Poucos artistas têm o privilégio de agradar aos cultores de música erudita e simultaneamente aos do jazz e música popular. É o caso de George Gershwin, este russo (de origem judaica) emigrado, que se afirmou ao longo das décadas como incontornável compositor, quer de peças musicais da Broadway ou de peças clássicas, como «Rapsody in Blue» ou ainda a ópera famosíssima «Porgy and Bess».
Esta ópera apresenta a vida dos negros sujeitos à exploração, já não no tempo do esclavagismo, mas ainda com relentos dessa época. Foi calorosamente recebida, embora muitos, na classe alta (e nas outras), não vissem os negros como inteiramente humanos. Porém, a tragédia representada na ópera Porgy and Bess, ia muito além do cliché, as personagens tinham real espessura humana. A sociedade «educada» dos anos 20 e 30 nos EUA, tinha cultura (musical e outra) essencialmente europeia. A sua aderência a uma inovação musical e teatral como esta, tinha que ver com a fase ascendente da sociedade e cultura nos EUA. Mas, não foi senão com uma luta de decénios, que foram reconhecidos aos antigos escravos direitos iguais aos dos brancos, culminando com o Movimento pelos Direitos Civis (no início dos anos 1960). Esta luta custou a vida a Martin Luther King e a Malcolm X, entre muitas outras vítimas da vingança de brancos racistas.
As composições de Gershwin para o Music Hall são - em grande maioria - notáveis pela musicalidade e naturalidade. Têm sido gravadas em disco por várias gerações de artistas.
Dou abaixo apenas três exemplos, de entre a minhas peças preferidas:
- «Embreacable You», escrita em 1928, mas celebrizada em 1930, com Ginger Rogers e Fred Astaire e depois por uma coorte de cantores, incluindo Billie Holiday. Aqui, a versão de Judy Garland (1940) .
-«They can't take that away from me»: Canção que se presta muito bem à forma de cantar característica de Sarah Vaughan.
Existem muitos outros artistas que cantaram e gravaram obras de George Gershwin. Esta curta nota não tem a ambição de cobrir a abundante discografia.
Note-se que o fluxo de novas versões de temas famosos do jazz (os standards) continua: Gershwin continua a ser um dos compositores mais frequentemente interpretados, sem dúvida.
Ele é um marco da música erudita e uma referência incontornável na música de jazz.
On December 15, 2025, the European Union slapped sanctions on former Swiss intelligence officer and ex-NATO employee Jacques Baud. No day in court, no charges filed, just abrupt, suffocating, sanctions.
Why did the EU sanction Baud? For “Russian propaganda,” of course, although many of the sources he cites in his reports on the West provoking war with Russia years prior to Russia’s military operation are Western and Ukrainian – including the SBU and Aleksey Arestovich, a former adviser to Vladimir Zelensky.
Welcome to the latest EU insanity.
Widely respected for his deep knowledge and analysis, much of which is based on his own research while working with NATO, Baud has grown increasingly popular over the years, appearing on numerous podcasts and interviews, authoring numerous books and articles as well.
Since Russia began its military operation in Ukraine, Western media have been howling about an “unprovoked invasion.” Baud has written and spoken extensively about realities which counter this claim: facts on the ground prior to February 2022, going back (unlike most legacy media who have developed selective amnesia) to even before the 2014 Maidan coup.
What is interesting about Baud is he does not use Russian sources to back his claims and he has not taken a public position in favor of either Russia or Ukraine.
He has simply analyzed the situation, based on information he had access to. How did he have access to this information? In 2014, when working for NATO in charge of countering proliferation of small arms, he was tasked with investigating accusations of Russia supplying arms to Donbass resistance.
He wrote of this in 2022, noting, “The information we received then came almost entirely from Polish intelligence services and did not ‘fit’ with the information coming from the OSCE – despite rather crude allegations, there were no deliveries of weapons and military equipment from Russia.
