Global Research

Global Research Editor’s Note

We bring to the attention of our readers the following text of Osama bin Laden’s interview with Ummat, a Pakistani daily, published in Karachi on September 28, 2001. It was translated into English by the BBC World Monitoring Service and made public on September 29, 2001.

The authenticity of this interview remains to be confirmed. It was available in recognized electronic news archives including the BBC. 

The interview tends to demystify the Osama bin Laden persona.

Osama bin Laden categorically denies his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.  Bin Laden’s statements in this interview are markedly different from those made in the alleged Osama video tapes.

In this interview, Osama bin Laden exhibits an understanding of US foreign policy. He expresses his views regarding the loss of life on 9/11. He focusses on CIA support to the narcotics trade.

He also makes statements as to who, in his opinion, might be the likely perpetrator of  the September 11 attacks.

This is an important text which has not been brought to the attention of Western public opinion.

We have highlighted key sections of this interview.

It is our hope that the text of this interview, published on 28 September 2001 barely a week before the onset of the war on Afghanistan, will contribute to a better understanding of the history of Al Qaeda, the role of Osama bin Laden and the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

I should be noted that on the day preceding the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden had been admitted for treatment in a Military Hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

This was confirmed by Dan Rather in a CBS News Report. 

This interview is published for informational purposes only.

GR does not in any way endorse the statements in this interview. Nor are we in a position to confirm its authenticity.

Michel  Chossudovsky, September 2, 2023

---

Full text of September 2001 Pakistani paper’s “exclusive” interview with Usamah Bin-Ladin

translated from Urdu by the BBC World Monitoring Service

Karachi, 28 September 2001, pp. 1- 7.

Ummat’s introduction

Kabul: Prominent Arab mojahed holy warrior Usamah Bin-Ladin has said that he or his al-Qa’idah group has nothing to do with the 11 September suicidal attacks in Washington and New York. He said the US government should find the attackers within the country. In an exclusive interview with daily “Ummat”, he said these attacks could be the act of those who are part of the American system and are rebelling against it and working for some other system. Or, Usamah said, this could be the act of those who want to make the current century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. Or, the American Jews, who are opposed to President Bush ever since the Florida elections, might be the masterminds of this act. There is also a great possibility of the involvement of US intelligence agencies, which need billions of dollars worth of funds every year. He said there is a government within the government in the United States.

The secret agencies, he said, should be asked as to who are behind the attacks. Usamah said support for attack on Afghanistan was a matter of need for some Muslim countries and compulsion for others. However, he said, he was thankful to the courageous people of Pakistan who erected a bulwark before the wrong forces. He added that the Islamic world was attaching great expectations with Pakistan and, in time of need, “we will protect this bulwark by sacrificing of lives”.

Following is the interview in full detail:

Ummat: You have been accused of involvement in the attacks in New York and Washington. What do you want to say about this? If you are not involved, who might be?

Usamah [Osama bin Laden]: In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful. Praise be to Allah, Who is the creator of the whole universe and Who made the earth as an abode for peace, for the whole mankind. Allah is the Sustainer, who sent Prophet Muhammad for our guidance. I am thankful to the Ummat Group of Publications, which gave me the opportunity to convey my viewpoint to the people, particularly the valiant and Momin true Muslim people of Pakistan who refused to believe in lie of the demon.

I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people.

Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. It is the United States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children, and common people of other faiths, particularly the followers of Islam. All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.

There is also a warning for those Muslim countries, which witnessed all these as a silent spectator. What had earlier been done to the innocent people of Iraq, Chechnya, and Bosnia?

Only one conclusion could be derived from the indifference of the United States and the West to these acts of terror and the patronage of the tyrants by these powers that America is an anti-Islamic power and it is patronizing the anti-Islamic forces. Its friendship with the Muslim countries is just a show, rather deceit. By enticing or intimidating these countries, the United States is forcing them to play a role of its choice. Put a glance all around and you will see that the slaves of the United States are either rulers or enemies of Muslims .

The US has no friends, nor does it want to keep any because the prerequisite of friendship is to come to the level of the friend or consider him at par with you. America does not want to see anyone equal to it. It expects slavery from others. Therefore, other countries are either its slaves or subordinates.

However, our case is different. We have pledged slavery to God Almighty alone and after this pledge there is no possibility to become the slave of someone else. If we do that, it will be disregardful to both our Sustainer and his fellow beings. Most of the world nations upholding their freedom are the religious ones, which are the enemies of United States, or the latter itself considers them as its enemies. Or the countries, which do not agree to become its slaves, such as China, Iran, Libya, Cuba, Syria, and the former Russia as received .

Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.

According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US government has stated. But the Bush administration does not want the panic to spread. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive. They can be any one, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia. In the US itself, there are dozens of well-organized and well-equipped groups, which are capable of causing a large-scale destruction. Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.

Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This funding issue was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger.

They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usamah and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush administration approved a budget of 40bn dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance.

Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing their importance. I will give you an example. Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the US secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the US Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat. In the same way, whether it is President Bush or any other US president, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.

Ummat: A number of world countries have joined the call of the United States for launching an attack on Afghanistan. These also include a number of Muslim countries. Will Al-Qa’idah declare a jihad against these countries as well?

Usamah: I must say that my duty is just to awaken the Muslims; to tell them as to what is good for them and what is not. What does Islam says and what the enemies of Islam want?

Al-Qa’idah was set up to wage a jihad against infidelity, particularly to encounter the onslaught of the infidel countries against the Islamic states. Jihad is the sixth undeclared element of Islam. The first five being the basic holy words of Islam, prayers, fast, pilgrimage to Mecca, and giving alms Every anti-Islamic person is afraid of it. Al-Qa’idah wants to keep this element alive and active and make it part of the daily life of the Muslims. It wants to give it the status of worship. We are not against any Islamic country nor we consider a war against an Islamic country as jihad.

We are in favour of armed jihad only against those infidel countries, which are killing innocent Muslim men, women, and children just because they are Muslims. Supporting the US act is the need of some Muslim countries and the compulsion of others. However, they should think as to what will remain of their religious and moral position if they support the attack of the Christians and the Jews on a Muslim country like Afghanistan. The orders of Islamic shari’ah jurisprudence for such individuals, organizations, and countries are clear and all the scholars of the Muslim brotherhood are unanimous on them. We will do the same, which is being ordered by the Amir ol-Momenin the commander of the faithful Mola Omar and the Islamic scholars. The hearts of the people of Muslim countries are beating with the call of jihad. We are grateful to them.

Ummat: The losses caused in the attacks in New York and Washington have proved that giving an economic blow to the US is not too difficult. US experts admit that a few more such attacks can bring down the American economy. Why is al-Qa’idah not targeting their economic pillars?

Usamah: I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom. This system is totally in control of the American Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is simply that the American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced to live according to the principles and laws laid by them. So, the punishment should reach Israel. In fact, it is Israel, which is giving a blood bath to innocent Muslims and the US is not uttering a single word.

Ummat: Why is harm not caused to the enemies of Islam through other means, apart from the armed struggle? For instance, inciting the Muslims to boycott Western products, banks, shipping lines, and TV channels.

Usamah: The first thing is that Western products could only be boycotted when the Muslim fraternity is fully awakened and organized. Secondly, the Muslim companies should become self-sufficient in producing goods equal to the products of Western companies. Economic boycott of the West is not possible unless economic self-sufficiency is attained and substitute products are brought out. You see that wealth is scattered all across the Muslim world but not a single TV channel has been acquired which can preach Islamic injunctions according to modern requirements and attain an international influence. Muslim traders and philanthropists should make it a point that if the weapon of public opinion is to be used, it is to be kept in the hand. Today’s world is of public opinion and the fates of nations are determined through its pressure. Once the tools for building public opinion are obtained, everything that you asked for can be done.

Ummat: The entire propaganda about your struggle has so far been made by the Western media. But no information is being received from your sources about the network of Al-Qa’idah and its jihadi successes. Would you comment?

Usamah: In fact, the Western media is left with nothing else. It has no other theme to survive for a long time. Then we have many other things to do. The struggle for jihad and the successes are for the sake of Allah and not to annoy His bondsmen. Our silence is our real propaganda. Rejections, explanations, or corrigendum only waste your time and through them, the enemy wants you to engage in things which are not of use to you. These things are pulling you away from your cause.

The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which make us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves. Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness.

Ummat: What will the impact of the freeze of al-Qa’idah accounts by the US?

Usamah: God opens up ways for those who work for Him. Freezing of accounts will not make any difference for Al-Qa’idah or other jihad groups. With the grace of Allah, al-Qa’idah has more than three such alternative financial systems, which are all separate and totally independent from each other. This system is operating under the patronage of those who love jihad. What to say of the United States, even the combined world cannot budge these people from their path.

These people are not in hundreds but in thousands and millions. Al-Qa’idah comprises of such modern educated youths who are aware of the cracks inside the Western financial system as they are aware of the lines in their hands. These are the very flaws of the Western fiscal system, which are becoming a noose for it and this system could not recuperate in spite of the passage of so many days.

Ummat: Are there other safe areas other than Afghanistan, where you can continue jihad?

Usamah: There are areas in all parts of the world where strong jihadi forces are present, from Indonesia to Algeria, from Kabul to Chechnya, from Bosnia to Sudan, and from Burma to Kashmir. Then it is not the problem of my person. I am helpless fellowman of God, constantly in the fear of my accountability before God. It is not the question of Usamah but of Islam and, in Islam too, of jihad. Thanks to God, those waging a jihad can walk today with their heads raised. Jihad was still present when there was no Usamah and it will remain as such even when Usamah is no longer there. Allah opens up ways and creates loves in the hearts of people for those who walk on the path of Allah with their lives, property, and children. Believe it, through jihad, a man gets everything he desires. And the biggest desire of a Muslim is the after life. Martyrdom is the shortest way of attaining an eternal life.

Ummat: What do you say about the Pakistan government policy on Afghanistan attack?

Usamah: We are thankful to the Momin and valiant people of Pakistan who erected a blockade in front of the wrong forces and stood in the first file of battle. Pakistan is a great hope for the Islamic brotherhood. Its people are awakened, organized, and rich in the spirit of faith. They backed Afghanistan in its war against the Soviet Union and extended every help to the mojahedin and the Afghan people. Then these are the same Pakistanis who are standing shoulder by shoulder with the Taleban. If such people emerge in just two countries, the domination of the West will diminish in a matter of days. Our hearts beat with Pakistan and, God forbid, if a difficult time comes we will protect it with our blood. Pakistan is sacred for us like a place of worship. We are the people of jihad and fighting for the defence of Pakistan is the best of all jihads to us. It does not matter for us as to who rules Pakistan. The important thing is that the spirit of jihad is alive and stronger in the hearts of the Pakistani people.

Copyright Ummat in Urdu, BBC translation in English, 2001

---

Read about Osama Bin Laden in Michel Chossudovsky’s international best-seller

Order Directly from Global Research

America’s “War on Terrorism”

by Michel Chossudovsky

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

 

Nous faisons face présentement à une problème technique.

Pour accéder à la version mobile de mondialisation.ca, cliquez sur le Menu principal de Globalresearch.ca (version mobile), (en haut à gauche) et ensuite cliquez sur Mondialisation.ca.

 

A partir de la semaine prochaine le problème technique devrait être résolu.

Amitiés à tous nos lecteurs

 

The world is globalizing and information has become more accessible to more people than ever before. We are, indeed, in unprecedented times, and we face unprecedented challenges.

The aims of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research are to battle the tidal waves of misinformation and propaganda washing our minds on a daily basis. We have separated ourselves from the corporate controlled mainstream news, whose only objective is to serve their corporate masters. We take no assistance from the major foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford, and MacArthur, who act as patrons (and thus pacifiers) of the alternative and critical voices challenging the forces of globalization.

We do this in order to remain an independent voice, challenging all that needs to be challenged and exposing all that remains in the dark. Bringing light to a dimly lit world is no easy task, and though the aim and method is “independence,” we are, in fact, entirely dependent upon YOU, our readers. Without your support, we cannot continue our operations nor expand our horizons and opportunities. Global Research is indebted to our readers, and we are here for you and because of you. If you would like Global Research to continue and to grow, we need your support now more than ever.

By making a donation  to Global Research, you  assist journalists, researchers and contributors who have either lost their jobs with the mainstream media or who have been excluded from employment opportunities as professional journalists for their pledge to the truth. We send our thanks to all who have contributed so far by donating or becoming a member!

The mainstream media is owned by bankers and corporate kingpins. Not only that, but it has been historically and presently infiltrated by covert government agencies, seeking to deceive and propagandize their agendas. The CIA has long had associations with major mainstream news publications. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc. The CIA even ran a training program “to teach its agents to be journalists,” who were “then placed in major news organizations with help from management.”

At Global Research, we seek to not only expose and criticize the larger picture, but to point the finger at the media, itself, and examine who is lying, why they lie, and how they get away with it.

To continue in our endeavours, we need our readers to continue in their support.

One important and helpful thing that all of our readers can do is to help spread our name and information by “sharing and  “liking” our Facebook page here. We post articles daily that will appear in your news feed so that you don’t have to come to us, we can bring our information straight to you. “Like” our page and recommend us to your friends. Every bit helps! You can also subscribe to our RSS feed

You can also support us by continuing to send us your much needed donations which allow us to continue our day-to-day operations and help us expand our scope and content.

Supporting Global Research is supporting the cause of truth and the fight against media disinformation.

Thank you.

The Global Research Team

FOR ONLINE DONATIONS

For online donations, please click below:

VISIT THE DONATION PAGE

FOR DONATIONS BY MAIL

To send your donation by mail, kindly send your cheque or international money order, made out to CRG, to our postal address:

Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

PO Box 55019
11, Notre-Dame Ouest,

Montreal, QC, H2Y 4A7
CANADA

FOR DONATIONS BY FAX
For payment by fax, please print the credit card fax authorization form and fax your order and credit card details to Global Research at 514 656 5294

You can also support us by purchasing books from our store! Click to browse our titles.

A deluge of articles have been quickly put into circulation defending France’s military intervention in the African nation of Mali. TIME’s article, “The Crisis in Mali: Will French Intervention Stop the Islamist Advance?” decides that old tricks are the best tricks, and elects the tiresome “War on Terror” narrative.TIME claims the intervention seeks to stop “Islamist” terrorists from overrunning both Africa and all of Europe. Specifically, the article states:

“…there is a (probably well-founded) fear in France that a radical Islamist Mali threatens France most of all, since most of the Islamists are French speakers and many have relatives in France. (Intelligence sources in Paris have told TIME that they’ve identified aspiring jihadis leaving France for northern Mali to train and fight.) Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), one of the three groups that make up the Malian Islamist alliance and which provides much of the leadership, has also designated France — the representative of Western power in the region — as a prime target for attack.”

What TIME elects not to tell readers is that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is closely allied to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG whom France intervened on behalf of during NATO’s 2011 proxy-invasion of Libya – providing weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the overthrow of Libya’s government.

As far back as August of 2011, Bruce Riedel out of the corporate-financier funded think-tank, the Brookings Institution, wrote “Algeria will be next to fall,” where he gleefully predicted success in Libya would embolden radical elements in Algeria, in particular AQIM. Between extremist violence and the prospect of French airstrikes, Riedel hoped to see the fall of the Algerian government. Ironically Riedel noted:

Algeria has expressed particular concern that the unrest in Libya could lead to the development of a major safe haven and sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other extremist jihadis.

And thanks to NATO, that is exactly what Libya has become – a Western sponsored sanctuary for Al-Qaeda. AQIM’s headway in northern Mali and now French involvement will see the conflict inevitably spill over into Algeria. It should be noted that Riedel is a co-author of “Which Path to Persia?” which openly conspires to arm yet another US State Department-listed terrorist organization (list as #28), the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to wreak havoc across Iran and help collapse the government there – illustrating a pattern of using clearly terroristic organizations, even those listed as so by the US State Department, to carry out US foreign policy.Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar noted a more direct connection between LIFG and AQIM in an Asia Times piece titled, “How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli:”

“Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda’s number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same – and Belhaj was/is its emir. “

“Belhaj,” referring to Hakim Abdul Belhaj, leader of LIFG in Libya, led with NATO support, arms, funding, and diplomatic recognition, the overthrowing of Muammar Qaddafi and has now plunged the nation into unending racist and tribal, genocidal infighting. This intervention has also seen the rebellion’s epicenter of Benghazi peeling off from Tripoli as a semi-autonomous “Terror-Emirate.” Belhaj’s latest campaign has shifted to Syria where he was admittedly on the Turkish-Syrian border pledging weapons, money, and fighters to the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” again, under the auspices of NATO support.

LIFG, which with French arms, cash, and diplomatic support, is now invading northern Syria on behalf of NATO’s attempted regime change there, officially merged with Al Qaeda in 2007 according to the US Army’s West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). According to the CTC, AQIM and LIFG share not only ideological goals, but strategic and even tactical objectives. The weapons LIFG received most certainly made their way into the hands of AQIM on their way through the porous borders of the Sahara Desert and into northern Mali.

It is no coincidence that as the Libyan conflict was drawing to a conclusion, conflict erupted in northern Mali. It is part of a premeditated geopolitical reordering that began with toppling Libya, and since then, using it as a springboard for invading other targeted nations, including Mali, Algeria, and Syria with heavily armed, NATO-funded and aided terrorists.

Algeria was able to balk subversion during the early phases of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” in 2011, but it surely has not escaped the attention of the West who is in the midst of transforming a region stretching from Africa to Beijing and Moscow’s doorsteps – and in a fit of geopolitical schizophrenia – using terrorists both as a casus belli to invade and as an inexhaustible mercenary force to do it.

Part I: Syria comes to the Russian Caucasus

On August 28 Sheikh Said Afandi, acknowledged spiritual leader of the Autonomous Russian Republic of Dagestan, was assassinated. A jihadist female suicide bomber managed to enter his house and detonate an explosive device.

The murder target had been carefully selected. Sheikh Afandi, a seventy-five-year old Sufi Muslim leader, had played the critical role in attempting to bring about reconciliation in Dagestan between jihadist Salafi Sunni Muslims and other factions, many of whom in Dagestan see themselves as followers of Sufi. With no replacement of his moral stature and respect visible, authorities fear possible outbreak of religious war in the tiny Russian autonomous republic.[1]

The police reported that the assassin was an ethnic Russian woman who had converted to Islam and was linked to an Islamic fundamentalist or Salafist insurgency against Russia and regional governments loyal to Moscow in the autonomous republics and across the volatile Muslim-populated North Caucasus region.

Ethnic Muslim populations in this region of Russia and of the former Soviet Union, including Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and into China’s Xinjiang Province, have been the target of various US and NATO intelligence operations since the Cold War era ended in 1990. Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring uncontrollable chaos to Russia and Central Asia. It’s being carried out by some of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside Syria against the government of Bashar Al-Assad. In a real sense, as Russian security services clearly understand, if they don’t succeed in stopping the Jihadists insurgency in Syria, it will come home to them via the Caucasus.

The latest Salafist murders of Sufi and other moderate Muslim leaders in the Caucasus are apparently part of what is becoming ever clearer as perhaps the most dangerous US intelligence operation ever—playing globally with Muslim fundamentalism.

Previously US and allied intelligence services had played fast and loose with religious organizations or beliefs in one or another country. What makes the present situation particularly dangerous—notably since the decision in Washington to unleash the misnamed Arab Spring upheavals that began in Tunisia late 2010, spreading like a brushfire across the entire Islamic world from Afghanistan across Central Asia to Morocco—is the incalculable wave upon wave of killing, hatreds, destruction of entire cultures that Washington has unleashed in the name of that elusive dream named “democracy.” They do this using alleged Al-Qaeda groups, Saudi Salafists or Wahhabites, or using disciples of Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen Movement to ignite fires of religious hatred within Islam and against other faiths that could take decades to extinguish. It could easily spill over into a new World War.

Fundamentalism comes to Caucasus

Following the dissolution of the USSR, radical Afghanistani Mujahadeen, Islamists from Saudi Arabia, from Turkey, Pakistan and other Islamic countries flooded into the Muslim regions of the former USSR. One of the best-organized of these was the Gülen Movement of Fethullah Gülen, leader of a global network of Islamic schools and reported to be the major policy influence on Turkey’s Erdogan AKP party.

Gülen was quick to establish The International Dagestani-Turkish College in Dagestan. During the chaotic days after the Soviet collapse, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation officially registered and permitted unfettered activity for a variety of Islamic foundations and organizations. These included the League of the Islamic World, the World Muslim Youth Assembly, the reportedly Al-Qaeda friendly Saudi foundation ‘Ibrahim ben Abd al-Aziz al-Ibrahim.’ The blacklist also included Al-Haramein a Saudi foundation reported tied to Al-Qaeda, and IHH, [2] a Turkish organization banned in Germany, that allegedly raised funds for jihadi fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan, and was charged by French intelligence of ties to Al Qaeda.[3] Many of these charities were covers for fundamentalist Salafists with their own special agenda.

As many of the foreign Islamists in Chechnya and Dagestan were found involved in fomenting the regional unrest and civil war, Russian authorities withdrew permission of most to run schools and institutions. Throughout the North Caucasus at the time of the Chechyn war in the late 1990’s, there were more than two dozen Islamic institutes, some 200 madrassas and numerous maktabas (Koranic study schools) present at almost all mosques.

The International Dagestani-Turkish College was one that was forced to close its doors in Dagestan. The College was run by the Fethullah Gülen organization.[4]

At the point of the Russian crackdown on the spread of Salafist teaching inside Russia at the end of the 1990’s, there was an exodus of hundreds of young Dagestani and Chechyn Muslim students to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other places in The Middle east, reportedly to receive training with the Gülen movement and various Saudi-financed organizations, including Salafists. [5] It is believed in Russia that the students trained by Gülen supporters or Saudi and other Salafist fundamentalist centers then were sent back to Dagestan and the North Caucasus to spread their radical strain of Islam.

By 2005 the situation in the Caucasus was so influenced by this Salafist intervention that the Chechen Salafist, Doku Umarov, cited by the UN Security Council for links to Al-Qaeda,[6] unilaterally declared creation of what he called the Caucasus Emirate, announcing he planned to establish an Islamic state under Sharia law encompassing the entire North Caucasus region including Dagestan. He modestly proclaimed himself Emir of the Caucasus Emirate. [7]

*  *  *

*  *  *

 

Part II: Salafism at war with Sufi tradition

Salafism, known in Saudi Arabia as Wahhabism, is a fundamentalist strain of Islam which drew world attention and became notorious in March 2001 just weeks before the attacks of September 11. That was when the Salafist Taliban government in Afghanistan willfully dynamited and destroyed the historic gigantic Buddhas of Bamiyan on the ancient Silk Road, religious statues dating from the 6^th Century. The Taliban Salafist leaders also banned as “un-islamic” all forms of imagery, music and sports, including television, in accordance with what they considered a strict interpretation of Sharia.

Afghani sources reported that the order to destroy the Buddhas was made by Saudi-born jihadist Wahhabite, Osama bin Laden, who ultimately convinced Mullah Omar, Taliban supreme leader at the time to execute the act.[8]

Before and…After Salafist Taliban …

While Sufis incorporate the worship of saints and theatrical ceremonial prayers into their practice, Salafis condemn as idolatry any non-traditional forms of worship. They also call for the establishment of Islamic political rule and strict Sharia law. Sufism is home to the great spiritual and musical heritage of Islam, said by Islamic scholars to be the inner, mystical, or psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam, going back centuries.

As one Sufi scholar described the core of Sufism, “While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and will become close to God in Paradise–after death and the ‘Final Judgment’– Sufis believe as well that it is possible to become close to God and to experience this closeness–while one is alive. Furthermore, the attainment of the knowledge that comes with such intimacy with God, Sufis assert, is the very purpose of the creation. Here they mention the hadith qudsi in which God states, ‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved that I be known, so I created the creation in order to be known.’ Hence for the Sufis there is already a momentum, a continuous attraction on their hearts exerted by God, pulling them, in love, towards God.” [9]

The mystical Islamic current of Sufism and its striving to become close to or one with God is in stark contrast to the Jihadist Salafi or Wahhabi current that is armed with deadly weapons, preaches a false doctrine of jihad, and a perverse sense of martyrdom, committing countless acts of violence. Little wonder that the victims of Salafist Jihads are mostly other pacific forms of Islam including most especially Sufis.

The respected seventy-five year old Afandi had publicly denounced Salafist Islamic fundamentalism. His murder followed a July 19 coordinated attack on two high-ranking muftis in the Russian Volga Republic of Tatarstan. Both victims were state-approved religious leaders who had attacked radical Islam. This latest round of murders opens a new front in the Salafist war against Russia, namely attacks on moderate Sufi Muslim leaders.

Whether or not Dagestan now descends into internal religious civil war that then spreads across the geopolitically sensitive Russian Caucasus is not yet certain. What is almost certain is that the same circles who have been feeding violence and terror inside Syria against the regime of Alawite President Bashar al-Assad are behind the killing of Sheikh Afandi as well as sparking related acts of terror or unrest across Russia’s Muslim-populated Caucasus. In a very real sense it represents Russia’s nightmare scenario of “Syria coming to Russia.” It demonstrates dramatically why Putin has made such a determined effort to stop a descent into a murderous hell in Syria.

Salafism and the CIA

The existence of the so-called jihadist Salafi brand of Islam in Dagestan is quite recent. It has also been deliberately imported. Salafism is sometimes also called the name of the older Saudi-centered Wahhabism. Wahhabism is a minority originally-Bedouin form of the faith originating within Islam, dominant in Saudi Arabia since the 1700’s.

Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism give the following description of Saudi conditions under the rigid Wahhabi brand of Islam:

“Women living under Saudi rule must wear the abaya, or total body cloak, and niqab, the face veil; they have limited opportunities for schooling and careers; they are prohibited from driving vehicles; are banned from social contact with men not relatives, and all personal activity must be supervised including opening bank accounts, by a male family member or “guardian.” These Wahhabi rules are enforced by a mutawiyin, or morals militia, also known as “the religious police,” officially designated the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) who patrol Saudi cities, armed with leather-covered sticks which they freely used against those they considered wayward. They raid homes looking for alcohol and drugs, and harassed non-Wahhabi Muslims as well as believers in other faiths.” [10]

It’s widely reported that the obscenely opulent and morally-perhaps-not-entirely-of- the-highest-standards Saudi Royal Family made a Faustian deal with Wahhabite leaders. The deal supposedly, was that the Wahhabists are free to export their fanatical brand of Islam around to the Islamic populations of the world in return for agreeing to leave the Saudi Royals alone.[11] There are, however, other dark and dirty spoons stirring the Wahhabite-Salafist Saudi stew.

Little known is the fact that the present form of aggressive Saudi Wahhabism, in reality a kind of fusion between imported jihadi Salafists from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabites. Leading Salafist members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were introduced into the Saudi Kingdom in the 1950’s by the CIA in a complex series of events, when Nasser cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood following an assassination attempt. By the 1960’s an influx of Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia fleeing Nasserite repression, had filled many of the leading teaching posts in Saudi religious schools. One student there was a young well-to-do Saudi, Osama bin Laden.  [12]

During the Third Reich, Hitler Germany had supported the Muslim Brotherhood as a weapon against the British in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Marc Erikson describes the Nazi roots of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood thus:

…as Italian and German fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and ’40s to counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and “supreme guide” Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini.[13]

After the defeat of Germany, British Intelligence moved in to take over control of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultimately, for financial and other reasons, the British decided to hand their assets within the Muslim Brotherhood over to their CIA colleagues in the 1950s. [14]

According to former US Justice Department Nazi researcher John Loftus,  “during the 1950s, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now, when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood, like Dr Abdullah Azzam, became the teachers in the madrassas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabism.” [15]

“Everyone thinks that Islam is this fanatical religion, but it is not,” Loftus continues. “They think that Islam–the Saudi version of Islam–is typical, but it’s not. The Wahhabi cult has been condemned as a heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations. But when the Saudis got wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is a very harsh cult. Wahhabism was only practised by the Taliban and in Saudi Arabia–that’s how extreme it is. It really has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It always had good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its existence.” [16]

Loftus identified the significance of what today is emerging from the shadows to take over Egypt under Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi, and the so-called Syrian National Council, dominated in reality by the Muslim Brotherhood and publicly led by the more “politically correct” or presentable likes of Bassma Kodmani. Kodmani, foreign affairs spokesman for the SNC was twice an invited guest at the Bilderberg elite gathering, latest in Chantilly, Virginia earlier this year.[17]

The most bizarre and alarming feature of the US-financed  regime changes set into motion in 2010, which have led to the destruction of the secular Arab regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muhammar Qaddafi in Libya, and the secular regime of President Ben Ali in Tunisia, and which have wreaked savage destruction across the Middle East, especially in the past eighteen months in Syria, is the pattern of emerging power grabs by representatives of the murky Salafist Muslim Brotherhood.

By informed accounts, a Saudi-financed Sunni Islamic Muslim Brotherhood dominates the members of the exile Syrian National Council that is backed by the US State Department’s Secretary Clinton and by Hollande’s France. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is tied, not surprisingly to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood of President Mohammed Morsi who recently in a meeting of the Non-Aligned in Iran called openly for the removal of Syria’s Assad, a logical step if his Muslim Brothers in the present Syrian National Council are to take the reins of power. The Saudis are also rumored to have financed the ascent to power in Tunisia of the governing Islamist Ennahda Party,[18] and are documented to be financing the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Council against President Bashar al-Assad. [19]

Part III: Morsi’s Reign of Salafi Terror

Indicative of the true agenda of this Muslim Brotherhood and related jihadists today is the fact that once they have power, they drop the veil of moderation and reconciliation and reveal their violently intolerant roots. This is visible in Egypt today under Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi.

Unreported in mainstream Western media to date are alarming direct reports from Christian missionary organizations in Egypt that Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood has already begun to drop the veil of “moderation and conciliation” and show its brutal totalitarian Salafist colors, much as Khomeini’s radical Sharia forces did in Iran after taking control in 1979-81.

