idea of destroying Al-Aqsa and having a Jewish temple there. It’s a sign that we’re back, King David is back. Even though it has nothing to do with history and there’s no truth in it, the connection that we are descendants of King David is something Israelis love. That’s what this is about, the relationship between the so-called settlers. That’s what they’re called in Israeli jargon. They’re called the settlers. Regular secular Israelis are an interesting one because on the one hand, they’re looked down upon because they’re religious, but on the other hand, they’re a cool religious. So there is an affinity.

    Chris Hedges: Great. That was Miko Peled, author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five. I want to thank the Real News Network and its production team: Cameron Granandino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.

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    https://therealnews.com/the-idfs-war-crimes-are-a-perfect-reflection-of-israeli-society

    https://telegra.ph/The-IDFs-war-crimes-are-a-perfect-reflection-of-Israeli-society-04-02
    The IDF’s war crimes are a perfect reflection of Israeli society Miko Peled, author and former member of IDF Special Forces, explains how Israel indoctrinates its citizens in anti-Palestinian racism from the cradle to the grave. Three months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, the atrocities the IDF has committed against Palestinians are too numerous to name. Israel is staging a prolonged assault on the Palestinian people’s very means of existence—destroying homes, hospitals, sanitation infrastructure, food and water sources, schools, and more. To understand the genocidal campaign unfolding before our eyes, we must examine the roots of Israeli society. Israel is a settler colonial state whose existence depends on the elimination of Palestinians. Accordingly, Israel is a deeply militarized society whose citizens are raised in an environment of historical revisionism and indoctrination that whitewashes Israel’s crimes while cultivating a deep-seated racism against Palestinians. Miko Peled, former IDF Special Forces and author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, joins The Chris Hedges Report for a frank conversation on the distortions of history and reality at the foundations of Israeli identity. Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Adam Coley Transcript Chris Hedges: The Israeli army, known as the Israel Defense Force or IDF, is integral to understanding Israeli society. Nearly all Israelis do three years of military service, most continue to serve in the reserves until middle age. Its generals often retire to occupy senior positions in government and industry. The dominance of the military in Israeli society helps explain why war, militaristic nationalism, and violence are so deeply embedded in Zionist ideology. Israel is the outgrowth of a militarized settler colonial movement that seeks its legitimacy in biblical myth. It has always sought to solve nearly every conflict; The ethnic cleansing and massacres against Palestinians known as the Nakba or catastrophe in the years between 1947 and 1949, the Suez War of 1956, the 1967 and 1973 wars with Arab neighbors, the two invasions of Lebanon, the Palestinian intifadas, and the series of military strikes on Gaza, including the most recent, with violence. The long campaign to occupy Palestinian land and ethnically cleanse Palestinians is rooted in the Zionist paramilitaries that formed the Israeli state and continue within the IDF. The overriding goal of settler colonialism is the total conquest of Palestinian land. The few Israeli leaders who have sought to reign in the military, such as Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, have been pushed aside by the generals. The military setbacks suffered by Israel in the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria, and during Israel’s invasions of Lebanon only fuel the extreme nationalists who have abandoned all pretense of a liberal democracy. They speak in the open language of apartheid and genocide. These extremists were behind the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israel’s failure to live up to the Oslo Accords. This extremism has now been exacerbated by the attack of October 7, which killed about 1,200 Israelis. The few Israelis who oppose this militaristic nationalism, especially after October 7, have been silenced and persecuted in Israel. Genocidal violence is almost exclusively the language Israeli leaders, and now Israeli citizens, use to speak to the Palestinians and the Arab world. Joining me to discuss the role of the military in Israeli society is Miko Peled. Miko’s father was a general in the Israeli army. Miko was a member of Israel’s special forces and, although disillusioned with the military, moved from his role as a combatant to that of a medic. After the 1982 war in Lebanon, he buried his service pin. He is the author of, The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five. You grew up, you were a child when your father was a general in the IDF. This inculcation of that military ethos has begun very young and begun in the schools. Can you talk about that? Miko Peled: Sure, thanks for having me, Chris. It’s good to be with you again and talk to you. So it begins before the military. It begins in preschool. It begins as soon as kids are able to talk and walk. I always say I knew the order of the ranks in the military before I knew my alphabet and this is true for many Israeli kids. The Israeli education system is such that it leads young Israelis to become soldiers, to serve the apartheid state, and to serve in this genocidal state, which is the state of Israel. It’s an enormous part of that. And with me, it came with mega-doses of that because when your father’s a general, and particularly of that generation of the 1967 generals, they were like gods of Olympus. Everybody knew their names. On Independence Day, I remember in the schools you would have little flags, not just flags of Israel, but flags of the IDF with pictures of IDF generals, pictures of the military, all kinds of military symbols, and so on. It’s everywhere. When I was a kid they still had a military parade. It’s everywhere and it’s inescapable. And you hear it when you walk down the street, you hear it in the news, you hear it in conversations, you hear it in schools, you read it in the textbooks, and there’s no place to develop dissent. There’s no place to develop a sense that dissent is okay, that dissent is possible. And the few cases where people do become dissenters, it’s either because their families have a tradition of being communist or more progressive and somehow it’s part of their tradition but this is a minority of a minority. By and large, Israel stands with the army, and Israel is the army. You can’t separate Israel from its army, from its military. Chris Hedges: Let’s juxtapose the myth that you were taught in school about the IDF with the reality. Miko Peled: The myth that I was… Again, this was given to me in larger doses at home because my father and his comrades were all part of the 1948 mythology. We were small and we were resourceful, and we were clever, and therefore, in 1948, we were able to defeat these Arab armies and these Arab killers who came to try to kill us and so on and destroy our fledgling little Jewish state. And because of our heroism – And you talked about the biblical connection – Because we are the descendants of King David, and we are the descendants of the Maccabees, and we have this resourcefulness and strength in our genes, we were able to create a state and then every time they attacked, we were there. We were able to defend ourselves and prevail and so on. It’s everywhere. Then again, in my case, it’s every time the larger, more extended family got together or my parents got together with their friends. And in many cases, the fathers were also comrades in arms. The stories of the battles, the stories of the conquests; Every city in Israel has an IDF plaza. Street names after different units of different generals are all over the country, street names of battles, so it’s everywhere. It wasn’t until I was probably 40 or a little less than 40, that it was the first time that I encountered the other narrative, the Palestinian story, and it was unbelievable. Somebody was telling me the day is night and night is day, or the world is flat, or whatever the comparison you want to make, it was incredible. They are telling me that what I know to be true – ‘Cause I heard it in school and I read it in books and I heard it from my father and my mother and friends – That all of this is not true. And what you find out if you go along the path that I chose to take, this journey of an Israeli to Palestine, is that it was one horrifying crime against humanity. That’s what this so-called heroism was, it was no heroism at all. It was a well-trained, highly motivated, well-indoctrinated, well-armed militia that then became the IDF. But when it started, it was still a militia or today they would be called a terrorist organization, that went up against the people who had never had a military force, who never had a tank, who never had a warplane, who never prepared, even remotely, for battle or an assault. Then you have to make a choice: How do you bridge this? The differences are not nuanced, the differences are enormous. The choice that I made is to investigate for myself and find out who’s telling the truth and who isn’t. And my side was not telling the truth. Chris Hedges: How did they explain incidents such as the Nakba, the massacres that took place in ’48 and ’56, and the massive ethnic cleansing that took place in ’67? How was that explained to you within that mythic narrative? Many of the activities that the IDF has had to carry out are quite brutal, quite savage. The indiscriminate killing of civilians – We can talk about Gaza in a minute – What did that do to society? The people who carried out those killings, and eventually huge prisons, torture, and everything else? But let’s begin with how the myth coped with those incidents and then talk about the trauma that is carried within Israeli society for carrying out those war crimes. Miko Peled: My generation, we knew that there were several instances of bad apples that committed terrible crimes. And we admitted, so there was Deir Yassin, which was a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a peaceful village where a horrible massacre took place. Then we knew that Ariel Sharon was a bit of a lunatic and he took the commandos that he commanded in the ’50s and went to the West Bank and went into Gaza and committed acts of terrible massacres. He was still a hero, held in high regard by everyone, but we knew that there were certain instances… And every military, every nation makes its mistakes and then these things happen But there was never any sense that this somehow discounted or hurt the image of us being a moral army. There are lots of stories of how soldiers went and they decided to, out of the kindness of their hearts, they didn’t harm civilians. And those same civilians went and then warned the enemy that they were coming. And these same good Israeli soldiers would then pay the price and were killed. So it’s presented as limited cases. Nakba was not something that was ever discussed. I’m sure it’s not discussed today, certainly not in schools. In Israeli schools today, you’re not allowed to mention the Nakba. There’s a directive by the Ministry of Education that even Palestinians are not allowed to mention the Nakba. But nobody ever talked about that. And the Arabs left, what are you going to do? There was a war and all these people left and this is the way it is. So none of that ever hurt, in any way, the image of us being this glorious heroic army, descendants of King David, and other great traditions of Jewish heroism. None of that ever hurt itself. So there’s no trauma because we did nothing wrong. If somebody did something wrong, well, it was a case of bad apples, it was limited to a particular circumstance, a particular person, a particular unit, and you get crazy people everywhere. What are you going to do? It’s never been presented as systemic. Today, we have a history so we can look back and if we do pay attention, and if we do read the literature, and if we do listen to Palestinians – And today there’s this great NGO called Zochrot, whose mission is to maintain the memory of the towns and cities that were destroyed in 1948 and to revive the stories of what took place in 1948 – They are uncovering new massacres all the time. Because as that generation is dying off, both the Israelis who committed the crimes and the Palestinians who were still alive at the time and survived, are opening up and telling more and more stories. So we know of churches that were filled with civilians and were burned down. We know of a mosque in Lydd that was filled with people and a young man went and shot a Fiat missile into it. All of these horrific stories are still coming out but Israelis are not paying attention, Israelis are not listening. Whenever there’s an attack on Gaza – And as you know very well, these attacks began in the fifties with Ariel Sharon, by the way – There is always a reason. Because at first they were infiltrators, and then they were terrorists, and now they’re called Hamas, and whatever the devil’s name may be there’s always a very good reason to go in there because these are people who are raised to hate and kill and so on. So it’s a tightly-knit and tightly-orchestrated narrative that is being perpetuated and Israelis don’t seem to have a problem with that. Chris Hedges: And yet carrying out acts of brutality. The occupation – Huge numbers, a million Israelis are in the states. Large numbers of Israelis have left the country. I’m wondering how many of those are people who have a conscience and are repulsed by what they have seen in the West Bank and Gaza. Perhaps I’m incorrect about that. Miko Peled: I don’t know. In the few encounters that I’ve had with Israelis in the US over the years, the vast majority support Israel, support Israel’s actions. It’s interesting that you mentioned that because I got an email from someone representing a group of alumni of Jewish Day Schools. These are Zionist schools all over countries where they indoctrinate the worst Zionism: secular Zionism. And they are now appalled by the indoctrination to serve in the IDF. A very high percentage of these students grew up, went to Israel, joined the IDF, took part in APEC events, and so on. And now they’re looking back and they’re reflecting and they’re feeling a sense of anger that they were put through this and lied through their entire lives about this. So that’s an interesting development. And if that grows, then that might be a game changer because these are the most loyal American Jews. The most loyal to Israel. But by and large, Israelis that I meet, with few exceptions, support Israel and they’re here for whatever reasons people come to America: They’re not unique, they’re not necessarily here because they were fed up or they were angry, or they were dissenters in any way, shape, or form. Around DC and Maryland, there are many Israelis. Sometimes you’ll sit in a coffee shop or go somewhere, you hear the conversations, and there’s no lack of support for Israel among these Israelis as far as I can see. Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about the armies. You were in the Special Forces elite unit. Talk about that indoctrination. I remember visiting Auschwitz a few years ago, and there were Israeli groups and people flying Israeli flags. But speak about that form of indoctrination and its link, in particular, to the Holocaust. Miko Peled: The myth is that Israel is a response to the Holocaust. And that the IDF is a response to the Holocaust; We must be strong, we must be willing to fight, and we must always have a gun in one hand or a weapon in one hand so that this will never happen again. And what’s interesting is, when you talk to Holocaust survivors who are not indoctrinated, who did not get pulled into Zionism – Which there are very, very many – They’ll say the notion that a militarized state is somehow the answer to the Holocaust is absurd because the answer to the Holocaust is tolerance and education and humanity, not violence and racism. But nobody wants to ruin a good myth with the facts. So that’s the story. The story is because of Auschwitz, we represent all those that were killed, perished by the Nazis, and so on, and therefore we need to be strong. And the Israeli flag represents them, and the Israeli military represents them. It’s absurd, it’s absolute madness. I went to serve in the army willingly, as most young Israelis do. In my environment, refusing or not going was not heard of, although there were some voices in the wilderness that were refusing and questioning morality. But I never did. Nobody around me ever did until I began the training and you began patrolling. I remember – You and I may have talked about this once – We were an infantry unit, a commando infantry unit. And suddenly we were given batons and these plastic handcuffs and were told to patrol in Ramallah. And I’m going, what the hell’s going on? What are we doing here? And then we’re told if anybody looks at you funny, you break every bone in their body. And I thought, everybody’s going to look at us, we’re commandos while marching through a city. Who’s not going to look at us? I was behind. I didn’t realize that everybody already understood that this is how it is, this is how it’s supposed to be. I thought, wait, this is wrong. Why are we doing this? We’re supposed to be the good guys here. And then there was the Lebanon invasion of ’82 and so on. So that broke that in my mind, that was a serious crack in the wall of belief and the wall of patriotism that was in me. But this whole notion that somehow being violent and militaristic and racist and being conquerors is somehow a response to the horrors of the Holocaust is absolute madness. But when you’re in it nobody around you is asking questions. You don’t ask questions either unless you’re willing to stand out and be smacked on the head. Chris Hedges: Within the military, within the IDF, how did they speak about Palestinians and Arabs? Miko Peled: The discourse, the hatred, the racism, is horrifying. First of all, they’re the animals. They’re nothing. It’s a joke, you see, it’s horrifying. They think it’s funny to stop people and ask them for their ID and to chase them and to chase kids and to shoot. It all seems like entertainment, you know? I never heard that discourse until I was in it. Then afterward, when I would meet Israelis who served, even here in the US, the way they joked around about what they did in the West Bank, the way they joked around about killing or stopping people or making them take their clothes off and dance naked, it’s entertainment. They think it’s funny. They don’t see that there’s a problem here because racism is so ingrained from such a young age that it’s almost organic. And I don’t think it’s surprising. When you have a racist society, and you have a racist education system that is so methodical, that’s what you get. And the racism doesn’t stop with Palestinians or with Arabs; It goes on to the Black people, it goes on to people of color, it goes to Jews or Israelis who come from other countries who are dark-skinned, for some reason. The racism crosses all these boundaries and it’s completely part of the culture. Chris Hedges: You have very little criticism of the IDF, almost none within the Israeli press, although there is quite a bit of criticism right now, of Netanyahu and his mismanagement and his corruption. Talk a