“The rebels were armed thanks to the defection of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units that went over to the rebel side. As Ukrainian failures continued, tank, artillery and anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists.”
As a result of his research, he was also able to unequivocally debunk accusations of Russia sending military units into Donbass, by quoting the SBU (Ukrainian security service) itself as well as other Ukrainian sources.
In a September 2024 interview I did with Baud, he spoke of this.
“I can categorically say no, there were no Russian forces in Donbass. The guy you encountered (I had mentioned meeting one sole Russian former soldier when I went to the Donbass in 2019) represents exactly the kind of Russian presence that was at that time, recognized by the SBU and recognized also by the Ukrainian Chief of Staff.
“In a public interview in 2015, just after the signature of the Minsk Agreement 2, the head of the Ukrainian General Staff said publicly that there were no Russian military units fighting in Donbass; that there were only individual soldiers exactly the same case as the one you just mentioned.”
It is clear he is not citing Russian information (or “propaganda”) but Ukrainian and Western sources. An even better illustration of this is what he had to say about the prelude to Russia commencing its Special Military Operation in February 2022.
Referring to a March 2021 decree by Zelensky (to take back Crimea and the south of Ukraine), Baud spoke of an interview two years prior with Zelensky’s former adviser, Arestovich.
“He says in order to join NATO, we had to have a war with Russia. When the interviewer asked him when would this conflict happen, Arestovich says end of 2021 or 2022.” A position, Baud noted, which aligned with a March 2019 300-page document published by the Rand Corporation, “that explains how to defeat and to destabilize Russia.”
The EU is almost certainly pissed off that Baud likewise demolished the Western propaganda claims about Russia invading Crimea in 2014. He told me, “The Ukrainian army at that time was a conscript army, meaning that within the Ukrainian army you had both Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers. When the army was ordered to shoot or to fight against demonstrators, those who were Russian speakers just defected, they just changed side. They just went to support the protesters and they became in fact those the famous ‘little green men’.”
Keep in mind that Baud was working for NATO then. “There was absolutely not the slightest indication that Russia brought new troops to Crimea. Based on the status of force agreement signed between Russia and Ukraine, you had up to 25,000 Russian troops stationed in the Crimean peninsula. At that time they were not even 25,000, there were 22,000. A Ukrainian lawmaker on Ukrainian TV said that out of the 20,000 (sic) Ukrainian soldiers that were deployed in Crimea, 20,000 defected to the Russian-speaking side.”
As for “Russian propaganda,” it is a term bandied about quite easily by legacy media and NATO mouthpieces to taint reputations or lead to censorship of voices. The war backers are upset that their own “Russia started it” propaganda isn’t working.
Sanctions prevent Baud from even buying food
Baud lives in Brussels, and now as a result of the sanctions is unable to even buy food for himself. Nor can well-intending people do so on his behalf. In an interview on Dialogue Works at the end of December, 2025, Baud said:
“Yesterday, a friend of mine tried from Switzerland to buy food for me, to be delivered to my home (in Belgium). She could order, but the payment was blocked. Any delivery to my home is prohibited, even if the funds come from Switzerland.”
People who are aware of his unjust situation have been physically bringing him food, to alleviate his inability to purchase it himself.
In a more recent interview on Judging Freedom, Baud highlighted that his case was a foreign policy decision, denying him due process.
“This is not a decision that has been taken by any court. I was not judged by anybody. In fact I was not in front of a jury. I could not present my case. I could not defend my case. This decision was not taken by a court but by the council of the foreign ministers of the European union.”
The most he can do, Baud explained, is, “go to the European Court of Justice and try to make my case saying that the decision was not just, and the court of justice may then study the case and have an assessment on that.” Even if the court concludes the sanctions are not justified, all it can then do is “advise the council of foreign ministers to change their mind.”
Given that the sanctions against Baud are punitive for his not toeing the line, it is unlikely minds will be changed.