In a letter distributed by the Christian Aid Mission (CAM), a Christian Egyptian missionary wrote that Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood “announced they would destroy the country if Morsi didn’t win, but they also said they will take revenge from all those who voted for [his opponent Ahmed] Shafiq, especially the Christians as they are sure we did vote for Shafiq. Yesterday they began by killing two believers in el Sharqiya because of this,” the missionary added, speaking on condition of anonymity.[20]

This report came only weeks after Egyptian State TV (under Morsi’s control) showed ghastly video footage of a convert from Islam to Christianity being murdered by Muslims. The footage showed a young man being held down by masked men with a knife to his throat. As one man was heard chanting Muslim prayers in Arabic, mostly condemning Christianity, another man holding the knife to the Christian convert’s throat began to cut, slowly severing the head amid cries of “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is great”), according to transcripts. In the letter, the Egyptian missionary leader added that, “soon after Morsi won, Christians in upper Egypt were forcibly prevented from going to churches.” Many Muslims, the letter claimed, “also began to speak to women in the streets that they had to wear Islamic clothing including the head covering. They act as if they got the country for their own, it’s theirs now.” [21]

Already in 2011 Morsi’s Salafist followers began attacking and destroying Sufi mosques across Egypt. According to the authoritative newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm (Today’s Egyptian), 16 historic mosques in Alexandria belonging to Sufi orders have been marked for destruction by so-called ‘Salafis’. Alexandria has 40 mosques associated with Sufis, and is the headquarters for 36 Sufi groups. Half a million Sufis live in the city, out of a municipal total of four million people. Aggression against the Sufis in Egypt has included a raid on Alexandria’s most distinguished mosque, named for, and housing, the tomb of the 13th century Sufi Al-Mursi Abu’l Abbas.[22]

Notably, the so-called “democratically elected” regime in Libya following the toppling of Mohamar Qaddafi by NATO bombs in 2011, has also been zealous in destroying Sufi mosques and places of worhip. In August this year, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova expressed “grave concern” at the destruction by Islamic Jihadists of Sufi sites in Zliten, Misrata and Tripoli and urged perpetrators to “cease the destruction immediately.” [23] Under behind-the-scenes machinations the Libyan government is dominated by Jihadists and by followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, as in Tunisia and Egypt. [24]

The explosive cocktail of violence inherent in allowing the rise to power of Salafist Islamists across the Middle East was clear to see, symbolically enough on the night of September 11,^th when a mob of angry supporters of the fanatical Salafist group, Ansar Al-Sharia, murdered the US Ambassador to Libya and three US diplomats, burning the US Consulate in Bengazi to the ground in protest over a YouTube release of a film by an American filmmaker showing the Prophet Mohammed indulging in multiple sex affairs and casting doubt on his role as God’s messenger. Ironically that US Ambassador had played a key role in toppling Qaddafi and opening the door to the Salafist takeover in Libya. At the same time angry mobs of thousands of Salafists surrounded the US Embassy in Cairo in protest to the US film. [25]

Ansar Al-Sharia (“Partisans of Islamic law” in Arabic) reportedly is a spinoff of Al-Qaeda and claims organizations across the Middle East from Yemen to Tunisia to Iraq, Egypt and Libya. Ansar al-Sharia says it is reproducing the model of Sharia or strict Islamic law espoused by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq. The core of the group are jihadists who came out of an “Islamic state”, either in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, or among jihadists in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003.[26]

The deliberate detonation now of a new round of Salafist fundamentalist Jihad terror inside Muslim regions of the Russian Caucasus is exquisitely timed politically to put maximum pressure at home on the government of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Putin and the Russian Government are the strongest and most essential backer of the current Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, and for Russia as well the maintenance of Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base at Syria’s Tartus port is vital strategically. At the same time, Obama’s sly message to Medvedev to wait until Obama’s re-election to evaluate US intent towards Russia and Putin’s cryptic recent comment that a compromise with a re-elected President Obama might be possible, but not with a President Romney, [27] indicate that the Washington “stick-and-carrot” or hard cop-soft cop tactics with Moscow might tempt Russia to sacrifice major geopolitical alliances, perhaps even that special close and recent geopolitical alliance with China.[28] Were that to happen, the World might witness a “reset” in US-Russian relations with catastrophic consequences for world peace.

F. William Engdahl*  is the author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

Notes:

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the newly redesigned Global Research website!

We are very proud to launch an updated version of our website, featuring the same timely and analytical content as before, in a display that will be easier for our readers to navigate so that you can get the information you need as quickly and easily as possible.

On this website, you will be able to access an archive of more than 30,000 articles published by Global Research.

We thank all of our readers for the feedback you have sent us over the years and hope you will enjoy your browsing experience.

These changes would not be possible without your support, and for that we extend our sincere appreciation.

To help us cover the costs of important projects and necessary upgrades like this, we kindly ask that you consider making a donation to Global Research.

We also take this opportunity to invite you to become a Member of Global Research

If we stand together, we can fight media lies and expose the truth. There is too much at stake to choose ignorance.

Be aware, stay informed, spread the message of peace far and wide.

Feedback and suggestions regarding our new website are most welcome. To post a comment, kindly visit us on the Global Research facebook page

Sincerely,

 

The Global Research Team

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Ukrainians are taking increasingly desperate measures to avoid conscription into the military at a time when Kiev does not have reserve troops to replace those already on the front, a soldier from the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade told local media. The lack of morale among Ukrainians to fight Russian forces brings into question why the US insists on sending billions of dollars to Kiev.

“No one is willing to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine nowadays,” commented Niko, who is using a call name and is a fighter for the 12th Brigade of the Azov Brigade, a formation of the National Guard of Ukraine formerly based in Mariupol.

The men “do whatever they come up with” to avoid conscription, including “swimming across the Tisza River and drowning themselves in there,” Niko told local media TSN before referring to reports from April 13 about men killed trying to flee Ukraine across the river to avoid compulsory military service.

Likewise, the neo-Nazi fighter said he continues to serve despite the amputation of his leg because no one can replace him.

Evasion of military service is increasingly worrying for Kiev, with many trying to flee the country illegally. The reaction of the Ukrainian authorities to these attempts is harsher than ever. A video published by Ukrainian media in March showed border guards brutally beating dozens of men detained when they tried to cross the border with Romania, piling them together on the ground.

On April 11, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine approved a controversial law requiring men between the ages of 18 and 60 to carry their military registration papers at all times. The new law also toughens penalties for attempting to evade military conscription.

The mobilisation law aims to increase the number of Ukrainian troops. These measures were adopted amid the heavy losses suffered by Ukraine in the conflict, with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu indicating in late April that Kiev had lost almost 500,000 soldiers since the start of hostilities.

Yet, despite this catastrophic casualty number and the evident unwillingness of Ukrainians to fight, US President Joe Biden has approved a massive $61 billion aid package for Ukraine, wasting more taxpayer money on a war that will only result in Russia’s ultimate victory.

Ukrainians desperately avoiding conscription shows that the only people on the frontline are those unfortunate to have been forcibly mobilised and are therefore not motivated, or the most extremist elements like Niko, who have managed to survive but are extremely exhausted and even maimed.

This raises questions about who will man the new influx of weapons and equipment that Ukraine will receive. In fact, journalist Christoph Wanner on Die Welt revealed that the Ukrainian military is refusing to use US-made Abrams tanks due to overestimated expectations.

It is recalled that in late September 2023, the White House confirmed that Abrams tanks had begun arriving in Ukraine.

“They probably didn’t bring what was expected of them, so now they are temporarily abandoning the still intact Abrams tanks,” the journalist said when commenting on the withdrawal of Ukraine’s Abrams tanks from the front line.

Wanner noted that using the tanks, initially hailed as a “wunderwaffe” (wonder-weapon) that would turn the tide in Kiev’s favour, is complicated by first-person view (FPV) and kamikaze drones operated by the Russian military. Expectations of the Abrams effectiveness faced a harsh reality as cheap Russian drones can easily turn expensive American-made tanks into scrap metal.

“We cannot live in a world where drones costing a few thousand dollars have free rein to attack $10 million tanks where they are most vulnerable: from above,” lamented The Telegraph on April 26.

The fact that Abrams tanks have been removed from the battlefield indicates that Ukrainian soldiers are considered by the Kiev regime even more expendable than their outdated weaponry, providing insight once again into why Ukrainians are desperately avoiding conscription.

Although the $61 billion aid package could sustain Kiev’s war efforts for a few more months, it ultimately cannot help Ukraine avoid defeat. This will put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an even more difficult predicament than he currently finds himself in, especially as he is carrying out brutal persecutions through his conscription system of kidnapping men between 18 and 60 years old to go to the battlefront – a situation that cannot be sustained as domestic outrage will boil over.

The only thing Zelensky currently offers Ukrainian men of combat age is to die fighting in a futile war against Russia or go to jail for having deserted. As Niko pointed out, “No one is willing to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine nowadays.”

And who can blame them? No one wants to die or lose a leg like the neo-Nazi fighter did.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Every day in the media, the question “When will the Third World War break out?” continues to be on the agenda. 

Let’s answer this question from the beginning, the world war has been going on between oceanic powers and continental powers with varying intensities since 1914. 

So what is “World War”? 

This term emerged with the terms “First and Second World War”. 

It was coined to describe large-scale conflicts around the world, involving many nations, including the hegemon and its rivals, and covering different continents, regions and countries. 

The world of academia, media, politics and the military defined these multi-regional, multi-sided wars, which caused the hegemony to change hands or the existing hegemon to consolidate its power or the emergence of new great powers, as “world wars”. 

However, while the wars were being waged or after them, many states did not call these wars world wars. For example, there were states that defined the First World War as the “Great War”. The Ottoman Empire called this war “Harbi Umumi”, that is, “General War”. 

Similarly, while the Russians still define World War II as the “Great Patriotic War”, in China it is defined as the “War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression” or simply the “War of Resistance”. 

Hitler also frequently referred to World War II as “war” or “struggle” in his speeches and propaganda.

Industrial Revolution and the Period of Great Wars

Wars that affected the world continentally rather than regionally emerged after the industrial revolution. Because the industrial revolution brought machine power instead of manual/natural power in production, triggering revolutions in the production of goods that have never been seen in human history. Its biggest reflection for great powers was the transition from the capitalist stage to the imperialist stage with the increase in trade, economic power and prosperity. This transition undoubtedly received its greatest driving force from military power. Military power developed greatly in a short time as a tool of punishment and imposition of the hegemon who controlled the growing financial and economic world, thus prepared the conditions for world wars. Today’s framework was drawn at the beginning of the 19th century.

Pax Britannica and the World War

In the 19th century, the biggest owner of both the industrial and the military revolution was Great Britain. Using its economic and military (naval) power, the small island state imposed the liberal capitalist and Sterling-based global system wordlwide, based on Protestant morality. In other words, the foundations of today were formed after the victories of the 1805 Trafalgar Naval Battle and the 1812 Waterloo Battle. The imperialist hegemony of Anglo-Saxonism began to be imposed on the whole world through the Royal Navy and army. Even the Ottoman Tanzimat reform and the Baltalimanı trade agreement were the results of this era. This system worked smoothly until the beginning of the 20th century, and the Anglo-Saxon empire ruthlessly continued its hegemony without setting the sun.

The Rise of Germany and World War I

German soldiers on the way to the front in 1914. A message on the freight car spells out “Trip to Paris”; early in the war, all sides expected the conflict to be a short one. (From the Public Domain)

Britain’s global reign continued for nearly 100 years, until the unification of Germany at the beginning of the 20th century and its subsequent leadership of the second industrial revolution. The balance began to be disrupted after the early 1900s.

Germany, as a late imperialist and colonial continental state and economic giant, wanted to benefit more from the resources of underdeveloped countries during the transition from coal to oil. Germany challenged England’s naval power through developing and deploying a huge navy to the oceans.

And the First World War broke out. The first, most brutal showdown between the sea and the continent lasted 4 years. Britain allied with  another naval power -its archenemy of last 200 years – France, and its biggest rival -the continental state- Russia – and pushed Germany back to where it started at the end of the war.

The War Won Thanks to the USA

However, it owed this success to destiny. At the end of 1917, things were not going well and there was a communist revolution in Russia.

If there had been no revolution in Russia and the Russians had not withdrawn from the war with the extremely humiliating Treaty of Brest Litovsk, the USA would not have entered the war on the side of Britain to fill the gap, and perhaps Britain would not have won the war.

Thus, at the end of the war, Britain retained its place as the owner of the First Industrial Revolution and hegemony, but this victory was a Pirrhyc victory. Germany had become weak.

The USA was beginning to take Britain’s place. Power was slowly changing hands, but this change was between two Anglo-Saxons.

Losers and the Seeds of the New War

There were two big losers in the great power league of the First World War: Germany and Russia.

Both lost their empires and made large territorial concessions.

On the other hand, the United States could not be on the side of the winners, because although Britain had a large share in winning the war, it did not transfer post war gains to the United States from either the Middle East or Europe.

In 1918, Lenin made major territorial concessions in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to protect the revolution at home.

However, he still could not please the western world and was dragged into civil war. As a result, they achieved unity at the end of 1922 through bloody conflicts and established the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Germany’s humiliation period with the Treaty of Versailles brought out Hitler. Industrial giant Germany quickly recovered with its disciplined population and this time took action with its enormous military machine to expand its living space (Lebensraum).

Repeating Dynamics in Europe in 1939

The only thing that was different in the Second World War from the first was that the Soviets did not become enemies through the non-aggression agreement with Germany in the first two years of the war.

However, this was later disrupted, and the restructuring of the First World War was repeated.

The USA, Britain and the Soviets became allies.

Far from taking back what it lost in the first showdown, Germany occupied almost all of Europe.

As if that wasn’t enough, Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. Operation Barbarossa

This attack was inevitable despite the mutual non-aggression pact signed in 1939, because one of the eyes of the hegemon who emerged in Western Europe, just like Napoleon, is always directed towards the oceans and the other towards Asia.

It is a golden rule: What was lost in the first war is tried to be taken back in the second war.

The USA had the Wild West, England had India, Russia had the huge Central Asia, but Germany only had coal.

\Hitler was aiming for a German Empire stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Ural Mountains. Hitler was so strong till the end of 1941, with the support of US corporations. 

In a way, he took over the Imperial geopolitics from where the Kaiser left off in 1914.

In fact, his biggest goal was to gain access to both oil and valuable raw materials by taking over Russian lands.

After securing the oil and rubber stocks for domestic storages on which they were dependent, they achieved great victories in a toe years time frame with blitzkrieg warfare.

The first two years of the war went as planned. His aim was to persuade England to join him and attack the Soviets. Because Europe hated communists. Meanwhile, the world’s financial and trade giants were making big money from the war. Especially in the USA, the traces of the 1929 world economic crisis were being erased thanks to the war, and industrial production, was rapidly turning into war industry.

Pacific Front

On the other hand, another important factor that made this war a world war was Japan’s emergence as an island state, as a naval hegemon by challenging the USA in the Pacific.

They aimed to dominate the Pacific Ocean with Indonesia’s oil, Indo-China’s rubber, and other valuable strategic resources.

However, the Anglo-Saxon and Protestant USA, which has been the world’s largest economy since 1890, could not accept Britain’s example of establishing dominance by going from the island to the ocean and to the continent.

A massive blockade and sanctions process was launched against Japan, and on the morning of December 7, 1941,

Japan attacked the Hawaiian island and entered the war with the USA.

This attack was a big surprise for Hitler. Because Hitler did not want the neutral USA to intervene in the great war across the ocean.

Japan declared war on the USA without informing its ally Germany. Thus status quo fractured. Large US companies were already continuing to trade with Germany over the neutral countries throughout the war. The USA was even sending fuel to Germany via Spain. The neutral USA entering the war with Germany’s ally Japan would disrupt this flow.

Hitler’s Disappointment

Hitler’s situation was not bright at all during the days of the Pearl Harbor raid. The great Russian campaign (Operation Barbarossa) that he started on June 22, 1941, hit a hard rock in Moscow on December 5, 1941. The legend of the Blitzkrieg (Lightning War) ended that day. 

Photograph taken from a Japanese plane during the torpedo attack on ships moored on both sides of Ford Island shortly after the beginning of the Pearl Harbor attack. (From the Public Domain)

A week later, Hitler made his second mistake, as important as his decision to go to Moscow, and declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, hoping that Japan would declare war on the Soviets to force Russia into a two-front war. 

However, if not declared, the USA would have fought only in the Pacific Front and maintained its neutrality on the European front. On the other hand, the Japanese did not declare war on the Soviets in response to Hitler’s gesture. While this decision brought the beginning of the end of Hitler, it also ensured the salvation of England. Because if the USA had not actually entered the war on the side of Britain, it would have taken much longer for Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean basin to be freed from Hitler. 

In the meantime, let us remind that the reason why the Soviets did not make a preemptive attack on Germany was for not to provoke Japan. In such a situation, they would have to fight on two fronts. The beginning of the end of Germany, which was stuck in the mud in the Russian steppes, began with the Stalingrad victory, which lasted 200 days and ended in February 1943. The Soviets counterattacked in the summer of 1943. They were moving so fast that the Soviet armies were stopped in Berlin by the US threat of nuclear weapons. In fact, the real military power that saved Europe from Hitler was the Soviets. One of the main reasons for the Normandy landing was to prevent the Soviets from reaching the Atlantic coast and dominating Europe.

Post-war Balance

As a result of the determination of the areas of influence that started in Yalta after the war, the two winning fronts of the war (Anglo-Saxons and Soviets) created a balance. (We can say that if Hitler had won the war, the same sphere of influence would have been shared between Germany and the Anglo-Saxon world.) On the other hand, the Soviets created a very wide security buffer area extending from the Baltic to the Adriatic Sea to avoid encountering a new Napoleon and Hitler again. With the geopolitical security belt where the first buffer is the Warsaw Pact and the second buffer is the Soviet Union, the founding Republic of the Soviets, Russia, has secured itself at the center.

The End of the Soviets

The external buffer called the Warsaw Pact lasted 36 years, and with the end of the Cold War, Russia first lost the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union.

In other words, Russia encountered a new Brest Litovsk. It lost almost three-quarters of its domains within a year or two.

Just as Germany was humiliatingly provoked at the end of the First World War to prepare the environment for the Second War, this time, after the end of the Cold War, Russia was threatened with the continuous expansion of NATO to the East.

Furthermore it was faced with the NATO attempts to make Ukraine, one of the three main republics that founded the Soviet Union, a NATO ally. 

Today Is Like Yesterday

Today, the US-led maritime hegemony is playing a geopolitical chess game like the situation in the early 1900s. In place of the UK, there are USA, UK, and the EU; In place of Germany, there are China and Russia.

Today, there is no change in Anglo-Saxonism’s objectives towards Russia.

According to them, Russia is too big and should be dismembered at all costs and removed from all seas.

Its unlimited resources should be in the hands of neoliberal capitalists.

Let’s remind again. The rising great powers in Europe always turn their attention to the east as soon as they become hegemons.

Napoleonic France and Hitler’s Germany are the best examples.

The rising power in Europe after the Cold War was the USA.

By using NATO through its leading proxies, England, France, Germany, Romania and Poland, NATO, which has constantly expanded after 1999, today has penetrated into Russia’s vital borders.

By provoking and inviting the Russia-Ukraine War, the USA and the EU enabled European NATO countries to fight Russia indirectly, if not directly.

If Hitler came back to the world today and saw the borders of NATO and the EU, he would undoubtedly not be surprised by this situation.

Russia Removed From the Sea

Today, Russia is not in the Adriatic. It is squeezed into a small area in the Baltic. It is surrounded by NATO countries in the North Sea. If it were not for the Montreux Convention, which restricts the entry of NATO warships in the Black Sea in war time, it has been brought to a situation where it cannot even breathe. 

Despite being surrounded by NATO and being subjected to nearly a thousand economic sanctions and embargoes by the USA and the EU, Russia did not take any step back on the Ukrainian front; The fact that there was no change in the status of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia and Crimea, where the Russian-speaking population lives, frustrated the predictions that Russia would take a step back against Ukraine, which has received 200 billion USD worth of weapons, ammunition, mercenaries and aid from the West to date.

The leaders of the US, UK and France constantly say that Russia Must Not Win.

Russia is being demonized and made hostile in a way unprecedented in history.

However, this negative interaction backfires. During the Second World War, many western states breathed a sigh of relief when Hitler attacked the Soviets.

As a result, much of Hitler’s energy would be directed towards the east. 

However, the Russian Expedition, which Hitler and his generals predicted would reach Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev in 8 weeks at most, opened the doors of Berlin to the Russians with a devastating German defeat 2.5 years later.

Russians entered Berlin and did not leave Western Europe until 1989.

More importantly, in the 2.5 years between the winter of 1941 and 1943, their second biggest enemy, Japan, did not open a front against Russia in the east. Türkiye made the right decision by not entering the war on the side of Germany, nor did it enter the war on the side of the Anglo-Saxons. Today, in response to the anti-Russian US/EU and NATO front, China and India and the Global South do not even participate in fighting, let alone embargoes and sanctions against Russia.

The Main Target Is to Weaken China

For the collective west the most important objective is to defaeat  Russia thus move it away from the China and to keep the Anglo-American dominance globally.

A weak Russia will not be able to spare any strength against the Anglo-American alliance in the Pacific power struggle with China.

To the contrary, in a worst case scenario, Russia’s imposition of its own political will in Europe, despite the US and the EU/NATO bloc, will damage the global patronage of the US, whose reputation and credibility have already been greatly damaged due to the Gaza War. 

We are living in days in which the world economic balance is shifting towards Asia, and even the 300-year-old high-tech production monopoly of the West is being broken by Asian countries. BRICS+10 is rapidly moving towards becoming BRICS+40 in the autumn. 

The Global South now distances itself from US leadership and arbitration in international issues. Although the US-China competition is currently concentrated in the fields of trade and technology, the days when the military competition will be carried to the actual field, especially through the Philippines and Taiwan, are near. 

India will be the most important state in the alliance systems to be established during the military competition with China. If India remains neutral during the military conflict between China and the USA, the situation that will arise will be like Japan remaining neutral against the Soviets on the eastern front in World War II. 

This will be the most important decision that will determine China’s future. Let us remind you once again that if the Soviets had clashed with Japan in the east while the German occupation was continuing, they would not have been able to wage a two-front war.

Though, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand acting together with the USA against China cannot guarantee a decisive victory. Because military, demographic, and economic conditions are in China’s favor today.

USA Will Try to Buy Time in the Pacific

In the light of these views, the USA will not initiate a military initiative in the Pacific that will cause a loss of reputation and trust for itself, unless India’s complete participation in to the Anglo-Saxon bloc is guaranteed and the US allies in the Pacific reach joint and combined operational capability under a NATO-like military command and control structure. 

On the other hand, Ukraine, which still has its own dynamics, will use every means to continue the Russian war, as long as the its own people do not oppose it. In this way, both NATO states are kept on track and the American defense industry continues to transition to a war economy and massive production increase. 

Using the security advantage that geography provides, the USA will increase its efforts to prevent the unification of powers on other continents and to prevent continental states from reaching to the high seas as naval powers in order to ensure the continuation of the Anglo-American geopolitics of the early 1900s. 

In other words, the dynamics of the 1914 world war are valid today with different actors. World War continues. Only the scenes and actors vary. 

The two biggest geopolitical shifts were the end of the cold war in 1989 and the capitalist economic system collapse in 2008. In very same year, 2008, Russia challenged the USA in Georgia/South Ossetia, where neocon imperialism peaked and won. 

After 2012, with China entering the process of challenging the USA, the new era called great power competition has come to this day. 

In popular language, World War III continues with hybrid methods. A new front to be opened in the Pacific or in Moldova/Transdinistra after the Russia-Ukraine and Gaza-Israeli wars will give a clue to where this process will evolve in the future. 

However, under all circumstances, it is necessary to evaluate the situation that the US and EU/NATO fronts will encounter in the Asian Campaign with the surprises, Hitler encountered in the Moscow Campaign. 

In all these processes, I assume that the use of nuclear weapons will only be made by governments and leaders who will approve the destruction of their own people. That’s why I consider it a remote possibility. However, the production of nuclear weapons will continue, especially for the American war industry, and therefore the threat will be kept on the agenda and the transfer of large resources will be ensured.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Ret Admiral Cem Gürdeniz, Writer, Geopolitical Expert, Theorist and creator of the Turkish Bluehomeland (Mavi Vatan) doctrine. He served as the Chief of Strategy Department and then the head of Plans and Policy Division in Turkish Naval Forces Headquarters. As his combat duties, he has served as the commander of Amphibious Ships Group and Mine Fleet between 2007 and 2009. He retired in 2012. He established Hamit Naci Blue Homeland Foundation in 2021. He has published numerous books on geopolitics, maritime strategy, maritime history and maritime culture. He is also a honorary member of ATASAM.  

Featured image is from History Learning Site

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

My generation is old enough to still remember the Vietnam War – another American invasion, another US killing atrocity by psychopaths leading governments, another bonanza for the war industry.

This is now 50-plus years back, and the empire’s strategies to dominate the world, subdue its people, has not changed.

In the meantime, dozens of wars and conflicts have been initiated and fought either by the United States or its proxies, killing and maiming tens of millions of people around the world; as the world is sinking deeper and deeper into a dark abyss, from which one day, there may be no return.

But maybe there is hope.

What inspired me to write about Kim Phùc’s story – the “Never Stop Running, Napalm Girl” – is the short affectionate, yet strong and expressive anti-war video clip by Ray Jason, released in April 2024. Ray also provided the title for this article. See video below.

Vietnam – The 20-year War (1955 – 1975)

 You may remember the famous picture of the nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phùc, or Kim for short, who keeps running naked for her life from a US napalm attack that has scorched the cloths off her body, screaming in fear – never stopping from running. Kim was born on April 6, 1963.

Image: “The Terror of War”, photograph showing Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a road near Trảng Bàng, Vietnam, after a napalm bomb was dropped on the village of Trảng Bàng by a plane of the Vietnam Air Force. (Licensed under PD-US)

On 8 June 1972 at Tràng Bàng, during the 20-year Vietnam War (1955-1975), Nick Ut took the iconic “Napalm Girl” photo (above). The then 21-year-old Associated Press (AP) photographer won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for his famous photo, titled, “The Terror of War”.

The picture was also chosen as the Word Press Photo of the Year for 1973.

Rightly or wrongly, the photograph has often been credited with initiating the Vietnam Peace process, by showing the people of the world innocent victims’ faces.  

Nick, the photographer, saved Kim’s life by taking her as an emergency to a Saigon hospital. They first did not want to admit her, saying that with her burns she would never survive. But Nick insisted, threatening them with going to the media, if they would refuse to help her, doing their best to save her life. They did, and saved Kim. 

In an interview some 20 years ago, Nick Ut, a veteran, retired from AP, and now Vietnamese-Canadian citizen, exuberated:

“That terrified little girl is still alive today and has become an eloquent testimony to the authenticity of that photo. That moment thirty years ago will be one Kim Phúc and I will never forget. It has ultimately changed both our lives.” 

Kim and Nick Ut have remained friends and posed for pictures at the 40th Anniversary Tribute Dinner in Honor of Kim Phuc in Toronto, June 8, 2012.  (Photo left by Matthew Sherwood/Reuters)

Today, Kim lives near Toronto with her family and helps other children-victims of war around the world. In between her trips, she shares her story with The World.

Kim Phúc founded the Kim Foundation International to provide aid to child victims of war. See this.​

In a February 2018 interview with The World, Kim Phúc described that day of horror, June 8, 1972:

“We were allowed to play inside of the temple nearby the bomb shelter. I remember after lunch, we heard the noise of some burning outside … suddenly, the soldiers asked the children to run out of the temple.”

“I saw the planes were very fast, very loud. As a child, I didn’t know anything. And I turned my head. I saw four bombs landing … then suddenly, the fire was everywhere around me. I didn’t see anybody else. And then the fire burned off my clothes, and I saw the fire on my left arm. I used my right hand to wrap it up. That’s why my right hand got burned, as well.”

The World: You just put the fire out with your hand?

“Yes. That moment, I was terrified, you know. Then, I ran out of that fire, and I saw my brothers and my cousins and some soldiers with us, probably South Vietnamese soldiers, who protected us in the temple. Then, we kept running and running and running, until I was too tired to run anymore. And I saw a lot of people. They stood on the street, and I cried out, “Too hot, too hot.” And I remember one of the soldiers; he gave me some water to drink. He poured water over my skin. At that moment, I passed out. I didn’t remember anything. I lost consciousness that day.” 

The World: After you lost consciousness, do you remember the following week? What happened afterward?

“Oh, for a long time, I had no idea when my memory came back.”

“After I got burned, I had a dream. I really wanted to become a doctor. Then, I got into medical school but then, at that moment, the Vietnamese government rediscovered me. I was that little girl in a famous picture, right? So, many foreign journalists came to Vietnam, and they wanted to interview me. So, because of that reason, I was put out of my school to basically do publicity [for the government].”

“And that was really a low point in my life. I didn’t have any freedom to do whatever I wanted.”

“Later, the Vietnamese government sent me to Cuba to study for six years. Then, I married a Vietnamese student, whom I met in my university. On the way back to Cuba [from our honeymoon to Moscow], our airplane had to stop in in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, for refueling. So, for one hour in that location, I took my chance; my husband and I defected [asking for Canadian political asylum, which they were granted]. Then our life was set up in Toronto. We had freedom in Canada.” 

Now, Kim is married (1992) to Bui Huy Toan. The couple has two children and lives in Ajax, Ontario, with their two children. In 1997, they became Canadian citizens. 

The World: You have such an optimistic view of how things can proceed in life after you went through so much. Are you ever angry?

“Right now, no. But before, yes. Before I held the hatred for a while. And I learned to forgive. I learned to love my enemies. That is from learning. I’m not born with that. I was raised in a different religion. I was raised in a Cao Dai religion in Vietnam, but I was missing something. And I just wondered, “Where are you, God?” But then finally I went to the library, and I had read so many religious books and among them, I read the Bible. Then I changed my attitude, changed my behavior.”

“I love my scars.”

“And because of that picture, I got the best treatment later-on. I went through 16 operations but unfortunately, I still have a lot of pain, so recently, I went through 10 laser treatments to help ease my pain.”

The World: I know you’ve got kids and grandkids. Have they ever seen the famous photo that was taken of you after that napalm fire? Do they see your scars and want to know why? What do you tell them to keep them positive about humanity?

“They know my suffering. They know everything. I cannot, you know, hide anything from them. I continue to teach them why Mommy got that scar and pain and suffering. But then I tell them because I still have a life and I still have you … be thankful to be alive. And I never, never take it for granted … I count what I have, but I’m not thinking about what I lost.”

*

About Kim’s Life

When Kim Phúc was removed from her dream-studies, medicine, by the university and used for propaganda by her government, she became angry and depressed. Her anger was directed at the perpetrators of the war, who burned her, as well as her government which removed her from her studies and used her for publicity. The depression had its origins in her anger, as well as the constant pain from her scars. Kim was in a deep state of depression and considered suicide. 

But, the story goes, that in 1982 she found The Bible in a library. It led her to become a Christian and learning forgiveness. In 1986, she was granted permission by the Vietnamese Government to continue her studies in Cuba, where she first had to learn Spanish, then was trained as a pharmacist. It was in Havana, in 1989, where Kim Phúc met Nick Ut for the first time in fourteen years. The two have been meeting and speaking over the phone regularly ever since.

Becoming a Christian and learning forgiveness, Kim said in a National Public Radio (NPR) interview in 2008:

“Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness, and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness. If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?”

Forgiveness may have been the reason for Kim and Nick, the photographer, paying their respect, recently at the Vietnam Veterans Wall in Washington DC – a photo depicted towards the end of the tender but expressive anti-war video-composite of photographs “Never Stop Running, Napalm Girl”, by Ray Jason, above.

There is hope after all. Forgiveness and a conscience of Love may be the recipe for Peace and Harmony in this shattered and war-torn world.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing. 

Featured image: Thumbnails of the film footage showing the events just before and after the photograph was taken (Licensed under Fair Use)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Below you will find the text of the Notice of Liability delivered to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Dr Maria van Kerkhove, Dr Janet Diaz and Jeremy Farrar this week.

It was drafted with the help of specialist international lawyers and health scientists. Feel free to copy, paste and adapt for the purpose of notifying others of their liability in relation to the Covid-19 fraud.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: a man

dba: Director General World Health Organisation (WHO)

Office of the Director General

Avenue Appia 20

1202 Geneva – Switzerland       

6th day in the month of May in the year 2024

Dear Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (hereafter ‘you’),

Re: Notice upon Harm and to Cease and Desist 

On behalf of living men, women and all their sons and daughters living right now and those yet to be born on Earth, we hereby place you: a man: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, doing business as the Director General of the World Health Organisation (hereafter W.H.O), on notice that:

1. Your actions carried out in the capacity of Director General of the W.H.O during the Covid-19 chapter, principally consisting of falsely informing world governments of a so-called pandemic, thereby causing governments to declare non-existent medical emergencies, have been and are still an integral part of a chain of events that is resulting in mass loss of life, immense physical harm and untold psychological distress and trauma to the people on this planet;
2. Said actions appear to have led to Governments deploying insufficiently tested SARS-CoV-2 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) falsely termed ‘vaccines’ being also gene therapies, mandating unscientific masking protocols, implementing inhumane and anti-scientific ‘social distancing’ measures, purchasing and deploying ineffective and fraudulent PCR tests subsequently used to create false ‘casedemics’ in order to justify unlawful ‘lockdowns’, business closures and house arrest;
3. We demand that, with immediate effect, you cease and desist from taking further actions that would involve false and fraudulent communication to governments thereby causing or resulting in further instances of the kind of catastrophic outcomes outlined above.

Notice Upon Personal Liability

We also put you on notice that failure to cease or desist from continued or repeated involvement or implication in the above harms shall render you liable both in your personal and corporate capacity. As a man, you shall be investigated for criminal conspiracy. As a corporate officer, you shall be investigated for gross negligence, serious misconduct in public office, corporate fraud and potentially even aiding and abetting corporate manslaughter.