little bit about the deification of the IDF within the public discourse and mainstream media and what that means for what’s happening in Gaza. Miko Peled: Well, the military is above the law. It’s above reproach, except from time to time. So after the ’73 war, there was an investigation. Earlier this week, there was, in the cabinet meeting… The cabinet meets every Sunday. And the army chief of staff was there and he was… This was leaked from the cabinet meeting. It was leaked that some of the more right-wing partners – It’s funny to say right-wing partners because they’re all this right-wing lunacy in the Israeli cabinet – But the more right-wing settlers that are in the cabinet were attacking the army, were attacking the chief of staff because he decided to start an inquiry because it was catastrophic when the Palestinian fighters came in from Gaza, there was nobody home. They took over half of their country back. They took 22 Israeli settlements and cities. They took over the army base of the Gaza brigade, which is supposed to defend the country from exactly this happening. And there was nobody in the… They took over the base. So he initiated an internal inquiry within the army, and they’re criticizing him and what you see in the Israeli press is two very interesting things: One is something went horribly wrong and we need to find out why, but we should wait because we shouldn’t do it during wartime. We shouldn’t criticize the army during wartime. We shouldn’t make the soldiers feel like they have to hold back because if they need to shoot, they should be allowed to shoot. And the other thing we see is that politically, everybody is eating each other up. They’re killing each other politically in the press. So everybody that’s against Netanyahu and wants to see it is attacking him. His people are attacking the others for attacking the government. It seems like there’s this paralysis as a result of this infighting that is affecting the functionality of the state as a state. Israelis are not living in the country, Israel is not the state that it was prior to October 7, it was paralyzed for several weeks, and now it’s still paralyzed in many ways. You’ve got missiles coming from the north, you’ve got missiles coming from the south. You’ve got very large numbers of Israeli soldiers being killed and thousands being injured and the war’s not ending. They’re not able to defeat the Palestinians in Gaza, the armed resistance, and so on. So all of this is taking place and you read the Israeli press and it’s like this cesspool that’s bubbling and bubbling and bubbling, and everybody’s attacking everybody else. And the army, it’s true, they are above reproach mostly, but this particular time the settlers are very angry. Another reason is because the the military decided to pull back some of the ground troops, understandably, since they’re being hit so hard. And I remember that happening before when the army pulled back out of Gaza, they were being attacked for stopping the killing, for not continuing these mass killings of Palestinians. Chris Hedges: Well, you had what? 70 fatalities in the Golani Brigade? And they were pulled back. This is a very elite unit. Miko Peled: Yeah, it’s very interesting because many of the casualties are high-ranking officers. You have colonels, lieutenant colonels, and very high-ranking commanders within Israeli special forces who are being killed. And they’re usually killed in big bunches because they’ll be in an armored personnel carrier or they’ll be marching together. And in Jenin a few days ago, they blew up a military vehicle and killed a bunch of soldiers. So Israelis are scratching their heads, not knowing what the hell is going on and what to do, because number one, they were not protected as they thought they were. And I’m sure you know this, the Israeli settlements, the kibbutzim, the cities in the south that border Gaza, [inaudible 00:25:59], they enjoy some of the highest standards of living among Israelis. It’s a beautiful lifestyle. It’s warm, it’s lovely. Agriculture is… And I don’t think it ever occurred to them that Palestinians would dare to come out of Gaza fighting and succeeding the way they did. The army was bankrupt. It was gone, the intelligence apparatus was bankrupt, and nothing worked. And it is reminiscent of what happened in 1973. This is far worse but it is reminiscent. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the October 7 attacks were exactly 50 years and one day after the 1973 October war began and the whole system collapsed. So that’s what we’re seeing right now. Chris Hedges: How do you read what’s happening in Gaza, militarily? Miko Peled: The Palestinians are able to hold on and kill many Israelis. And even though the Israelis have the firepower and they’ve got the logistics, supply chains are not a problem. Whereas Palestinians, I don’t know where they’re getting supplies. I don’t know where they’re getting food to continue fighting. They’re putting up a fierce resistance. I don’t think that militarily there’s a strategy here. This is revenge; Israel was humiliated, the army was humiliated, and they needed to take it out on somebody. So they found the weakest victims they could lay their hands on, and these are the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. And so they’re killing them by the tens of thousands. I don’t think anybody believes in such a thing as getting rid of Hamas. I don’t think anybody believes that that’s possible. I don’t believe anybody takes seriously or believes that you can take too many people out of Gaza and spread them around the world and into other places, even though that’s what they’re saying. But as long as Israel is allowed to kill, and as long as the supply chain isn’t interrupted, they’re going to continue to kill. Chris Hedges: And they’re also creating a humanitarian crisis. So it’s not just the bombs and the shells, but it’s now starvation. Diarrhea is an epidemic, sanitation is broken. I’m wondering at what point this humanitarian crisis becomes so pronounced that the choice is you leave or you die. Miko Peled: That’s always the big question for Palestinians. And the sad thing is that Palestinians are always being placed in these situations where they have to make that choice. It’s the worst form of injustice. And you know this, you’ve been in war zones. We don’t know how many bodies are buried under the rubble and what that’s going to bring up. And there are hundreds of thousands now who are suffering from all kinds of diseases as a result of this environmental catastrophe. And you remember, what was it? 2016 or something, 2017? The UN came out with a report that by 2020, Gaza would be uninhabitable. I don’t think the Gaza Strip has ever been inhabitable. It’s been a humanitarian disaster since it was created in the late forties and early fifties because they suddenly threw all these refugees there with no infrastructure and that was it, and then began killing them. I was talking to some people the other day, as Americans, as taxpayers, wouldn’t we want the Sixth Fleet, which is in the Mediterranean, the US Navy Sixth Fleet, to aid the Palestinians? To provide them support? To create a no-fly zone over these innocent people that are being massacred? As Americans, shouldn’t that be the natural ask, the natural desire to demand our politicians to use? Because American naval vessels have been used for humanitarian causes before. Why aren’t they supporting the Palestinians? Why aren’t they providing them aid? Why aren’t they helping them rebuild? Why are American tax dollars going to continue this genocide rather than stop it and aid the victims? These are questions Americans need to ask themselves because it makes absolutely no sense. It is absolute madness that people are allowing their government to support a genocide that’s not even done in secret. It’s not even done in hiding it. It’s on prime time. Everybody sees it. Everybody knows what’s going on. And again, for some strange reason, Americans are allowing their military and their government to aid the genocide. And there’s no question that it’s genocide. The definition of the crime of genocide is so absolutely clear, that anybody can look it up and compare it to what’s been going on in Palestine. So that to me is the greatest question: Why aren’t Americans demanding that the US support the Palestinians? Chris Hedges: Well, according to opinion polls, most Americans want a ceasefire. But the Congress is bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. Biden is one of the largest recipients of aid or campaign financing from the Israel lobby. This is true for both parties. Chuck Schumer was at the rally saying no ceasefire. Miko Peled: Which is odd. A ceasefire is a very small ask and I don’t know why we always ask for the bare minimum for Palestinians. But let’s talk about ceasefire. Israeli soldiers are being killed as well in very large numbers. How has ceasefire suddenly become an anti-Israeli demand? But it’s a very small ask. I don’t know how it was or where it was that this idea of demanding a ceasefire came up because that is not a serious demand. Ceasefire gets violated by Israel anyway, within 24-48 hours. You know that historically Israel always violated ceasefires. What is required here are severe sanctions, a no-fly zone, immediate aid to the Palestinians, and stopping this and providing guarantees for the safety and security of Palestinians forever moving forward so this can never happen again. That’s what needs to be asked. At this point, after having sacrificed so much, after having shown much of what I believe is immense courage, Palestinians deserve everything. We as people of conscience need to demand not to ceasefire, we need to demand a dismantling of the apartheid state and a full stop and absolute end to the genocide and guarantees put in place that Palestinian kids will be safe. I was talking to Issa Amro earlier in Hebron. It’s ridiculous when nobody even talks about what happens in the West Bank. Friends of mine who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, nobody dares to leave the house, nobody dares to text. They’re afraid to walk down the streets. Their safety is not guaranteed by anyone. Palestinian safety and security are left to the whims of any Israeli, and that should be the conversation right now, after such horrendous violence. That needs to be the demand. That needs to be the ask when we go to protests when we make these demands like a ceasefire. And even that, Israel is not willing. And these bouts of political supporters of Israel here in America are not willing to entertain a ceasefire. I believe it’s a crazy part of history that we’re experiencing right now and it’s a watershed moment. October 7 created an opportunity to end this for good, to end the suffering of Palestinians, the oppression, and the genocide for good. And if we being people of conscience don’t take advantage of this now and bring it to an end, we will regret this for generations. Chris Hedges: The Netanyahu government is talking about this assault on Gaza, this genocide continuing for months. There are strikes, and have been strikes against, now Hezbollah leaders. What concerns you? How could this all go terribly wrong? Miko Peled: It’s already gone terribly wrong because of the death and destruction of so many innocent lives is… I don’t even know that there’s a word for it. It’s beyond horrifying. Netanyahu is relying on the restraint of Hezbollah and the restraint of Iran and the restraint of the Arab governments has all been neutralized either through destruct, being destroyed, or through normalization. So he’s relying on that and he knows that he can keep triggering, he can keep bombing Lebanon, bombing Syria, instigating all of these things and it won’t turn into an all-out war. Because at the end of the day, even though Lebanese, Hezbollah, and Palestinian fighters have shown that they’re superior as fighters, they don’t have the supply chains, they don’t have the warplanes, they don’t have the tanks. So more and more civilians are going to be hurt. So I don’t think it’s going to turn into a regional war by any stretch of the imagination. And so Netanyahu is betting on that, and that’s why he’s allowing this to go on. And for him, this is a win-win. There’s no way that he can be unseated by anybody that’s around him. There’s no opposition. And as long as this goes on, as long as everybody’s in a state of crisis, he can continue to sit in the Prime Minister’s seat, which for him is the end all and be all of everything. And the world is supporting. The world, as governments of the world, I should say. I do interviews with African TV stations, Indian TV stations, and Europeans; Everybody is supporting Israel. Everybody listens to what I have to say, and they think I am a lunatic for supporting terrorism or whatever it is they, however, it is that they frame it. But I don’t see this ending unless there is massive pressure by people of conscience on their governments to force change, to force sanctions, to force the end of the genocide, and the end of the apartheid state. Chris Hedges: I want to talk about the shift within Zionism itself from the dominance of a secular leadership to – We see it in the government of Netanyahu – The rise of a religious Zionism, which is also true now within the IDF. And I wondered if you could talk about the consequences of that. Miko Peled: Sure. So originally, traditionally, and historically, Zionism and Judaism were at odds. And even to this day ultra-orthodox Jews reject Zionism and reject Israel by and large. But after 1967, there was this new creation of the Zionist religious movement. And these are the settlers who went to the West Bank and they became the new pioneers. And they are today, they make up a large portion of the officers and those who joined the special forces and so on. In the past, in the army, the unofficial policy was that these guys, should not be allowed to advance. The current chief of staff comes from that world, which is a huge change. There are several generals and high-ranking commanders and so on who come from that world. The reason that it was the unofficial policy that these guys should not be promoted was that it’s an incredibly toxic combination, this messianic form of Judaism, which is an aberration. It’s not Judaism at all, with this nationalist fanaticism. This combination is toxic and look what it created. It created some of the worst racists, some of the most violent thugs that we’ve seen, certainly in the short history of the state of Israel, although I don’t know that they’re any less violent than the generation of Zionists of my father who are secular. This was a big concern in the past but now they’re everywhere and look at its current government. They hold the finance ministry, they hold the national security ministry, certainly in the military they’re everywhere, they hold many sub-cabinets, and they’re heads of committees in the Knesset, and so on. And they’ve done their work. They worked very hard to get to where they are today, which is where they call the shots. And Netanyahu’s guaranteed to remain in power. They’re his support group. That’s why you could have had, as we had earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets and it didn’t affect him because he has his block in the Knesset that will never leave him as long as he allows them to play their game. And this is what’s happening. So in terms of violence and the facts on the ground, I don’t think these guys are any worse again than my parents’ generation who were young Zionists and zealots at the time and committed the 1948 Nakba and ran the country and operated the apartheid state for the first few decades. But it’s a new form of fanaticism being that it is religious as well as fascist. So it’s very toxic. And they have more of a stomach for killing civilians than we’ve ever seen before, even for Israelis. These numbers are beyond belief, even for Israel. Chris Hedges: I’m wondering if this religious Zionism probably has its profoundest effect within Israel, in terms of shutting down dissidents, civil liberties, this kind of stuff. Miko Peled: Well, Israelis love them. Israelis love these guys because they’re religious but they dress like us. They don’t look like the old Jews with the big beards and everything; They’re cool. They wear jeans. And the reason I say this is because one of their objectives is to take over Al-Aqsa and build a Jewish temple. They’re destroying Al-Aqsa and they conduct these tours. In the old city of Jerusalem, there’s a particular path that you take from where the western wall is up to Al-Aqsa, which is open for non-Muslims. And so they hold tours and there’s several odd times throughout the day. I’ve taken some of these tours to see what it’s about, what these guys do, you know? These are prayer tours and hundreds of thousands of Israelis go on these tours. And these are Israelis who are not religious at all, these are secular people. I see the people that go on the tours. To give you an idea of what this is about, you go up on that bridge and then you wait until the tour starts because you have to go in a group. And there’s a massive model of the new temple, of the Jewish temple that is going to be built there. And then you have a huge group of armed police –They’re not soldiers, they’re police but dressed completely militarized. And Muslim Palestinians are not allowed – That accompany the tour all around and they stop and they pray and they stop and they pray and they stop and pray at various places. The whole thing takes maybe an hour. But the interesting thing is that the people who go on these tours are secular Israelis. And then as I was doing this, I was remembering, even as a kid growing up completely secular, we would sing songs about the day that we build a temple. Why did we sing songs about building a temple? Because it went beyond our religious significance and became a national significance. And there’s no question in my mind that Netanyahu and secular Israelis would love to see this idea of destroying Al-Aqsa and having a Jewish temple there. It’s a sign that we’re back, King David is back. Even though it has nothing to do with history and there’s no truth in it, the connection that we are descendants of King David is something Israelis love. That’s what this is about, the relationship between the so-called settlers. That’s what they’re called in Israeli jargon. They’re called the settlers. Regular secular Israelis are an interesting one because on the one hand, they’re looked down upon because they’re religious, but on the other hand, they’re a cool religious. So there is an affinity. Chris Hedges: Great. That was Miko Peled, author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five. I want to thank the Real News Network and its production team: Cameron Granandino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com. Creative Commons License Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. https://therealnews.com/the-idfs-war-crimes-are-a-perfect-reflection-of-israeli-society https://telegra.ph/The-IDFs-war-crimes-are-a-perfect-reflection-of-Israeli-society-04-02
    THEREALNEWS.COM
    The IDF's war crimes are a perfect reflection of Israeli society
    Miko Peled, author and former member of IDF Special Forces, explains how Israel indoctrinates its citizens in anti-Palestinian racism from the cradle to the grave.
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  • Medical Researchers Call for Urgent Actions to Deal with Mass Contamination of Blood Supply
    "Japanese researchers have published disturbing evidence that blood transfusions from individuals who received COVID-19 shots are tainted with a myriad of dangers." - Jeff Dornik