A growing list of EU-sanctioned voices
Jacques Baud isn’t the first to be sanctioned by the EU. Many journalists and public figures have been sanctioned for their writings or words on the Donbass, Crimea, corruption in Ukraine, and so on. However, many have safety in Russia or elsewhere, and while their foreign bank accounts have been unjustly frozen, they can at least buy food and otherwise live normally.
A recent article in Forum Geopolitica notes the brazen illegality of these sanctions. “In contrast to Article 11 of its own charter, the EU has decided to punish, disenfranchise and expropriate the citizens of all countries without any offence having been committed, as was last seen in Nazi Germany.
“This elimination of dissidents is not ordered by a court, but by the ‘Council of the European Union’, the political arm of the EU. The Council, in which non-democratically elected apparatchiks lead a good life, is chaired by Kaja Kallas, herself not democratically elected. We are back in the Middle Ages.”
French journalist Xavier Moreau was also sanctioned, and roughly half a year prior, Swiss-Cameroonian political activist Nathalie Yamb was targeted.
German journalist Huseyin Dogru was sanctioned in May 2025 for being a “Russian disinformation actors, and for, according to him, “pro-Palestine reporting and documenting the repression of activists in Germany + the EU.”
As with the others sanctioned, no “evidence” of the EU’s accusations was provided, particularly no proof of financial ties to Russia or Russian media.
A petition demanding “the immediate lifting of the illegal sanctions against Jacques Baud as well as against alljournalists, scholars, and EU citizens,” rightly notes it is not a crime to name the true reasons for the Ukraine war.
“It is not a crime to draw readers’ attention to untruths and to the EU’s and NATO’s own propaganda. It is not a crime to point out the thoughtless cooperation of the West with Ukrainian forces that show a dangerous proximity to fascists.”
Further noting the sanctions have targeted 59 journalists and scholars, it points out, the EU is “using the sanctions list as an instrument to silence critics and is maneuvering itself ever deeper into an abyss of lawlessness.”
Quite amusingly, the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen (also known as Ursula von der Lying), posted of“protecting” freedom of speech. The EU Commission website claims the right to freedom of expression, “also means the freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.”
The sanctions are part of the broader desperate campaign of threatening and censoring voices that report truthfully on matters related to Ukraine, the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and other timely topics. Yes, they can censor us by deleting our YouTube and social media platforms, or by imposing sanctions on journalists, authors, and other public figures.
But, it doesn’t work. Baud said he now has more visibility and more credibility. “It’s always a bad idea when you start preventing someone to speak. This attracts more attention.”
Transcrevo na íntegra o artigo de Nicholas Hulscher e do Prof. Michel Chossudovsky. Convido os meus leitores a ler o seu conteúdo e a divulgarem ao máximo, como forma de «higiene e profilaxia» contra a perpetuação duma narrativa enganadora sobre a crise do COVID.
Como os meus leitores habituais sabem, eu acompanhei a crise do COVID, desde os seus primeiros momentos. Sou biólogo de formação, especializado em genética molecular e microbiologia. Vi desde logo, com muito espanto, as distorções e fabricações que se espalharam como fogo na media corporativa. Vi também, ainda mais preocupado, uma parte maioritária das profissões médicas ou de saúde e de académicos, aceitar a narrativa oficial, inflacionando os casos de infeção por COVID, porque isso reforçava o poder absoluto de farmacêuticas gigantes (nomeadamente Pfizer, Zeneca, Moderna...), sobre os Estados e a própria OMS.
Eu fiquei «vacinado» em relação à «bondade» dos Estados e seus agentes, às instituições destinadas a «cuidar da saúde da população» e à globalidade da média «mainstream», que orquestrou a maior campanha terrorista de desinformação ao nível mundial.
Eu sabia, desde 2020, da enorme fraude do chamado teste «PCR» para detetar o vírus do COVID, mas apesar dos meus esforços de esclarecimento, não consegui convencer da realidade pessoas chegadas, incluindo familiares. A grande maioria preferiu «ignorar» os meus argumentos, apesar de eu ter uma abordagem pedagógica dos assuntos.