Further to the above Notices, and in order to clarify our position, may we take this opportunity respectfully to remind you of your own position and legal responsibilities.

WHO Constitutional Obligation

The objective of the World Health Organization (WHO), according to Article 1 of the WHO Constitution, is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.¹ Thus, in your role as WHO Director-General, you are obliged to consult with a diversity of experts, including those who disagree with your recommendations on health, to ensure that best practice is ethically and objectively promoted to uphold the best interests of the public.

As early as 2021, international experts were cautioning against the novel Covid strategies recommended by the WHO Covid team, especially but not limited to the experimental modRNA medical technologies developed at ‘warp speed’ to function purportedly as vaccines.

The WHO Constitution states in Article 67 that members of the WHO may enjoy ‘such privileges and immunities as may be necessary for the fulfilment of its objective and for the exercise of its functions.” Such privileges and immunity, whilst patently unfair, inequitable and dangerous, only apply when fulfilling the Article 1 objective.

By your unilateral recommendation of harmful Covid strategies, The People, represented by the World Council for Health, do not believe that you acted in accordance with your constitutional obligations in Article 1. If your actions are found to be in contravention of Article 1, you will not be covered by Article 67 of the WHO Constitution that provides for the stated protection and immunity. In other words, you may be personally liable for the millions of deaths and immense suffering caused on account of your role in the unlawful authorisation of these harmful recommendations. Moreover, given the blatant conflicts of interest evident in the WHO’s activities, closely connected to commercial interests, immunity is not guaranteed when acting at the behest of those interests.

Consequences of Your WHO COVID Policies, Recommendations, Advice and Omissions 

1. Immeasurable suffering and death

In the past four years, billions of people who trusted and complied with WHO-based country government advice have experienced ongoing physical and mental suffering, illness, disability, loss of income, poverty, child abuse, other violence, and even death as a result.

2. Human rights violations

Country governments worldwide implemented severe emergency measures directly based on WHO recommendations that consequently resulted in widespread violations of fundamental human rights. Boys, girls and babies were masked and injected. Living men and women expressing, or wishing to express their right to free speech, travel, bodily autonomy, and to choose, were threatened, intimidated, coerced, neglected, abused and in some cases assaulted, imprisoned or killed. The WHO did nothing to address the harm it caused.

3. Failure to recommend inexpensive, safe and effective treatments and remedies for Covid-19

Covid-19 can be effectively treated with safe and established multi-purpose generic medicines, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, in combination with zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C, and other immune-boosting, health-promoting and anti-coagulant treatments. Failure to disclose and raise awareness of these, and failure to recommend ivermectin widely in combination with zinc for early use, meant that millions of people suffered and many died as a result of not being offered effective early and late treatments.

By recommending ivermectin only in the context of clinical trials and omitting sound and practical advice on how to attain the highest level of health during the Covid-19 scare, ivermectin and other effective treatments were withheld in many countries in favour of expensive GMO drugs, emergency-authorized patented pharmaceuticaldrugs without safety records. Thus, in your personal capacity, the world’s people may hold you responsible for the consequences of serious omissions related to safe, effective treatments for Covid-19, in preference for undisclosed GMOs.

4. Dangerous GMO gene therapies deployed in the guise of vaccines 

You may also be personally liable for death, loss and suffering in relation to the SARS-CoV-2 ‘vaccines’ as you have not advised people of the following:

1. The long-term material risks of these ‘vaccines’ are unknown. The LNP-modRNA platform fulfils EU, UK, South African, Australian, and US legal definitions for being properly deemed a genetically modified organism (GMO), and a gene therapy, where material risks are identified over a period up to 15 years and perhaps into offspring. People were not advised as required by law that the so-called ‘vaccines’ are, in fact, GMOs.
2. Pfizer used one process to manufacture the products that they submitted for approval but a different process to manufacture the product supplied for injection into the world’s people. The latter product was manufactured using E.coli bacteria and plasmid DNA which has resulted in excessive synthetic DNA contamination confirmed as able to integrate with the human genome. Moderna’s use of plasmid DNA in manufacture has also led to excessive synthetic DNA contamination.
3. Pfizer products includes a SV40 virus-derived enhancer gene sequence. This gene sequence is known to facilitate the transport of the synthetic DNA into cell nuclei, posing a real risk of chromosomal integration. This threatens permanent genetic modification of inoculated people without their knowledge or consent and can only be harmful.
4. The contents of these genetic injections do not stay in the arm muscle.
5. Spike proteins are produced for a prolonged and unknown period of time, possibly indefinitely.
6. These spike proteins trigger extensive microvascular blood clotting as well as large vessel blood clots.
7. Spike proteins are deposited in many tissues and organs including the heart, brain, testis, ovaries, liver and spleen, causing tissue degeneration and disease.
8. The large quantity of spike proteins may overwhelm the immune system, causing immune system dysfunction and worsening risk of all infections and cancers.
9. The spike protein is toxic in itself, but this foreign antigen also marks the victims’ own tissues as non-self, triggering autoimmune disease within these tissues.
10. The antibodies generated are non-neutralizing and worsen Covid disease; this is “antibody dependent enhancement” of infection.
11. Undeclared plasmid DNA in these products carries further dangers; especially in the case of Pfizer and the concealed SV40 enhancer and promotor sequences. This includes the disruption of tumour suppressor genes, and adds to the list of mechanisms by which these products increase cancer risk.
12. The artificial modRNA in these products is hyper-persistent due to the substitution of N1-methylpsudouridine in place of uracil. This prolongs the production of the toxic spike proteins, but also causes ribosome frame shifting, such that a variety of unpredictable proteins and polypeptides are also generated. These pose serious risk for triggering a large spectrum of autoimmune diseases.
13. Additionally the pegylated lipid nanoparticles, which deliver the genetic payload into the victims’ cells, are toxic in and of themselves.

5. Violation of informed consent

Based on your authority as the designated WHO Director General, the majority of people around the world trusted your words when you stated that Covid-19 GMOs and gene therapies were “safe and effective”. This claim cannot be substantiated and is further disproved by Covid-19 vaccine contracts. As such, the right to free and informed consent was violated for every human being who was injected with the experimental Covid-19 GMO gene therapy called ‘vaccines’.

In addition, it appears that at no point did you appraise people of the risks associated with these experimental GMO injections, nor have you shared the mounting vaccine injury reports with the public. Vigibase, the WHO pharmacovigilance collaboration with the University of Uppsala, holds the records of over five million people suspected of harm due to the Covid-19 genetic ‘vaccines’, yet you have failed to demand and ensure transparent, independent and timely analysis of these data.

This is in direct contravention of the Nuremberg Code, that was agreed to in 1948, to prevent non-consensual medical experimentation on human beings, following gross human rights violations during the Second World War.² Your failure to advise on, recommend, promote and ensure free and informed consent for these Covid-19 GMO gene therapies can be prosecuted for both breach of your duty of care as well as for battery.

World Council for Health Invitation

It is our opinion that the health of the World’s People is much poorer for the actions that you have taken during the course of your work responsibilities at the World Health Organization. In the circumstances, we are morally obliged to invite you to defend your actions or apologise publicly with a plan for reparations. A World Council for Health Country Council General Assembly is scheduled to take place on May 21, 2024, to hear your response and to agree on further necessary actions.

In the interim and in future, we demand that you cease and desist from spreading disinformation about the Covid-19 GMO gene therapy products with immediate effect.

By the men and women named below:

World Council for Health Steering Committee

Shabnam Palesa Mohamed (WCH Africa), Fahrie Hassan (WCH Africa), Emma Sron (WCH N. America), Dr.Marivic Villa (WCH N. Americas), Dr. Mark Trozzi (WCH N. America), Izumi Kamijo (WCH Asia), Rev. Dr. Wai Ching Lee (WCH Asia), Dr. Gilbertha St Rose (WCH Caribbean), Christof Plothe DO (WCH Europe), Dr. Mazen Nasreddine (WCH Levant), Lucinda van Buuren (WCH Oceania), Dr. Anne O’Reilly (WCH Oceania), Prof. Héctor Carvallo (WCH Latin America), Marco Albertazzi (WCH Latin America), Dr. Tess Lawrie (WCH Chief Coordinator)

‘Notice to principals is notice to agents and vice versa’

*

Swiss solicitor, Philipp Kruse, delivered the notice in person to the WHO headquarters around midday on Monday 6th, 2024. Here he is confirming delivery:

Click here to watch the video

 

The WHO and its employees can no longer say they are ignorant of the issues and public concerns. Here is the signed receipt of the documents:

The World Council for Health Steering Committee is extremely grateful to lawyers Philipp Kruse, Julian Gillespie, David Adelman and the many, many others who informed, assisted and supported this international collaboration toward truth, justice and accountability.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is licensed under CC

The Collapse of Dollar Hegemony Could Lead to World War III. Richard C. Cook

By Richard C. Cook and Ahmed Danyal Arif, May 08, 2024

Our Declaration of Independence states that every person has a right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Of course along with these rights come responsibilities. One is that we act with kindness and compassion in accepting the rights of others. Our predatory financial system does not do this.

IDF Enters Rafah Blocking Aid to the Gaza Strip

By Abayomi Azikiwe, May 09, 2024

In Gaza, the Health Ministry reports say that over 35,000 people have been killed while more than 70,000 are wounded and injured. Thousands of other bodies including many women, elderly and children remain trapped under the massive rubble of destroyed residential, commercial and public structures.

Genocide in Gaza: Kudos to Journalists Who Tell the Truth

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, May 09, 2024

UNESCO should be congratulated for awarding the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for 2024 to Palestinian journalists covering Gaza. The prize this year was announced in Santiago, Chile in conjunction with World Press Day on 3^rd  May  2024.

Tackling California’s Budget Crisis: Raise Taxes, Cut Programs, or Form a Bank?

By Ellen Brown, May 09, 2024

In 2022, the state of California celebrated a record budget surplus of $97.5 billion. Two years later, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, this surplus has plummeted to a record budget deficit of $73 billion. Balancing the budget will be challenging. Unlike the federal government, the state cannot just drive up debt and roll it over year after year. 

The Militarization of Space: Report to U.S. Congress Outlines U.S. Determination to Establish “Space Command and Control”

By Drago Bosnic, May 09, 2024

On May 1, in an official statement before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee On Strategic Forces, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb actually explained how the US plans to militarize space to “further its interests”, or more precisely, expand options to continue its aggression against the entire world.

Ukraine War “Spins Out of Control”: Putin Is Letting It Get Too Late to Turn Aside from Nuclear Armageddon

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, May 08, 2024

The Russian government has stated that the American F-16 aircraft supplied to Ukraine by the idiotic governments of Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium will “be treated as nuclear-capable weapons.”

Bromelain and Cancer

By Dr. William Makis, May 08, 2024

Bromelain’s anti-cancer properties have been evaluated extensively in dozens of studies in vitro for: breast cancer, prostate cancer, gastric, colorectal, hepatocellular, cholangiocarcinoma, lung, melanoma, lymphoma and leukemia.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

First published on September 4, 2023

*** 

Not everyone in the field of science has abandoned the truth that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other “greenhouse gases” are good for people and planet as opposed to bad.

More than 1,600 scientists – 1,609 as of this writing, to be precise – belonging to the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) signed the World Climate Declaration in August, declaring that man-made climate change is a myth.

Contrary to the leftist narrative, there is no “climate emergency,” which means there is no need to abandon earth-based “fossil” fuels like gas and oil in favor of loud and unsightly wind turbines and Chinese-made solar panels.

“There is no climate emergency,” CLINTEL says.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

Most Climate Models Are False and Should Not be Used to Form Policy

For as long as the earth has existed, the climate has always been changing, this cohort of scientists and other experts says. Sometimes it gets cold, while other times it gets hot – and taking away meat, cars, and freedom is never going to change that.

As recently as 1850, the earth went through a “Little Ice Age,” so it is “no surprise,” the declaration states, “that we now are experiencing a period of warming.”

The government and media love to make much ado about nothing concerning the changing climate. All that “global warming” they love to rant on and on about is actually not that bad.

“Warming is happening ‘far slower’ than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” wrote Naveen Athrappully in a report for The Epoch Times.

As we have been saying for quite some time now, CO2 and other greenhouse gases are good for the planet. CO2 in particular is “essential” to all life on earth, and is extremely “favorable” for nature and the actual greening of the planet.

“Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition warns, adding that these same models “exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.”

Though they repeatedly try to denigrate it as a pollutant, the climate cultists are getting it wrong, wrong, and more wrong every time they refer to CO2 as some kind of planetary scourge that must be removed if we are to have any chance at survival.

“Extra CO2 results in the growth of global plant biomass while also boosting the yields of crops worldwide,” further explains Athrappully.

Furthermore, there is “no statistical evidence” to even remotely suggest that CO2 is in any way responsible for fueling more natural disasters like hurricanes, droughts, and floods.

“There is no climate emergency,” the group says. “Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are.”

“To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naïve belief in immature climate models?”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

For overwhelming Western political analysts, journalists, scientists, etc., the disappearance of the USSR in 1990/91 was symbolized overdramatically by the physical destruction of the Berlin Wall followed by the removal/destruction of statues/monuments devoted to the communist leaders and communist ideology.

This geopolitical change called for a new world order in international relations (IR) and, in fact, heralded global peace, international democracy, and worldwide security and stability in foreign affairs after the Cold War 1.0 (1949−1989).

The period of the Cold War was a historic period lasting from the time of the establishment of the NATO pact in 1949 to the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

During that time, global politics was structured around a binary political geography that opposed US-led global capitalism to Soviet-type communism. Nevertheless, although the world did not face during that time a direct military confrontation (like in 1962 during the Cuban Crisis) between East and West, the period of the Cold War 1.0 witnessed serious economic, financial, military, political, and primarily ideological rivalries between at that time two (nuclear) superpowers (USA and USSR) and their allies (NATO and Warsaw Pact).

According to the well-known concept of “the end of history” which reflects the end of Cold War 1.0, the global battle of the previous 40 years – in the Western propaganda eyes, the final battle between (Western) liberties and (Eastern) “Evil Empire” – was over (at least for some time).

The world seemed unified under the New World Order (directed by Washington). Immediately after 1989, any combination of multipolarity of the post-Cold War 1.0 order in IR was understood as a real danger to global security. 

However, from the point of critical geopolitics, it was suggested that the world would soon miss stability in IR which existed during the Cold War 1.0 due to the military, political, and ideological opposition by two superpowers and their allies. In other words, according to those critics, the New World Order after 1989 will lose the clarity and stability that the Cold War 1.0 era had. Therefore, the post-1989 world concerning the IR, according to, for example, S. P. Huntington, was going to be a more jungle-like world of foreign affairs and of multiple dangers for global security with hidden traps, unpleasant surprises, and moral ambiguities. A new mantra in IR started after 11/9 (2001) when US President George W. Bush put clear lines of good and evil on the global political map.

During the Cold War 1.0, the “free” capitalistic world was fighting against the “non-free” communist world (particularly if someone lived in the “promised land” of the USA). The “promised” West demonstrated the inevitability of countries falling under “devil” communism like dominos (a “domino effect”) unless the USSR was contained behind the Iron Curtain. Nevertheless, after 1989, some political theorists offered new visions of global politics based on chaos and fragmentation claiming the threats and dangers from many corners around. Such critical global geopolitics became incorporated into the imagined geography of G. W. Bush’s proclaimed the War on Terror after 11/9 when the US administration sharply divided the world into two halves meaning that each state was either for the USA or for the terrorists. It was, in fact, no in-between space. From a wider perspective, the use of geographical imaginaries in forming global political models (like those two during and post-Cold War 1.0) is usually understood as geopolitics. 

From the point of human geography as an academic discipline, it understands geopolitics as an element of the practice and analysis of statecraft that considers geography and spatial relations both of which play a crucial impact in the process of making IR. The political reality concerning IR has to take seriously into consideration certain frameworks of laws of both geography and politics: concerning geography, distance, proximity, and location as they are understood to influence the development of political action (for instance, war). From the very points of geopolitical arguments, the impact of geography on politics is founded on the geophysical reality but not on ideology. It seems in historical practice that geographical science is going to have predictable impacts on political action.

Such above-presented arguments are challenged by those who claim that geographical relationships and entities are specific to historical and cultural environments. That means the nature of the influence of geography on political events can change. 

We have to keep in mind that the term geopolitics was historically first used by the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen in 1899. Nevertheless, the term was not very much used before the early 20th century. However, the British geographer and political strategist Halford Mackinder’s promotion of the study of geography as an academic discipline to assist statecraft stimulated the view that geopolitics can influence geographers to offer a way in which they could influence the IR. In essence, geopolitics as an academic research discipline is dealing with the question of which geographical factors can shape IR. Basically, these geographical factors include the continental space followed by the distribution of physical landscape and human resources. Concerning geographical research, some territories are predicted to be easier or harder to defend. In addition, the notion of distance affects politics and some topographical features can significantly participate in the security efforts of the state but as well as may also lead to its security vulnerability.

It can not be ever forgotten that the issue of security was all the time and is going to be in the future fundamental to the study of geopolitics. It, basically, means the maintenance of the state in the face of threats, usually from external powers (aggression from outside). The crucial point is that geopoliticians claim that they can support the concept of national (state) security by explaining the effects of a country’s (and around) geography and that of potential conquerors, on future power-political relations. In other words, the experts in geopolitics have to be able to predict which areas could make a state stronger, helping it to rise to prominence, and which might leave it vulnerable. The geopoliticians argue that geography is the most important factor in IR for the very reason it is the most permanent one. Subsequently, the study of geopolitics is considered to be of a very practical nature and the most objective one regarding IR. From that point of view, it is quite separate from political theory. 

Usually, geopoliticians present the world and IR as one closed system founded on interdependent relations between political actors, basically independent states. Accidentally or not, the interest in geopolitics as an academic discipline that can explain the world and the system of IR happened at a time when the entire world was explored by Western imperialistic colonists. Therefore, now the world has become available for the territorial and economic expansion of the nation-states. Soon, around 1900, the West European policy of colonialism reached its height. In principle, colonialism is understood as the rule of a nation-state (or other political power) over another, occupied and subordinated territory and its people. Originally, geopolitics was understood as the study that explains and even legitimates the policy of colonization and making overseas empires. Practically, before 1945 geopolitics in many cases was offering a way for nation-states to protect their territorial possessions at the time (before the process of de-colonization) when the “empty lands” (and “terra incognita”) became ultimately occupied by the West European (and other) states and powers.

From the very pan-global perspective, the best-known geopolitical thesis is of the British Mackinder – “Heartland Thesis”. According to the thesis, the Asian “Heartland” is a pivotal area of global geopolitics. Who controls this area provides a chief position in world politics and, therefore, global domination. This “Pivot Area” is surrounded by the “Outer Rim” of the lands divided into two territories: 1) “Inner or marginal crescent”; and 2) “Lands of outer or insular crescent”). If not resistance from the area of the “Outer Rim”, which is proximate to the “Heartland”, some occupying power could quite easily come to control first Europe and then the world. According to Mackinder’s thesis from 1919, the precondition to command “Heartland” is to rule East Europe. However, whoever rules “Heartland” commands the World Island which is a precondition to rule over the World. 

Mackinder’s geopolitical analysis of world politics, nevertheless, had a very practical task – to assist British global colonial imperialism. In other words, he suggested to the British policymakers to be wary of powers that are occupying the “Heartland”, and should establish a “buffer zone” around the territory of “Heartland” in order to prevent the accumulation of power in the future that might challenge the hegemony of the British Empire within both “Inner” and “Outer Crescents”. Mackinder’s geopolitical reasoning had a certain influence on both British foreign policy and popular imagination. Nevertheless, not all geopoliticians agree with Mackinder’s conclusion that the location of global power is the land as, for instance, the US geopoliticians Mahan, instead of the power of the land, promoted the concept of the power of the sea while later others promoted the significance of air power. Nonetheless, each of these three groups came up with different core areas from which political, military, and economic dominance can be imposed.

The notion of geopolitics after WWII was quite negative as in many eyes it was associated with Nazi Geopolitik policies of territorial occupation, expansionism, Lebensraum, colonization, holocaust, and war atrocities. Practically, during the Cold War 1.0, geopolitics, as expressed in pure spatial (geographical) models, became obsolete and out of use at least in its original form. Nevertheless, the Western (American) theory of the Domino Effect (chain reaction of states falling to the communists, like a row of falling dominoes) was in essence connected with the factor of territory (geography) as the spread of communism/socialism was seen not as a complex political process of adaptation and conflicts but primarily as a direct result of proximity to a territory ruled by the USSR. The process of chain reaction would not stop, according to this theory, until it reached the last standing domino (the USA), and made future political action appear inevitable unless proactive action like a pre-emptive strike is done.  

However, after 1989 appeared new approaches to geopolitics usually called “critical geopolitics”. For all of them, the common issue is the refusal of the objectivity and timelessness of the effect of geography on certain political processes including IR.

Differently from traditional geopoliticians, supporters of critical geopolitics are taking into consideration a wide spectrum of factors that influence political action and IR. Additionally, traditional geopolitics is criticized for the reason that it takes into consideration only the state or primarily the state as chief or even only player in international politics especially at the time of “Turbo Globalization” after 1989/1990 when, clearly, other actors and powers are involved both at the sub-state level (like ethnic, regional, or place-based groups), and at the supra-state level (such as transnational corporations or international organizations like NATO, EU, UN, ASEAN, NAFTA, BRICS, OPEC, Arab Union, African Union, Council of Europe, etc.). 

It has to be stressed that critical geopoliticians are particularly interested in questioning the language of geopolitics, or in other words, the so-called “geopolitical discourse”. For geopoliticians, discourse is a way of talking about, writing, or otherwise representing the world and its geographies. The discourse is simply seen as a way of representing the world – the way that is, in fact, shaping the reality of the world, rather than just being a way of presenting a reality that exists outside of language. Linguistic expression can be a problematic issue as language is metaphorical and, therefore, firstly understood differently by the listeners/readers and secondly directing the opinion of others. All the time exists a choice of words, expressions, and metaphors and the type of terms used affects the meaning of what is being described. For instance, the members of some organizations can be described as “terrorists” or “freedom fighters”. To properly understand the character and aims of their political activity, therefore, very much depends on the used linguistic description of them. As a consequence, there is a politics of language. 

Critical geopolitics is founded on postmodern concerns with the politics of representation. For the supporters of such an approach, political geography is not a collection of indisputable facts but, instead, is about power. It means that political geography is not an order or facts but, instead, geopolitical orders are created by top individuals and chief institutions and then imposed worldwide. Political geography is the product of cultural context followed by political motivation. One of the focal points of critical geography today is that it examines the question of why international politics are usually understood from the point of space or simply through the eyes of geography. Consequently, critical geopolitics seeks to uncover the politics involved in writing the geography of global space. This process is called “geo-graphing” (writing about earth/land) to use the process of geographical reasoning in the practical service of political and other powers.  

Critical geopolitics is not so much interested in classical geopolitical problems like the true effects of geography on international relations (like whether land, sea, or air powers are the most influential). Rather, critical geographers investigate whose models of international geography are used, and above all, whose interests these models serve. For them, power essentially depends on knowledge and, therefore, the knowledge has a crucial impact on political action. Examples of how science (knowledge) can be used in politics are the cases of Mackinder who wanted to help maintain British overseas imperial colonies and, therefore, its hegemony over world affairs, and Mahan, a naval historian, who was interested in building up the US Navy to assist the creation of the US Empire. 

Supporters of critical geopolitics tend to analyze the impact of geography in any description of the world or its parts from a political viewpoint – for instance to describe or predict a foreign policy of some nation-state is, in fact, to be engaged in geopolitics. Any geopolitical description can influence political perception. For instance, knowledge of other regions and the character of their inhabitants described in a particular political-ideological way can be significant for political action – using constantly the terms “Evil Empire” or “Devil Axis” to describe some country and its political leadership, serve to legitimate its own foreign policy and military actions.

The focal claim by the supporters of critical geopolitics is that conventional, or traditional geopolitical arguments are too much of a pro-geographical nature. Contrary to the traditional geopoliticians, their colleagues in critical geopolitics prefer to reduce the factor of space and place (that means not being crucially concerned with understanding and analyzing geographical processes) to concepts or ideologies. Ideology, from the very perspective of critical geography, can be understood as a meaning that serves to create or/and maintain relationships of domination and subordination, through symbolic forms. Regarding international politics, critical geopolitics argues that geopolitics is not simply linked to the function of describing or predicting the shape of IR. However, geopolitics has to be focal to how identity is formed and supported in contemporary (multi- and hybrid) societies.  

In conclusion, we can say that geopolitics continues to be a powerful form of geographical reasoning, but used in support of powerful political interests. Geopolitics can create “moral” maps of the world, and locate enemies to the nation-state. However, critical geopolitics is a significant challenge to the traditional geopolitical imagination of IR and global politics which offers another way to imagine alternative connections between different human groups in the world.  

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

A chamada “contra-ofensiva” ucraniana em 2023 foi um fracasso absoluto. Dezenas de milhares de soldados ucranianos morreram no campo de batalha em atritos sem necessidade, nos quais Kiev não teve qualquer hipótese de vencer. No entanto, a Ucrânia foi aparentemente aconselhada até mesmo por funcionários da OTAN a não utilizar tal estratégia suicida.

Segundo Guido Crossetto, ministro da Defesa italiano, o regime de Kiev ignorou vários avisos diretos para evitar atritos prolongados com a Rússia durante o contra-ataque de 2023. Crossetto afirma ter falado diversas vezes com Zelensky que a tentativa de lançar uma contra-ofensiva através de ataques frontais estava fadada ao fracasso e levaria à derrota da Ucrânia. No entanto, Zelensky supostamente ignorou tal conselho, optando deliberadamente pelas táticas irracionais usadas nas linhas de frente.

Crossetto revelou que tanto durante a visita de Zelensky à Itália como em outros fóruns internacionais, o presidente ucraniano ouviu diretamente dele uma opinião crítica sobre o plano de contra-ataque às posições russas. Analisando o conflito de forma realista, Crossetto afirma que, embora apoie a Ucrânia, não concorda com a decisão de confrontar frontalmente as forças russas, dada a clara superioridade de Moscou. O ministro disse que “o resultado de uma guerra é a soma de quem tem mais homens e mais meios”, razão pela qual insistir na fricção com a Rússia seria um suicídio para a Ucrânia.

O oficial também comentou outras questões relativas ao conflito. Por exemplo, criticou severamente o plano do presidente francês Emmanuel Macron de enviar tropas para lutar diretamente na Ucrânia se o exército de Kiev entrar em colapso. Segundo Crossetto, tal manobra seria extremamente perigosa e ultrapassaria a linha do retorno, razão pela qual aconselha a França a evitar qualquer envolvimento direto.

Além disso, Crossetto também fez alguns comentários realistas sobre as sanções anti-russas ocidentais. Segundo ele, as medidas coercivas não atingiram os seus objetivos. O ministro acredita que o Ocidente se engana ao manter tais sanções em vez de simplesmente reconhecer as novas circunstâncias geopolíticas.

“Muitas vezes comportamo-nos como se o mundo não tivesse mudado (…) Sempre pensámos que o Ocidente era suficiente para deter a Rússia e as sanções são o resultado do fato de ainda estarmos presos à ideia de que o mundo é o nosso mundo. Em vez disso, o mundo é muito maior e só podemos resolver esta crise envolvendo todos: primeiro com uma trégua e depois com a paz (…) Não devemos desistir de todos os caminhos e aberturas possíveis, mesmo os estreitos, da diplomacia, ” ele disse.

Na verdade, Crossetto mostra uma profunda compreensão geopolítica. Embora seja funcionário de um país da OTAN e apoie a Ucrânia, compreende que as circunstâncias geopolíticas favorecem a emergência de um mundo multipolar, no qual o Ocidente já não é o único ator no processo de tomada de decisão internacional. A sua opinião crítica sobre as atitudes ocidentais mostra que uma tendência realista pró-multipolar é capaz de emergir na Europa, apesar da forte pressão americana. Quanto mais a UE é vítima de medidas coercitivas impostas pelos EUA, mais os países europeus tendem a assumir uma postura crítica em relação a Washington e à OTAN.

No entanto, o detalhe mais interessante do seu discurso foi a notícia de que Zelensky ignorou os conselhos dos especialistas militares sobre a contra-ofensiva. Isto mostra como até os políticos estrangeiros estão mais preocupados com os soldados de Kiev do que com o próprio governo ucraniano. Na prática, não há respeito pelas vidas ucranianas por parte do regime neonazista. Os soldados são vistos como mera bucha de canhão, tendo que ser eliminados massivamente em batalhas inúteis e anti-estratégicas.

O desrespeito pelos soldados é uma das razões pelas quais o governo Zelensky é tão impopular. Os militares e as suas famílias não querem mais continuar a ver baixas numa guerra invencível. O moral das tropas está baixo e a certeza da derrota parece crescer entre os combatentes. Sem expectativas de vitória, não há razão para continuar a lutar, razão pela qual Kiev está a ser forçada a implementar métodos ditatoriais para manter os esforços de guerra.

Há rumores de que Kiev está a planear lançar outra “contra-ofensiva” em 2024. Tendo perdido quase todos os seus homens em idade militar, o regime está agora a utilizar idosos, mulheres e pessoas com problemas de saúde – bem como milhares de mercenários estrangeiros. Em tais circunstâncias, é obviamente impossível para Kiev vencer qualquer batalha, mas é possível que Zelensky insista no erro apenas para tentar fazer mais propaganda de guerra em busca de armas ocidentais.

Contudo, a situação ucraniana é ainda pior agora do que em 2023. Se Kiev quiser realmente repetir o erro de promover um contra-ataque, o colapso total do regime será certamente bem rápido.

Lucas Leiroz De Almeida

 

 

Artigo em inglês : Western officials warned Zelensky against 2023 ‘counteroffensive’, InfoBrics, 9 de main de 2024.

Imagem :  Ministro italiano da Defesa Guido Crossetto. InoBrics.

*

Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

 

 

Back in mid-February, the mainstream propaganda machine bombarded us with a slew of reports about “big bad Russian space nukes“, claiming that Moscow is using its technological prowess to build strategic space-based weapons. And while it’s true the Eurasian giant is a cosmic superpower and that it certainly has the know-how to accomplish such a feat, the mainstream propaganda machine conveniently “forgot” to explain why the Kremlin would make the decision to expand its space capabilities. Namely, Russia is indeed planning to deploy a nuclear-powered anti-satellite weapon (ASAT), but there’s a massive difference between having thermonuclear warheads pointed at Earth from space and having a nuclear-powered spacecraft. The Russian military is already in possession of the former, as it was the world’s first operator of the FOBS back in the early 1960s.

FOBS, an acronym for the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (СЧОБ in Russian), is a thermonuclear weapon system found on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), designed to make their range effectively limitless. China tested its own version of the technology only in 2021, while the United States has been unable to create anything similar. Thus, Moscow has had this capability for well over half a century, so why is there such hype over a supposed nuclear-powered ASAT all of a sudden? It’s exceedingly difficult to ignore the fact that this is being used as yet another excuse to push several warmongering agendas at once. First, it furthers the idea that there “cannot be peace” with the Kremlin, and second, it gives Washington DC the perfect excuse to continue militarizing space, started years (or, in reality, even decades) before the special military operation (SMO).

On May 1, in an official statement before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee On Strategic Forces, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb actually explained how the US plans to militarize space to “further its interests”, or more precisely, expand options to continue its aggression against the entire world. The statement reflects on current and upcoming space policies of the Department of Defense (DoD), specifically on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 National Security Space Programs. Plumb directly mentioned China and Russia as the primary threats to Washington DC’s increasingly overstretched (neo)colonial empire. The budget predicted for FY 2025 is $33.7 billion, $25.2 billion of which will be “investments for procurement and research, development, test, and evaluation”. To put it into perspective, that’s a third of Russia’s annual military budget.