    Karen Kingston
    March 22, 2024: Japanese researchers published a meta-analysis on the dangers of using blood donated from people who were injected with the COVID-19 ‘vaccines,’ increasing the risks for acute health conditions and severe diseases in recipients of blood donations. The researchers provide testing and screening recommendations, and proposed regulations to reduce these risks.


    Share

    Jeff Dornik published an excellent article summarizing the scientific meta-analysis, declaring;

    “The blood supply, once deemed a lifeline, has now become a conduit for harm.” - Jeff Dornik


    In his article entitled, Japanese Researchers Sound Alarm on Deadly Risks of Vaccinated Blood Transfusions, Jeff writes, “In a shocking revelation, Japanese researchers have unearthed disturbing evidence that could change the way we view COVID-19 Injections forever. According to their findings, blood transfusions from individuals who have received COVID-19 shots are tainted with a myriad of dangers, potentially wreaking havoc on both vaxxed and unvaxxed recipients. This discovery has sparked urgent calls for action from the global medical community, as the ramifications of this contamination could be catastrophic.”

    I recommend reading and sharing Jeff’s breaking news article.

    You Can Make an Impact

    The COVID-19 injections have not only contaminated the blood of those who are injected, but due to shedding and blood donations, all individuals are at risk of being inoculated with gene-editing nanoparticle technologies and toxic biosynthetic spike proteins. These toxic biosynthetic nanoparticles are proven to increase the risk for cardiovascular, neurological, auto-immune, and pulmonary diseases, and can induce permanent changes to the human genome.


    For the safety of the public, the use of mRNA nanoparticle injections must be banned from every county and state in America.

    Every American has standing in their state to demand that the COVID-19 mRNA nanoparticle ‘vaccines’ be banned from their state. You can send a demand letter to your governor, attorney general, and even local sheriff. If they fail to take action, you can petition your state’s Supreme Court to order the governor and attorney general to seize the injections and ban the use of mRNA nanoparticle injections.

    Hebrews 10:35-36

    So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

    Pending Florida Supreme Court Case: Will DeSantis & AG Moody Be Court-Ordered to Remove ALL mRNA Injections from Florida?

    Pending Florida Supreme Court Case: Will DeSantis & AG Moody Be Court-Ordered to Remove ALL mRNA Injections from Florida?
    March 5, 2024: When I first began this endeavor, God put on my heart to have the mRNA shots removed from every community across the United States and around the world. I’m honored that I was integral in sending Dr. Joseph Sansone the document that I updated from the

    Read full story

    The Kingston Report. TRUTH WINS.

    Ways to Support My Work

    Mail: Karen Kingston/miFight Inc., 960 Postal Way #307, Vista, CA 92085

    Buy me a coffee (Ko-fi)

    Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

    email: [email protected]

    Get a FREE $99 Wellness Company Membership

    You can keep a full armamentarium of prescriptions on-hand for bacterial, viral, or parasite infections through The Wellness Company. Use the code FREEMEMBER at checkout and SAVE $45.