O mal que nos fizeram, a todos nós, ainda está a decorrer. Isto é possível, porque as pessoas comuns não conseguem crer na corrupção dos políticos no poder, das organizações internacionais e das grandes empresas de «saúde». Quanto aos media, estes em vez de nos informar honestamente, «inoculam» a opinião pública com falsas notícias, ao mesmo tempo que difamam os cientistas corajosos que se ergueram contra a desinformação.
Oxalá que artigos como este, transcrito abaixo, saltem a barreira da censura da média corporativa e sejam lidos atentamente por pessoas honestas, para que elas compreendam como têm sido enganadas.
BREAKING: Peer Reviewed Report. 86% of PCR-Positive “COVID Cases” Were Not Real Infections
[This article was originally published by Focal Points and reposted on Global Research. You can read it here.]
We bring go the attention of our readers, the pointed analysis of Dr. Nicolas Hulscher pertaining to a peer-reviewed study conducted in Germany which has “dismantled the scientific foundation used to justify lockdowns, social distancing, and vaccine mandates.
Déjà Vu: Introductory Note by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Ironically, this was known right from the beginning of the COVID crisis in early 2020.
And now we are informed by a so-called bombshell peer-reviewed study of something which was firmly established at the outset of the COVID crisis in January 2020.
“The PCR is a process. It does not tell you that you are sick.” –Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate and Inventor of the RT-PCR, passed away in August 2019.
“…All or a substantial part of these positives could be due to what’s called false positives tests.” –Dr. Michael Yeadon, distinguished scientist, former Vice President and Chief Science Officer of Pfizer
“This misuse of the RT-PCR technique is applied as a relentless and intentional strategy by some governments to justify excessive measures such as the violation of a large number of constitutional rights, … under the pretext of a pandemic based on a number of positive RT-PCR tests, and not on a real number of patients.” –Dr. Pascal Sacré, Belgian physician specialized in critical care and renowned public health analyst.
“The PCR “test” cannot detect the identity of the virus, nor can it detect its variants and sub-variants.” —Dr. Kary Mullis. His legacy will prevail.
The slanted methodology applied under WHO guidance for detecting the alleged spread of the virus is the Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test, which has been routinely applied all over the world since February 2020.
The RT-PCR test has been used worldwide to generate millions of erroneous “COVID-19 confirmed cases”, which are then used to sustain the illusion that the alleged pandemic is real.
This assessment based on erroneous numbers has been used in the course of the last [five] years to spearhead and sustain the fear campaign.
And people are now led to believe that the COVID-19 “vaccine” is the “solution”. And that “normality” will be restored once the entire population of planet Earth has been vaccinated.
“Confirmed” is a misnomer. A “confirmed RT-PCR positive case” does not imply a “COVID-19 confirmed case”.
“Positive RT-PCR is not synonymous with the COVID-19 disease! PCR specialists make it clear that a test must always be compared with the clinical record of the patient being tested, with the patient’s state of health to confirm its value [reliability].” —(Dr. Pascal Sacré)
The procedure used by the national health authorities is to categorize all RT-PCR positive cases as “COVID-19 confirmed cases” (with or without a medical diagnosis).Ironically, this routine process of identifying “confirmed cases” is in derogation of the CDC’s own guidelines:
“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.” (Emphasis added)
The methodology used to detect and estimate the spread of the virus is flawed and invalid.
False Positives
The earlier debate at the outset of the crisis focused on the issue of “false positives.” Acknowledged by the WHO and the CDC, the RT-PCR test was known to produce a high percentage of false positives. According to Dr. Pascal Sacré:
“Today, as authorities test more people, there are bound to be more positive RT-PCR tests. This does not mean that COVID-19 is coming back, or that the epidemic is moving in waves. There are more people being tested, that’s all.”