According to Plumb, specific fields of interest for the US military will be “space command and control, integrated space fires and protection capabilities, modernized and agile electronic warfare architecture, enhanced battlespace awareness and space systems defense, and a range of capabilities designed to enhance our space control”. He also stated the importance of having more space launch options, highlighting the importance of access to commercial (i.e. private) companies, as well as upgrades to the GPS, which is further evidence that Russia’s EW (electronic warfare) in Ukraine is indeed making NATO precision-guided weapons virtually obsolete, a complaint that has become rather commonplace ever since the SMO started. Plumb then focused on specific Russian and Chinese space capabilities, highlighting several types of systems.

Citing the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and its 2024 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA), Plumb says that “China will probably have achieved world-class status in all but a few space technology areas by 2030″, complaining that Beijing can “monitor forces across the globe and improve its long-range precision strike capabilities against US or allied forces to deter or deny outside regional intervention”. In other words, the US is worried that China has the capability to not only defend itself, but also strike back in case of direct NATO aggression. What’s particularly concerning for Washington DC are Beijing’s “counter-space capabilities to hold our on-orbit assets at risk”. Plumb says that this includes EW, direct-ascent ASAT missiles, directed-energy weapons (DEWs) such as ground-based lasers, space-based kinetic weapons and orbiting space robots.

However, Plumbs seems to have been particularly concerned by Russia’s capabilities which are virtually identical to China’s, but also include the previously mentioned nuclear-powered systems. The US claims that Moscow has “a range of offensive counter-space capabilities”, including EW, DEWs, direct-ascent ASAT missiles and orbital systems with counter-space applications. The report focuses on “Russia’s investments in counter-space systems designed to exploit what it views as a US overreliance on space for conducting military operations” and “to offset US capabilities”. ODNI 2024 ATA says that “Russian military doctrine embraces multi-domain attacks, using both reversible and irreversible capabilities, to target adversary satellites” and that “Russia conducted cyber intrusions against commercial satellite communication networks” (i.e. GPS).

Plumb further accuses Moscow that it has “demonstrated through both public statements and actions that it views commercial satellites providing space-based services to Russia’s adversaries as potential targets” and that it’s “also developing a concerning [ASAT] capability related to a new satellite carrying a nuclear device that Russia is developing”. The US insists that it’s allegedly “worried this could pose a threat to all satellites operated by countries and companies around the globe, as well as to the vital communications, scientific, meteorological, agricultural, commercial, and national security services we all depend upon”. The endless hypocrisy of the political West, but particularly the US, is immediately visible in such statements, as Plumb openly said, in this very report, mind you, that the Pentagon plans to expand the usage of commercial assets.

 

 

Soviet Terra-3 Ground-based-laser- ASAT (From the Public Domain)

In simpler terms, the US is complaining about Russia targeting “commercial” space capabilities, while top-ranking officials in Washington DC are bragging about using those same “commercial” capabilities for military purposes. Analyses I wrote years ago suggested that America has been using private space corporations to enhance its military capabilities. Who in their right mind can blame Moscow for wanting to deny such assets to the US military, which is also bragging about using other advanced technologies to target Russian soldiers? Of course, this is hardly strange or unexpected, since it’s coming from the political West. Hypocrisy is the only modus operandi its political elites understand. Interestingly, the report also mentioned North Korea and Iran, particularly as both besieged countries are working closely with Russia and China.

Funnily enough, the rest of the 13-page paper (.PDF) focuses precisely on the aforementioned commercial assets in space warfare and how the US and NATO can enhance their capabilities by using them against the world. In his concluding remarks, Plumb says that “space capabilities are essential to overall military effectiveness and central to [the US military’s] integrated deterrence strategy” and that Washington DC is “committed to making critical space investments to deter our competitors and prevail in conflict should deterrence fail”. Once again, it’s rather interesting how the belligerent thalassocracy is insisting on the fact that others are supposedly “aggressive” in space, while the Pentagon has been refusing to disclose the nature of its own space-based programs for decades, particularly the US Space Force’s controversial X-37B pilotless spaceplane.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: A USAF F-15 Eagle launching an ASM-135 ASAT anti-satellite missile. (From the Public Domain)

 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

The conflict in Ukraine was deliberately provoked by the United States and NATO with the aim of weakening Russia and overthrowing Vladimir Putin’s government. In the expectations of Washington and the Atlantic Alliance, this move should have dragged Russia – with its immense natural resources – under Western influence. A necessary postponement also in view of a possible confrontation with China.

Collapse Russia is a failed goal. But Washington and NATO have achieved an equally important objective: to weaken Europe and cut its political and economic ties with Russia. Today, Europe is more than ever enslaved by Washington, dependent on its gas and arms supplies.

What might seem like the analysis of a Kremlin official is instead a profound and detailed vision that comes from the heart of Europe, from Paris. This analysis bears the signature of Eric Denécé, one of the leading Western experts in geopolitics and geostrategy, with a lot of experience gained in the field, under the tricolor flag of French intelligence.

Denécé now is the Director and Founder of the French Centre for Intelligence Studies (CF2R). During his career, Denécé previously served as  Naval Intelligence Officer (analyst) within the Strategic Evaluation Division at the Secretariat Général de la Défense Nationale (SGDN). His operational experience, whether as an officer or as a consultant, led him to conduct operations in Cambodia among guerrilla forces, and in Myanmar to secure Total’s interests against the local guerrilla. He also served as a consultant to the French Ministry of Defence on projects concerning the future of the French Special Forces and South China Sea’s disputes. For years, he has served French and European companies on intelligence, counter-intelligence, information operations and risk management issues, in Europe and Asia.

Piero Messina (PM): More than 30 years ago Russia was assured that NATO would never extend its operational area. And then what happened?

Eric Denécé (ED): NATO’s lies date back to 1990, when the then US Secretary of State, James Baker, assured Mikaïl Gorbatchev at their meeting on February 9 that NATO would “never advance an inch eastwards”. This promise was not kept. Then, in March 1991, Western leaders again promised USSR leaders that NATO would not expand eastwards. The evidence of this lie is now documented, as confirmed by Roland Dumas, then French Foreign Minister, and Vladimir Fedorovsky, former Russian diplomat. NATO has constantly extended its influence in Eastern Europe, integrating new members. It continues to do so (Ukraine, etc.) and is even transforming itself into an anti-Chinese alliance, by deploying in the Indo-Pacific.

PM: From NATO Headquarters in Brussels they make it known that from their point of view the Atlantic Organization has in reality simply implemented the requests of Sovereign States that had expressed the desire to join that Pact. Is it a credible reconstruction?

ED: Such a situation would not have arisen if NATO had been dissolved after the threat of the Warsaw Pact had disappeared. But the Americans never had any intention of doing so, because the Alliance was a formidable instrument of political, diplomatic and military influence for controlling European states, almost all of which – with the exception of France and the UK – refused to make the minimum effort to ensure their own security.

Nor should we forget another essential aspect. By steadily enlarging NATO, and reneging on commitments made to Moscow, the Americans have denied Russia the notion of a space of influence in its near abroad, even though they themselves established the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which “forbids” the intervention or interference of any foreign state on the American continent, on pain of American retaliation. This systematic policy of “double standards” has finally exasperated the Russians, who consider that the West does not respect the international laws it has enacted and imposed on the world when it deems it profitable to its interests, but continues to condemn those who do.

PM: The last years of Ukraine’s history are very complex. What happened from 2004 to 2014? Are we able to make a list of the external actors who contributed to changing the course of that country’s history?

ED: In 2004, in the wake of the “color revolutions”, Ukraine saw a major popular movement denouncing widespread fraud in the second round of the presidential election. While the pro-European candidate Viktor Yushchenko was leading in the exit polls, the electoral commission declared the victory of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, supported by the outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, and Vladimir Putin. Massive demonstrations were held to demand the annulment of the election results and the organization of a new ballot. On December 3, 2004, the Ukrainian Supreme Court annulled the presidential election and ordered a new ballot to be held in the presence of international observers. This time, Viktor Yushchenko was declared the winner and sworn in as president on January 23, 2005. A pro-Western government was installed in Kiev.

This peaceful “Orange Revolution” was supported and financed by the European Union, the United States and numerous Western NGOs and foundations. For Washington, support for Ukraine’s democratic opposition was part of the neoconservative strategy advocating a more active American foreign policy, based on the “Shape the world” principle.

But the new Ukrainian regime soon became characterized by chronic instability: in less than four years, three prime ministers succeeded one another, two parliamentary elections were held and the Orange coalition disintegrated. Due to internal conflicts, the regime that emerged from the Orange Revolution quickly collapsed, highlighting the endemic corruption that has characterized the country and its “elites” since independence.

As a result, in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych was elected – quite legally this time – to the presidency, notably with the support of the Russian-speaking populations of eastern Ukraine. He then decided to reject an economic association agreement with the European Union in favor of another, with Russia, which he considered more profitable for his country. This was the signal that provoked his overthrow, via the Maïdan coup (2014), orchestrated by the United States as confirmed by Victoria Nuland.

PM: European intelligence agencies had been shining a spotlight on Ukraine for two decades. Why was all history from 2004 to February 2022 literally erased?

ED: Western intelligence services were well aware of the particularly chaotic situation in this country (in near economic collapse, corrupt, plagued by mafias and specifically neo-Nazi groups, etc.), which was a veritable “gray zone” at the heart of Europe. So it had to be watched.

But the Americans decided to turn it into an area of tension with Russia, and set up a showdown in the belief that Moscow would bow down and be definitively weakened. So they deliberately increased the friction and tried to blame Moscow for everything. To achieve this, they had to forget their role in the 2004 revolution and the 2014 coup d’état, in order to continue to appear as the “camp of good and democracy”, in the face of the “dictator” Putin and his expansionist ambitions…

PM: In 2015 the Minsk agreements were reached. We will discover years later, former German Prime Minister Angela Merkel will tell us, that it was a strategy to buy time. How do you convince Russia to come to the negotiating table after that precedent?

ED: The deliberate non-application of the Minsk agreements by France and Germany is a real scandal, a double state lie that discredits both states in the eyes of the world and, of course, the Russians. It should be remembered that all this was done with the backing of Washington, which was opposed to the agreement. For Moscow, this was yet another example of Western duplicity and of the United States’ hostile plans against its country. This, of course, came on top of the lies of the post-Cold War era. With all confidence gone, Putin began to react differently, preparing his country for a possible confrontation. But he never gave up on the idea of negotiating with the Americans, Europeans and Ukrainians, in full knowledge of their double game.

PM: Let’s talk again about a global vision for a moment. What are the geostrategic objectives of the United States in this conflict? Is separating Russia from Europe a necessary objective for maintaining the Unipolar order born from the collapse of the USSR?

ED: In provoking this conflict, the Americans had two objectives. The first was to weaken Russia, overthrow Putin and integrate Russia and its resources into the Western camp, with a view to a possible future confrontation with China. The second was a takeover of the European states, increasingly dependent on Russian energy resources and, for some, rather critical of NATO. This was all the more necessary for Washington since, following the Brexit, London could no longer play its role as “Trojan horse” within the European Union, and the latter, under Franco-German impetus, risked increasing its autonomy vis-à-vis Washington.

Obviously, the United States failed completely on the first point, due to a very poor assessment of Russia’s willingness, resilience and capacity to react. On the other hand, it has been a complete success on the second, with Europe more than ever enslaved by Washington, dependent on its gas and arms supplies. Our European “elites” are clearly complicit in this deplorable development.

PM: Could the conflict between Russia and Ukraine be the first conflict between two opposing world visions: the unipolar world and the multipolar one which is concentrated in the BRICS dimension?

ED: This conflict is in fact the clash of two different world visions: that of a decadent Occident, led by the United States whose unilateralism and imperialism continue to grow stronger, and slavishly followed by European states with no will of their own, having abdicated all sovereignty. And that of Russia, attached to its sovereignty, culture and balanced relations between states, a vision shared by the majority of the BRICS and the so-called “southern” countries.

But for the West, this is nothing more than a collection of rogue or authoritarian regimes.

The funny thing is that our side claims to represent “good”, “right” and “democracy”, even though this is no longer the case. Let’s recall the contempt with which the United States ignored UN resolutions in 2003 and violated international law by invading Iraq, causing an estimated one million civilian deaths and giving birth to the terrorist group known as “Islamic State”.

PM: Europe is showing all its limits. The EU does not have a common foreign policy, it follows the guidelines dictated by NATO and the United States. What meaning does the European Union have today?

ED: The European Union is much more fragmented than we like to admit. And the Ukrainian conflict has only served to increase internal divergences. Firstly, several states are showing increasing national egoism in defending their own interests: this is the case of Poland and the Baltic States, whose hatred of Russia – partly understandable historically – is pushing them to extreme positions, harmful to Europe. This is also the case for Germany, which, since the Brexit, sees itself as the sole leader of the Union and is less and less inclined to cooperate: we can measure this in terms of the fight against immigration from the Mediterranean, compliance with financial rules and industrial cooperation on armaments.

Beyond this, it must be recognized that today it is a bellicose Washington-London-Warsaw axis that dictates European policy, since France and above all Germany have seen their political role considerably reduced by the Ukrainian conflict: the former because of its inability to curb its indebtedness, the latter because of the disruption of its supplies of cheap Russian natural gas.

PM: Let’s talk about how the war in Ukraine is reported by the media. Is it a one-way narrative, a narrative that often erases historical facts? What is the meaning of this attitude and how can it be explained?

ED: For the past two years, the Ukrainian conflict has given rise to an unbridled information war, albeit paradoxically limited since each side has banned the broadcasting of opposing media, and can only influence its own opinion. As a result, Russian propaganda remains difficult for Western audiences to measure, as it is impossible to access the messages it conveys. On the other hand, the disinformation practised by the Ukrainians and the Americans, and blindly repeated by the European media, is passed over in silence, even though the populations have been subjected to it on a daily basis for the past two years.

It is therefore important to highlight the techniques used by Kiev’s Spin Doctors, their American advisors and their media relays. Indeed, they use all the techniques of storytelling to impose their narrative, condition opinion, place full responsibility for this conflict on Moscow and neutralize any divergent viewpoint.

It is therefore more important than ever to be wary of any information disseminated by either side. In this conflict, Western media are no more neutral or reliable than Russian media.

PM: President Zelensky’s political profile is also very complex. From TV to Bankova. In addition to the oligarchs who we know have financed him, it is possible to imagine “hybrid” support for the construction of Zelensky as a media figure.

ED: This is an important question. In the West, we’ve made a “hero” of Zelensky, when in fact he’s just a mediocre character who plunged his country straight into chaos. Let’s not forget that this “comic” was elected in 2019 following a campaign prepared by the production of a TV series designed to propel him to the presidency. He was then elected on a pledge to restore the rights of the Russian-speaking population and to make peace. He completely reneged on these promises as soon as he came to power, notably under the influence and threat of neo-Nazi ultranationalist groups. And from 2020, he began to harden his policy towards his opposition, closing many media outlets – obviously labelled pro-Russian – and imprisoning certain opponents. It should also be remembered that he is accused, with solid evidence, of having laundered large sums of money, and that he has been unable to combat the corruption undermining his country, which has grown even worse with the war.

Above all, he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians by refusing – under British pressure – to conclude peace negotiations with the Russians in April 2022, six weeks after the outbreak of the conflict.

PM: Until the 1990s, NATO used clandestine operational networks to change the order of things. In your opinion, is there a STAY BEHIND network dedicated to the Central Europe dossier today?

ED: Such networks were set up in Ukraine by the Americans and British as early as 2015. They trained special units within Kiev’s army and special services, both to reconquer the Donbass and Crimea, and to deal with a possible Russian invasion. These units were engaged against the autonomists in the south-east of the country, and then against Russian forces from the start of the “special military operation”. They are now conducting offensive operations in Russia, and are tempted to do so in Africa too, to disrupt the actions of the Wagner group and harm Moscow’s interests.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from SF

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

In 2022, the state of California celebrated a record budget surplus of $97.5 billion. Two years later, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, this surplus has plummeted to a record budget deficit of $73 billion. Balancing the budget will be challenging. Unlike the federal government, the state cannot just drive up debt and roll it over year after year. The California Balanced Budget Act, passed in 2004, requires the state legislature to pass a balanced budget every year. 

The usual solutions are to cut programs or raise taxes, but both approaches are facing an uphill battle. Raising taxes would require a two-thirds vote of the legislature, which would be very challenging, and worthy public programs are in danger of getting axed, including homelessness prevention and funding for low-income housing. 

A third possibility might be to increase the income tax base and state income by stimulating the economy with a state-owned depository bank. The state-owned Bank of North Dakota, which has raised record profits for its state, is a stellar example. In a review of states with the healthiest budgets based on data from the PEW Charitable Trusts, U.S. News & World Report puts North Dakota at No. 1 in Budget Balancing and #1 in Short-term Fiscal Stability.    

California has an Infrastructure and Development Bank, which is already capitalized and has an established track record of prudent and productive lending, but it is not a depository bank and its reach is small. Transforming it into a depository bank would be fairly uncomplicated and could substantially increase its reach. 

But first a look at what happened to the state’s copious revenues.

Saga of a Budget Crisis

California’s record surplus was largely due to tax windfalls and to $43.5 billion received in American Rescue Plan money during the COVID crisis. Anticipating that these inflows would continue, the governor and legislature enacted a record budget for 2024-25 of nearly $300 billion, the largest of any state. Much of the surplus was committed to expanding an array of social and educational services, including extending universal health care coverage to undocumented immigrants. When taxes came in, the tally showed a revenue shortfall of $26 billion.  

Tech industry woes were a major contributor. The top 1% of earners pay nearly half of California’s  income taxes, and 20% of its GDP comes from the tech industry. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which financed startups and attracted venture capital, speeded the sector’s decline. Massive Silicon Valley layoffs occurred and tech stock lost value, cutting capital gains taxes. And there has been a notable exodus from the state not just among the ultra-wealthy but by businesses, due to the combination of high taxes, stringent regulations, and elevated costs for labor, utilities, and energy.  

Another contributor to the budget deficit were huge payouts for unemployment benefits, which skyrocketed during the COVID lockdown and business shutdowns. The state’s unemployment fund was exhausted, requiring a loan from the federal government. Twenty-one billion dollars remains to be repaid, and the interest rate on the debt has gone up. To meet the unemployment burden, California legislators are considering quintupling unemployment taxes and nearly doubling benefits, but the result could be more layoffs and more businesses leaving the state.

Plagued by Homelessness and Unemployment

Meanwhile, the wealth divide in California is enormous, with the highest unemployment rate and homeless rate in the country. This is despite $24 billion being spent on the unhoused over the last five years. Thirty percent of the nation’s homeless live in California, and nearly nine million Californians are on the brink of being homeless. Housing is too expensive for low-wage earners and there is a lack of available low-cost housing. But well-meaning legislation to help low-wage earners has had unintended consequences. 

As of April 1, the minimum wage for fast food restaurant workers was raised by 25% to $20 an hour triggered by a strike by their union. But the move has negatively impacted many of the workers. Fast food restaurant owners operate on thin profit margins; and to cover these new costs, they have had to reduce workers’ hours, raise customer prices, engage in massive worker layoffs, move out of state, or close their businesses altogether. Almost 10,000 fast food jobs have been lost in California just since the $20 minimum wage law was signed. 

As a result of these and other efforts to help low-wage earners, many vulnerable workers are suddenly finding or will find themselves out of a job.

Compare North Dakota

At the other end of the employment spectrum is North Dakota, which has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. As noted above, in a review of states with the healthiest budgets, U.S. News & World Report puts it at No. 1 in Budget Balancing and #1 in Short-term Fiscal Stability.  North Dakota’s budget for 2024-25 includes cuts in individual income taxes, including eliminating the state individual income tax for 60% of the population and a reduction in that tax for the other 40%. The result is projected to be a 1.5% flat rate income tax, the lowest in the nation. Again compare that to California, where the top state income tax is 14.4%, higher even than other states known for their tax burdens. 

North Dakota was the only state to fully escape the 2008-09 credit crisis, never slipping into the red. When the state did go over budget in 2001-02 due to the dot-com bust, the Bank of North Dakota (BND), the nation’s only state-owned bank, acted as a rainy day fund. To make up the budget shortfall, the bank declared an extra dividend for its state owner, and the next year the budget was back on track. 

The BND is more profitable than some of the largest Wall Street banks. Its latest Annual Report (for 2022) states that it had a record net income of $191.2 million that year, up $47 million from 2021. Its asset size also set a record, at $10.2 billion. The return on investment was a healthy 19%. As the BND’s principal depositor, the state must keep its funds in the bank by law, thus protecting the bank from a run on its deposits. The Standard & Poor’s credit rating for the BND is A+/stable. The S&P report states, “BND has one of the highest risk-adjusted capital (RAC) ratios for rated U.S. banks.” 

BND’s profitability has helped strengthen community banks and credit unions in North Dakota by making loans in partnership rather than in competition with them. In the Great Recession, it also bought loans from stressed local banks to prevent bank failures and keep the economy running smoothly. BND operates with very low overhead and stresses productive and local lending rather than lending to buy existing assets, the sort of speculative lending that leads to bubbles and busts. 

The State’s Deposits Are Safer in Its Own Bank

The Bank of North Dakota was established in 1919 by a populist party of farmers who felt their farms were being foreclosed on unfairly by out-of-state bankers. They succeeded in bringing their state revenues back into their own bank, serving their own communities. 

Counting-room of the Bank of North Dakota, c. 1920 (From the Public Domain)

North Dakota’s revenues are safer in its own bank than in the largest Wall Street banks, which “insure” their capital with interconnected derivatives backed by rehypothecated collateral. The Financial Stability Board has declared that practice to be risky, “as highlighted during the 2007-09 global financial crisis.” The five largest Wall Street depository banks hold $223 trillion in derivatives, or 83 percent of all the derivatives at 4,600 banks; and they have a combined half trillion dollars in commercial real estate loans, also very risky in the current financial environment. 

Today most government funds are deposited in these SIFIs (Systemically Important Financial Institutions), putting the deposits at risk. Under the Dodd Frank Act of 2010, a SIFI that goes bankrupt will not be bailed out by the government but will be recapitalized by “bail ins” – confiscating the funds of the bank’s creditors, including “secured” depositors such as state and local governments. Under the Bankruptcy Act of 2005, derivative and repo claims have seniority and could easily wipe out all of the capital of a SIFI. The details are complicated, but the threat is real and imminent. See my earlier articles here and here, David Rodgers Webb’s The Great Taking, and Chris Martenson’s excellent series drilling down into the obscure legalese of the enabling legislation, concluding here.    

Even if the SIFIs remain solvent, they are not using state deposits and investments for the benefit of the people; and often they are betting against us. The BND, by contrast, is mandated to use its revenues for the benefit of the North Dakota public.  

California Could Replicate the BND Model with Its Infrastructure and Development Bank

California already has an Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank (I-Bank), but it is not a true depository bank able to take deposits and leverage its capital. According to its website: 

IBank was created in 1994 to finance public infrastructure and private development that promote a healthy climate for jobs, contribute to a strong economy, and improve the quality of life in California communities. IBank is located within the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development and is governed by a five-member Board of Directors. IBank has broad authority to issue tax-exempt and taxable revenue bonds, provide financing to public agencies, provide credit enhancements, acquire or lease facilities, leverage state and federal funds and provide loan guarantees and other credit enhancements to small businesses. 

Its Infrastructure State Revolving Fund (ISRF) Program provides loans only to public entities (municipalities, counties, Joint Power Authorities, pension funds), but it also has a Small Business Financing Center (SBFC) that provides loan guarantees through independent agencies for businesses and farms having trouble accessing loans, among other outreach services. The ISRF is a revolving fund, limited to lending its base capital. It engages to some extent in leverage, but it’s the riskier version called “rehypothecation” (relending of existing collateral). As explained by Stan I-Bank’s first Executive Director Stan Hazelroth in a 2013 article: 

When you loan $100 to an electric utility, say, to build new infrastructure, they take money from ratepayers and pay that loan back over time. These payments, based on the history of utility ratepayers over decades, are very reliable—so reliable, in fact, that bond buyers will loan money secured by the promise of those ratepayers to pay the utilities back over time. 

The utility with the right to be paid back $100 can pledge those aggregate payments and secure an additional loan of, say, $80. When that loan begins to be paid back, bond buyers will loan you another, say, $60, which can also be loaned out. With just $100 in cash, in other words, you can loan out $240.

Thus a contract becomes a security, which can act as collateral for another loan and another for the lender. But reuse of the same asset for multiple loans can go only so far. Chartered at a 10% capital requirement, depository banks can issue up to ten times their capital in loans. (In 2020 the Fed lifted the capital requirement altogether, but 10% is still considered a prudent ratio.) 

Banks do need to back withdrawals with reserves, which they acquire from their incoming deposits or by borrowing from other banks or the Federal Reserve; but the state has plenty of deposits to serve that function. Any bank in which the state deposits its revenues will back its loans with those deposits, and the I-Bank’s loans are actually safer and better for the public interest than those of the big Wall Street banks. If the I-Bank were to become the state’s banker and its reserve account were overdrawn, it would have the same protections afforded by the Federal Reserve system to all chartered banks: it could borrow reserves from other banks, the repo market, or the Fed itself. The BND is not a member of the Federal Reserve but has a master account with it, allowing the bank to transfer funds with other banks in the system and to act as a “mini- Fed” for the state, providing correspondent banking services to North Dakota’s many community banks.

One thing California and North Dakota have in common is that they are both big agricultural states. The BND helps its farmers with a variety of low-interest loans. Although most of its loans are in collaboration with local banks, two loans it makes directly are the Beginning Farmer Real Estate Loan and Established Farmer Real Estate Loan. California’s struggling farmers could benefit from that sort of direct aid as well.

The state itself could also realize significant savings from its I-Bank if the bank’s loan capacity were expanded. I was unable to nail down the current comparative figures for loans, but here is an example from an article I wrote in Yes Magazine in 2018:

Financing infrastructure through the municipal bond market accounts for half the cost of infrastructure due to the debt load involved. One example where this is made clear is with Proposition 68, a statewide ballot measure that voters approved in the June 5 primary election which authorizes $4.1 billion in bonds for parks, environmental, and flood protection programs. The true cost of the measure is $200 million per year over 40 years in additional interest, bringing the total to $8 billion. California’s IBank, which funds infrastructure at 3 percent, could finance the same bill over 30 years for $2.1 billion—a nearly 50 percent reduction.

The Golden State as Trendsetter: Time to Form a Bank

In 2019, two bills were brought to convert California’s I-Bank into a depository bank, one in the Senate, SB 528 (Hueso), and one in the Assembly, AB 310 (Santiago). SB 528 sought simply to convert the I-Bank to a depository ban. It passed the first two committees but was “suspended” in Appropriations. The second bill, AB 310, sought to extend the I-Bank’s services directly to underserved individuals and businesses. It was opposed by the state treasurer and the state controller on grounds that it was too risky, and it failed. But California State Treasurer Fiona Ma said in her opposition letter to AB 310 that she was sympathetic to its goals, and that “I respectfully propose AB 310 be amended, replacing the current language with a mandate to develop a feasibility study to be conducted by an independent, apolitical expert source. The technical experts in my office can assist to build the framework of the study as the state’s banker.” 

There is actually no need to change the I-Bank’s existing programs, since it already has a variety of programs that help the underserved indirectly. Simply converting it to a depository bank would extend the reach of its existing services (for which there is currently excess demand), expand its profitability, reduce the cost of infrastructure and development for state and local government agencies, and protect any revenues deposited in it from a sudden crisis in the conventional banking system. 

The remedy for unemployment is employment, and the remedy for the unhoused is affordable housing. An I-Bank expanded into a state-owned depository bank could provide both.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was first posted as an original to ScheerPost.com.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, co-chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

UNESCO should be congratulated for awarding the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for 2024 to Palestinian journalists covering Gaza. The prize this year was announced in Santiago, Chile in conjunction with World Press Day on 3^rd  May  2024.

The prize named in honour of a Colombian journalist murdered in 1986, Guillermo Cano Isaza, is a recognition of the courage shown by journalists who are prepared to carry out their responsibilities in the face of grave danger. Guillermo was a newspaper editor who was a vocal critic of drug barons in his country and in South and Central America.   

It is an indisputable truth that journalists in Gaza have been confronting the reality of death every day of their lives in the last seven months as Israeli bombs rain their congested homeland and Israeli bullets target any child, woman or man who inhabits that narrow strip of land. Up to this point, 7^th May 2024, 143 journalists have lost their lives in the Israeli assault on Gaza. This is the largest number of journalists killed in a conflict within a certain period of time in a certain demographic setting. 

The number of journalists killed should be viewed in the context of the huge massacre that has taken place in Gaza since October 7^th. Israel —mainly its armed forces and Zionist settlers who are allowed to kill Palestinians at random— have annihilated at least 35,000 people in the course of the last seven months. It is heart-rending to know that about 70% of those killed are children and women. Indeed, more children have died in the present conflict in Gaza and the West Bank than in any previous assault upon Palestinian territory since 1948 when the state of Israel was established.

Image: Funeral for Palestine TV journalist Mohammad Abu Hattab. Credit: X/@MuhammadSmiry

If the story of this senseless slaughter has been told to the world, it is not simply because of the courage of the journalists associated with the conventional media. The alternative media have also played a significant role. Within the alternative media in Gaza are a large number of citizen journalists telling the truth to relatives and friends through their handphones and other channels. They too are heroes and heroines because of their indomitable courage and their willingness to take great risks, risks which place their very lives in peril.

It is because these citizen journalists had shared their stories with certain conventional media channels which in turn had scrupulously verified the news and information they had received that so much of what was, and is, happening in Gaza is now known to the world. A television station operating in both Arabic and English which helped to disseminate the actual happenings in Gaza and the West Bank far and wide was of course the Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

Al-Jazeera also has its own huge network of journalists on the ground whose courage and integrity are awe-inspiring. Through their commitment to truth and justice, they have raised journalism to a loftier level. It is a shame that such a television station should now be banned by the Israeli authorities from reporting from Occupied Palestine or Israel proper. It only confirms that the Israeli state does not want the world to know the truth about what it is doing in Gaza

But the truth will prevail in the end. That is the immutable law of life. After more than 75 years of oppression and suppression, of extermination and expulsion, millions and millions of people all over the world have come to know about what Israel really is, and what it has been doing to the Palestinians and other Arabs. 

Israel is exposed as never before. The whole world now knows that it is an arrogant, cruel and inhuman state and society. It is so selfish and self-serving that it has brought about its own downfall.

At this juncture, it should also be emphasized that while Israel is perpetuating colossal injustices against Palestinians, there are also millions of Jews in North America and Europe who are against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They want the rights of the Palestinians restored. They are convinced that Jews, Christians and Muslims can live together in peace and harmony.

Together with Palestinians and millions of others from every continent and community, they would applaud UNESCO’s decision to award this year’s World Press Freedom prize to Palestinian journalists covering the catastrophe in Gaza. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr Chandra Muzaffar, founder and president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), prominent human rights advocate, author and academic, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: The funeral of two Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

So now the world knows.

The democratic government of the United States of America has been covertly supplying thousands upon thousands of high explosive, 2,000-pound (900kg) and 500-pound (225kg) bombs to the IDF to enable it to carry out the mass killing of civilians in Gaza. This fact makes the United States an accessory to mass murder in Gaza, amounting to genocide.

In the first month of its war in Gaza, Israel dropped hundreds of such massive bombs, many of them capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away. To date, more than 100,000 have either been killed, mutilated or wounded. Primarily women and children.

These 2,000-pound bombs are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States dropped on ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, during the war against the extremist group there.

Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy munitions such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. The population of Gaza is more highly concentrated than almost anywhere else on earth, so the deliberate use of such heavy munitions has a profound effect that directly violates the Geneva Conventions and Article 51 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover, if ever, from such crimes against humanity.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

In the aftermath of the attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on the border crossing city of Rafah, from Gaza to Egypt, the United States administration claimed that it had paused a shipment of massive bombs to the government of Prime Benjamin Netanyahu.