    Here is the direct link to Emergency Prescription Kit, which contains prescriptions for the above listed acute (not chronic) conditions and infections. Use the code FREEMEMBER at checkout and SAVE $45 PLUS Receive a FREE TWC Membership ($99 Value)


    https://karenkingston.substack.com/p/medical-researchers-call-for-urgent
    Medical Researchers Call for Urgent Actions to Deal with Mass Contamination of Blood Supply "Japanese researchers have published disturbing evidence that blood transfusions from individuals who received COVID-19 shots are tainted with a myriad of dangers." - Jeff Dornik Karen Kingston March 22, 2024: Japanese researchers published a meta-analysis on the dangers of using blood donated from people who were injected with the COVID-19 ‘vaccines,’ increasing the risks for acute health conditions and severe diseases in recipients of blood donations. The researchers provide testing and screening recommendations, and proposed regulations to reduce these risks. Share Jeff Dornik published an excellent article summarizing the scientific meta-analysis, declaring; “The blood supply, once deemed a lifeline, has now become a conduit for harm.” - Jeff Dornik In his article entitled, Japanese Researchers Sound Alarm on Deadly Risks of Vaccinated Blood Transfusions, Jeff writes, “In a shocking revelation, Japanese researchers have unearthed disturbing evidence that could change the way we view COVID-19 Injections forever. According to their findings, blood transfusions from individuals who have received COVID-19 shots are tainted with a myriad of dangers, potentially wreaking havoc on both vaxxed and unvaxxed recipients. This discovery has sparked urgent calls for action from the global medical community, as the ramifications of this contamination could be catastrophic.” I recommend reading and sharing Jeff’s breaking news article. You Can Make an Impact The COVID-19 injections have not only contaminated the blood of those who are injected, but due to shedding and blood donations, all individuals are at risk of being inoculated with gene-editing nanoparticle technologies and toxic biosynthetic spike proteins. These toxic biosynthetic nanoparticles are proven to increase the risk for cardiovascular, neurological, auto-immune, and pulmonary diseases, and can induce permanent changes to the human genome. For the safety of the public, the use of mRNA nanoparticle injections must be banned from every county and state in America. Every American has standing in their state to demand that the COVID-19 mRNA nanoparticle ‘vaccines’ be banned from their state. You can send a demand letter to your governor, attorney general, and even local sheriff. If they fail to take action, you can petition your state’s Supreme Court to order the governor and attorney general to seize the injections and ban the use of mRNA nanoparticle injections. Hebrews 10:35-36 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. Pending Florida Supreme Court Case: Will DeSantis & AG Moody Be Court-Ordered to Remove ALL mRNA Injections from Florida? Pending Florida Supreme Court Case: Will DeSantis & AG Moody Be Court-Ordered to Remove ALL mRNA Injections from Florida? March 5, 2024: When I first began this endeavor, God put on my heart to have the mRNA shots removed from every community across the United States and around the world. I’m honored that I was integral in sending Dr. Joseph Sansone the document that I updated from the Read full story The Kingston Report. TRUTH WINS. Ways to Support My Work Mail: Karen Kingston/miFight Inc., 960 Postal Way #307, Vista, CA 92085 Buy me a coffee (Ko-fi) Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. email: [email protected] Get a FREE $99 Wellness Company Membership You can keep a full armamentarium of prescriptions on-hand for bacterial, viral, or parasite infections through The Wellness Company. Use the code FREEMEMBER at checkout and SAVE $45. Here is the direct link to Emergency Prescription Kit, which contains prescriptions for the above listed acute (not chronic) conditions and infections. Use the code FREEMEMBER at checkout and SAVE $45 PLUS Receive a FREE TWC Membership ($99 Value) https://karenkingston.substack.com/p/medical-researchers-call-for-urgent
    KARENKINGSTON.SUBSTACK.COM
    Medical Researchers Call for Urgent Actions to Deal with Mass Contamination of Blood Supply
    "Japanese researchers have published disturbing evidence that blood transfusions from individuals who received COVID-19 shots are tainted with a myriad of dangers." - Jeff Dornik
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  • The Shedding Disease
    What's going on and what to do about it

    Dr. Syed Haider

    Back in the 1300s during the Black Death plague outbreak in Europe, people were dropping like flies from this mystery illness. No one knew how it spread or how to protect themselves.

    Imagine their shock when some folks started getting sick without ever coming into direct contact with a plague victim!

    Turns out, the plague was spreading through fleas hitching a ride on rats. Even if you never touched a sick person, a plague-carrying flea could jump off a rat and bite you, infecting you with the deadly disease.

    Image
    Huge rat > truly gigantic flea > normal or tiny (?) peasant
    Crazy, right?

    Fast forward to today, and as most of you already know we might be facing a somewhat similar situation with the clot shots.

    For the FOBs (Fresh off the Boat from normie land), hear me out…

    So there's been a ton of stories popping up lately about unvaxxed people, mostly women, having all sorts of weird health issues after being around recently vaccinated folks.

    We're talking things like wacky periods, miscarriages, crazy autoimmune flares, cancers, strokes, etc, all in people who never got the jab themselves.

    At first it seemed like coincidence, but the reports kept piling up.

    It got many doctors scratching their heads (others like me didn’t scratch, we just knew) and wondering, could there be something to this?

    Image
    Man scratches head, Not me.
    Could vaccinated people be "shedding" something that's making unvaccinated people sick?

    There's a few theories flying around.

    One is that the spike proteins made by the vaccines are hitching a ride in tiny bubbles called exosomes that are released in breath, sweat, and other bodily fluids. So an unvaxxed person breathes in these exosomes and boom(!), the toxic spike proteins get into their body and start wreaking havoc. Some people seem super sensitive and react to even tiny amounts.

    Image
    Exosomes are just little bits of our cells membranes that bud off, and can carry anything inside them. In a way viruses are just a class of exosomes, but carrying genetic material that originated outside us (and then multiplied inside us).
    Another idea is that the vaccines are turning people into stealthy virus super-spreaders without them even knowing it. They might feel fine, but they could be carrying and shedding high amounts of virus to everyone around them. So it's not really something in the shot that's being shed, its that they catch COVID, have no symptoms and then just go around spreading COVID everywhere and it’s the COVID that causes the problem (sounds like Big Pharma cope to me, kind of like: it's all in their heads! So yeah, I’m not buying it either).

    Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

    Share

    There's even studies showing the vaccines contain DNA junk from the manufacturing process that might be messing with our microbiome and turning vaxxed people into walking bio-hazards (this is more like it).

    Some theories are farther out there, like it’s some kind of energetic imbalance, or it’s graphene oxide, or even some kind of nanotech (all your cells are belong to us! not very convincing imo).

    Image
    This is not real! My take on the "flashing lights" in the nanotech videos: spinning particulate crystals dispersing incident light from the microscope? The apparently self-assembling structures: chemical gardens? The broadcasted MAC addresses? Put that sample in a Faraday cage and check it again.
    Anyway, regardless of the mechanism there’s something strange going on.

    The science is still new (there's not much of a career in studying this stuff), but evidence is beginning to stack up suggesting that this "vaccine shedding" stuff might be legit.

    Researchers are finding vaccine cooties like mRNA, spike proteins, and weird DNA bits in saliva, vaginal secretions, sperm, breast milk, even the air around vaxxed people.

    Image
    For the love of God don’t vax the kiddos.
    So what to do?

    Figure out your personal risk level. Some folks seem to be more sensitive than others, especially if you already have health issues (or had spike toxicity before). Might be smart to take extra precautions.

    Rain check: avoid swapping saliva or other Fun Time Activities with vaxxed people if you can, at least for a few weeks to months after they get the shot.

    Feed your body the good stuff to beef up your natural defenses. We're talking clean eats, plenty of Zzz's, and immune-boosting supps like the sunshine vitamin (I mean actual sunshine), as well as actual supplements like C, D, zinc, and quercetin.

    Consider adding some anti-shedding supplements to your arsenal, like

    DETOX [spike buster] to bust up clots or ivermectin to nuke those spike proteins. Work with a dialed in doc (i.e. me) to find the right combo for you.

    If you got mega-dosed with someone's shed, you might need to pull out the big detox guns like plasma donation (which is better tho the paid, or more expensive, less available therapeutic plasmapheresis), ozone therapy, ultraviolet blood irradiation, low-dose naltrexone, microbiome restoration (i.e. stool transplants, probably somewhere in South America or maybe Australia), or IV exosomes. We can help with a custom detox plan at mygotodoc.com (that's me).

    Don't forget to clean your space! Some have reported you can detoxify a room where shedding occurred using hypochlorous acid (Danolyte) or Chlorine Dioxide. UV light systems may also be able to zap any shed cooties floating around (plus they kills normal COVID too, bonus!)

    Share

    Bottom line, we need way more research on this shedding stuff ASAP. But until we know for sure it's not a thing, better safe than shedding or shed upon.

    We all have the right to choose what goes in our bodies, and that includes not getting stealth dosed with someone else's vaccine gunk.

    The health bigwigs need to step up and take this seriously stat (yea right - someone needs to take them to the woodshed, or just shed on them).


    Until then (forever?), keep your eyes open, trust your gut, and do what you gotta do to stay safe out there!

    And if you think you got shed upon, speak up and find a doc who will actually listen (again: moi).

    Shedding is no joke, but together we'll get through this and come out stronger on the other side.

    Drop a comment below and let me know if you’ve been shed upon, what you know works and what else we should do (Nuremberg 2.0, anyone?).