The debate on false positives (acknowledged by health authorities) points to so-called errors without necessarily questioning the overall validity of the RT-PCR test as a means to detecting the alleged spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The PCR Test Does Not Detect the Identity of the Virus
The RT-PCR test does not identify/detect the virus. What the PCR test identifies are genetic fragments of numerous viruses (including influenza viruses types A and B and coronaviruses which trigger common colds).
The results of the RT-PCR test cannot “confirm” whether an individual who undertakes the test is infected with SARS-CoV-2.
All that is required is the presence of “viral genetic material” for it to be categorized as “positive”. The procedure does not identify or isolate SARS-COV-2. What appears in the tests are fragments of the virus.
Selected excerpts from Chapter III of Michel Chossudovsky‘s Book entitled:
Peer Reviewed Report: 86% of PCR-Positive “COVID Cases” Were Not Real Infections
by Dr. Nicolas Hulscher
A bombshell peer-reviewed study out of Germany just dismantled the scientific foundation used to justify lockdowns, social distancing, and vaccine mandates.
Researchers analyzed data from the Akkreditierte Labore in der Medizin (ALM) — a nationwide consortium of authority-accredited medical laboratories that performed roughly 90% of all SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests in Germany between 2020 and 2023.
When researchers compared the ALM’s week-by-week PCR positivity rates with the same labs’ IgG antibody testing data — essentially measuring who truly developed infection-induced immunity — they discovered something staggering:
Only about 14% of those who tested PCR-positive during the early pandemic period (2020–mid-2021) actually developed antibodies — meaning most early “cases” were never real infections.
Even under the most conservative assumptions — correcting for possible overrepresentation of IgG-positive individuals in the sample — the true infection fraction fell to roughly 10%, implying that nearly 90% of PCR positives were false or non-infectious detections, often just residual RNA fragments amplified at CT thresholds of 35–45.
What This Means
Mass PCR testing grossly inflated case numbers worldwide. Every nation that used similar CT thresholds likely overcounted “infections” by an order of magnitude.
Lockdowns and mandates were built on a false metric. The German “7-day incidence” used to trigger restrictions was statistically meaningless — and identical logic applied in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere. In America, the entire “15 Days to Slow the Spread” campaign was predicated on the same inflated PCR scam.
Authorities suppressed representative serology data. Germany’s RKI and Ministry of Health had access to these ALM antibody results but never disclosed them — despite their policy relevance.
Rewriting pandemic history. If only 10–14% of reported PCR “cases” during the first year reflected true infections, then the infection-fatality rate, transmission models, and emergency declarations were all built on sand. By the end of 2020—months before vaccination began—roughly one-quarter of Germany’s population already carried natural antibodies. In other words, while authorities were declaring an uncontrolled crisis, herd-level immunity was already taking shape. By late 2021, nearly the entire population was IgG-positive. The evidence shows that pandemic policy was driven not by infection reality, but by a diagnostic illusion.
PCR technology and testing thresholds were standardized across WHO member states.
That means the same distortion likely occurred everywhere — a systemic diagnostic inflation that may be the single greatest fraud in public health history.
These tactics were likely used to amplify fear in order to boost compliance with lockdowns and experimental gene-based “vaccines.” This was demonstrated by Gao et al, who found that public fear of COVID-19 (PFC) was positively associated with the number of COVID-19 vaccinations at county-level: “as PFC increases from 0 to 300, the predicted vaccination number increases from 10,000 to 230,000.”
This is in line with fraudulent attempts to artificially increase COVID-19 death counts. Basoulis et al found that 45.3% of “COVID-19 deaths” in Greece were not actually due to COVID-19:
In the end, most of the population did encounter the manufactured virus and develop antibodies—but the PCR data that justified global lockdowns, fear, and vaccine mandates were a complete fraud. Accountability is warranted.
***
Nicolas Hulscher, MPH, Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