This statement made largely for international consumption is an indication of the political pressure generated by the continuing resistance of the Palestinians combined with mass demonstrations across the United States and the world.

President Joe Biden and members of his administration have said for weeks that it was opposed to a full-scale ground offensive by the IDF on Rafah, an area where 1.5 million people have taken refuge seeking to avoid the massive bombing operations and ground assaults on Gaza City and Khan Younis over the last seven months.  However, proponents of an immediate and lasting ceasefire say that the Biden administration is not serious about its threats to pause military assistance to the Israeli government.

Just recently, the U.S. Congress approved $95 billion more in taxpayer dollars to feed the imperialist war drives in Palestine, Ukraine, China and on the southern border with Mexico where thousands are crossing every week. Biden has stated repeatedly that the commitment of his administration to Israel remains “ironclad.”

These contradictory postures by the White House cannot conceal the critical role of the U.S. in perpetuating the genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. The policy orientation of Washington is leading to greater instability, not just in Palestine, but internationally.

In Gaza, the Health Ministry reports say that over 35,000 people have been killed while more than 70,000 are wounded and injured. Thousands of other bodies including many women, elderly and children remain trapped under the massive rubble of destroyed residential, commercial and public structures.

An intensification of attacks on Rafah will generate even worse conditions for the civilian population already living under dire circumstances. The UN has declared that some areas in northern Gaza are coping with famine.

The IDF has already shut down and destroyed most of the hospitals in Gaza. The areas surrounding the hospitals had become humanitarian shelters for those whose homes have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and shelling. Many physicians over the course of the latest phase of the war have been apprehended by the IDF, interrogated, tortured and murdered.

Rafah, bordering Egypt, has been a main point of entry for humanitarian assistance to the besieged population of the Gaza Strip. The level of aid has been significantly reduced since the IDF operations began in early October 2023. Many of the employees of UNRWA, which is responsible for providing assistance to the Palestinians, have been killed. The agency, which is affiliated with the UN, has been accused by Israel and the U.S. of harboring members of the Hamas Resistance Movement in Gaza.

Aid entering Rafah through Egypt (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Therefore, in light of the massive bombing operations by the IDF along with the targeting of healthcare workers, hospitals, schools, religious institutions, food and water distribution services and neighborhoods, any objective observer of the situation in Gaza would conclude that genocide is being carried out. Meanwhile, the White House and its allies in Britain and the European Union (EU) have denied the reality that the Israeli government is deliberately forcing the Palestinian population out of the Gaza Strip while liquidating as many of them as possible.

The Biden administration has already lost several of the major constituencies within the Democratic Party electorate. The majority of the Arab and Muslim population groups in the U.S. are clearly alienated from the White House and Congress. This erosion of its electoral base has placed the administration in grave jeopardy.

Nonetheless, it is not only the Arab Americans and Islamic communities which have broken with the Biden campaign. Obviously, many youths and students are expressing their discontent with the U.S. foreign policy towards Palestine and West Asia as a whole. Significant sectors of the African American and Latin American peoples are also in solidarity with the Palestinians rejecting the official narrative that the resistance to settler-colonialism and genocide is tantamount to “terrorism.”

In an article published by the Associated Press on the siege of Rafah, it reports that:

“U.N. officials say an attack on Rafah will collapse the aid operation that is keeping the population across the Gaza Strip alive, and potentially push Palestinians into greater starvation and mass death. The Rafah crossing has a main route for aid entering the besieged enclave and the only exit for those able to flee into Egypt. Early Tuesday (May 7), Israel seized control of the Gaza side of the crossing, saying militants had staged attacks from the area. Both Rafah and Kerem Shalom, the other main aid entry point, have been closed since a Hamas mortar attack killed four Israeli soldiers. Though smaller entry points still operate, the closure is a blow to efforts to maintain the flow of food, medicine and other supplies that are keeping Gaza’s population alive. Some entry points have been opened in the north, and the U.S. has promised that a port to bring in supplies by sea will be ready in weeks. Bringing aid into Gaza through Rafah would likely be impossible during an invasion.” 

Even though the White House has said it is concerned about the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the reality is quite different. Not only has the administration repeatedly condemned the resistance forces in Gaza, they have worked very closely with the Zionist regime to eliminate tens of thousands in the enclave and create the conditions for the forced removal of another 2.3 million Palestinians from their homeland.

Genocidal Policies and U.S. Electoral Politics

The Biden administration could very well be willing to lose the national elections rather than rein in Tel Aviv. Biden’s opponent, former President Donald Trump, has never been a friend of the Palestinian people either.

It was Trump who relocated the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in violation of international law. Biden, who has been in the oval office for over three years, has not reversed this policy.

Biden has always said he considers himself a “Zionist” uttering the false notion that the settlers occupying Palestine have nowhere else to go. The president has never expressed any sympathy with the plight of Palestinians and continues to deliver massive amounts of war materials to the Israeli government, the aggressors in the present situation.

On the eve of the 76th anniversary of Nakba, the disaster of 1948 which has resulted in the dislocation and disenfranchisement of millions of Palestinians, demonstrations against the Zionist state will be a reminder that the struggle is by no means over. Despite the unprecedented numbers of casualties among Palestinians in the last seven months, the growth of the solidarity movement has reached new heights.

In several important swing states in the upcoming presidential elections, during the primaries an important minority within the Democratic Party electorate voted “Uncommitted” as a means of expressing their discontent with the administration’s facilitation of the genocide taking place in Gaza. Opinion polls released over the last several months reveal that the election outcomes are within the margin of error.

Journalist Omar Karmi wrote in the Electronic Intifada emphasizing:

“The U.S. has plenty of options. It can implement an arms embargo on Israel. It can withdraw financial support for Israel. It can exercise its considerable power to demonstrate that it takes seriously its self-appointed role as guarantor of international order and ‘leader of the free world.’ All of this will seem unpalatable to Joe Biden, a staunchly pro-Israel president facing what by all accounts appears a close election race in November. But that is the choice he faces: Israel or everyone else.” 

As the demonstrations around the U.S. continue for a ceasefire and solidarity with Palestine, the White House and the majority of Congressional officials are proving to be completely out of touch with important constituencies which are essential for any hope of winning Democratic control of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government beginning in 2025. Irrespective of which ruling class-dominated party wins in the November elections, many people remain committed to ending the genocide and realizing the emergence of an independent Palestinian state will continue.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: IDF in Rafah in May 2024 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

[This video was produced in 2013.]

James Corbett of corbettreport.com presents this 5-minute parody of the official conspiracy theory of 9/11.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

President Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected head-of-state in the Republic of South Africa, said during the final phases of the transition from apartheid settler-colonialism to non-racial democracy, that “our freedom remains incomplete without the liberation of the Palestinians.”

This statement takes on an even more poignant character in light of the developments of the last seven months in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

At present, approximately 35,000 people have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7 where resistance organizations based in the Gaza Strip launched an offensive operation against the Zionist state. The massive bombing operations and ground offensive by the IDF has drawn the opprobrium of billions of people around the world.

Mass demonstrations, boycotts, blockades, cultural presentations, petitions and electoral campaigns have been launched demanding an end to the siege of Gaza and the total independence of the Palestinian people under their own sovereign state. On college and university campuses in the United States and other countries from Western Europe to Australia, students have built encampments along with taking over buildings to demand the complete divestment of these educational institutions from entities that engage in business dealings and other forms of cooperation with the State of Israel.

The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa, has been a longtime ally of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority. In recent months, the ANC government has held discussions with the Hamas Resistance organization and other groupings representing the oppressed people.

Due to this decades-long affinity between African Liberation Movements and their Palestinian counterparts, the South African Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs filed a lawsuit in December 2023 charging Tel Aviv with violations of the Genocide Convention of 1948. A ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest legal body within the United Nations, said that the claims made by South Africa in its pleadings were plausible.

Nonetheless, the ICJ and the UN Security Council have refused to take any punitive actions against the Israeli regime. A separate legal challenge by the Nicaraguan government against Germany for being the second largest supplier of weapons to the IDF, was rejected by the ICJ.

Obviously, the imperialist states are committed to the maintenance of a settler-colonial state amid the struggling and oppressed peoples of West Asia and North Africa. U.S. President Joe Biden continues to supply bombs, warplanes, guns, intelligence assistance and diplomatic cover to the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire ruling apparatus which contains and exploits millions of Palestinians along with people living in neighboring Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.

The disproportionate economic and political power exercised by the U.S. and other imperialist states on an international scale has been further exposed as being detrimental to peace, security and sustainable development. This is the reason behind the failure of western-dominated institutions such as the UN to impose harsh measures on Tel Aviv and its supporters for the perpetuation of settler-colonialism and genocide.

This intransigence on the part of imperialism is the trigger which ignites the resistance movements across the region. The mass demonstrations by broad sectors of the population within the Western states are a reflection of the social contradictions which exist in the leading capitalist countries. While there is much self-congratulatory rhetoric on the part of both ruling class-dominated political parties in the U.S., tens of millions remain impoverished and insecure.

South Africa and its policies towards the Palestinian question represents the rejection of U.S. and Western European hegemony. This attitude towards settler-colonialism and institutional racism positions the imperialists on a collision course with the majority of people around the globe.

South Africa and the World Economic Crisis

A key characteristic of capitalist societies is the level of inequality between the ruling class and the majority of the people constituting the workers, farmers and youth. All of these social elements of the oppressed peoples are destined to resist and eventually rise up against their rulers.

South Africa as a transitional state clearly remains an unequal society characterized still by the dominance of the capitalist modes of production. When reading most western-based analyses of the current phase within the South African political trajectory there is considerable emphasis on the official statistics revealing more than 32% jobless rate and even higher among youth.

In addition, the degree to which reforms instituted by the government have not fulfilled the aspirations of both the domestic and international capitalist interests lends to the arguments suggesting that the ANC has failed in its policy imperatives. Various positions taken and advanced by the South African government have drawn the ire of the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress.

Moreover, the Biden administration falsely accused Pretoria of selling arms to the Russian Federation assisting its Special Military Operation in Ukraine. An announcement was made recently calling for a downgrading of diplomatic relations by the U.S. towards South Africa.

However, interesting enough, South Africa has been once again designated as having the largest economy on the African continent. The ANC is standing for national elections at the end of May. There are economic and political interests within and outside of Africa which are working towards the weakening of the ruling party as an outcome of the voting. (See this)

Diplomatically, the White House castigated the ANC government for filing a legal claim against the Israeli government saying publicly that the case had “no merit.” Such continued utterances by the Biden administration are placing its own chances of reelection in an even more precarious status.

Leading African American religious organizations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) together issued a joint statement demanding that the Biden administration commit to a ceasefire in Gaza. These two denominations represent 4.9 million African Americans in the U.S. Prior to the AME-AMEZ statement early in 2024, 1000 African American clergy held a press conference telling the White House to work towards a ceasefire.

Therefore, the South African government, commandeering the largest national economy within the continental African Union (AU), along with the African American progressive forces, are working towards the halting of the genocide against the Palestinian people and a long-term resolution to the Palestinian question. In the U.S., the militant actions taken by students and professors at the most elite higher education institutions in the country, illustrates that the myths under which imperialism has shaped public opinion around the legitimacy and inevitability of the status-quo are collapsing.

In the U.S. hundreds of labor leaders and unions have formed committees to advance the cause of ending the genocide in Gaza. The struggle for Palestine liberation has grown exponentially within the imperialist centers of power.

Role of the African Union

At the AU headquarters in Ethiopia, the Commission has issued a series of statements condemning the actions of Tel Aviv against the Palestinians. In addition to the AU’s views and official policy on Palestine, they have parted ways with Washington over the necessity of a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. (See this and this)

These declarations by African states are occurring within the context of a rising demand for U.S. and French military and diplomatic forces to vacate certain Africa states, particularly in the West African Sahel region where a series of events involving the military seizure of power is resulting in an apparent shifting of alliances from the NATO states to the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. Over several decades, successive Washington administrations have invested substantial resources and lives in their machinations to control the economic and political atmosphere within the AU member-states.

Consequently, the U.S. administration is working to destabilize those African states which are seeking to form their own independent foreign policy. South Africa has refused to back away from its solidarity with the Palestine people.

This is one of the most important achievements of the 30 years of independent democratic control in South Africa. Despite the limitations of the advancements toward total freedom and sovereignty, South Africa embodies large vibrant trade union and communist movements.

These proletarian organizations are allied with the government around the questions of Palestine and the necessity of building an alternative to the existing power relations. In the U.S., more working class organizations are diverging from the capitalist state involving foreign policy issues.

In order for imperialism to be defeated it will require a convergence of national liberation and working class struggles on a world scale. The current warmongering of the imperialists must be viewed as an act of desperation. These developments cannot deter the peoples from continuing their efforts for a just and peaceful planet.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

All images in this article are taken from the author

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

The following is a transcript on a an interview with Richard C. Cook conducted by Ahmed Danyal Arif, Editor of the Economics Section for The Review of Religions.

Ahmed Danyal Arif (ADA): Mr. Cook, first of all thank you so much for giving us a little of your precious time. We are very grateful for this. I have to be honest I don’t know where to start as you have had such a long career in the US Government where you have essentially served (please correct me if I am wrong) as a policy analyst in the 70s and 80s. You then worked for NASA and ended your career in 2007 as a Project Manager in the US Treasury Department. You are now retired and writing with a particular focus on monetary reform. What led you to write about this?

Richard C. Cook  (RCC): I began to study monetary reform in 1979-1980 when I worked for the Carter White House in the office of consumer affairs. I had discovered the ideas of British engineer C.H. Douglas who explained the chronic gap in developed economies between GDP and national income, which meant that society never had enough money to purchase what their economies were able to produce. Some very notable people like Winston Churchill and Henry Ford were also aware of this. The system of Keynesian economics was developed to address the problem through government borrowing. But all this accomplished was to ‘kick the can down the road’ by creating debt that eventually had to be paid off, usually through war or hyperinflation.

A decade later I found myself working for the US Treasury Department, when I was able to carry out an in-depth study of the history of the US monetary system. I learned that the banking system existed to fill the GDP-income gap but that the debt it created in doing so led to massive profits to the banks but ruin for the nation at large. I also learned that the only successful alternative had been the spending of Greenbacks by the government during the Civil War. I then came into contact with Stephen Zarlenga who had founded the American Monetary Institute and was studying the same problems. Together we wrote the American Monetary Act which became Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s NEED Act introduced in Congress in 2011 but not yet passed. This would create a modern version of Greenback money. So one thing led to another, and I am still writing about these things. My latest is my new book, Our Country, Then and Now to be published soon by Clarity Press.

ADA: In your book We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (Tendril Press, 2009), you have a whole chapter about morality and economics. What is the correlation between the two and do you still believe this is the ‘key issue of the 21st century’?

RCC: Our Declaration of Independence states that every person has a right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Of course along with these rights come responsibilities. One is that we act with kindness and compassion in accepting the rights of others. Our predatory financial system does not do this. The system is based on putting people into debt. That’s how money is generated in the economy. But this is wrong.

Of course we are all responsible for working to earn a living. But the system should assure that people can earn enough that they can live decently and respectably as well as save for the future. Naturally, the work of some will support the lesser financial contributions of others, but this is part of life. If people are dissatisfied with their opportunities for work they should be free to seek elsewhere or be able to improve their skills so as to earn more. But all of this requires a monetary system that supports individual freedom and initiative. We do not have such a system today. What we have is debt slavery where the 1% make out like bandits and the 99% struggle to survive. Such a system also promotes crime and war, where people and nations feel they must steal from their neighbour in order to get by.

ADA: When we take a look at the current economic climate and the news on a daily basis, there is clearly a popular discontent. I am obviously thinking about inflation which really is giving us a hard time. Price rises have slowed in some parts of the world, but they are still significant. How did we get there? Is it only Putin’s fault or did the unconventional monetary policies of the central banks following the 2008 crisis also play a role?

RCC: We have a war, with the West supplying billions of dollars of weapons to the Ukrainian regime. And Russia is winning that war.

The West also cut itself off from cheap Russian energy in order to cause the Russian economy to collapse. That didn’t work. So energy prices are skyrocketing. Then for reasons no one understands, the Federal Reserve and other Western banks began raising interest rates, making every purchase of consumer goods more expensive. I certainly don’t begrudge the payment by the government of stipends to citizens during the pandemic. People have to live. But that was not the cause of the present crisis. The cause is the banking system.

ADA: Interest rates are also soaring as you rightly mentioned, and many are now questioning whether they can still afford to pay their mortgage while prospective first-time homeowners are considering putting off buying in the hopes of securing a better deal in the future. I even came across  a company called ‘SimpleClosure raising $1.5m in less than 24h to help businesses shut down’ (especially startups). I mean, it seems to be the perfect recipe for… a systemic crash, no?

RCC: There have been previous times in history that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates that crashed the economy. This is what started the Great Depression in 1929. The Fed started the recession of 1979 when it raised interest rates to over 20 percent. There were periodic increases in the 1980s and 1990s that took down the economies of entire nations in Latin America and Asia. It is happening again now after the zero percent interest rates the Federal Reserve put in place during the 2008-2009 Great Recession. The Federal Reserve always claims that they raise interest rates to ‘fight inflation.’ But there is an equally sound argument that higher interest rates cause inflation by making every business transaction more expensive. The fact is that the Federal Reserve is a black hole.

No one but the bankers themselves know what they are doing or why. At the present time banks like JP Morgan Chase are making record profits while the economy is moving toward a recession and ordinary people increasingly cannot afford food, housing, education, or transportation.

The US federal government is now $33.1 trillion in debt.

State and local governments are $3.17 trillion in debt. Private sector debt is over $30 trillion.

This is just within the US.

It means that every individual is $211,000 in debt on average. According to the Federal Reserve, the average net worth of American families in 2019 was $746,820, with the median $121,760. We can deduce that a large majority of American families literally own nothing. It’s no different in most other countries. And with the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, mainly to attract overseas investment and shore up the dollar, the debt continually grows even if no new debt is added.

ADA: Turning to your latest insightful article titled ‘Is World War III About to Start’ (part I and part II), you say of the Ukraine war that ‘anyone with a discernible pulse is aware of the danger that the conflict could escalate into a conflagration large and destructive enough to morph into World War III.’ You also give a detailed analysis of the US military-industrial complex employing tens of millions of people. Do you think that military production is the only area where the “saturation” point can be postponed indefinitely as long as the ‘adversaries’ or ‘enemies’ are equally able to develop faster and better weapons?

RCC: The problem here are the words ‘adversaries’ and ‘enemies.’ Who says so? Personally, I have no ‘adversaries’ or ‘enemies.’ These are buzzwords used by governments to get people to kill other people and to get themselves killed. Why? So the fat cats can make money. It’s been that way for a long time, but it doesn’t have to be that way any longer. We have the knowledge and the understanding today to stop wars. Of course, there will always be competition, and some people will still try to cheat their competitors. So, we still need a system of law enforcement. But we don’t have to kill each other so the rich can get richer.

ADA: This brings me to the crucial issue of the dollar’s global hegemony. We know that this gives the US government power to impose crippling sanctions and wage other forms of financial warfare against adversaries. But this hegemony of the dollar is increasingly contested and the Sino-Russian agenda of opposition to the American currency has intensified with the Ukrainian conflict. Several historical allies of the United States (Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc.) or Brazil have affirmed their desire to gradually get rid of the dollar. Do you think that this geo-monetary tug of war and the recent gold accumulation of central banks could lead to World War III and, in the medium/long term, to a different international monetary system from the one we have known since 1944 and the Bretton Woods Agreement?

RCC: Yes, it does seem clear that the collapse of dollar hegemony could lead to World War III if the US decides, out of desperation, to simply knock over the chessboard now that it is in danger of being checkmated.

The U.S. had previously been heading toward bankruptcy around 1970 due to huge budget and trade deficits coming from the Vietnam War. So, the Nixon government, also acting in desperation, removed the gold peg, while the banking/oil cartels raised oil prices by a factor of four. It was done by the US/British financial class, not by the Arab oil producers. What it really represented was a gigantic theft of international resources by these cartels. The world has never been the same since, with real GDP and incomes not having grown at all since then. So, the Bretton Woods Agreement actually ended then. Obviously, we need a new Bretton Woods, one that recognizes parity among all national currencies. This is what BRICS is aiming at, even as the West goes bankrupt.

ADA: As you already know, and you mentioned it in your book, interest is strictly forbidden in the Islamic paradigm. But as a Muslim, I also know that the Qur’an actually quite explicitly links interest with war (Ch. 2: V. 280). I just wanted to take your view, as a defense analyst or economist, on the role of debt in this whole global warfare that we have been seeing for decades now.

RCC: The view of the Islamic nations on lending and interest is absolutely correct. In the West, the regime of usury based on compound interest is criminal psychopathy.

What really happened was that gradually the money lenders took over the U.S. economy during the late 19th century in exactly the same way the Bank of England took over the British economy after it was founded in 1694.

The British got rich by plundering India, China, and South Africa, but the profits went to the bankers in the City of London, who put the entire British ruling class into debt.

The British Empire and today the American Empire were both founded on bank-created debt. Global warfare, including the West’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, are manifestations of this financial imperative. It is no accident that the US hedge fund BlackRock is in process of buying up the assets in Ukraine now that Ukraine has been depopulated by the war. This is what they wanted to do with Russia when they enticed Russia to invade Ukraine in 2022 then imposed sanctions. Russia was supposed to collapse, but it didn’t happen.

ADA: Ultimately, dialogue with other nations and communities is vital. Is it possible, in your opinion, for nations and leaders to conciliate a focus on their own national interests and at the same time consider what is best for the world at large?

RCC: Is a multipolar world possible? Only if the people of the West, acting through their own governments, take back the unconstitutional power of the banks. The US banking system, going back to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and beyond, is in fact an ongoing insurrection against the U.S. Constitution. It’s the Constitution that gives Congress, not the banks, the authority to create and oversee the monetary system of the nation. In Russia and China, the central banks report to the government.

In the US, the Federal Reserve reports only to the wealthiest 1%. This is what has to change. Until then, there can be no peace in the world. Of course, we also need a spiritual renewal.

My inspiration has been the German spiritual master Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken–1876-1943). His books are becoming available in English translation from Kober.com. I would urge all your readers to take a look. One thing he writes about is the necessity for people and nations to live within their means.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on The Review of Religions.

Richard C. Cook is a retired US government analyst who worked for the US Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Jimmy Carter White House, NASA, and the US Treasury Department. While at NASA he became a whistleblower at the time of the January 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster by disclosing NASA’s past knowledge of the problems that destroyed the shuttle and killed the 7-person crew. At Treasury, he developed and taught training courses on the American monetary system. After retirement in 2007, he published several books and numerous articles on public policy issues, including ‘We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform’. Most recently he has published articles on the dangers of World War III and the urgent need to confront the crimes of international finance in driving the world to destruction. He will soon be publishing a new book, ‘Our Country, Then and Now’, through Clarity Press.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

The Russian government including President Putin now publicly acknowledges that Western provocations are increasing in scope and seriousness and are spinning the Ukrainian conflict out of control.

The Russian government has stated that the American F-16 aircraft supplied to Ukraine by the idiotic governments of Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium will “be treated as nuclear-capable weapons.”

Dmitry Medvedev, former President of Russia and currently deputy director of the Russian Security Council has declared the West’s leaders to be “infantile morons” whose ignorant arrogance is leading to their destruction.

Alarmed by the increasing likelihood of NATO and US soldiers deployed to Ukraine and by the British Foreign Secretary’s statement that there are no prohibitions on Ukraine’s use of the UK-provided long range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory, President Putin has ordered the Russian Ministry of Defense to conduct exercises to guarantee Russia’s ability to rapidly deploy battlefield nuclear weapons.

Medvedev stated that while the moronic French president speaks of “strategic ambiguity,” for Russia there is no ambiguity. Russia’s “response will not be in Ukraine. There will be no hiding on Capitol Hill, in the Elysee Palace or at 10 Downing Street.”

These developments confirm that I was correct that Putin’s never-ending conflict would permit ever increasing Western interventions until the situation spins out of control. As Putin has never enforced any of his many red lines that the West has crossed in Ukraine, the West no longer regards Russian warnings as meaningful. The warnings are welcomed and used as propaganda to further rouse Western populations to “the Russian threat.”

I find it bewildering that Putin, and apparently Xi, still think the West will come to its senses and accept a multipolar world. The ignored reality is that Washington cannot possibly reposition Russia from enemy to trusted partner. Despite the enormous increase in provocations and elevation of tension, Russia and China are still unable to accept reality. In his inaugural speech Putin again gave his assurance that Russia does not renounce dialogue with the West. Apparently Putin is willing to be forever deceived as he was for eight years by the Minsk Agreement. Putin thinks the atmosphere has changed and today “reliability, mutual responsibility, sincerity, decency, nobility and courage” are highly valued. By whom, President Putin? Most certainly not by the West.

Putin’s aversion to reality is buttressed by that of Russian foreign affairs “experts.” For example, Andrey Bystritsky of the Valdai Discussion Club claims that Putin’s openness to dialogue with the US about a mutual security system will “undoubtedly be heard in the West. There is no doubt about it. They are listening carefully.” Please name one leader in the West who is seeking “diplomatic solutions.” If any such leader exists, he clearly has no influence.

The French president has sent French Foreign Legion troops to Ukraine.

The UK foreign minister has sent Ukraine long-range missiles with which to attack deep into Russia.

The Lithuanian prime minister dismisses Russian warnings and says she is ready to send troops to Ukraine. Biden calls the Russian president “Hitler” to justify more armaments and money for Ukraine.

These are not the words and deeds of those seeking diplomatic solutions. Russians have a difficult time engaging with reality, and it is the Russian failure to accept reality that is leading to nuclear war.

Putin does not understand that in America, the only remaining cement holding a dissolving society together is propaganda about “foreign enemies.”

American conservatives and super-patriots (USA! USA! USA!) oppressed by their own government rally to the support of their oppressive government against “foreign enemies.”

The designation of Russia, China, and Iran as enemies is essential for unity and for the power and profit of the powerful military/security complex. Without the propaganda, expressed by UK, EU, Biden and US Congressional leaders that Russia will next invade Europe, what would hold the West together? With the enormous investment Washington has in the portrait of Russia as Hitlerite evil, how can the Kremlin possibly entertain the hope of a partnership?

If Putin does not quickly bring an inexcusably over-long conflict to a victorious end before Ukraine fills up with Western troops, he will bequeath nuclear Armageddon to the world.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Sources

https://www.rt.com/russia/597054-medvedev-nuclear-drill-nato/

https://www.rt.com/news/597053-democrat-leader-us-troops-ukraine/

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-warns-ukraines-f-16s-will-treated-nuclear-threats-1897700

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240506/russias-not-bluffing-tactical-nuke-drills-are-deafening-warning-to-nato-to-stay-out-of-ukraine-1118294192.html

https://tass.com/politics/1784091

https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1948389/

Featured image is from The Unz Review

Video: Hiroshima-Nagasaki Dress Rehearsal. The Dangers of Nuclear War. Michel Chossudovsky with James Corbett

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and James Corbett, May 08, 2024

We talk about the original, genocidal plan of the US War Department for a genocidal nuclear slaughter of the Soviets, how that plan has continued to the present day, the existential threat of nuclear holocaust and the prospects for an anti-war movement that can actually stand up to the military-industrial complex.

Young Women with Stage 4 Cancers After COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination. Solution? Screening Age for Great Cancer Now Dropped from 50 to 40

By Dr. William Makis, May 08, 2024

The age that women should begin regular breast cancer screening has dropped from 50 to 40, according to new official guidance from the US’ chief disease prevention body. The US Preventive Services Task force (USPSTF) finalized Tuesday the draft recommendation from last year, amid rising cases of the disease in women under 50.

NATO’s Entry Into the Ukraine War?

By Germán Gorraiz López, May 08, 2024

With the US immersed in the electoral campaign for the November presidential elections, France, Poland and the United Kingdom would be the trident chosen by the globalists to implode the Ukrainian front next summer and provoke the subsequent entry of NATO into open conflict with Russia of a re-elected Putin until 2030.

Western Officials Warned Zelensky Against 2023 “Counteroffensive”. Rumors of Another “Counteroffensive” in 2024

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, May 08, 2024

According to Guido Crossetto, Italian defense minister, the Kiev regime ignored several direct warnings to avoid prolonged frictions with Russia during the 2023 counterattack. Crossetto claims to have spoken to Zelensky several times that the attempt to launch a counteroffensive through frontal attacks were doomed to failure and would lead to Ukraine’s defeat.

The True “Efficacy” of COVID-19 “Vaccines”

By Dr. Mark Trozzi, May 08, 2024

Covid-19 experimental genetic injections have been referred to as “safe and effective vaccines” though they do not satisfy that definition or those claims. They are physically not like any vaccine ever administered before.

Anti-Doping: Western Media Ignites War on China in Sports

By Rick Sterling, May 08, 2024

Western accusations of doping by Chinese swimmers threaten to exacerbate China-US tensions, undermine the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and seriously harm the upcoming Paris Olympics. The controversy was ignited by investigation reports at the New York Times and German TV broadcaster ARD. 

Israel’s Battle Against Free Speech: The Shuttering of Al Jazeera

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, May 08, 2024

Al Jazeera has had a troubled relationship with Israel.  Sounding like paranoid family members who have imbibed a bit too much, accusations frothed from various politicians accusing the network of being a Hamas front. In a dubious honour, the network’s name became associated with a law passed by the Israeli Knesset on April 1.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Papers reviewed: 

• 2023 Jan (Pezzani et al) – Anticancer properties of Bromelain: State-of-the-art and recent trends

• 2021 Nov (Hikisz et al) – Beneficial Properties of Bromelain

2023 Jan (Pezzani et al) – Anticancer properties of bromelain: State-of-the-art and recent trends

• Bromelain is an enzyme with a particular proteolytic activity that can be easily obtained from the pineapple stem (Ananas comosus)

• Bromelain’s anti-cancer properties have been evaluated extensively in dozens of studies in vitro for: breast cancer, prostate cancer, gastric, colorectal, hepatocellular, cholangiocarcinoma, lung, melanoma, lymphoma and leukemia

 

• Cytotoxicity: cytotoxic properties of bromelain known since ancient times (traditional Asian Medicine) – due to protease activity. Dose dependent.

• Apoptosis: bromelain can induce both internal and external apoptosis pathways
• autophagy: this mechanism focuses on the degradation and recycling of cellular components. Bromelain increases autophagy of cancer cells.
• Immunomodulatory: bromelain can stimulate or inhibit the immune system
  • Stimulates T-cells and other immune cells and their anti-cancer activity
• anti-inflammatory: bromelain has been used since ancient times for its anti-inflammatory properties
  • able to reduce inflammation and edema – bromelain reduces vasodilation, and increased capillary permeability, leukocyte migration and local pain by inhibiting the formation of bradykinin and serotonin.
  • bromelain also reduces levels of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines
  • Reduced cytokines/chemokines expression and alteration of white blood cell trafficking can impact on tumor microenvironment, another possible immune-mediated and anti-cancer effect of bromelain.
  • Bromelain can accelerate tissue repair processes as a result of the depolymerization of intercellular structures and modification of vascular permeability (modulation of the arachidonic acid cascade)
• Combined treatment: Bromelain delivery in association with other molecules is often used to obtain a synergistic effect.
  • bromelain + peroxidase: increase ROS, upregulate p53
  • bromelain + olive leaf: decreased lung carcinogenesis in mice
  • bromelain + curcumin + harpagophytum: reduced inflammation
  • bromelain + NAC: inhibits growth and proliferation of certain mucinous tumors
    • This activity can be traced back to the proteolytic activity of bromelain and the mucolytic activity of NAC
    • Some tumors may use mucins during invasion, metastasis and growth in otherwise inhospitable sites
  • bromelain + cisplatin: enhanced chemo effect in breast cancer
    • more tumor shrinkage than cisplatin alone
  • bromelain + radiation therapy: bromelain can act as a radiosensitizer and radio protector of normal tissue
    • increased ROS production, inhibition of repair of DNA strand breaks and inhibition of proliferation

Clinical Studies 

• bromelain has been studied as an adjuvant treatment in cancer care (not a main treatment but an addition to a main treatment)
• breast cancer patients who took bromelain for 10 days showed increased immunotoxicity effect of monocytes and lymphocytes against breast ca cells
• New drug (BromAc^®) combines bromelain + NAC and is used in recurrent thoracic pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP) treatment (mucolytic properties of BromAc^® help the tumor dissolution when it was injected directly into mucinous disease)
• bromelain (in combination with papain, sodium selenite and Lens culinarislectin) has been also tested as a complementary medicine on more than 600 breast cancer patients to reduce the side effects caused by adjuvant hormone therapy.