    https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/the-shedding-disease

    https://telegra.ph/The-Shedding-Disease-03-20
    The Shedding Disease What's going on and what to do about it Dr. Syed Haider Back in the 1300s during the Black Death plague outbreak in Europe, people were dropping like flies from this mystery illness. No one knew how it spread or how to protect themselves. Imagine their shock when some folks started getting sick without ever coming into direct contact with a plague victim! Turns out, the plague was spreading through fleas hitching a ride on rats. Even if you never touched a sick person, a plague-carrying flea could jump off a rat and bite you, infecting you with the deadly disease. Image Huge rat > truly gigantic flea > normal or tiny (?) peasant Crazy, right? Fast forward to today, and as most of you already know we might be facing a somewhat similar situation with the clot shots. For the FOBs (Fresh off the Boat from normie land), hear me out… So there's been a ton of stories popping up lately about unvaxxed people, mostly women, having all sorts of weird health issues after being around recently vaccinated folks. We're talking things like wacky periods, miscarriages, crazy autoimmune flares, cancers, strokes, etc, all in people who never got the jab themselves. At first it seemed like coincidence, but the reports kept piling up. It got many doctors scratching their heads (others like me didn’t scratch, we just knew) and wondering, could there be something to this? Image Man scratches head, Not me. Could vaccinated people be "shedding" something that's making unvaccinated people sick? There's a few theories flying around. One is that the spike proteins made by the vaccines are hitching a ride in tiny bubbles called exosomes that are released in breath, sweat, and other bodily fluids. So an unvaxxed person breathes in these exosomes and boom(!), the toxic spike proteins get into their body and start wreaking havoc. Some people seem super sensitive and react to even tiny amounts. Image Exosomes are just little bits of our cells membranes that bud off, and can carry anything inside them. In a way viruses are just a class of exosomes, but carrying genetic material that originated outside us (and then multiplied inside us). Another idea is that the vaccines are turning people into stealthy virus super-spreaders without them even knowing it. They might feel fine, but they could be carrying and shedding high amounts of virus to everyone around them. So it's not really something in the shot that's being shed, its that they catch COVID, have no symptoms and then just go around spreading COVID everywhere and it’s the COVID that causes the problem (sounds like Big Pharma cope to me, kind of like: it's all in their heads! So yeah, I’m not buying it either). Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share There's even studies showing the vaccines contain DNA junk from the manufacturing process that might be messing with our microbiome and turning vaxxed people into walking bio-hazards (this is more like it). Some theories are farther out there, like it’s some kind of energetic imbalance, or it’s graphene oxide, or even some kind of nanotech (all your cells are belong to us! not very convincing imo). Image This is not real! My take on the "flashing lights" in the nanotech videos: spinning particulate crystals dispersing incident light from the microscope? The apparently self-assembling structures: chemical gardens? The broadcasted MAC addresses? Put that sample in a Faraday cage and check it again. Anyway, regardless of the mechanism there’s something strange going on. The science is still new (there's not much of a career in studying this stuff), but evidence is beginning to stack up suggesting that this "vaccine shedding" stuff might be legit. Researchers are finding vaccine cooties like mRNA, spike proteins, and weird DNA bits in saliva, vaginal secretions, sperm, breast milk, even the air around vaxxed people. Image For the love of God don’t vax the kiddos. So what to do? Figure out your personal risk level. Some folks seem to be more sensitive than others, especially if you already have health issues (or had spike toxicity before). Might be smart to take extra precautions. Rain check: avoid swapping saliva or other Fun Time Activities with vaxxed people if you can, at least for a few weeks to months after they get the shot. Feed your body the good stuff to beef up your natural defenses. We're talking clean eats, plenty of Zzz's, and immune-boosting supps like the sunshine vitamin (I mean actual sunshine), as well as actual supplements like C, D, zinc, and quercetin. Consider adding some anti-shedding supplements to your arsenal, like DETOX [spike buster] to bust up clots or ivermectin to nuke those spike proteins. Work with a dialed in doc (i.e. me) to find the right combo for you. If you got mega-dosed with someone's shed, you might need to pull out the big detox guns like plasma donation (which is better tho the paid, or more expensive, less available therapeutic plasmapheresis), ozone therapy, ultraviolet blood irradiation, low-dose naltrexone, microbiome restoration (i.e. stool transplants, probably somewhere in South America or maybe Australia), or IV exosomes. We can help with a custom detox plan at mygotodoc.com (that's me). Don't forget to clean your space! Some have reported you can detoxify a room where shedding occurred using hypochlorous acid (Danolyte) or Chlorine Dioxide. UV light systems may also be able to zap any shed cooties floating around (plus they kills normal COVID too, bonus!) Share Bottom line, we need way more research on this shedding stuff ASAP. But until we know for sure it's not a thing, better safe than shedding or shed upon. We all have the right to choose what goes in our bodies, and that includes not getting stealth dosed with someone else's vaccine gunk. The health bigwigs need to step up and take this seriously stat (yea right - someone needs to take them to the woodshed, or just shed on them). Until then (forever?), keep your eyes open, trust your gut, and do what you gotta do to stay safe out there! And if you think you got shed upon, speak up and find a doc who will actually listen (again: moi). Shedding is no joke, but together we'll get through this and come out stronger on the other side. Drop a comment below and let me know if you’ve been shed upon, what you know works and what else we should do (Nuremberg 2.0, anyone?). https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/the-shedding-disease https://telegra.ph/The-Shedding-Disease-03-20
    BLOG.MYGOTODOC.COM
    The Shedding Disease
    What's going on and what to do about it
    Angry
    1
    0 Comments 1 Shares 11150 Views
  • Walmart $100 Gift Crad Giveaways!
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    Hey there, Walmart users! Don't miss out on your chance to claim $100 for 2024! Simply follow the steps to claim your Gift Card reward now! Hurry, this offer won't last forever! . Only USA People are eligible for this Offer.
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    Walmart $100 Gift Crad Giveaways! Get Now here 👉👉 https://cutt.ly/Bw1T8ZG1 Hey there, Walmart users! 🤑 Don't miss out on your chance to claim $100 for 2024! 💰 Simply follow the steps to claim your Gift Card reward now! 💵 Hurry, this offer won't last forever! ⏳. Only USA People are eligible for this Offer. #Walmart #Walmartgiveawaygiftcard #WalmartGiftCard #VirialVideo #WalmartUSA
    1 Comments 0 Shares 2277 Views 1
  • Latest Cash App $750 (2024)
    Hey there, Cash App users! Don't miss out on your chance to claim $750 for 2024! Simply follow the steps to claim your cash reward now! Hurry, this offer won't last forever! . Only USA People are eligible for this Offer.
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    Latest Cash App $750 (2024) Hey there, Cash App users! 🤑 Don't miss out on your chance to claim $750 for 2024! 💰 Simply follow the steps to claim your cash reward now! 💵 Hurry, this offer won't last forever! ⏳. Only USA People are eligible for this Offer. Claim Now here 👉👉👉 https://rb.gy/570w16 #CashappUSA #CashApp$750Update #Cashappblessing #CashAppMe #VirialVedio #VirialPostresent
    1 Comments 0 Shares 1574 Views 7
  • Scott Ritter: We are witnessing the bittersweet birth of a new Russia | VT Foreign Policy
    March 10, 2024
    VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

    $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
    Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

    Tucker Carlson’s confused exasperation over Russian President Vladmir Putin’s extemporaneous history lesson at the start of their landmark February interview (which has been watched more than a billion times), underscored one realty. For a Western audience, the question of the historical bona fides of Russia’s claim of sovereign interest in territories located on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper River, currently claimed by Ukraine, is confusing to the point of incomprehension.

    Vladimir Putin, however, did not manufacture his history lesson from thin air. Anyone who has followed the speeches and writings of the Russian president over the years would have found his comments to Carlson quite familiar, echoing both in tone and content previous statements made concerning both the viability of the Ukrainian state from an historic perspective, and the historical ties between what Putin has called Novorossiya (New Russia) and the Russian nation.

    For example, on March 18, 2014, during his announcement regarding the annexation of Crimea, the president observed that “after the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917], for a number of reasons the Bolsheviks – let God judge them – added historical sections of the south of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic composition of the population, and these regions today form the south-east of Ukraine.”

    Later during a televised question-and-answer session, Putin declared that “what was called Novorossiya back in tsarist days – Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev and Odessa – were not part of Ukraine then. These territories were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet Government. Why? Who knows? They were won by Potemkin and Catherine the Great in a series of well-known wars. The center of that territory was Novorossiysk, so the region is called Novorossiya. Russia lost these territories for various reasons, but the people remained.”

    Novorossiya isn’t just a construct of Vladimir Putin’s imagination, but rather a notion drawn from historic fact that resonated with the people who populated the territories it encompassed. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an abortive effort by pro-Russia citizens of the new Ukrainian state to restore Novorossiya as an independent region.

    Scott Ritter: Helping Crimea recover from decades of Ukrainian misrule is a tough but necessary challenge

    Read more

    Scott Ritter: Helping Crimea recover from decades of Ukrainian misrule is a tough but necessary challenge

    While this effort failed, the concept of a greater Novorossiya confederation was revived in May 2014 by the newly proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. But this effort, too, was short-lived, being put on ice in 2015. This, however, did not mean the death of the idea of Novorossiya. On February 21, 2022, Putin delivered a lengthy address to the Russian nation on the eve of his decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine as part of what he termed a Special Military Operation. Those who watched Tucker Carlson’s February 9, 2024, interview with Putin would have been struck by the similarity between the two presentations.

    While he did not make a direct reference to Novorossiya, the president did outline fundamental historic and cultural linkages which serve as the foundation for any discussion about the viability and legitimacy of Novorossiya in the context of Russian-Ukrainian relations.

    “I would like to emphasize,” Putin said, “once again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space. It is our friends, our relatives, not only colleagues, friends, and former work colleagues, but also our relatives and close family members. Since the oldest times,” Putin continued, “the inhabitants of the south-western historical territories of ancient Russia have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. It was the same in the 17th century, when a part of these territories [i.e., Novorossiya] was reunited with the Russian state, and even after that.”

    The Russian president set forth his contention that the modern state of Ukraine was an invention of Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet Union. “Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy,” Putin stated, “and can be rightfully called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine’. He was its creator and architect. This is fully and comprehensively corroborated by archival documents.”

    Putin went on to issue a threat which, when seen in the context of the present, proved ominously prescient. “And today the ’grateful progeny’ has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization. You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine.”

    In September 2022 Putin followed through on this, ordering referendums in four territories (Kherson and Zaporozhye, and the newly independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics) to determine whether the populations residing there wished to join the Russian Federation. All four did so. Putin has since then referred to these new Russian territories as Novorossiya, perhaps nowhere more poignantly that in June 2023, when he praised the Russian soldiers “who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya and for the unity of the Russian world.”

    The story of those who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya is one that I have wanted to tell for some time now. I have borne witness here in the United States to the extremely one-sided coverage of the military aspects of Russia’s military operation. Like many of my fellow analysts, I had to undertake the extremely difficult task of trying to parse out fact from an overwhelmingly fictional narrative. Nor was I helped in any way in this regard by the Russian side, which was parsimonious in the release of information that reflected its side of reality.

    In preparing for my December 2023 visit to Russia, I had hoped to be able to visit the four new Russian territories to see for myself what the truth was when it came to the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. I also wanted to interview the Russian military and civilian leadership to get a broader perspective of the conflict. I had reached out to the Russian Foreign and Defense ministries through the Russian Embassy in the US, bending the ear of both the Ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, and the Defense Attache, Major-General Evgeny Bobkin, about my plans.

    While both men supported my project and wrote recommendations back to their respective ministries in this regard, the Russian Defense Ministry, which had the final say over what happened in the four new territories, vetoed the idea. This veto was not because they didn’t like the idea of me writing an in-depth analysis of the conflict from the Russian perspective, but rather that the project as I outlined it, which would have required sustained access to frontline units and personnel, was deemed too dangerous. In short, the Russian Defense Ministry did not relish the idea of me being killed on its watch.

    Under normal circumstances, I would have backed off. I had no desire to create any difficulty with the Russian government, and I was always cognizant of the reality that I was a guest in the country.

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    The last thing I wanted to be was a “war tourist,” where I put myself and others at risk for purely personal reasons. But I also felt strongly that if I were going to continue to provide so-called “expert analysis” about the military operation and the geopolitical realities of Novorossiya and Crimea, then I needed to see these places firsthand. I strongly believed that I had a professional obligation to see the new territories. Fortunately for me, Aleksandr Zyryanov, a Crimea native and director general of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation, agreed.

    It wasn’t going to be easy.

    We first tried to enter the new territories via Donetsk, driving west out of Rostov-on-Don. However, when we arrived at the checkpoint, we were told that the Ministry of Defense had not cleared us for entry. Not willing to take no for an answer, Aleksandr drove south, towards Krasnodar, and then – after making some phone calls – across the Crimean Bridge into Crimea. Once it became clear that we were planning on entering the new territories from Crimea, the Ministry of Defense yielded, granting permission for me to visit the four new Russian territories under one non-negotiable condition – I was not to go anywhere near the frontlines.

    We left Feodosia early on the morning of January 15, 2024. At Dzhankoy, in northern Crimea, we took highway 18 north toward the Tup-Dzhankoy Peninsula and the Chongar Strait, which separates the Sivash lagoon system that forms the border between Crimea and the mainland into eastern and western portions. It was here that Red Army forces, on the night of November 12, 1920, broke through the defenses of the White Army of General Wrangel, leading to the capture of the Crimean Peninsula by Soviet forces. And it was also here that the Russian Army, on February 24, 2022, crossed into the Kherson Region from Crimea.

    The Chongar Bridge is one of three highway crossings that connect Crimea with Kherson. It has been struck twice by Ukrainian forces seeking to disrupt Russian supply lines, once, in June 2023, when it was hit by British-made Storm Shadow missiles, and once again that August when it was hit by French-made SCALP missiles (a variant of the Storm Shadow.) In both instances, the bridge was temporarily shut down for repairs, evidence of which was clearly visible as we made our way across, and on to the Chongar checkpoint, where we were cleared by Russian soldiers for entry into the Kherson Region.

    At the checkpoint we picked up a vehicle carrying a bodyguard detachment from the reconnaissance company of the Sparta Battalion, a veteran military formation whose roots date back to the very beginning of the Donbass revolt against the Ukrainian nationalists who seized power in Kiev during the February 2014 Maidan coup. They would be our escort through the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – even though we were going to give the frontlines a wide berth, Ukrainian “deep reconnaissance groups”, or DRGs, were known to target traffic along the M18 highway. Aleksandr was driving an armored Chevrolet Suburban, and the Sparta detachment had their own armored SUV. If we were to come under attack, our response would be to try and drive through the ambush. If that failed, then the Sparta boys would have to go to work.

    Our first destination was the city of Genichesk, a port city along the Sea of Azov. Genichesk is the capital of the Genichesk District of the Kherson Region and, since November 9, 2022, when Russian forces withdrew from the city of Kherson, it has served as the temporary capital of the region. Aleksandr had been on his phone since morning, and his efforts had paid off – I was scheduled to meet with Vladimir Saldo, the local Governor.

    RT

    Genichesk is – literally – off the beaten path. When we reached the town of Novoalekseyevka, we got off the M18 highway and headed east along a two-lane road that took us toward the Sea of Azov. There were armed checkpoints all along the route, but the Sparta bodyguards were able to get us waved through without any issues. But the effect of these checkpoints was chilling – there was no doubt that one was in a region at war.

    To call Genichesk a ghost town would be misleading – it is populated, and the evidence of civilian life is everywhere you look. The problem was, there didn’t seem to be enough people present. The city, like the region, is in a general state of decay, a holdover from the neglect it had suffered at the hands of a Ukrainian government that largely ignored territories that had, since 2004, voted in favor of the Party of Regions, the party of former President Viktor Yanukovich, who was ousted in the February 2014 Maidan coup. Nearly two years of war had likewise contributed to the atmosphere of societal neglect, an impression which was magnified by the weather – overcast, cold, with a light sleet blowing in off the water.

    As we made our way into the building where the government of the Kherson Region had established its temporary offices, I couldn’t help but notice a statue of Lenin in the courtyard. Ukrainian nationalists had taken it down in July 2015, but the citizens of Genichesk had reinstalled it in April 2022, once the Russians had taken control of the city. Given Putin’s feeling about the role Lenin played in creating Ukraine, I found both the presence of this monument, and the role of the Russian citizens of Genichesk in restoring it, curiously ironic.

    Vladimir Saldo is a man imbued with enthusiasm for his work. A civil engineer by profession, with a PhD in economics, Saldo had served in senior management positions in the “Khersonbud” Project and Construction Company before moving on into politics, serving on the Kherson City Council, the Kherson Regional Administration, and two terms as the mayor of the city of Kherson. Saldo, as a member of the Party of Regions, moved to the opposition and was effectively subjected to political ostracism in 2014, when the Ukrainian nationalists who had seized power all but forced it out of politics.

    Aleksandr and I had the pleasure of meeting with Saldo in his office in the government building in downtown Genichesk. We talked about a wide range of issues, including his own path from a Ukrainian construction specialist to his current position as the governor of Kherson Oblast.

    We talked about the war.

    But Saldo’s passion was the economy, and how he could help revive the civilian economy of Kherson in a manner that best served the interests of its diminished population. On the eve of the military operation, back in early 2022, the population of the Kherson Region stood at just over a million, of which some 280,000 were residing in the city of Kherson. By November 2022, following the withdrawal of Russian forces from the right bank of the Dnieper River – including the city of Kherson – the population of the region had fallen below 400,000 and, with dismal economic prospects, the numbers kept falling. Many of those who left were Ukrainians who did not want to live under Russian rule. But others were Russians and Ukrainians who felt that they had no future in the war-torn region, and as such sought their fortunes elsewhere in Russia.

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    “My job is to give the people of Kherson hope for a better future,” Saldo told me. “And the time for this to happen is now, not when the war ends.”

    Restoration of Kherson’s once vibrant agricultural sector is a top priority, and Saldo has personally taken the lead in signing agreements for the provision of Kherson produce to Moscow supermarkets. Saldo has also turned the region into a special economic zone, where potential investors and entrepreneurs can receive preferential loans and financial support, as well as organizational and legal assistance for businesses willing to open shop there.

    The man responsible for making this vision a reality is Mikhail Panchenko, the Director of the Kherson Region Industry Development Fund. I met Mikhail in a restaurant located across the street from the governmental building which Saldo called home. Mikhail had come to Kherson in the summer of 2022, leaving a prominent position in Moscow in the process. “The Russian government was interested in rebuilding Kherson,” Mikhail told me, “and established the Industry Development Fund as a way of attracting businesses to the region.” Mikhail, who was born in 1968, was too old to enlist in the military. “When the opportunity came to direct the Industry Development Fund, I jumped at it as a way to do my patriotic duty.”

    The first year of the fund’s operation saw Mikhail hand out 300 million rubles (almost $3.3 million at the current rate) in loans and grants (some of which was used to open the very restaurant where we were meeting.) The second year saw the allotment grow to some 700 million rubles. One of the biggest projects was the opening of a concrete production line capable of producing 60 cubic meters of concrete per hour. Mikhail took Alexander and me on a tour of the plant, which had grown to three production lines generating some 180 cubic meters of concrete an hour. Mikhail had just approved funding for an additional four production lines, for a total concrete production rate of 420 cubic meters per hour.

    “That’s a lot of concrete,” I remarked to Mikhail.

    “We are making good use of it,” he replied. “We are rebuilding schools, hospitals, and government buildings that had been neglected over the years. Revitalizing the basic infrastructure a society needs if it is to nurture a growing population.”

    The problem Mikhail faces, however, is that most of the population growth being experienced in Kherson today comes from the military. The war can’t last forever, Mikhail noted. “Someday the army will leave, and we will need civilians. Right now, the people who left are not returning, and we’re having a hard time attracting newcomers. But we will keep building in anticipation of a time when the population of the Kherson region will grow from an impetus other than war. And for that,” he said, a twinkle in his eye, “we need concrete!”

    I thought long and hard about the words of Vladimir Saldo and Panchenko as Aleksandr drove back onto the M18 highway, heading northeast, toward Donetsk. The reconstruction efforts being undertaken are impressive. But the number that kept coming to mind was the precipitous decline in the population – more than 60% of the pre-war population has left the Kherson region since the Russian military operation began.

    According to statistics provided by the Russian Central Election Commission, some 571,000 voters took part in the referendum on joining Russia that was held in late September 2022. A little over 497,000, or some 87%, voted in favor, while slightly more than 68,800, or 12%, voted against. The turnout was almost 77%.

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    These numbers, if accurate, implied that there was a population of over 740,000 eligible voters at the time of the election. While the loss of the city of Kherson in November 2022 could account for a significant source of the population drop that took place between September 2022 and the time of my visit in January 2024, it could not account for all of it.

    The Russian population of Kherson in 2022 stood at approximately 20%, or around 200,000. One can safely say that the number of Russians who fled west to Kiev following the start of the military operation amounts to a negligible figure. If one assumes that the Russian population of the Kherson Region remained relatively stable, then most of the population decline came from the Ukrainian population.

    While Saldo did not admit to such, the Governor of the neighboring Zaporozhya Region, Yevgeny Balitsky, has acknowledged that many Ukrainian families deemed by the authorities to be anti-Russian were deported following the initiation of the military operation (Russians accounted for a little more than 25% of the pre-conflict Zaporozhye population.) Many others fled to Russia to escape the deprivations of war.

    Evidence of the war was everywhere to be seen. While the conflict in Kherson has stabilized along a line defined by the Dnieper River, Zaporozhye is very much a frontline region. Indeed, the main direction of attack of the summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive was from the Zaporozhye region village of Rabotino, toward the town of Tokmak, and on towards the temporary regional capital of Melitopol (the city of Zaporozhye has remained under Ukrainian control throughout the conflict to date.)

    I had petitioned to visit the frontlines near Rabotino but had been denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense. So, too, was my request to visit units deployed in the vicinity of Tokmak – too close to the front. The closest I would get would be the city of Melitopol, the ultimate objective of the Ukrainian counterattack. We drove past fields filled with the concrete “dragon’s teeth” and antitank ditches that marked the final layer of defenses that constituted the “Surovikin Line,” named after the Russian General, Sergey Surovikin, who had commanded the forces when the defenses were put in place.

    The Ukrainians had hoped to reach the city of Melitopol in a matter of days once their attack began; they never breached the first line of defense situated to the southeast of Rabotino.

    Melitopol, however, is not immune to the horrors of war, with Ukrainian artillery and rockets targeting it often to disrupt Russian military logistics. I kept this in mind as we drove through the streets of the city, past military checkpoints, and roving patrols. I was struck by the fact that the civilians I saw were going about their business, seemingly oblivious to the everyday reality of war that existed around them.

    As was the case in Kherson, the entirety of the Zaporozhye Region seemed strangely depopulated, as if one were driving through the French capital of Paris in August, when half the city is away on vacation. I had hoped to be able to talk with Balitsky about the reduced population and other questions I had about life in the region during wartime, but this time Aleksandr’s phone could not produce the desired result – Balitsky was away from the region and unavailable.

    If he had been available, I would have asked him the same question I had put to Saldo earlier in the day: given that Putin was apparently willing to return the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions to Ukraine as part of the peace deal negotiated in March 2022, how does the population of his region feel about being part of Russia today? Are they convinced that Russia is, in fact, there to stay? Do they feel like they are a genuine part of the Novorossiya that Putin speaks about?

    Saldo had talked in depth about the transition from being occupied by Russian forces, which lasted until April-May 2022 (about the time that Ukraine backed out of the ceasefire agreement), to being administered by Moscow. “There never was a doubt in my mind, or anyone else’s, that Kherson was historically a part of Russia,” Saldo said, “or that, once Russian troops arrived, that we would forever be Russian again.”