• “Despite these promising effects, the number of clinical trials is low and limited to early stages.”

2021 Nov (Hikisz et al) – Beneficial Properties of Bromelain

• pineapple was valued because of its pleasant, sweet taste, in addition to a wealth of nutrients such as fiber, numerous vitamins, manganese, and copper.
• studies carried out on leaf extracts of pineapple stem have shown that they also contain many biologically attractive alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins, and tannins. Currently, it is believed that the attractive healing properties of this plant can be attributed to the action of bromelain
• bromelain is an enzyme characterized by anti-inflammatory, cardioprotective, immunomodulatory, antioxidant, and anticancer properties.
• Due to its low toxicity, high efficiency, high availability, and relative simplicity of acquisition, it is the object of inexhaustible interest of scientists
• bromelain is a non-toxic compound with therapeutic values, classified as a protein-digesting enzyme protease
• proteases perform many essential functions, e.g., digestion, proliferation control, cell growth and death, regulation of protein synthesis, and degradation.
• bromelain has low systemic toxicity and good absorption in the body while maintaining sufficiently high biological activity.
• safety: Animal experiments have shown that bromelain has very low toxicity with a lethal dose (LD) greater than 10 g/kg body weight.
• Immunomodulatory: Numerous studies indicate that bromelain has very complex immunomodulatory properties realized at many levels of molecular signaling pathways and control of gene expression involved in the immune response.
  • bromelain may cause both an increase and a decrease in the activity/expression of the same molecules involved in the immune response

Anti-Cancer Properties

• the exact mechanism of its molecular anticancer activities is still unknown
• It has been suggested that the ability of bromelain to inhibit tumor cell proliferation and metastasis, and induce tumor cell death may be due to its proteolytic and immunomodulatory properties
• Bromelain’s ability to trigger apoptosis is undoubtedly one of its essential features allowing for effective inhibition of cancer development and proliferation

• molecular mechanisms of bromelain’s anticancer activity are carried out in many biochemical pathways

 

• breast cancer – main mechanism is apoptosis, but also enzymatic degradation of cell DNA and inhibition of cancer cell cycle (cell cycle arrest)

• melanoma – bromelain upregulates p53 tumor suppressor protein
  • Bromelain-dependent apoptosis induction was associated with modulation of the Bax-Bcl-2 ratio, activation of caspases 3 and 9, and DNA fragmentation
  • bromelain’s ability to deplete intracellular glutathione and generation of reactive oxygen species also plays an essential role in fighting melanoma
• leukemias & lymphomas – combining bromelain with pineapple peroxidase is more effective in inhibiting tumor progression than bromelain alone.
  • bromelain plus pineapple peroxidase may be a powerful anticancer agent.
  • The combination of bromelain-peroxidase caused inhibition of the cell cycle in the G0/G1 phase, and increased intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and changes in mitochondrial potential.
• gastrointestinal and colon cancer
  • bromelain + NAC combination inhibited the proliferation of human gastric and colon carcinoma cells
  • bromelain reduced the development of aberrant crypt foci, polyps, and tumors induced by carcinogens
  • worth emphasizing that the MUC1 glycoprotein, which provides tumor cells with invasive, metastatic, and chemo-resistant properties, may be one of the main targets of bromelain’s antitumor activity
  • apoptogenic properties of bromelain were realized in the mitochondrial pathway and were associated with the involvement of the caspase system and extranuclear p53, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) degradation.
  • Bromelain also appears to impair cancer cell survival by blocking the ERK1/2 and pAkt/Akt, NFκB/MAPK pathway and attenuating Bcl-2 and mucin 1, cell surface associated (MUC1) oncoproteins
• hepatic and pancreatic cancer
  • There is a high promise for bromelain, which can proteolytically degrade the extracellular matrix (ECM).
  • the role of bromelain is enzymatic degradation of the ECM around the tumor, which results in the enhancement of the penetration of anticancer drugs into the neoplastic tissue of the pancreas. As an anticancer drug delivery system, bromelain plays the role of a specific enhancer of the activity of chemotherapeutic agents
  • bromelain + NAC combo given with chemo such as doxorubicin, cisplatin, 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) may significantly reduce the doses of chemo agents while increasing the effectiveness and minimizing effects of systemic toxicity

• “bromelain undoubtedly appears to be a potent inducer of apoptosis and autophagy in tumor cells”

My Take…

Bromelain is very effective in COVID-19 Vaccine Injury as an enzyme that breaks down the toxic spike protein and many people are already taking it as part of a “spike protein detoxification” protocol.

That it has strong anti-cancer activity is an added bonus.

COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated individuals who developed Turbo Cancer need a spike protein detoxification, so Bromelain is very helpful with both spike detox and treating the Cancer as well.

In terms of an “Alternative Cancer Treatment”, Bromelain falls into the “Bioactive Compounds – Supplements” category along with others like Quercetin, Olive Leaf, Curcumin, Green Tea Extract, Resveratrol, Berberine, etc.

 

However, Bromelain does have unique properties that other “bioactive compounds” don’t. These include:

• it’s a proteolytic enzyme – has unique cytotoxic effect (dose dependent) as well as an immunomodulatory effect (affects how the immune system deals with cancer) that appears to be extremely complicated
• synergistic effect – works extremely well in combination with other agents
  • bromelain + peroxidase: increase ROS, upregulate p53 – effective against leukemias and lymphomas
  • bromelain + olive leaf: decreased lung carcinogenesis in mice
  • bromelain + curcumin + harpagophytum: reduced inflammation
  • bromelain + NAC: inhibits growth and proliferation of certain mucinous tumors (gastric and colorectal)
• powerful stimulator of apoptosis and autophagy
• Due to its low toxicity, high efficiency, high availability, and relative simplicity of acquisition, it is the object of extensive research.

As with most bioactive compounds, the question is how to add Bromelain into a Cancer Treatment Regimen and what doses to supplement with.

The literature does not give much guidance in this regard.

From 2021 paper by Varilla et al:

“Without any significant side effects, it has been recorded that almost 12 g/day of bromelain can be taken in an in vivo study [36]. In addition, bromelain is absorbed in its active form throughout the gastrointestinal tract, with approximately 40 percent of the total bromelain absorbed in its high molecular weight form from the intestine [37]. In terms of pharmacokinetics, the maximal level of bromelain in the blood was obtained an hour after oral dosing [35]. Furthermore, [36] found that bromelain retains its plasma proteolytic function. Based on this, a more recent in vitro test showed that after 4 h, approximately 30% of bromelain remained stable in artificial stomach juiceand that after the same time, roughly 20% of bromelain also remained stable in artificial blood [35].”

Bromelain typically comes in 500mg capsules.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from COVID Intel

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Apr. 30, 2024 – Breast cancer screening age officially lowered from 50 to 40, amid worrying rise of disease in young women

The age that women should begin regular breast cancer screening has dropped from 50 to 40, according to new official guidance from the US’ chief disease prevention body.

The US Preventive Services Task force (USPSTF) finalized Tuesday the draft recommendation from last year, amid rising cases of the disease in women under 50.

Recommendations from the group are almost always adopted as best practice by physicians across the US.

For instance, the same agency lowered the minimum colonoscopy screening age from 50 to 45 last year.

The ruling reverses longstanding guidance recommending women start regular screening, done through a specialist x-ray called a mammogram, at age 50. 

Dr John Wong, USPSTF vice president, cited a rise in breast cancer cases in women under 50, which recent research shows has increased by three percent per year.

This includes actress Olivia Munn, who was diagnosed with the disease at age 43 after an initial test missed her tumor.

‘There is clear evidence that starting screening every other year at age 40 provides sufficient benefit that we should recommend it for all women in this country to help them live longer and have a better quality of life,’ Dr Wong, a primary care physician at Tufts Medical Center in Massachusetts, said.

USPSTF has previously said an extra 20 million women in their 40s would benefit from a mammogram every two years.

In a study published last year in JAMA Network Open, researchers found that the number of women getting screened for breast cancer has declined since the Covid pandemic began.

Looking through 1.6 million breast cancer screening records, they found that screenings dropped by 14 percent in the first year of the pandemic.

* 

Apr. 30, 2024 – New York Times – In Reversal, Expert Panel Recommends Breast Cancer Screening at 40

 

April 26, 2024 – CANADA (CTV News)

Apr. 26, 2024 – ‘Too young to have breast cancer’: Rates among young Canadian women rising 

Breast cancer rates are rising in Canada among women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, according to a research by the University of Ottawa (uOttawa).

The study reviewed breast cancer cases over 35 years to shed light on trends in breast cancer detection in Canada, said the university in a news release on Friday.

It finds that the risk increases with age:

• Women in their 20s: There were 3.9 cases per 100,000 people between 1984 and 1988, compared to 5.7 cases per 100,000 between 2015 and 2019 for a 45.5 per cent increase.
• Women in their 30s: There were 37.7 cases per 100,000 people between 1984 and 1988, compared to 42.4 cases per 100,000 between 2015 and 2019 for a 12.5 per cent increase.
• Women in their 40s: There were 127.8 cases per 100,000 people between 1984 and 1988, compared to 139.4 cases per 100,000 between 2015 and 2019 for a 9.1 per cent increase.

The study is led by Dr. Jean Seely – Head of Breast Imaging at The Ottawa Hospital and professor in the Department of Radiology at uOttawa. Dr. Seely says the rising rates among younger women is alarming, noting that women in their 20s and 30s are not regularly screened for breast cancer.

“Breast cancer in younger women tends to be diagnosed at later stages and is often more aggressive,” said Dr. Seely.

Dr. Seely suggests targeting younger women in breast cancer awareness campaigns and screening programs.

“We’re calling for increased awareness among health-care professionals and the public regarding the rising incidence of breast cancer in younger women,” said Dr. Seely.

“We need to adapt our strategies and policies to reflect these changing trends, ensuring that all women, regardless of age, have access to the information and resources they need to detect and combat this disease.”

The study also says more research is needed to understand the root cause of rising breast cancer rates among younger women.

Chelsea Bland was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 28.

Though Bland is two years cancer free, she remains on hormone therapy today. Her experience prompted her to establish a local group to offer support for women between the ages of 28 and 40.

“I hope that by bringing awareness to this study it makes people think twice about saying that being in your 20s, 30s and 40s is too young to have breast cancer. In my support group, I have heard the same story over and over again,” Bland said.

“Young women are not being taken seriously after they find a lump because they are told they are too young for breast cancer. This has ultimately led to delays in being diagnosed and being diagnosed at a more advanced stage. We are not too young for this and this is happening to women who do not have any high-risk genetic markers for breast cancer, myself included.”

The study is published in the Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal.

*

Recent turbo breast cancer cases in women under age 40 I’ve reported (16 cases):

2024 Jan – Philippines – 27 year old Janah Solleza has been diagnosed with cancer. She made a video about getting COVID-19 vaccinated.

 

 

2024 Apr – NC – Two friends in 30s diagnosed with terminal cancer Sarah Glad was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer & 3 weeks later her best friend 35 year old Rebekah Dunston was diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon Cancer.

 

 

Click here to read the full article.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

---

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

You may also access the online version of the e-Book by clicking here.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page. 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

The war in Ukraine would have meant a return to the Cold War between Russia and the USA and a return to the Doctrine of Containment, the foundations of which were laid out by George F. Kennan in his essay “The sources of Soviet behavior”, published in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947 and whose main ideas are summarized in the quote “Soviet power is impervious to the logic of reason but very sensitive to the logic of force”.

This would include the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO military structures and the increase of military forces with four new battalions deployed on the European border with Russia and the Russian response to the installation of missiles in Belarus Iskander-M equipped with multi-purpose warheads as well as S-40 anti-aircraft missiles following the dynamics of the Cold War (action-reaction).

For their part, Russia would have installed in Kaliningrad the Iskander M missiles equipped with multi-purpose warheads as well as S-400 anti-aircraft missiles and in the event of NATO closing the exit of the Soviet enclave of Kaliningrad to the Baltic Sea, could be reissued the Kennedy-Khrushchev Missile Crisis (October, 1962) which would have as its epicenter Kaliningrad.

NATO’s Entry Into the Ukraine War?

With the US immersed in the electoral campaign for the November presidential elections, France, Poland and the United Kingdom would be the trident chosen by the globalists to implode the Ukrainian front next summer and provoke the subsequent entry of NATO into open conflict with Russia of a re-elected Putin until 2030.

Poland seeks to become a local player in the Eastern European hornet’s nest and extend its influence to the Ukrainian area by claiming its right to incorporate the Ukrainian region of Lviv on the Polish map, which was occupied by Poland from 1918 to 1939.

Thus, the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, affirmed that his country is “willing to accept nuclear weapons” from allied countries in its territory, which has received the harsh and forceful response of Moscow when warning that “the deployment of such weapons in Poland will make Poland a priority objective in Russian military planning”.

Likewise, in a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, Russia has warned that “the arrival of F-16 fighters in Ukraine will see them as carriers of nuclear weapons and we will consider that step by the US and NATO as a deliberate provocation”‘while accusing the West of openly supporting Ukraine’s sabotage actions on Russian territory and supplying Kiev with British and French long-range missiles as well as the new US ATACMS, which can reach Russian territory.

Within the dynamics of action-reaction typical of the new scenario of Cold War 2.0, Putin has ordered the Armed Forces of his country to conduct shortly tactical nuclear weapons maneuvers on the southern border with Ukraine. This would be a Russian response to the claims of French President Emmanuel Macron and other senior British officials “to be willing to send military contingents to Ukraine”. Thus, France had already deployed in Ukraine its first troops from the French Third Infantry Regiment, which is one of the main units of the French Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère).

Use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons?

If nobody prevents it, everything indicates that we are heading to the next entry of NATO in open conflict with  Russia, not being disposable the use of “non-strategic” nuclear weapons, also known as “tactical nuclear weapons”, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and of which Russia would have about 1,800 warheads and NATO would have 250 warheads deployed in Europe.

Tactical warheads refer to those designed to be used on a limited battlefield, for example, to destroy a tank column or carrier battle group if used at sea, so they are also known as “low performance”.

[This official interpretation and narrative regarding “low performance” is misleading. Tactical nuclear weapons have an explosive capacity between one third (1/3) of a Hiroshima to 12 times a Hiroshima bomb, M. Ch.]

However, according to Union of Concerned Scientists, a simulation by Princeton University of a US-Russia conflict that begins with the use of a tactical nuclear weapon predicts “a rapid escalation that would leave more than 90 million dead and injured”, with which the onset of a low-intensity nuclear conflict could degenerate into a large-scale nuclear conflagration with disastrous results for humanity.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Germán Gorraiz López is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

 

 

 

The so-called Ukrainian “counteroffensive” in 2023 was an absolute failure. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers died on the battlefield in senseless attritions, in which Kiev had no chance of winning. However, Ukraine was apparently advised even by NATO officials against using such a suicide strategy.

According to Guido Crossetto, Italian defense minister, the Kiev regime ignored several direct warnings to avoid prolonged frictions with Russia during the 2023 counterattack. Crossetto claims to have spoken to Zelensky several times that the attempt to launch a counteroffensive through frontal attacks were doomed to failure and would lead to Ukraine’s defeat. However, Zelensky allegedly ignored such advice, deliberately opting for the irrational tactics used on the front lines.

Crossetto revealed that both during Zelensky’s visit to Italy and in other international forums, the Ukrainian president heard directly from him a critical opinion about the plan to counterattack Russian positions. Analyzing the conflict realistically, Crossetto states that, even though he supports Ukraine, he does not agree with the decision to confront Russian forces frontally, given Moscow’s clear superiority. The minister said that “the result of a war is the sum of whoever has the most men and the most means,” which is why insisting on friction with Russia would be suicidal for Ukraine.

The officer also commented on other issues concerning the conflict. For example, he severely criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to send troops to fight directly in Ukraine if Kiev’s army collapses. According to Crossetto, such a maneuver would be extremely dangerous and would cross the “point of no return”, which is why he advises France to avoid any direct involvement.

Furthermore, Crossetto also made some realistic comments about Western anti-Russian sanctions. According to him, the coercive measures failed to achieve their objectives. The minister believes that the West is deceiving itself by maintaining such sanctions instead of simply recognizing the new geopolitical circumstances.

“Many times we behave as if the world has not changed (…) We have always thought that the West was enough to stop Russia and the sanctions are the result of the fact that we are still stuck in the idea that the world is our world. Instead, the world is much bigger and we can only resolve this crisis by involving everyone: first with a truce and then with peace (…) We must not give up on every possible path and opening, even narrow ones, of diplomacy,” he said.

In fact, Crossetto shows a deep geopolitical understanding. Even though he is an official from a NATO country and supports Ukraine, he understands that geopolitical circumstances favor the emergence of a multipolar world, in which the West is no longer the only actor in the international decision-making process. His critical opinion of Western attitudes shows that a pro-multipolar realist tendency is capable of emerging in Europe, despite strong American pressure. The more the EU is victim of coercive measures imposed by the US, the more European countries tend to take a critical stance towards Washington and NATO.

However, the most interesting detail of his speech was the news that Zelensky ignored advice from military experts on the counteroffensive. This shows how even foreign politicians are more concerned about Kiev’s soldiers than the Ukrainian government itself. In practice, there is no respect for Ukrainian lives on the part of the neo-Nazi regime. The soldiers are seen as mere cannon fodder, having to be massively eliminated in useless and anti-strategic battles.

Disrespect for soldiers is one of the reasons why the Zelensky government is so unpopular. Military personnel and their families no longer want to continue seeing casualties in an unwinnable war. Troops’ morale is low, and the certainty of defeat seems to grow among the combatants. Without expectations of victory, there is no reason to continue fighting, which is why Kiev is being forced to implement dictatorial methods to maintain the war efforts.

Kiev is rumored to be planning to launch another “counteroffensive” in 2024. Having lost almost all of its military-age men, the regime is now using the elderly, women and people with health problems – as well as thousands of foreign mercenaries. In such circumstances, it is obviously impossible for Kiev to win any battle, but it is possible that Zelensky insists on the error just to try to do more war propaganda in search of Western weapons.

However, the Ukrainian situation is even worse now than in 2023. If Kiev really wants to repeat the mistake of promoting a counterattack, the total collapse of the regime will certainly be quick.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Guido Crossetto (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

The language of diplomacy can be quite veiled, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain a level of etiquette. However, this is done only when dealing with those who deserve respect. And then there’s the political West, an entity that has shown it commands zero respect. The words of its “leaders” mean little to nothing, their promises are worth less than the paper they’re written on, while their idea of conducting diplomacy is on the level of a severely mentally challenged caveman.

And where to even begin with NATO’s open support for terrorism that recently killed and wounded hundreds of Russian civilians. Thus, when dealing with such entities, one must forget about civilized ways and behave accordingly. In line with that, ambassadors of the United Kingdom and France in Moscow were summoned to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they were told, in no veiled terms, what awaits them if London and Paris continue with their barbaric, warmongering behavior.

The video of the two diplomats leaving the building shows men who are clearly shaken. And for good reason, as the countries they represent have intentionally crossed all of Russia’s red lines in order to cause a reaction. Well, the political West was quite successful, because there was a reaction. It’s just that they don’t like it. One would say that doing something to cause a certain reaction from someone, but then not liking the reaction they knew was coming is called schizophrenia or some other form of mental disorder. However, this seems to be the only way in which the belligerent power pole operates these days (or centuries, to be precise). In the meantime, the Russian military is busy conducting exercises that involve simulated tactical nuclear strikes. Obviously, that’s another “hint” to NATO war criminals, as the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel obviously didn’t get the memo back in mid-April when Moscow test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile at intermediate range.

The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed hope that military exercises involving simulated tactical nuclear weapons will cool down all the hot-headed governments in the political West and “help” them finally realize that they’re risking the fate of governing nothing but radioactive glass deserts from their fallout bunkers if they keep their current course. It should be noted that, although this sounds quite harsh, it’s a necessary evil. As previously mentioned, the United States, European Union, NATO, etc. have repeatedly demonstrated that it’s simply impossible to talk sense into them. They either openly brag about killing Russian troops, including with advanced AI systems, or try to toss the hot potato to each other when they’re caught red-handed. Moscow tried using diplomatic backdoor channels to urge them to deescalate, but to no avail. This left the official warning as the only option and that’s precisely what the Kremlin did by issuing a formal statement. Here it is.

In short, apart from warning about the belligerent rhetoric of Western countries, Moscow’s MFA also pointed out NATO’s support for terrorism, as well as the increasingly possible direct military involvement in Ukraine. The Kremlin also warned about the plethora of ever more advanced weapons that the Neo-Nazi junta is getting, as well as the fact that the political West is openly endorsing their usage against targets deep within Russia, including against civilians. It also pointed out that the US and its vassals and satellite states are deploying the aforementioned medium and intermediate-range missiles, previously banned by the now-defunct INF Treaty that Washington DC suspended unilaterally back in 2019, around not only Russia, but also China. The delivery of F-16s was also mentioned, with Russia reiterating that it “will regard them as carriers of nuclear weapons and consider this step a deliberate provocation. It should be noted that Sergei Lavrov also warned about this last year.

Russia also mentioned Polish requests to Washington DC regarding the deployment of American nuclear weapons on its territory. Moscow warned that “these and some other actions actually indicate that they are consciously leading to a further escalation of the Ukrainian crisis towards an open military clash between NATO countries and Russia” and that the Russian military will respond to such belligerence, including with thermonuclear weapons. It would seem this worked on some, such as France and Italy, as they’ve shown fear. This is particularly true for the former, as Paris is now insisting that it’s “not at war” with Russia and its people (although battlefield footage suggests otherwise, despite the mainstream propaganda machine’s attempts to declare it a “conspiracy theory”). President Macron’s statements have become less direct and more ambiguous after his ambassador in Moscow was told what would happen if NATO involvement became more direct. However, others seem to react differently to fear.

For instance, the US and Germany summoned their ambassadors back to their home countries (not that Russia will miss either, truth be told). Obviously, Washington DC and Berlin want to avoid similar (un)pleasantries, as they’re perfectly aware that Moscow knows all about their support for terrorism and Neo-Nazism. Also, they probably want to avoid the fate of one of Macron’s predecessors. Namely, back in 2007, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy tried playing it tough with Putin. It didn’t end well for him, to put it mildly. He was so shaken after the meeting that Western media reported he was drunk. It could be argued that Sarkozy was indeed drunk, only with fear, as he was so terrified that he was barely able to utter a coherent sentence. And obviously, that’s exactly what anyone with a single half-functioning brain cell would expect when trying to intimidate a country that can wipe out the entirety of France with a single ICBM (while fielding hundreds). Unfortunately, the political West needs to be reminded of this way too often.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen

---

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

In this November 2023 presentation given in the Romanian Parliament, I provided evidence regarding the true efficacy of Covid-19 “vaccines”.

Other International Crisis Summit experts there revealed many details regarding the unprecedented deaths and injuries that follow these injections.

For my presentation, I set aside the monumental side effects, to evaluate the supposed purpose of the injections: to stop or reduce covid-19 infections. Here is the video of that presentation, as well as the same material in written format.

Click here to watch the video

The True “Efficacy” of COVID-19 “Vaccines”

Introduction 

Covid-19 experimental genetic injections have been referred to as “safe and effective vaccines” though they do not satisfy that definition or those claims. They are physically not like any vaccine ever administered before.

Pfizer / Moderna covid “vaccines” carry a payload of genetic mRNA for the spike protein in a special nanoparticle, while Astrazenica / Johnson & Johnson deliver full strand DNA in an adeno virus.

 

Not Safe, Not Effective

They do not block infection. They do not block transmission. They were predictably a failure and should not have been administered at all. The manufacturers’ clinical trials were inadequate, flawed, and in my opinion fraudulent. Efficacy claims to the public were deceptive.

Real-world data clearly demonstrates that in addition to causing unprecedented adverse events … 

And death by multiple mechanisms…

These injections ultimately increase ones risk of covid-19 disease; with more injections rendering progressively higher risk of disease. 

Predictable Failure and Persecution of Whistleblowers 

Why, as early as 2020, before the covid injection campaigns started, did many doctors and scientists around the world, including myself, endure great professional and financial persecution, in the process of warning you against these injections? It’s because they were predictably harmful! Prior to the global experiment, the predicted efficacy of these injections was very poor.  

There are many mechanisms of injury and death from the injections which my colleagues will describe to you, and I will gladly discuss during our interactions. These include general immune system dysfunctions that worsen all infectious diseases and cancers. 

However, the subject of this article is specifically these injections’ impact on frequency or severity of covid-19 infections. Though as we note they fail to meet the definition of vaccines, we will describe their efficacy in terms of how effective are they at reducing coronavirus infections. 

There efficacy was predictably bad. Here are a few of the reasons:  

Antibody Dependent Enhancement

Click here to watch the video

Coronavirus Vaccines Caused Death and Illness in Prior Animal Trials

First, prior coronavirus vaccine research had revealed that antibodies induced through experiments can actually worsen outcomes rather than helping. When exposed to the actual disease, vaccinated laboratory animals often suffered worse illness and higher death rates than the unvaccinated control animals. 

 

Second, these injections though labeled as “vaccines” were indeed genetic injections. Pfizer and Moderna covid-19 “vaccines” used messenger RNA technology. There have only ever been 385 human subjects in mRNA technology experiments prior to covid-19. These experiments demonstrated poor performance and high levels of adverse events with this technology. 

Antibody Mediated Selection

Click here to watch the video

Third, vaccinating a population during a pandemic violates a fundamental principle of vaccinology, which is that one should never try to vaccinate the way out of a pandemic. The reason for this is that doing so places evolutionary pressure on the virus, and drives the evolution of one variant after another. This obstructs the natural path to herd immunity which normally would have ended the pandemic in a matter of a few months. 

A fourth reason we predicted negative impact from these injections is the importance of the innate immune system and its development, especially for children. This is threatened by these injections.     

So those are some of the reasons that many of us strongly predicted that these injections would have negative “efficacy”, that is, that they would make matters worse. 

It is beyond naive to think that with big Pharma’s multi-billion dollar budget, their scientists who created these injections, could not foresee these same problems. 

What evidence do we have of efficacy from the “vaccine” manufacturers’ own documents? 

Pfizer’s initial two months of clinical trial data, which they used to apply to medical regulators for emergency use authorization; and the partial continuation of that clinical trial, to create their six month clinical trial report, had many flaws. 

For instance: Two months for Emergency Use Authorization, and 6 months for the published trial, was far too little time to legitimately assess safety or efficacy. 10 years would be a usual minimum for a normal vaccine, never mind these genetic experimental “vaccines”. 

The trial was not designed to assess transmission, or clinically relevant endpoints like hospitalization or transmission. 

Large numbers of “vaccinated” subjects were just eliminated from the study, so their results were absent, with no explanation. 

There was a failure to actively track and record the health status and adverse events of all trial participants. 

The study was prematurely unblinded and many of the “unvaccinated” control groups were injected with the “vaccine”. 

Unreliable and manipulatable PCR tests were used to diagnose “covid cases” without even reporting the cycle threshold used. This meant that “unvaccinated” subjects were diagnosed as having covid infections on very sketchy grounds; and “vaccinated” subjects similarly were diagnosed as not having covid, though they clearly had worse outcomes and more death. Considering the unreliability of the PCR as an endpoint measurement, they should have turned to all cause outcomes. 

 

The “vaccinated” had much higher unsolicited adverse events (more sickness and disability), but the “vaccines” were still assigned as reducing symptomatic and severe cases of covid, while ignoring the reality that the “vaccinated” group suffered much worse disease and disability than the control group. 

The Pfizer trial also had more death among the “vaccinated”.

Pfizer may have covered up waning efficacy of the “vaccines” by combining the adolescent cohort group in with the adult group, even though the adolescent group started months later 

Pfizer Wasn’t Alone in Performing Unacceptable Research…

 

Moderna’s study showed increased “covid like symptoms” in the “vaccinated” group, but combined with a negative PCR (which is totally manipulatable, and the cycle threshold was not reported) they shuttled these patients to be counted as “not covid”, but instead something they labeled as “reactogenicity”. So despite the injected people having more and worse covid symptoms in the week after the injections, they were counted as not having covid, and like Pfizer, Moderna ultimately reported that the “vaccines” reduced covid infections. 

With all these tricks in play, the manufacturers created a relative risk reduction claim of 95%, when the reality was likely much lower or even negative.   

Notice here we are discussing “relative risk reduction”. This is not normal.

 

Reporting relative risk reduction is deceptive and unethical. 

To make sound decisions about our health, we must be quoted absolute risk reduction. When Pfizer claimed their injections reduced the risk of covid disease by 95.1%, this actually meant it reduced the risk of covid disease by 0.7%.

The risk of covid disease was already very low without the “vaccine”, so a 95% RRR is a very small actual reduction in risk, or ARR. Moderna similarly claimed to reduce the risk of covid infection by 94.1% in their studies, but that was really just an absolute risk reduction of 1.1%.    

Considering the many flaws, omissions, and deceptive practices in the studies, like the ones we just discussed, the true absolute risk reduction for covid disease was possibly even less than the reported 0.7% and 1.1% ARR.

It may have been negative. We will find out more with the real world data to follow.  

These trials were not designed to assess transmission, or clinically relevant endpoints like hospitalization or death. The absolute harms clearly outweighed the absolute benefits for Pfizer’s 6 month data. People were coerced into experimental and dangerous injections that at most offered a sliver of benefit for reducing covid-19 disease, while increasing their total risk of harm. 

How did these so-called “vaccines” perform once they were imposed on the public? 

In short: poorly, and it was actively covered up by governments and medical regulators. 

 

Governments reported some evidence that supported “vaccine” effectiveness, but these claims were doubtful because of a range of serious inconsistencies and anomalies, including counting people as “unvaccinated” until two or three weeks after their injections, so for instance an infection up to two weeks after injection was counted as an infection in an unvaccinated person.  

People were considered “injected but not vaccinated” which is farcical. 

 

 

When government covid data showed infection rates highest in the most “vaccinated”, and lowest in the “unvaccinated”; rather than halt the injections and raise alarms, Canada’s governments stopped reporting “vaccination” status with the data. People were then blindfolded from seeing that it was predominantly “vaccinated” people suffering with covid-19 disease.

For example, by May 2022, Canadian data showed dramatically higher covid infection rates among the “vaccinated” than the unvaccinated, and even higher for triply injected person. Rather than responding in the best interest of the people, the government stopped reporting “vaccination” status with the covid statistics; then the public could no longer see what was happening.

 

Here’s one example of provinces doing the same thing. This is from British Columbia. Negative efficacy became obvious by the summer of 2022. The BC government responded by ending the reasonable practice of reporting “vaccination” status with covid data. 

Other provinces did the same. 

 

There is a severe difference between active surveillance in clinical trials and passive government surveillance used following the roll out. Passive surveillance systems seemed to make adverse events disappear.   

 

In Canada, only physicians could report adverse events, patients could not.   

The process was laborious, and doctors who tried to report adverse events, had their reports rejected, and they were investigated, disciplined, and often stripped of their licenses to practice medicine. 

For example consider Dr Patrick Phillips of Ontario Canada, who maintained ethical and scientific integrity throughout the pandemic, and was unlawfully persecuted by the medical licensing body, the CPSO, and stripped of his career and income. Every adverse event he reported was rejected, and the CPSO responded to each of his attempted reports by launching another complaint against him, despite there being no patient complaints. 