    But the declining population, and the admission of forced deportations on the part of Balitsky, suggests that there was a significant part of the population that had, in fact, taken umbrage at such a future.

    I would have liked to hear what Balitsky had to say about this question.

    Reality, however, doesn’t deal with hypotheticals, and the present reality is that both Kherson and Zaporozhye are today part of the Russian Federation, and that both regions are populated by people who had made the decision to remain there as citizens of Russia. We will never know what the fate of these two territories would have been had the Ukrainian government honored the ceasefire agreement negotiated in March 2022. What we do know is that today both Kherson and Zaporozhye are part of the “New Territories” – Novorossiya.

    Russia will for some time find its acquisition of the “new territories” challenged by nations who question the legitimacy of Russia’s military occupation and subsequent absorption of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions into the Russian Federation. The reticence of foreigners to recognize these regions as being part of Russia, however, is the least of Russia’s problems. As was the case with Crimea, the Russian government will proceed irrespective of any international opposition.

    The real challenge facing Russia is to convince Russians that the new territories are as integral to the Russian motherland as Crimea, a region reabsorbed by Russia in 2014 which has seen its economic fortunes and its population grow over the past decade. The diminished demographics of Kherson and Zaporozhye represent a litmus test of sorts for the Russian government, and for the governments of both Kherson and Zaporozhye. If the populations of these regions cannot regenerate, then these regions will wither on the vine. If, however, these new Russian lands can be transformed into places where Russians can envision themselves raising families in an environment free from want and fear, then Novorossiya will flourish.

    Novorossiya is a reality, and the people who live there are citizens by choice more than circumstances. They are well served by men like Saldo and Balitsky, who are dedicated to the giant task of making these regions part of the Russian Motherland in actuality, not just in name.

    Behind Saldo and Balitsky are men like Panchenko, people who left an easy life in Moscow or some other Russian city to come to the “New Territories” not for the purpose of seeking their fortunes, but rather to improve the lives of the new Russian citizens of Novorossiya.



    For this to happen, Russia must emerge victorious in its struggle against the Ukrainian nationalists ensconced in Kiev, and their Western allies. Thanks to the sacrifices of the Russian military, this victory is in the process of being accomplished.

    Then the real test begins – turning Novorossiya into a place Russians will want to call home.


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    https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/03/scott-ritter-we-are-witnessing-the-bittersweet-birth-of-a-new-russia/