This is highly irregular.

 

 

In the UK, by week 11 of the injection campaign in March 2022, government data showed overall increased covid-19 infections and deaths among the “vaccinated” compared to the “unvaccinated.” Scientists and doctors who showed negative effects of the “vaccines” were banned from publication and ousted from professional positions. Despite that, many studies contained data that did demonstrate negative efficacy. 

 

A UK study of covid “vaccine” and disease statistics in June 2022, involving more than 9 million participants and comparing data for differing Body Mass Indexes, found (I quote) “Surprisingly, we observed a higher risk of test positivity after vaccination with one or two doses across all BMI groups, which is contrary to evidence reported by the UK Office of National Statistics.

 

 

Here are some results from Sweden, December 2022, from a study titled: Effectiveness of COVID-19 “Vaccines” over 13 Months Covering the Period of the Emergence of the Omicron Variant in the Swedish Population.  

This involved data from 9,153,456 Swedes. The researchers reported conflict of interest and conclusion that differed from the data, but regarding “vaccine” efficacy, they found “limited protection against Omicron infection (dropped to 43% by week four and no protection by week 14)” and by week 50 post injection “vaccine” efficacy dropped to nearly negative 100%, meaning it doubled the persons’ risk of covid infection.  

Our data showed negative “vaccine” efficacy against Omicron infection from week 14, indicating that “vaccinated” individuals experienced a higher risk of infection than those unvaccinated.”

In Germany, in the fall of 2022, a covid outbreak occurred at an Ophthalmology conference. Every single person known to be infected was “vaccinated”. 

The Cleveland Clinic in the USA employs more than fifty thousand persons. 

 

This study published in April 2023, involved 51,017 employees and clearly demonstrated negative efficacy of the “vaccines”, with the lowest infection rate in the “unvaccinated” and highest rates in the most injected. You can literally see how each injection increased the risk of infection by about 17%.

A second Cleveland Clinic study published in June 2023, demonstrated lowest infection rates in person “not up-to-date” on the “vaccines”, and highest rates in person “up-to-date”.

The researchers noted: “It is now well-known that SARS-CoV-2 infection provides more robust protection than “vaccination”. To say the least!

 

The USA FDA knew on September 17, 2021 that people injected with the Pfizer covid “vaccine” had double the risk of covid infection than the “unvaccinated”. This is from the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee Meeting September 17, 2021 FDA Briefing Document. 

This document reported a covid-19 infection rate in the “vaccine” group of 70.3 cases per 1000 people, but only 51.6 cases per 1000 people who were originally in the control group and later “crossed over” and injected. It is safe to assume that they would have experienced an even lower infection rate had they not been injected at all. 

It is scientifically deceptive and unethical to inject control subjects when they were clearly better off in terms of covid disease, adverse events, and death; but it did serve to reduce the magnitude of the negative efficacy that was demonstrated. 

 

Israel launched their third dose on July 30, 2021 and deaths skyrocketed. In Mongolia covid infections were approximately zero until they launched their injection campaign in February 2021. Then infection rates soared. 

 

The Amish:

Here’s another real world indication of the negative effects of the coerced and misrepresented covid-19 genetic injection “vaccines”, and the rest of the unscientific and unethical covid agenda. 

The Amish did not participate in any of the covid agenda. They did not mask, social distance, close their schools, churches or businesses. They did not invite nor submit to the injection campaigns. 

Amish people over 60 years old had a 23 times lower Infection Fatality Rate than the rest of the country.

For all age groups combined, their infection fatality rate from COVID was at least 90 times lower than the surrounding community.

The failure of the experimental genetic injections to perform as “vaccines” was predictable before they were launched. The manufacturers own studies were flawed, inadequate and riddled with efforts to obfuscate safety and dramatize benefit.  

Relative risk reduction numbers presented to the public were deceptive. Real world evidence shows that in addition to the dramatic adverse events and deaths caused by these injections, they are complete failures with negative efficacy.  

Covid-19 so-called “Vaccines” prolonged the pandemic, and increase individuals’ risk of covid-19 disease.  

What should be done?  

1. Halt the injections. 
2. Treat the injured. 
3. Restore ostracized scientists, doctors and nurses. 
4. Investigate covid crimes.
5. Restore the rule of law and human rights.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Sources

ADE References:

• Immunization with SARS Coronavirus Vaccines Leads to Pulmonary Immunopathology on Challenge with the SARS Virus. “Conclusions: These SARS-CoV vaccines all induced antibody and protection against infection with SARS-CoV. However, challenge of mice given any of the vaccines led to occurrence of Th2-type immunopathology suggesting hypersensitivity to SARS-CoV components was induced. Caution in proceeding to application of a SARS-CoV vaccine in humans is indicated.”
• A Review: Understanding Molecular Mechanisms of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement in Viral Infections
• Antibody-dependent enhancement and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and therapies      
• Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of Feline Infectious Peritonitis Virus Infection in Feline Alveolar Macrophages and Human Monocyte Cell Line U937 by Serum of Cats Experimentally or Naturally Infected with Feline Coronavirus 
• Dr Lee Merritt explains ADE with mRNA “vaccine” VIDEO
• Antibody-dependent enhancement of coronavirus. ” it is clear that the effects of both have negative consequences for the human body and are probably an obstacle to the development of viral vaccines”
• Recent Advances in the Vaccine Development Against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus    
• “Vaccine candidates against SARSCoV were initially developed based on the full-length S protein. However, these vaccines were later demonstrated to induce non-neutralizing antibodies which did not prevent MERS-CoV infection, and the immunized animals were not protected from the viral challenge instead they experienced adverse effects like enhanced hepatitis, increased morbidity, and stronger inflammatory responses”
• Weingartl, H., Czub, M., Czub, S., Neufeld, J., Marszal, P., Gren, J., et al. (2004). Immunization with modified vaccinia virus ankara-based recombinant vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome is associated with enhanced hepatitis in ferrets. J. Virol. 78:12672. doi: 10.1128/JVI.78.22.12672-12676. 2004 
• The Novelty of mRNA Viral Vaccines and Potential Harms: A Scoping Review. Matthew T.J. Halma, Jessica Rose and Theresa Lawrie
• Mass vaccination during pandemic historical blunder: Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier.
• Children Should be Freed and Never Covid Injected P Alexander PhD and M Trozzi MD 
• Pfizer. Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for an Unapproved Product Review Memorandum
• Moderna. Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for an Unapproved Product. Review Memorandum
• Pfizer. Six Month Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine.
• Canadian Covid Care Alliance The-COVID-19 Inoculations More Harm Than Good REV Dec-16-2021  [Video]
• Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data Jan 4 2021.       
• Waning immunity. Does the FDA think these data justify the first full approval of a covid-19 vaccine?
• Flawed endpoints. Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us. BMJ 2020; 371 doi: (Published 21 October 2020)
• P Alexander and M Trozzi.The reported 95% RRR (relative risk reduction) was really less than 20% when we recalculated and imputed the over 3,000 subjects they removed to get the >50% threshold for EUA. What Pfizer did in their FDA submission was fraudulent. Also, the ARR (absolute risk reduction) is 0.7% to 0.8%.   
• CDC Finally Released Its VAERS Safety Monitoring Analyses for COVID Vaccines via FOIA And now it’s clear why they tried to hide them. JOSH GUETZKOW January 4 2023

• Absolute verses relative risk reduction. Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials  
• Sources of bias in observational studies of covid-19 vaccine effectiveness
• Dr Jessica Rose on both the two weeks injected but “not vaccinated” scandal,  and worse covid in the injected:

• Associations of BMI with COVID-19 vaccine uptake, vaccine effectiveness, and risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes after vaccination in England: a population-based cohort study.   
• Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines over 13 Months Covering the Period of the Emergence of the Omicron Variant in the Swedish Population Dec 2022  
• Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Bivalent Disease. Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Bivalent Vaccine.  Nabin K Shrestha 1, Patrick C Burke 2, Amy S Nowacki 3, James F Simon 4, Amanda Hagen 5, Steven M Gordon 1
• Risk of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) among Those Up-to-Date and Not Up-to-Date on COVID-19 Vaccination. Nabin K. Shrestha,1 Patrick C. Burke,2  Amy S. Nowacki,3  Steven M. Gordon1  June 9, 2023
• How the Covid “Vaccines” Cripple the Immune System | Part 3 of 5
• How Covid “Vaccines” Cripple the Immune System | Part 4 of 5
• Steve Kirsch. The unvaccinated Amish were the control group. Their infection fatality rate from COVID was 90X lower than the surrounding community.
• Steve Kirsch at Pennsylvania Senate

All images in this article are from the author

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Who proposed a two-state solution? Not the Palestinians. Not Israel. It was conceived in the young United Nations, and proclaimed there in November, 1947. But it was never successfully implemented, despite on-and-off negotiations continuing for the better part of a century. The Zionist leadership briefly promoted it prior to the 1947 UN vote, but only to gain legitimacy for its intentions to implement Plan Dalet for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and its independent proclamation of the state of Israel six months after the UN vote. The closest the Palestinians came to accepting the solution was a “Roadmap“, that was never seriously pursued but which created the quisling Palestinian Authority. 

Let’s be honest. The two-state solution was never proposed by either side, and never wanted by either of them.

The Palestinians always wanted a single non-Zionist from the river to the sea, and the Zionists wanted the river to the sea exclusively for their state.

The two-state solution was a fantasy imposed by the colonial West to get the British off the hook and use the Zionists to their domestic advantage. Nevertheless, both the Zionists (Israel) and the Palestinians thought that they could best gain their ends by working through the post-colonial UN/Western power structure and its insistence – genuine or otherwise – on a two-state solution. It has been purposely deadlocked ever since, because the West continues to promote the two-state solution while the Palestinians and Israelis have little or no interest in actually implementing it. In fact, everyone seems to have a different idea about what the two-state solution should look like, which also changes over time.

A lot of the same applies to the idea of a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian resistance, led by Hamas. True, they came to a brief, temporary agreement in November, 2023, but that was for very limited objectives and was neither intended nor expected to be permanent. The idea of a permanent ceasefire, promoted by peace groups and millions of demonstrators worldwide, as well as the UN, sounds like a great idea until you get to the details of what it entails and how to implement it. Everyone agrees (or will at least pay lip service) to stopping the killing of civilians, providing massive humanitarian aid and releasing captives. But then what? The ceasefire cannot be permanent without resolving questions of the status of Gaza and the rights it will enjoy.

Those questions place the aims of Israel and the Palestinian resistance completely at odds and largely irreconcilable. Prior to October 7th, Hamas had been preparing its strategic capability for years, creating the technology and resources for a sustained, effective resistance against the Israeli occupation, not merely occasional actions. The decision to finally launch the operation was due to multiple factors, but a major one was the increasing marginalization of the Palestinian cause and its potential abandonment by former ostensible supporters, such as the Arab countries that concluded “normalization” agreements with Israel. The proximate prospect of just such an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia plus the advanced state of readiness of the resistance forces may have been the deciding factors for the launching.

As for Israel, if its intelligence was not in fact taken by surprise but actually expecting the revolt, it had reasons for inviting it. First, the Zionist leadership had for many years been concerned that the Palestinian population was becoming greater in number than that of Jews in what it often calls “greater Israel”, including both Israel and the occupied territories under its control: the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip, plus small bits of Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This was intolerable to the Zionist leadership, and interfered with their intentions to annex those territories. They would therefore welcome a pretext to reduce that population, by whatever means necessary.

Second, while Israel has been gradually confiscating Palestinian lands and establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, no such effort is being made in Gaza. In fact, by evacuating the Jewish settlements in 2005 and making Gaza a sealed concentration camp of 2.3 million Palestinians, it guaranteed a ferment of Palestinian nationalism and resistance. Israel would prefer to simply be rid of it – but not the land, only the people. A revolt in Gaza would offer the opportunity to expel or exterminate the population while keeping the land.

Third, the discovery and partial mapping of a large natural gas field in Gaza waters became a powerful motive for creating a means for laying claim to both the land and its resources. From a strategic as well as economic point of view, the Israeli leadership felt unsurprisingly compelled to avoid allowing the prize to fall into Palestinian hands, and to keep it for themselves.

Finally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is highly motivated to remain in power, partly because he avoids prosecution for corruption by doing so, but also in order to become a national hero by “redeeming” another portion of “Eretz Israel” (land of Israel), through genocide and ethnic cleansing. The revolt by Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance provides the pretext for implementing such a plan through genocide and ethnic cleansing, then annexation. 

The potential motives of the two sides for a ceasefire are thus totally different, if they exist at all. For the resistance it is national liberation, freedom, independence and complete sovereignty, comparable to any other nation on earth. They are aware that it will require huge sacrifices for the Palestinian people, but neither the leaders of the resistance nor the people of Gaza will accept to return to the status quo ante (or worse). These aims are clear in the three-stage ceasefire proposal that Hamas accepted on May 6, 2024. That proposal culminates in a sovereign, independent Gaza, in total control of its economy, security and international relations. 

Israel, on the other hand, requires the elimination of Hamas as a minimal condition for a ceasefire. But even if Hamas agreed to disband, many if not most of its adherents would refuse to do so, and continue, if only under a new name, which Israel would also seek to eliminate. It is a disingenuous requirement, because Israel merely wishes to block a ceasefire and get on with eliminating the population.

How will it end? I’m sorry to say that Israel may have its genocide, with the invasion of Rafah as the next phase, and even the trickle of food and relief supplies being closed. Other than Yemen, there is no evidence that any nation will intervene to stop to stop the carnage or bring relief to the starving people of Gaza. But as I wrote four months ago, genocide will neither save Israel nor stop Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance. Israel is a pariah state as never before, with countries abandoning it on a scale unseen since its founding. Even its support among diaspora Jews is withering, and Israeli Jews are fleeing the country by hundreds of thousands since October 7th. The settlements in the north and south have been evacuated, with many of the former inhabitants living in temporary housing in the larger Israeli cities or joining the exodus abroad. Many businesses have closed. Only the lifeline to the US keeps Israel afloat. But for how long?

Hamas, on the other hand, is at its most popular, enjoying unprecedented support in all of Palestine and beyond, and receiving more recruits than it can train. There is no sign that it is flagging, and every indication that it can carry on indefinitely. 

It is unwise to underestimate either side, but if this is a fight to the finish, it may turn out to be Israel’s third defeat, after the ones in Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, and clearly more consequential. It is an open question who will be left standing at the end of Israel’s current struggle with Hamas, even if the victory is pyrrhic for the survivor.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Paul’s Substack.

Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Jewish Voice for Labour

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Western accusations of doping by Chinese swimmers threaten to exacerbate China-US tensions, undermine the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and seriously harm the upcoming Paris Olympics. 

The controversy was ignited by investigation reports at the New York Times and German TV broadcaster ARD. 

These media outlets suggest there has been a cover-up of a mass doping incident among Chinese top swimmers with connivance of  the Chinese Anti Doping Agency (CHINADA) and complicity from the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA). 

This story served as red meat to the hyper aggressive leader of the US Anti Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart. 

It has prompted western swimming competitors to loudly complain. For example the NY Times reports that US team swimmer Paige Madden thinks medals from the Tokyo Olympics should be reallocated. “I feel that Team USA was cheated.”  British swimmer James Guy says, “Ban them all and never compete again.” What might be considered whining and poor sportsmanship is effectively being encouraged by western media. 

The NYTimes and ARD are the same two media that precipitated the accusations of “state sponsored doping” in Russia. It did enormous damage to thousands of Russian athletes and resulted in different levels of banning starting with the Rio Olympics in 2016.  Although widely accepted as “truth” in the West, the claims of widespread Russian doping were weak when evidence was required.  Most Russian athletes who challenged their banning were exonerated. The major accusers, the Stepanovs and Grigory Rodchenkov, were themselves guilty of doping and profiting from doping. Despite this, the banning has continued and escalated after the Russian intervention in Ukraine.  The accusations and banning were useful in propelling the “new cold war” and “new McCarthyism”. 

NYT and ARD, and their anonymous informants, may be seeking to do something similar to China. USADA has issued a response in which they say China may be engaging in “systematic doping” under a “coordinated doping regime”. On May 6 USADA’s Tygart escalated his attacks. He implies the Paris Olympics will be a “train wreck” because of WADA complicity in China’s “cheating”. He hopes the US government will “step in and help lead and fix this.”  Surely a recipe for success.  

What Happened 

On Jan. 1-3 in 2021, the Chinese swim team was having a domestic swim meet. It was in the midst of covid lockdown. As usual, the team was drug tested but this time a strange thing happened: many swimmers tested positive for a trace amount of the banned medication trimetazadine (TMZ). 

The China Anti Doping Agency (CHINADA) investigated and reported the facts to the World Anti Doping Agency as required.  They found: 

• 23 swimmers tested positive for a very small amount of trimetazadine (TMZ)
• the swimmers were from different regions of China with different coaches and trainers
• all 23 were staying at the same hotel eating in the same dining room
• none of the swimmers staying at a different hotel tested positive
• some of the swimmers tested positive one day, negative the next 
• tests in the hotel kitchen showed the presence of  TMZ on the air vent and counters

CHINADA concluded the positive TMZ tests were from hotel food and the athletes were not at fault.

They reported the incident and investigation to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the international swimming federation now known as World Aquatics (formerly FINA). Both organizations examined the facts and agreed with the findings.    

Because the athletes were deemed to have no fault, the incident and names of the athletes were not publicized. WADA regulations indicate that there should be no publicity or naming of athletes deemed innocent and without an “Anti Doping Rule Violation” (ADRV). 

How It Has Been Reported 

Approximately a year later, in 2022,  anonymous sources reported this incident to the NY Times and ARD.  Since then, the two media outlets have done further investigation but kept the story secret until two weeks ago.  

They suggest something shady happened back in early 2021. They suggest WADA may be complicit in covering up anti doping violations. They almost encourage western athletes to challenge the Chinese swimming accomplishments and be “angry”. On April 20 the story was “Top Chinese Swimmers Tested Positive for Banned Drug, Then Won Olympic Gold“. On April 21 the story was “‘Team USA Was Cheated’: Chinese Doping Case Exposes Rift in Swimming“. On April 22 the story was “Top Biden Official Calls for Inquiry Into Chinese Doping Case.”

These reports ignited a flood of other sensational and accusatory reports and editorials. The Guardian report is titled “Poison in the pool: why the latest Chinese doping row is proving so toxic”. Sports Yahoo says “Extremely concerned Olympians will not let the Chinese doping allegations die”. The PBS News Hour had a video report titled “Chinese doping ‘swept under the carpet’: US anti-doping chief says”. Sports Illustrated said the news may alter the distribution of medals from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. 

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the situation. . 

The NY Times and ARD say they have been investigating this story for two years. The release appears timed to have maximum impact and possible damage, just months before the Paris Olympics.   

USADA Accuses WADA 

The US Anti Doping Agency (USADA) is led by the hyper-aggressive Travis Tyler. He has used the reports to claim that WADA is complicit in a Chinese “cover-up”. In a TV interview before a large national audience Tygart said,

“China didn’t follow the rules. They effectively swept this under the carpet because they didn’t find a violation. They didn’t announce a violation. They didn’t disqualify the athletes from the event at which they tested positive. And this is absolutely mandatory under the world anti-doping code that all nations are required to follow.”

WADA has responded that Tygart’s comments seem “politically motivated”.  They say CHINADA followed the rules, investigated and reported as required.  They say China did NOT have to announce it to the world, or name the individual athletes for the very good reason that false accusations of doping can destroy a career. WADA regulations say the names of athletes should NOT be publicized until or unless it is confirmed they have an Anti Doping Rule Violation. 

WADA Appoints Independent Investigator 

WADA is the international organization charged with supervising global anti-doping in sports. With its headquarters in Canada and most of its leaders from NATO countries, it is a largely western organization.

They are highly sensitive to criticism from the West. It has pushed back against some of the most extreme criticism, for example from the USADA head. They have also appointed an independent investigator to review what happened in China and whether WADA was correct to accept the Chinese investigation and report. 

WADA appointed Eric Cottier, the prosecutor general of a Swiss region. WADA headquarters are in Canada but the organization is registered in Switzerland. USADA has criticized the appointment suggesting that Cottier is not sufficiently “independent”.  

Thoms Bach, head of the International Olympic Committee, has voiced support for WADA. 

WADA has defended their actions in a press conference and fact sheet about the case. 

The controversy may quiet down. But a lot of poison has been spread around. Encouraged by the NY Times and other media,  numerous western athletes now claim they feel “cheated” out of medals at the Tokyo Olympics since 5 medals were won by Chinese swimmers involved in the  TMZ “doping scandal”. 

It is also possible the controversy will continue. Will the “Sports Czar” of the Biden Administration get involved? Will the FBI be designated to investigate?  These are now possible in the wake of the Rodchenkov Anti Doping Act which passed Congress in 2020. 

Reader comments following articles indicate there is a wellspring of anti-China hostility encouraged by the accusations. The most popular comment on this article says, “When will democracies learn that authoritarian regimes play dirty, and should be viewed as suspect not deserving of good faith.”  Another says,”No one knows doping like China knows doping, China knows doping best.”  Another one says, “China cheats. Russia cheats. Just like the East Germans did before them. Their governments will meet the same fate as they did.”

Pushback 

There has been some pushback to the sensational anti-China accusations. For example Denis Cotterell is a world class coach who has trained both  Australian and Chinese Olympic swimmers. He has spoken out strongly in support of the Chinese swimmers. He says, “I can see what they (the swimmers) go through. I see the measures… The suggestion that it’s systemic is so far from anything I have seen here the whole time. They are so adamant on having clean sport.” 

An insightful article from an Australian academic sports authority and popular sports commentator suggests there are political forces at work: “WADA – like the United Nations and other organizations – finds itself in the cross hairs of the great power struggle of our time: a rising China and its challenge to US dominance.”

Geopolitical Consequences

According to the “2024 Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community”, China is “challenging longstanding rules of the international system as well as U.S. primacy within it.” China’s positive “international image” is a challenge to U.S. leadership. By this logic, it is in the US interests to damage China’s international reputation and standing.

This raises the question: How did the TMZ get into the hotel kitchen and into the food being served to these Chinese athletes?

In February 2022, accusations of intentional doping were heaped on the Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva. A trace amount of trimetazadine (TMZ) was detected in a drug test taken seven weeks before the Beijing Olympics.  There are similarities to the Chinese case: same drug, same trace amount detected, same mystery as to how it was ingested.

Because she could not explain how it got there, Valieva was condemned in the West and ultimately had her international career destroyed. The Russian figure skating sweep was prevented and the Russian team lost their gold medals.  The controversy distracted and partially ruined the Beijing Olympics. The “intelligence community” undoubtedly considers this a success.

How did the TMZ get in the hotel kitchen in China? Who are the “whistle blowers” who informed the New York Times and ARD and supplied the names of the athletes who tested positive for the trace amount of TMZ?   

The anti doping crusade is being manipulated  by powerful forces with ignoble intentions. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Rick Sterling is an independent journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from the Public Domain

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Today, Michel Chossudovsky of GlobalResearch.ca joins us to discuss his recent article: “The Hiroshima Nagasaki ‘Dress Rehearsal’: Oppenheimer and the U.S. War Department’s Secret September 15, 1945 ‘Doomsday Blueprint’ to ‘Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map.’”

We talk about the original, genocidal plan of the US War Department for a genocidal nuclear slaughter of the Soviets, how that plan has continued to the present day, the existential threat of nuclear holocaust and the prospects for an anti-war movement that can actually stand up to the military-industrial complex.

 

For more details see:

The Hiroshima Nagasaki “Dress Rehearsal”: Oppenheimer and the U.S. War Department’s Secret September 15, 1945 “Doomsday Blueprint” to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 28, 2024

 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This was originally published on The Corbett Report.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

---

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

“Politics,” as the harsh, albeit successful German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck claimed, “is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.” 

To that should be added the stark awareness of being prudent, gingerly wise, appropriately cautious.  Mind how you go in avoiding any foolishness on the way.

Going after the motley press and news outlets while claiming to be a card-carrying member of the democracy club is far from prudent and more than a touch foolish, bound to make the critics croak and other fellow members decry.  And this is exactly what has happened in the context of Israel’s decision to shut down the Qatar-backed station Al Jazeera.

On May 5, police raided the offices of the network at the Ambassador hotel in Jerusalem. According to Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, equipment had been seized in the raid.

Al Jazeera duly released a statement strongly condemning and denouncing “this criminal act that violates human rights and the basic right to access of information.”  The network went on to affirm “its right to continue to provide news and information to its global audiences.”  Oddly enough, the ban is far from being a watertight one, as the channel remains accessible in Israel via Facebook.

Al Jazeera has had a troubled relationship with Israel.  Sounding like paranoid family members who have imbibed a bit too much, accusations frothed from various politicians accusing the network of being a Hamas front. In a dubious honour, the network’s name became associated with a law passed by the Israeli Knesset on April 1.

The instrument authorises the Minister of Communication, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Ministerial Committee on National Committee, to shut down foreign news outlets operating in Israel deemed a national security threat.  This entails halting broadcasts by Israeli content providers, restricting access to the relevant provider’s website, shutting down transmitters in Israel and the seizure of devices used in supplying the channel’s content, including mobile phones.  Betraying the Netanyahu government’s continued suspicion of the country’s judicial process, the law shackles the judiciary from overturning such a decision, notwithstanding any belief that it should be.

The dust had barely settled on the vote before Minister Karhi revealed plans had been hatched to shutter Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel on the grounds that it “promotes terrorism”.  According to a statement from the Israeli Communications Ministry,

“There will be no freedom of expression to Hamas mouthpieces in Israel.”

Akiva Eldar, a political scribe who pushes pieces for Haaretz, suggested that the closing of the network was “a very populistic move to feed the beast of the public opinion that is very disappointed from the conduct of the government in Gaza and in the international arena”.  The tail-end of the remark did little to stir convention, as the move was designed “to please the partners from the radical right”.

The passage of the law prompted a High Court of Justice filing by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) on April 4.  The petition argues for the cancellation of “the temporary order allowing sanctions to be imposed on foreign broadcasting channels from Israel.” On May 2, with rumours of imminent action being taken against the Qatari broadcaster, the same organisation sought an interim injunction, refused by the court, to instruct the government to refrain from issuing orders to a foreign broadcaster till the petition was decided.  The ACRI had every reason to be disappointed with the ruling, given that Al Jazeera had been refused a prior right of plea and denied effective judicial review.

On May 6, a further filing was made to join a separate proceeding in the Tel Aviv District Court regarding the sanctions imposed on Al Jazeera, with the ACRI challenging the propriety of the administrative process involved and whether there was, in fact, a “real security risk” posed by the network.

The Al Jazeera law is not a singular instance of state repression regarding matters of free speech. The signs point to a chronic ailing in the Israeli polity. Adalah, a Palestinian-run non-profit NGO advocating for the rights of Palestinians in Israel has noted, by way of example, the “severe crackdown on the freedom of expression rights of Palestinian students seeking to suspend or even expel them for their posts on social media platforms.”  The posts in question “vary widely, ranging from expressions of solidarity with the people of Gaza, to Quranic verses, to scathingly critical views of the Israeli military’s actions, to seemingly arbitrary content unrelated to Hamas or to the war.”

On April 18, the Israeli police, in all its intimidating glory, entered the home of Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian in the Old City of Jerusalem.  Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who holds the Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London and a post at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was subsequently detained for comments made the previous month on the Makdisi Street podcast.

Of particular interest to the authorities were comments purportedly calling for the abolition of Zionism and the uncontroversial call to halt the genocidal actions in Gaza.  She was strip-searched, handcuffed and interrogated, and denied access to such necessities as food, water and medication for a number of hours.  Her frigid cell also lacked blankets, while she was inadequately clothed. Her release on bail precipitated further interrogation sessions, with the police keen to tease out incriminating matters from previously published academic papers.

From targeting academics, activists and students, to drawing the covers over a network of renown, the Israeli state has made a vulgar statement against the role of free speech.  Such creeping authoritarianism, however, shows itself to be one-eyed and, eventually, self-defeating.  Ultimately, in the gallop, it is bound to fall over itself.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]

Featured image is licensed under CC BY 2.0 DEED

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

First published by Global Research on September 22, 2023

Today, we commemorate Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Choral, which was first performed in Vienna exactly 200 years ago, on May 7, 1824. at the Vienna Court Theater at the Kärntnertor,

 

Introduction 

Friends, look around you: The World is in a state of economic and social chaos. Censorship and the suppression of fundamental human rights is ongoing at the level of the entire planet. 

That is why Beethoven’s call: “Friends, get Rid of all those Ugly Sounds” is of utmost significance. It constitutes an Act of Resistance, without which the “Ode to Freedom”, namely “Real Democracy” is an impossibility. 

As long as “totalitarian rule” prevails, whether it is in the 19th Century under The Austrian Empire or Today (2020-2030) under US-NATO and the World Economic Forum, the “Ode to Freedom” cannot under any circumstances become a reality.

Not surprisingly, the 21st Century Globalists and their intelligence apparatus are emulating the Austrian Empire, with “a spy network” far more sophisticated than that cooked up by Prince Klemens von Metternich.

In the present context, Beethoven’s “Friends, Get Rid of all those Ugly Sounds” should be understood as An Act of Resistance and Worldwide Solidarity against the prevailing structures of corruption, fraud, social divisiveness and political abuse. As well as a stance to the conduct of genocide against the People of Palestine. 

Friends: What this indelibly requires is the creation of an articulate and cohesive mass movement at the level of the entire planet (nationally and worldwide) which confronts the Deep State Globalist architects of this insidious project: Big Money, Big Pharma, the Information Technology Conglomerates, the Security Apparatus, Intelligence, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil an Big Energy, and the Corporate Media.  

While this is no easy task, Let us join hands and restore Schiller and Beethoven‘s “Ode to Freedom”. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 7, 2023, May 7, 2024

200th Years Commemoration of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (May 7, 1824). 

 

***

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony’s first performance was in Vienna in May 1824 at the Kaiserliches Hoftheater am Kärntnertor

The Ninth Symphony is considered as a powerful symbol of solidarity, social equality, peace and human values. 

But there is something else, which has been ignored by musicologists and historians of music:

Beethoven added three extra verses –coupled with corresponding musical pitches– which were not contained in Friedrich von Schiller’s original “Ode to Joy”: 

Oh friends, not these sounds!
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!

But let us sing more pleasantly
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen

And more joyful ones!
Und freudenvollere!

These three verses were sung right at the beginning, they were followed by

Freude!

Freude!

Freude schoener Goetterfunken

Tochter aus Elysium

…

Schiller first composed the Ode in 1785, six years after the French Revolution of 1789. The text of Schiller’s Ode was revised several times. Originally Schiller composed an “Ode to Freedom” that he subsequently changed to “Ode to Joy”. This change “did not appear in print until 1849“.

“[It was the revised version of 1803] which Beethoven used to erect the impressive musical-textual monument of the fourth movement of his last symphony.

He also modified Schiller’s text quite drastically in places, adding, by way of an introduction, a whole strophe of his own. 

In Beethoven’s eyes, adding a few lines of his own did not mean interfering with the text  but establishing a transition between worldly desire – leading to chaos, as expressed in the introductory [three verses] of the fourth movement – and the will of Man to free himself, as evoked by the poet. (Maximiano Cobra, emphasis added)

Were these “three verses” at the beginning of the Ode to Joy inserted by Beethoven intent upon downplaying both the religious overtones as well as the “idealism” pertaining to peace, brotherhood and solidarity as contained in Schiller’s poem. I should mention that the Ode also contained “masonic elements”.

“we must bear in mind that the message conveyed by the Ode echoed and reflected its whole historical environment. Around 1810, in the streets of Bonn,  vitalized by revolutionary echoes from across the Rhine, students sang the Ode to the music of the Marseillaise” (Maximiano Cobra).

The poem was alive with the French revolution’s ethos. “All humans become brethren where joy touches the heart,” wrote Schiller.”

Dear Friends, Listen carefully to the 4th movement.

Three verses were inserted (in musical phrases) at the outset of the 4th movement (O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!). What was Beethoven’s message to humanity??