    https://telegra.ph/Scott-Ritter-We-are-witnessing-the-bittersweet-birth-of-a-new-Russia--VT-Foreign-Policy-03-11
    Scott Ritter: We are witnessing the bittersweet birth of a new Russia | VT Foreign Policy March 10, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. Tucker Carlson’s confused exasperation over Russian President Vladmir Putin’s extemporaneous history lesson at the start of their landmark February interview (which has been watched more than a billion times), underscored one realty. For a Western audience, the question of the historical bona fides of Russia’s claim of sovereign interest in territories located on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper River, currently claimed by Ukraine, is confusing to the point of incomprehension. Vladimir Putin, however, did not manufacture his history lesson from thin air. Anyone who has followed the speeches and writings of the Russian president over the years would have found his comments to Carlson quite familiar, echoing both in tone and content previous statements made concerning both the viability of the Ukrainian state from an historic perspective, and the historical ties between what Putin has called Novorossiya (New Russia) and the Russian nation. For example, on March 18, 2014, during his announcement regarding the annexation of Crimea, the president observed that “after the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917], for a number of reasons the Bolsheviks – let God judge them – added historical sections of the south of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic composition of the population, and these regions today form the south-east of Ukraine.” Later during a televised question-and-answer session, Putin declared that “what was called Novorossiya back in tsarist days – Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev and Odessa – were not part of Ukraine then. These territories were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet Government. Why? Who knows? They were won by Potemkin and Catherine the Great in a series of well-known wars. The center of that territory was Novorossiysk, so the region is called Novorossiya. Russia lost these territories for various reasons, but the people remained.” Novorossiya isn’t just a construct of Vladimir Putin’s imagination, but rather a notion drawn from historic fact that resonated with the people who populated the territories it encompassed. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an abortive effort by pro-Russia citizens of the new Ukrainian state to restore Novorossiya as an independent region. Scott Ritter: Helping Crimea recover from decades of Ukrainian misrule is a tough but necessary challenge Read more Scott Ritter: Helping Crimea recover from decades of Ukrainian misrule is a tough but necessary challenge While this effort failed, the concept of a greater Novorossiya confederation was revived in May 2014 by the newly proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. But this effort, too, was short-lived, being put on ice in 2015. This, however, did not mean the death of the idea of Novorossiya. On February 21, 2022, Putin delivered a lengthy address to the Russian nation on the eve of his decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine as part of what he termed a Special Military Operation. Those who watched Tucker Carlson’s February 9, 2024, interview with Putin would have been struck by the similarity between the two presentations. While he did not make a direct reference to Novorossiya, the president did outline fundamental historic and cultural linkages which serve as the foundation for any discussion about the viability and legitimacy of Novorossiya in the context of Russian-Ukrainian relations. “I would like to emphasize,” Putin said, “once again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space. It is our friends, our relatives, not only colleagues, friends, and former work colleagues, but also our relatives and close family members. Since the oldest times,” Putin continued, “the inhabitants of the south-western historical territories of ancient Russia have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. It was the same in the 17th century, when a part of these territories [i.e., Novorossiya] was reunited with the Russian state, and even after that.” The Russian president set forth his contention that the modern state of Ukraine was an invention of Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet Union. “Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy,” Putin stated, “and can be rightfully called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine’. He was its creator and architect. This is fully and comprehensively corroborated by archival documents.” Putin went on to issue a threat which, when seen in the context of the present, proved ominously prescient. “And today the ’grateful progeny’ has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization. You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine.” In September 2022 Putin followed through on this, ordering referendums in four territories (Kherson and Zaporozhye, and the newly independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics) to determine whether the populations residing there wished to join the Russian Federation. All four did so. Putin has since then referred to these new Russian territories as Novorossiya, perhaps nowhere more poignantly that in June 2023, when he praised the Russian soldiers “who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya and for the unity of the Russian world.” The story of those who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya is one that I have wanted to tell for some time now. I have borne witness here in the United States to the extremely one-sided coverage of the military aspects of Russia’s military operation. Like many of my fellow analysts, I had to undertake the extremely difficult task of trying to parse out fact from an overwhelmingly fictional narrative. Nor was I helped in any way in this regard by the Russian side, which was parsimonious in the release of information that reflected its side of reality. In preparing for my December 2023 visit to Russia, I had hoped to be able to visit the four new Russian territories to see for myself what the truth was when it came to the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. I also wanted to interview the Russian military and civilian leadership to get a broader perspective of the conflict. I had reached out to the Russian Foreign and Defense ministries through the Russian Embassy in the US, bending the ear of both the Ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, and the Defense Attache, Major-General Evgeny Bobkin, about my plans. While both men supported my project and wrote recommendations back to their respective ministries in this regard, the Russian Defense Ministry, which had the final say over what happened in the four new territories, vetoed the idea. This veto was not because they didn’t like the idea of me writing an in-depth analysis of the conflict from the Russian perspective, but rather that the project as I outlined it, which would have required sustained access to frontline units and personnel, was deemed too dangerous. In short, the Russian Defense Ministry did not relish the idea of me being killed on its watch. Under normal circumstances, I would have backed off. I had no desire to create any difficulty with the Russian government, and I was always cognizant of the reality that I was a guest in the country. Western ‘expertise’ on the Ukraine conflict could lead the world to a nuclear disaster Read more Western ‘expertise’ on the Ukraine conflict could lead the world to a nuclear disaster The last thing I wanted to be was a “war tourist,” where I put myself and others at risk for purely personal reasons. But I also felt strongly that if I were going to continue to provide so-called “expert analysis” about the military operation and the geopolitical realities of Novorossiya and Crimea, then I needed to see these places firsthand. I strongly believed that I had a professional obligation to see the new territories. Fortunately for me, Aleksandr Zyryanov, a Crimea native and director general of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation, agreed. It wasn’t going to be easy. We first tried to enter the new territories via Donetsk, driving west out of Rostov-on-Don. However, when we arrived at the checkpoint, we were told that the Ministry of Defense had not cleared us for entry. Not willing to take no for an answer, Aleksandr drove south, towards Krasnodar, and then – after making some phone calls – across the Crimean Bridge into Crimea. Once it became clear that we were planning on entering the new territories from Crimea, the Ministry of Defense yielded, granting permission for me to visit the four new Russian territories under one non-negotiable condition – I was not to go anywhere near the frontlines. We left Feodosia early on the morning of January 15, 2024. At Dzhankoy, in northern Crimea, we took highway 18 north toward the Tup-Dzhankoy Peninsula and the Chongar Strait, which separates the Sivash lagoon system that forms the border between Crimea and the mainland into eastern and western portions. It was here that Red Army forces, on the night of November 12, 1920, broke through the defenses of the White Army of General Wrangel, leading to the capture of the Crimean Peninsula by Soviet forces. And it was also here that the Russian Army, on February 24, 2022, crossed into the Kherson Region from Crimea. The Chongar Bridge is one of three highway crossings that connect Crimea with Kherson. It has been struck twice by Ukrainian forces seeking to disrupt Russian supply lines, once, in June 2023, when it was hit by British-made Storm Shadow missiles, and once again that August when it was hit by French-made SCALP missiles (a variant of the Storm Shadow.) In both instances, the bridge was temporarily shut down for repairs, evidence of which was clearly visible as we made our way across, and on to the Chongar checkpoint, where we were cleared by Russian soldiers for entry into the Kherson Region. At the checkpoint we picked up a vehicle carrying a bodyguard detachment from the reconnaissance company of the Sparta Battalion, a veteran military formation whose roots date back to the very beginning of the Donbass revolt against the Ukrainian nationalists who seized power in Kiev during the February 2014 Maidan coup. They would be our escort through the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – even though we were going to give the frontlines a wide berth, Ukrainian “deep reconnaissance groups”, or DRGs, were known to target traffic along the M18 highway. Aleksandr was driving an armored Chevrolet Suburban, and the Sparta detachment had their own armored SUV. If we were to come under attack, our response would be to try and drive through the ambush. If that failed, then the Sparta boys would have to go to work. Our first destination was the city of Genichesk, a port city along the Sea of Azov. Genichesk is the capital of the Genichesk District of the Kherson Region and, since November 9, 2022, when Russian forces withdrew from the city of Kherson, it has served as the temporary capital of the region. Aleksandr had been on his phone since morning, and his efforts had paid off – I was scheduled to meet with Vladimir Saldo, the local Governor. RT Genichesk is – literally – off the beaten path. When we reached the town of Novoalekseyevka, we got off the M18 highway and headed east along a two-lane road that took us toward the Sea of Azov. There were armed checkpoints all along the route, but the Sparta bodyguards were able to get us waved through without any issues. But the effect of these checkpoints was chilling – there was no doubt that one was in a region at war. To call Genichesk a ghost town would be misleading – it is populated, and the evidence of civilian life is everywhere you look. The problem was, there didn’t seem to be enough people present. The city, like the region, is in a general state of decay, a holdover from the neglect it had suffered at the hands of a Ukrainian government that largely ignored territories that had, since 2004, voted in favor of the Party of Regions, the party of former President Viktor Yanukovich, who was ousted in the February 2014 Maidan coup. Nearly two years of war had likewise contributed to the atmosphere of societal neglect, an impression which was magnified by the weather – overcast, cold, with a light sleet blowing in off the water. As we made our way into the building where the government of the Kherson Region had established its temporary offices, I couldn’t help but notice a statue of Lenin in the courtyard. Ukrainian nationalists had taken it down in July 2015, but the citizens of Genichesk had reinstalled it in April 2022, once the Russians had taken control of the city. Given Putin’s feeling about the role Lenin played in creating Ukraine, I found both the presence of this monument, and the role of the Russian citizens of Genichesk in restoring it, curiously ironic. Vladimir Saldo is a man imbued with enthusiasm for his work. A civil engineer by profession, with a PhD in economics, Saldo had served in senior management positions in the “Khersonbud” Project and Construction Company before moving on into politics, serving on the Kherson City Council, the Kherson Regional Administration, and two terms as the mayor of the city of Kherson. Saldo, as a member of the Party of Regions, moved to the opposition and was effectively subjected to political ostracism in 2014, when the Ukrainian nationalists who had seized power all but forced it out of politics. Aleksandr and I had the pleasure of meeting with Saldo in his office in the government building in downtown Genichesk. We talked about a wide range of issues, including his own path from a Ukrainian construction specialist to his current position as the governor of Kherson Oblast. We talked about the war. But Saldo’s passion was the economy, and how he could help revive the civilian economy of Kherson in a manner that best served the interests of its diminished population. On the eve of the military operation, back in early 2022, the population of the Kherson Region stood at just over a million, of which some 280,000 were residing in the city of Kherson. By November 2022, following the withdrawal of Russian forces from the right bank of the Dnieper River – including the city of Kherson – the population of the region had fallen below 400,000 and, with dismal economic prospects, the numbers kept falling. Many of those who left were Ukrainians who did not want to live under Russian rule. But others were Russians and Ukrainians who felt that they had no future in the war-torn region, and as such sought their fortunes elsewhere in Russia. Fyodor Lukyanov: How does the Russia-Ukraine conflict end? Read more Fyodor Lukyanov: How does the Russia-Ukraine conflict end? “My job is to give the people of Kherson hope for a better future,” Saldo told me. “And the time for this to happen is now, not when the war ends.” Restoration of Kherson’s once vibrant agricultural sector is a top priority, and Saldo has personally taken the lead in signing agreements for the provision of Kherson produce to Moscow supermarkets. Saldo has also turned the region into a special economic zone, where potential investors and entrepreneurs can receive preferential loans and financial support, as well as organizational and legal assistance for businesses willing to open shop there. The man responsible for making this vision a reality is Mikhail Panchenko, the Director of the Kherson Region Industry Development Fund. I met Mikhail in a restaurant located across the street from the governmental building which Saldo called home. Mikhail had come to Kherson in the summer of 2022, leaving a prominent position in Moscow in the process. “The Russian government was interested in rebuilding Kherson,” Mikhail told me, “and established the Industry Development Fund as a way of attracting businesses to the region.” Mikhail, who was born in 1968, was too old to enlist in the military. “When the opportunity came to direct the Industry Development Fund, I jumped at it as a way to do my patriotic duty.” The first year of the fund’s operation saw Mikhail hand out 300 million rubles (almost $3.3 million at the current rate) in loans and grants (some of which was used to open the very restaurant where we were meeting.) The second year saw the allotment grow to some 700 million rubles. One of the biggest projects was the opening of a concrete production line capable of producing 60 cubic meters of concrete per hour. Mikhail took Alexander and me on a tour of the plant, which had grown to three production lines generating some 180 cubic meters of concrete an hour. Mikhail had just approved funding for an additional four production lines, for a total concrete production rate of 420 cubic meters per hour. “That’s a lot of concrete,” I remarked to Mikhail. “We are making good use of it,” he replied. “We are rebuilding schools, hospitals, and government buildings that had been neglected over the years. Revitalizing the basic infrastructure a society needs if it is to nurture a growing population.” The problem Mikhail faces, however, is that most of the population growth being experienced in Kherson today comes from the military. The war can’t last forever, Mikhail noted. “Someday the army will leave, and we will need civilians. Right now, the people who left are not returning, and we’re having a hard time attracting newcomers. But we will keep building in anticipation of a time when the population of the Kherson region will grow from an impetus other than war. And for that,” he said, a twinkle in his eye, “we need concrete!” I thought long and hard about the words of Vladimir Saldo and Panchenko as Aleksandr drove back onto the M18 highway, heading northeast, toward Donetsk. The reconstruction efforts being undertaken are impressive. But the number that kept coming to mind was the precipitous decline in the population – more than 60% of the pre-war population has left the Kherson region since the Russian military operation began. According to statistics provided by the Russian Central Election Commission, some 571,000 voters took part in the referendum on joining Russia that was held in late September 2022. A little over 497,000, or some 87%, voted in favor, while slightly more than 68,800, or 12%, voted against. The turnout was almost 77%. Sergey Poletaev: As the second anniversary of the Russia–Ukraine conflict approaches, who has the upper hand? Read more Sergey Poletaev: As the second anniversary of the Russia–Ukraine conflict approaches, who has the upper hand? These numbers, if accurate, implied that there was a population of over 740,000 eligible voters at the time of the election. While the loss of the city of Kherson in November 2022 could account for a significant source of the population drop that took place between September 2022 and the time of my visit in January 2024, it could not account for all of it. The Russian population of Kherson in 2022 stood at approximately 20%, or around 200,000. One can safely say that the number of Russians who fled west to Kiev following the start of the military operation amounts to a negligible figure. If one assumes that the Russian population of the Kherson Region remained relatively stable, then most of the population decline came from the Ukrainian population. While Saldo did not admit to such, the Governor of the neighboring Zaporozhya Region, Yevgeny Balitsky, has acknowledged that many Ukrainian families deemed by the authorities to be anti-Russian were deported following the initiation of the military operation (Russians accounted for a little more than 25% of the pre-conflict Zaporozhye population.) Many others fled to Russia to escape the deprivations of war. Evidence of the war was everywhere to be seen. While the conflict in Kherson has stabilized along a line defined by the Dnieper River, Zaporozhye is very much a frontline region. Indeed, the main direction of attack of the summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive was from the Zaporozhye region village of Rabotino, toward the town of Tokmak, and on towards the temporary regional capital of Melitopol (the city of Zaporozhye has remained under Ukrainian control throughout the conflict to date.) I had petitioned to visit the frontlines near Rabotino but had been denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense. So, too, was my request to visit units deployed in the vicinity of Tokmak – too close to the front. The closest I would get would be the city of Melitopol, the ultimate objective of the Ukrainian counterattack. We drove past fields filled with the concrete “dragon’s teeth” and antitank ditches that marked the final layer of defenses that constituted the “Surovikin Line,” named after the Russian General, Sergey Surovikin, who had commanded the forces when the defenses were put in place. The Ukrainians had hoped to reach the city of Melitopol in a matter of days once their attack began; they never breached the first line of defense situated to the southeast of Rabotino. Melitopol, however, is not immune to the horrors of war, with Ukrainian artillery and rockets targeting it often to disrupt Russian military logistics. I kept this in mind as we drove through the streets of the city, past military checkpoints, and roving patrols. I was struck by the fact that the civilians I saw were going about their business, seemingly oblivious to the everyday reality of war that existed around them. As was the case in Kherson, the entirety of the Zaporozhye Region seemed strangely depopulated, as if one were driving through the French capital of Paris in August, when half the city is away on vacation. I had hoped to be able to talk with Balitsky about the reduced population and other questions I had about life in the region during wartime, but this time Aleksandr’s phone could not produce the desired result – Balitsky was away from the region and unavailable. If he had been available, I would have asked him the same question I had put to Saldo earlier in the day: given that Putin was apparently willing to return the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions to Ukraine as part of the peace deal negotiated in March 2022, how does the population of his region feel about being part of Russia today? Are they convinced that Russia is, in fact, there to stay? Do they feel like they are a genuine part of the Novorossiya that Putin speaks about? Saldo had talked in depth about the transition from being occupied by Russian forces, which lasted until April-May 2022 (about the time that Ukraine backed out of the ceasefire agreement), to being administered by Moscow. “There never was a doubt in my mind, or anyone else’s, that Kherson was historically a part of Russia,” Saldo said, “or that, once Russian troops arrived, that we would forever be Russian again.” But the declining population, and the admission of forced deportations on the part of Balitsky, suggests that there was a significant part of the population that had, in fact, taken umbrage at such a future. I would have liked to hear what Balitsky had to say about this question. Reality, however, doesn’t deal with hypotheticals, and the present reality is that both Kherson and Zaporozhye are today part of the Russian Federation, and that both regions are populated by people who had made the decision to remain there as citizens of Russia. We will never know what the fate of these two territories would have been had the Ukrainian government honored the ceasefire agreement negotiated in March 2022. What we do know is that today both Kherson and Zaporozhye are part of the “New Territories” – Novorossiya. Russia will for some time find its acquisition of the “new territories” challenged by nations who question the legitimacy of Russia’s military occupation and subsequent absorption of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions into the Russian Federation. The reticence of foreigners to recognize these regions as being part of Russia, however, is the least of Russia’s problems. As was the case with Crimea, the Russian government will proceed irrespective of any international opposition. The real challenge facing Russia is to convince Russians that the new territories are as integral to the Russian motherland as Crimea, a region reabsorbed by Russia in 2014 which has seen its economic fortunes and its population grow over the past decade. The diminished demographics of Kherson and Zaporozhye represent a litmus test of sorts for the Russian government, and for the governments of both Kherson and Zaporozhye. If the populations of these regions cannot regenerate, then these regions will wither on the vine. If, however, these new Russian lands can be transformed into places where Russians can envision themselves raising families in an environment free from want and fear, then Novorossiya will flourish. Novorossiya is a reality, and the people who live there are citizens by choice more than circumstances. They are well served by men like Saldo and Balitsky, who are dedicated to the giant task of making these regions part of the Russian Motherland in actuality, not just in name. Behind Saldo and Balitsky are men like Panchenko, people who left an easy life in Moscow or some other Russian city to come to the “New Territories” not for the purpose of seeking their fortunes, but rather to improve the lives of the new Russian citizens of Novorossiya. For this to happen, Russia must emerge victorious in its struggle against the Ukrainian nationalists ensconced in Kiev, and their Western allies. Thanks to the sacrifices of the Russian military, this victory is in the process of being accomplished. Then the real test begins – turning Novorossiya into a place Russians will want to call home. ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/03/scott-ritter-we-are-witnessing-the-bittersweet-birth-of-a-new-russia/ https://telegra.ph/Scott-Ritter-We-are-witnessing-the-bittersweet-birth-of-a-new-Russia--VT-Foreign-Policy-03-11
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    Scott Ritter: We are witnessing the bittersweet birth of a new Russia
    Building Novorossiya back up after Ukrainian neglect and war is a monumental but unavoidable task
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