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! Oh friends, not these sounds! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen, But let us  sing more pleasantly.

which in substance means:  Friends, get Rid of all those “Ugly Sounds” 

Was Beethoven expressing in the lyrics and melodies of the 4th Movement, the true nature of the “ugly sounds” which in Vienna in the year 1824 characterized the derogation of peace, brotherhood and fundamental human rights at the height of the Austrian Empire under Kaiser Franz I (1804-1834)

Kaiser Franz I, Emperor of Austria  (image left)

 

This was during the “Metternich Period”, which was marked by social repression and “empire building”. Metternich forcibly crushed public demonstrations, coupled with media censorship and the suppression of freedom of speech.  

Was this a call by Beethoven “to tone down the revolutionary spirit”? 

Or was it a subtle message within Beethoven’s musical brilliance to the socially repressive regime of the Austrian Empire which at the time was under the helm of State Chancellor (Prince) Klemens von Metternich?

Klemens von Metternich (image right)

While Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy is today considered Worldwide as a message to all mankind: “living in peace and harmony together”: 

–these three verses added by Beethoven should be remembered as a “Symbol of Resistance” to totalitarian rule. 

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! 

Metternich was firmly opposed to Liberalism: “He used a wide-ranging spy network to dampen down unrest”.(Alan Sked, “Decline and Fall of the Hapsburg Empire 1815-1918″

As long as “totalitarian rule” which is predicated on the suppression of “real democracy” prevails, in the 19th Century under Metternich or Today (2020-2025) under the World Economic Forum, the “Ode to Joy” or the “Ode to Freedom” cannot under any circumstances become a reality.

Not surprisingly, the 21st Century Globalists and their intelligence apparatus are emulating the Austrian Empire, with “a spy network” far more sophisticated to that cooked up by Prince Klemens von Metternich. 

There are (unconfirmed) reports that Metternich and Beethoven had met. Metternich was present at Beethoven’s funeral three years later in 1827. I should mention that Beethoven was not overtly against the aristocracy. He dedicated the Ninth Symphony to Koenig Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. 

The Choral starts at about 6.00 with the first three verses (which are indicated in German on the screen of the first video).

The second video featuring the 9th Symphony was recorded in Berlin

The full lyrics in German and English are indicated below at the foot of the article   

Video

Beautiful and Creative Production of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1.11) (Ode to Joy, Chorale at about 45’00)

Flash Forward to the 21st Century

Today, at the outset of the 21st Century, Europe’s “Classe politique” is once again committed to sustaining the “ugly sounds” of a social order marked by corruption, fraud and social divisiveness.

The music of Beethoven’s 4th Movement was embedded in the EU-Anthem. The poem by Friedrich von Schiller was not used.

Beethoven’s first three verses of the Ode to Joy. A Symbol of Resistance

Let us recognize Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a symbol of resistance, which in the contemporary context should be used to address the numerous “ugly sounds” of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, coupled with “Shock Treatment” and the Neoliberal agenda, which is endorsed by corrupt politicians, leading to the impoverishment of millions of people Worldwide.  

 

 

 

Michel Chossudovsky, September 21, 2023

 

 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

When I entered the legal profession on January 23, 2013, I took a solemn oath declaring my allegiance to a constituted authority and swore that I would carry out my duties with honesty in the spirit of fundamental justice.

By taking this oath, I pledged to uphold the Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers and not compromise the honour or dignity of the profession.

Following the events that have occurred since 2020[1], I found myself in a morally untenable position, one that has led me to a decision that I will explain briefly in this letter.

During this time, I have borne witness to a misleading narrative presented as unquestionable truth to a population in a state of shock. Today, this narrative, invoking the existence of a serious threat to the health of the population, has been taken as “judicial notice,” meaning that it can no longer be challenged in court[2]. Without any debate, contrary to all logic, and simply because it was repeated ad nauseam, a fraudulent story has become an absolute truth. I use the word “fraudulent” advisedly because that is exactly what it is, the alleged threat being only a pretext for making profound and potentially irreversible changes in society. These changes were accompanied by a massive transfer of wealth to the ruling class. I cannot overlook the fact that this imaginary threat also served as justification for the deployment of so-called “safe and effective” injections, which are likely linked to the excess deaths currently observed in Canada and elsewhere[3].

Over the last four years, my ongoing analysis leads me to conclude that this terrible chain of events could only have occurred through the unprecedented control of information with the complicity of key players in previously respected institutions and professions. For example, I witnessed doctors, scientists and professionals try by every means possible to set the record straight. In doing so, they were denied their share of the COVID pie and found themselves at great personal risk. I had the honour and privilege of working with these remarkable individuals. To my dismay, I saw them censored and attacked with unspeakable violence, all this happening in the context of widespread ignorance and indifference. The silence of my own profession was the most disturbing. On the other hand, I observed many people agreeing with the official narrative  without question, behaving in an opportunistic manner, and being rewarded for participating in the lies and misappropriation of science. What a sad sight to see.

The professional orders were key players in preserving the official narrative and managed to spread terror within their ranks by systematically attacking dissenting voices. This revealed their true nature; namely that their mission is to control professionals and protect vested interests, not to protect the public. Universities, awash in industry funding, have played a similar role, ensuring that none of their members threaten the current profit model.

I unsuccessfully defended[4] and advised some of the scientists and professionals who were attacked in this fashion. Along with a few of my colleagues, I also acted as a whistleblower[5]. Prior to that, in the spring of 2021, I had helped prepare an application for judicial review, hoping that the courts might halt the ongoing totalitarian drift. This application will probably never be heard. It was summarily dismissed by the Superior Court, and the leave to appeal was subsequently denied by the Court of Appeal[6]. Many legal remedies or complaints have met a similar fate. In hindsight, I now understand that an honest debate will never be permitted. The outcome of such a debate would be devastating to the official narrative, something which must be avoided at all costs by those who have benefited and continue to benefit from it.

Regrettably, I have observed a profession that has dishonoured itself, either through silence or through complicity, affirming what others have already stated; it essentially serves Power[7]. And this Power has shown, to put it mildly, that it doesn’t work for our well-being.

Yet, the Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers requires that I serve only one master: Justice.

The protection of fundamental rights and respect for the individual must inspire my practice. I have an obligation to act with integrity and maintain my professional independence. This code also requires me to uphold the authority of the courts – courts which now refuse debates, which punish any form of dissent and which condone unprecedented violations of the citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms. The reasonable limits imposed in a so-called free and democratic society were used to justify those violations[8].

The fact is our society is neither free nor democratic, despite the great efforts to make us believe such an illusion.

Citizens are allowed to exercise their rights and freedoms, such as freedom of opinion, as long as this exercise does not seriously undermine the powers that be. The division of power into executive, legislative and judicial powers, to which I would add the power of the media, is also an illusion. The walls have disappeared. All of these are slaves to Finance and take part in a plan that is not ours or, in any case, is not mine.

In this context, and since it was no longer possible for me to reconcile conflicting professional obligations, I chose to bow out by resigning from the Quebec Bar. I have withdrawn my allegiance to this constituted authority. I no longer support the courts. I refuse to take part for another moment in these sombre theatrics. That is the only decision that allows me to feel at peace with my conscience. That is all that really matters to me.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This letter was originally published in French on April 22, 2024.

Notes

1. I will not go into the details of the 2020 crisis here, but whoever is interested can consult, among other things, the work of the National Citizens’ Inquiry (NCI). I participated in the NCI as a prosecutor during the hearings held in Quebec City on May 11-13, 2023. The commission heard 305 witnesses, including 94 experts, during the 24 days of hearings held in 8 Canadian cities. The report of the commissioners and all the testimonies are available to the public.

See: https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca or https://www.nationalcitizensinquiry.com.

2. See, for instance, Monier c. Procureur général du Québec, 2023 QCCS 2111 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/jxqcq.

3. See, for instance, the work of Denis G. Rancourt, PhD, Marine Baudin, PhD, Joseph Hickey, PhD and Jérémie Mercier, PhD: https://correlation-canada.org/covid-19-vaccine-associated-mortality-in-the-southern-hemisphere/.

4. See, for instance, my comments on the Linard case, during a conference in Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce on July 2, 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvQCRFeylII.

5. See, for instance, the conference I gave with four colleagues in Longueuil on November 30, 2021: https://rumble.com/vqx7lv-les-avocats-de-rinfo-covid-qubec-prennent-la-parole.html.

6. See Monier c. Procureur général du Québec, 2023 QCCS 2111 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/jxqcq and Monier c. Procureur général du Québec, 2024 QCCA 80 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/k2dhm.

7. See my comments on a text from Duncan Kennedy during an interview with independent journalist Julie Lévesque, published on February 19, 2023: https://tribunaldelinfaux.com/2023/02/19/video-legitime-defense-3-formation-juridique-hierarchie-et-soumission-entrevue-avec-me-louis-olivier-fontaine/.

8. About the curfew and freedom of movement, see, for instance, Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales c. Pépin, 2024 QCCQ 299 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/k2p4n.

Featured image: The Édifice Ernest-Cormier is the courthouse for the Quebec Court of Appeal in Montreal (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

The world is facing two great threats today: the outbreak of WW3 and the Great Depression 2.0, much more serious than the one in 2007-2011 and similar to the market collapse of the 1930s. 

Both of these phenomena are interconnected because the ongoing series of local wars and the high probability of further ones in the Middle East and on the South China Sea seem to be methods of camouflaging the upcoming collapse of neoliberal global capitalism. 

In this situation, avoiding war becomes a matter of life and death, especially for the Central European nations, located in the natural crush zone between the West and the East. Any losses and destruction that would affect Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia or the Czech Republic in connection with the war with Russia are considered acceptable costs by the Anglo-Saxons. We may be the next victims of this war, and neither in Washington nor in London will anyone hesitate to send Polish or Romanian soldiers to die first in Ukraine, and then perhaps on the territories of our own countries.

NATO Is Already in Ukraine

NATO troops do not even have to enter Ukraine because they have already been there for a long time. 

The French and British presence on the Kyiv side is increasing from week to week, officially of course mainly for training and logistics purposes, but also for intelligence and we already know about the activity of NATO special forces, sappers, gendarmerie and even the police, including Polish one there.  Information on this subject is simply fed to the Western public in order to gradually accustom it to NATO’s increasing military involvement.  In this way, the full-scale entry into the war of countries such as Poland will seem simply a logical consequence of previously ongoing actions.  Unfortunately, in the current political situation, if such a decision is made, it is impossible to imagine avoiding Poland’s participation in the war with Russia, although over 90 percent of society opposes sending Polish troops to Ukraine. However, it is not the Poles who decide, but the American hegemon.

Fake Annexation Threat

Especially in Russia, Poland’s entry into the war is sometimes presented as an attempt to annex the territories that now constitute Western Ukraine. However it is necessary to distinguish the sentiments and hopes of Polish society from the policy of the Polish government. The authorities in Warsaw do not want to annex part of Ukraine, that is the truth and the Russian media needlessly delude themselves that it is otherwise. 

Of course, when nearly 1/3 of Poles have some historical, family connections with the former Eastern Borderlands (Kresy Wschodnie), including the lands currently occupied by Ukraine, it is difficult for us to forget that cities such as Lwów, Łuck, Stanisławów, Równe, Tarnopol have been  for centuries centres of Polish cultural and social life. 

The return of these areas to the Polish motherland would be an epoch-making event and a great national holiday, but the current rulers will not give Poles such gifts.  On the contrary, if Polish troops come to Ukraine, it will be to save the Kiev regime and former Polish lands… for Ukraine.

UkroPolin

Of course, if Polish troops enter Lwów, even as allies of President Zelensky and Mayor Sadovyi, it does not mean that we will leave quickly. A new geopolitical situation will be created, and this can always be saturated with new content. 

It may be the Polish-Ukrainian union, but whether it will be more Polish or more Ukrainian, we would see later on, and much would depend on the determination and commitment of the Poles themselves if the border dividing the eternally Polish lands truly disappears.  After all, millions of Ukrainians care more about going further to the West than on the lands and cities. And the vacuum should be filled in their place. Certainly, Poles would not manage our own former property in the East worse than oligarchs and Western capital do today.  Even if we had to do it in conditions as unfavourable as the Polish-Ukrainian union suggested to us.

The idea of a Polish-Ukrainian union, whatever it may be, appears from time to time, especially in circles closer to British policy towards Kiev. We can therefore assume that this is one of several possible scenarios predicted in London and Washington for Ukraine, depending on the course of events on the front and probably on the stability of the Zelensky’s regime. When it begins to falter and Poland will have to become another frontline state, then some new Polish-Ukrainian state entity would allow Ukraine to be drawn into NATO through the back door, and other countries belonging to the alliance would not be obliged to provide direct military assistance to this UkroPolin, as it is due because of the Art. 5 of the Treaty.

Who Is Our Real Enemy?

Such a scenario has many advantages for the West, but it would be very dangerous for Poland, which in one fell swoop would find itself in a state of actual war with Russia, and in addition would renounce its own sovereignty (although already limited by NATO and the EU) in favour of some undefined state entity with significant influence of Nazis and oligarchs. Instead of reaping any national benefits from the fall of the regime in Kiev, we would provide it with a direct influence on Poland’s internal politics, in addition to ultimately devastate our own economy, especially agriculture and transport.  

Yes, Poles definitely can and should strive to regain Polish property in the Eastern Borderlands, but without the unnecessary and harmful burden of the corrupt Kiev administration there and above all, without getting involved in a suicidal war with Russia.  The Russians are not enemies of Poles or any other Central European nation, but the real threats to us all are the warmongers, the Western military-industrial complex, as well as the Kiev Nazis and oligarchs. We must defend ourselves against them avoiding war at all costs.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Konrad Rękas is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

 

 

 

The COVID States Program demonstrated ~25% of Americans resisted COVID-19 vaccination. I am constantly being reminded by family, friends, and patients what a relief it was to know declining vaccination was the right medical decision. I wondered if there were any historical parallels.

The smallpox vaccine was variously deployed by doctors in the 19th century using lymphatic fluid from animals or from arm to arm of humans. It could hot have been sterilized from bacteria such as staphylococci, streptococci, tetanus, syphilis, or viruses such as hepatitis B. The dose of cowpox virions could not have been measured or controlled. So there were obvious safety concerns such as fatal iatrogenic infections and great debate over whether the procedure worked at all.

In 2010, Thomas Weber portrayed Alfred Russel Wallace in the context of the public sentiment rising against the smallpox immunization campaign in Britain:

“Alfred Russel Wallace, eminent naturalist and co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection, was a major participant in the antivaccination campaigns in late 19th-century England. Wallace combined social reformism and quantitative arguments to undermine the claims of pro-vaccinationists and had a major impact on the debate. A brief account of Wallace’s background, his role in the campaign, and a summary of his quantitative arguments leads to the conclusion that it is unwarranted to portray Victorian antivaccination campaigners in general as irrational and anti-science. Public health policy can benefit from history, but the proper context of the evidence used should always be kept in mind.”

 

 

I found this article interesting because:

1) Wallace was an eminent scientist,

2) he and his family were vaccinated,

3) his arguments were based on statistics as described in his work Vaccination Proved Useless and Dangerous published in 1889,

4) by the early 1900’s about 25% of the public was refusing smallpox vaccination,

5) Weber concludes it was wrong to portray Victorian antivaccination campaigners as “anti-science.”

 

 

Why is the 25% refusal rate the same for both the early unsafe smallpox vaccinations and COVID-19 genetic injections? Why has “anti-science” resurfaced as a term in the context of modern vaccine ideology? Weaponization of the term may give us a clue from vaccine-promoter Dr. Peter Hotez who had biodefense grants for COVID-19 vaccines in 2015-16.

 

 

A 2024 paper by Paul et al obviously calling out Hotez, indicates “anti-science” is a disparaging term used to discredit someone with an opposing view, essentially a device of propaganda. Hotez appears to be is using it on offense to defend against his vulnerabilities as a co-conspirator in the US-Chinese creation of SARS-CoV-2 and possibly against a scientific awakening to the risks of the routine childhood vaccine schedule.

 

Paul E, Brown GW, Ridde V, Sturmberg JP. Who is “anti-science”? Public Health Pract (Oxf). 2024 Mar 29;7:100493. doi: 10.1016/j.puhip.2024.100493. PMID: 38601178; PMCID: PMC11004618.

 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from the Public Domain

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

 

 

On May 5th, Orthodox Christians around the world celebrated Easter, the most important feast in Christianity. In Ukraine, the Orthodox Church has been officially persecuted since 2022, with several clergy and faithful people being arrested by the regime’s authorities due to alleged “ties with Russia”. While promoting persecution, however, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky uses religious rhetoric to try to garner popular support for his war efforts.

In his Easter message, Zelensky recorded a video at Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, making war propaganda with pseudo-religious rhetoric. According to Zelensky, Ukrainians are “God’s chosen people.” He described Kiev’s troops as “servants” of divine will against the Russians. In the same vein, Zelensky called on all Ukrainian Christians to unite against Moscow.

“The world sees it, God knows it (…) And we believe God has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder. So, with such an ally, life will definitely win over death,” he said.

Obviously, Zelensky’s statement was severely criticized by Orthodox Christians inside and outside Ukraine. In an official statement, the Russian Orthodox Church responded to Zelensky’s words by stating:

“The Lord is not a resident of Kiev Region for Zelensky to mobilize him and put him in the Ukrainian army. His statements do not merit any attention.”

Several other criticisms were made by Russian and foreign public figures, which shows that Zelensky failed to garner support with his hypocritical rhetoric.

The president’s unpopularity among religious people is increasing more and more, as his regime has intensified measures to persecute the Orthodox Church. Currently, there are dozens of criminal cases opened by the SBU, Kiev’s security service, against members of the Orthodox Church. 19 Ukrainian bishops had their citizenship canceled, in addition to dozens of clergymen being sanctioned or arrested.

Religious properties such as monasteries, churches and cathedrals have often been confiscated, vandalized and desacralized. There are several videos circulating on the internet showing sacred Ukrainian sites being used as nightclubs, with parties for neo-Nazi militants and mercenaries – which is seen as blasphemy by Orthodox Christians, being a clear provocation against the sentiments of the Ukrainian people.

Furthermore, there are cases in which properties stolen from the Orthodox Church are handed over to the so-called “Kiev Patriarchate,” an ultranationalist schismatic movement known for venerating Ukrainian “heroes” such as Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. The schismatics have been heavily supported by the government in their failed attempt to create a “religious alternative” for the Ukrainian people. The regime tries to convince ordinary people to stop attending their traditional churches and join the schismatic movement.

The reason for the persecution is the fact that the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church is linked to the Moscow Patriarchate. These ties do not have any political or military nature. In the Orthodox Church, canonical territories exist independently of the political situation. Borders between countries change constantly and the Church is under no obligation to limit its activities to the specific territory of a country. However, the Russophobia of the Ukrainian regime prevents any possibility of fraternal relations with Russia, which is why the Church has been seen as a criminal organization since the beginning of the special military operation.

Religious persecution in Ukraine has been denounced several times by the Russian Federation at the UN, but no resolution condemning Ukrainian crimes has been adopted. Having unrestricted support from Western countries, the Kiev regime has carte blanche to commit any crimes against civilians and innocent people, such as clergy, monks and believers. The absence of a formal condemnation against Ukraine for such practices is a sign of the failure of the UN, which is increasingly proving to be an organization incapable of protecting human rights and preventing conflicts.

Although unsuccessful, Zelensky’s attempt to gain support through religious rhetoric also indicates a certain level of fanaticizing. By saying that the Ukrainians are “God’s chosen” for the war against Russia, the neo-Nazi president is making it clear that the Kiev regime will continue to deepen its Russophobic ideology, even using pseudo-religious arguments to justify the war “until the last Ukrainian”. As unpopular as these ideas are, they serve to legitimize the government’s decisions and thus justify the conflict.

In the face of such signs, it seems increasingly clear that the only hope of Ukrainian religious people is Russian military victory. More than 80% of the Ukrainian population is Orthodox Christian and is not willing to abandon their faith to follow the neo-Nazi fanaticism proposed by the Kiev Junta. The end of the regime and its Russophobic madness is the only way to save millions of Ukrainian believers from persecution. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the Public Domain

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

May 7, 2024

Alan M. Garber 

Interim President

Harvard University

Dear President Garber,

I wish to respond to the letter that you sent out to all students, faculty, and staff concerning the encampment organized by students in Harvard Yard in protest against the genocide campaign being carried out in Gaza.

As your demands of the students far exceed the authority invested in you as the President of Harvard, and because you focused exclusively on the minor infractions of regulations by the protesters while ignoring the far more serious illegal actions being undertaken by the staff and faculty of Harvard University, the Harvard Corporation and its members, and the Board of Overseers and its members, I request humbly that we begin an open conversation about all of the unethical, illegal, and unconstitutional actions taking place at Harvard University and the Harvard Corporation.

I demand that you cease this dishonest effort to single out the sincere students who are trying to carry out their ethical responsibility as citizens by protesting against terrible acts of violence taking place in Gaza. Although the students, like many of us, may not fully understand the complexity of the issues involved, their commitment to the combination academic inquiry with moral action is to be praised and it has deep roots in the scholarly traditions from which Harvard derives its legitimacy.

Let us be honest with ourselves. Harvard University has taken enormous amounts of money, often in classified programs hidden from the public, and also in unclassified programs, from the military and intelligence of the United States, and from military and intelligence contractors, that involve activities that are not about national defense at all, but are clearly unethical and illegal. And yet, you are not demanding that those involved in these programs, or in the classified “anti-disinformation” operations run on campus by contractors using Homeland Security budgets, be stopped, or that those involved be dismissed from their jobs.

Moreover, Harvard faculty and staff have been intimately involved in covering up, in promoting false narratives about, and in justifying three major state crimes that have devastated our nation.

The first is the 9.11 incident, a blatant false flag attack on our citizens that was carried out by corrupt factions of the military and intelligence of the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and other players as an excuse to launch an endless war that has killed millions and to create extensive secret governance in the United States that has eviscerated the Constitution.

Harvard University refuses to even permit serious discussion of the 9.11 incident on campus, let alone to take action against Harvard faculty and staff who collaborated in this operation by promoting false science, distributing misleading narratives, and ridiculing those who insisted on accurate analysis.

The second is the use of the Federal Reserve to generate tens of trillions of dollars for private equity, multinational banks, and other financial institutions under the headings of “quantitative easing,” “COVID relief,” and “market stimulus.” This massive theft of money from the American people, literally the counterfeiting of money by private banks with the approval of the Department of the Treasury, was carried out in plain view of Harvard’s distinguished experts in economics and government policy.

Harvard University openly promoted false narratives about the United States economy, in its publications, in the Department of Economics and the Business School, and elsewhere, thereby whitewashing the situation, or blatantly misleading students and the public, about this monetary fraud that has destroyed our economy and created an unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

This academic dishonesty is the direct result of the presence of billionaires, many of whom made billions from this operation, on the board of the Harvard Corporation, as well as the decision of the previous Harvard President Professor Drew Faust to join the board of directors of Goldman Sachs in a blatant conflict of interest regarding the Havard University endowment.

The third example of Harvard’s complicity in state crimes can be found in the intimate collaboration of Harvard’s faculty, staff, and the board of the Harvard Corporation in the promotion of the COVID-19 military-intelligence-media-pharmaceutical operation to promote a bogus pandemic, to endorse vaccines that were designed to maim and kill, and to enforce marital law in the United States under the name of “lockdowns” in blatant violation of the Constitution, Federal Law, state law, and fundamental human rights.

To this date, Harvard University refuses to address the piles of evidence documenting this criminal conspiracy, one that has killed millions, and crippled tens of millions. Harvard University discourages, or suppresses outright, scientific investigations into this political and economic scheme for global domination by a handful of the super-rich.

In fact, Harvard University has not even admitted that there was anything wrong about the COVID 19 regulations that it heartlessly enforced, and states even today on its website, “We strongly recommend that all members of the Harvard community stay up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters if eligible.”

You yourself, President Garber, were directly involved in that operation when you served as provost, and as professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. You carried out dangerous, illegal, and unethical policies and promoted injurious and unscientific regulations at Harvard, and across the nation.

You state in your letter, “As an academic institution, we do not shy away from hard and important questions.” But, in fact, unlike the protesting students, you have shied away from any questions regarding criminal actions at Harvard of the most serious nature. You write that the demonstrations of students to demand real debate, “[do] not require, or justify, interfering with the educational environment and Harvard’s academic mission.” In reality, it has been the faculty, and the Harvard Corporation behind them, who have interfered grotesquely in Harvard’s academic mission, and not the students. 

You write that, “Our disagreements are most effectively addressed through candid, constructive dialogue, building not on disruption, but on facts and reason.” Yet you have promoted unscientific and dishonest narratives in the classes taught, and the publications issued, by Harvard University.

The collaborators in these great state crimes at Harvard are free to do what they like; the students who rightfully demand an end to the killing in Gaza are threatened with “involuntary leave,” a neologism, a dishonest and cowardly term, made up to the describe draconian punishments of students for engaging in legitimate political protest that will be enforced without due process.

The truth is that there already exist regulations to protect students, and to enforce regulations on campus. You are not empowered in any sense to make up new commands out of thin air.  

I also want to note the dishonesty of your statement: “Safety concerns…have required us to sharply limit access to Harvard Yard.”

I tried to enter Harvard Yard recently and I was turned away by a security guard (not Harvard Police) who refused to explain to me the reason why I could not enter the gate. The restriction on access to the campus was not a result of a concern for security, but rather born of a desire to hide from the nation the clear indignation at Israeli and American policy expressed by a large number of students. My conversations with friends at Harvard made it clear that your claim that the protesters were “the voices of a few” is untrue.

We are prepared to present concrete evidence that a significant part of the staff and faculty of Harvard University, yourself included, have actively collaborated in the promotion of, and the defense of, state crimes, and that you have supported and encouraged the persecution of those who have opposed these state crimes.

Those actions by members of the Harvard staff, the Harvard Corporation members, and Harvard faculty dwarf any infractions of university regulations that students protesting the Gaza genocide may been guilty of. We welcome an honest discussion with you the faculty of Harvard University, and the Harvard Corporation concerning Harvard’s role in abetting these state crimes.

I await your kind response.

Most respectfully,

Emanuel Pastreich

Ph.D., East Asian Languages and Civilizations, 1998

Independent Candidate for President

(Mailed on May 7, 2024)

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Harvard University Widener Library [Photo by Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0]

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

The International Criminal Court is a dusty jewel, a creation of heat, tension and manufacture in the international community.  Various elements have gone into its creation.  As with any international institution which draws its legitimacy from nation states and the like, its detractors are many, the invective against it frequent.  Some 124 countries have signed the Rome Charter of 1998 that gives the body its authority and jurisdictional force, but no one is foolish enough to think that its reach can ever be anything but tempered by political consideration and self-interest.

Be it issuing a problematic arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, attempting to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan, or busying itself with some nasty examples of African despotism, the scope of the body is potentially extensive.  At present, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan is sniffing out the prospect of issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials in the context of the war in Gaza. The sniff, however, has come with a rebuking blast from Israel, joined by various politicians in the United States champing at the bit to take a swipe at the body.

Such attacks have only been emboldened by the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, an instrument from 2002 that prohibits federal, state and local governments from furnishing the ICC with assistance in any way while authorising the US president “to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release” of any “US person” or “allied persons” detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request,” of the ICC.

In what is expedient and legally anomalous, Washington has chosen not only to avoid signing the Rome Statute but reject ICC jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories.  The ICC begs to differ, noting the acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction on the part of “the Government of Palestine” and its accession to the Rome Statute in January 2015.

In late October 2023, Israel announced that it would not be permitting Khan to enter Israel, signalling its intention to frustrate, as far as possible, his investigative functions. In April this year, Axios revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had requested US President Joe Biden to prevent the ICC from issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials.  A broader lobbying effort of the US Congress by the Netanyahu government is also taking place.

On May 1, a bipartisan group of US senators held a virtual meeting with members of seniority from the ICC, worried about the prospect that arrest warrants for top Israel might issue from the prosecutorial pipeline.  In a threatening letter to Khan from a dozen Republican senators led by Tom Cotton, the promise for retaliation was unequivocal:

“Target Israel, and we will target you.” 

Issuing such warrants would be “illegitimate and lack legal basis, and, if carried out, will result in severe actions against you and your institution.”  They would “not only be a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”

This was hardly novel and was unlikely to have phased Khan or his staff.  In June 2020, President Donald Trump implemented an executive order directed at the ICC.  The order authorised the blocking of assets and imposed family entry bans into the US in response to the court’s efforts to investigate the alleged commission of war crimes in Afghanistan by US personnel.  In September that year, pursuant to the executive order, targeted sanctions were imposed on then ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and senior prosecution official Phakiso Mochochoko.

Since 2021, the ICC has been vested in examining alleged war crimes committed by both the Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian militants stretching back to the 2014 Israel-Hamas war.

“Upon the commencement of my mandate in June 2021,” Khan states, “I put in place for the first time a dedicated team to advance the investigation in relation to the Situation in the State of Palestine.” 

Its mission is to collect, preserve and analyse “information and communications from key stakeholders in relation to relevant incidents.”

In November 2023, the office of the prosecutor received a referral from South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti to investigate “the Situation in the State of Palestine.”  The referral requests the prosecutor “to vigorously investigate crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court allegedly committed” on various grounds, including, among others, the unlawful appropriation and destruction of private and public properties, the forcible transfer of Palestinians, the unlawful transfer of Israel’s population into Occupied Palestinian Territory and a discriminatory system amounting to apartheid.

The spectacularly brutal Israeli campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks by Hamas also enlivened interest in using the ICC’s jurisdiction to investigate allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity and relevant war crimes.  But the notable catch, and bound to be threatening to its intended targets, was the request that culprits be found, and perpetrators be outed and held accountable.  South Africa, more specifically, requested that the prosecutor “investigate the Situation for the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with the commission of such crimes.”

On May 3, officials from the ICC openly reproached efforts to tamper and modify any opinions on the part of the body regarding its activities.  The ICC welcomed, according to Khan, “open communication” with government officials and non-governmental entities, and would only engage in discussions so long as they were “consistent with its mandate under the Rome Statute to act independently and impartially”.

As he continued to explain in his statement, Khan argued

“That independence and impartiality are undermined … when individuals threaten to retaliate … should the office, in fulfilment of its mandate, make decisions about investigations or cases falling within its jurisdiction”.  He demanded that “all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials cease immediately.”

Netanyahu had previously promised that, under his leadership, “Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.”  He regarded any “threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state” as “outrageous.”  Going heavy on the forces of light battling those of darkness – a favourite theme of his – the Israeli PM went on to claim that such actions “would set a dangerous precedent that threatens the soldiers and officials of all democracies fighting savage terrorism and wanton aggression”.

Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.

The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it.
Israel…

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 26, 2024

Far from threatening democracies of whatever flavour, the actions of the ICC can serve the opposite purpose, holding individuals in high office accountable for egregious crimes in international law.  In doing so, it can contribute, in no small part, to efforts in defeating impunity and rebutting brutal and often callous assertions of self-defence.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected] 

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Humanitarian crises deserve the most urgent attention. While rushing all possible help and mobilizing adequate resources must be the most immediate priority, ultimately the aim must be to minimize the possibilities of humanitarian crisis erupting time and again in various parts of the world. For this it is important to identify the right causes and to strive to remove or reduce these as much as possible.

If we look at most recent documents on humanitarian and extreme hunger situations in the world, these generally mention these factors the most—conflicts, climate change, adverse weather, disasters, disease outbreak etc. Generally various forms of injustice-historic and present—are not mentioned, even though these may well be the most important root cause, and those responsible for these injustices are not identified.

The maximum number of humanitarian crisis situations have been reported in recent years from the continent of Africa. However there were times when communities of African people were able to meet their food and other basic needs in much more secure and sustainable ways, with safe storages existing for bad weather years. Over vast areas communities of small farmers and pastoral people had learnt to exist in harmony, with nomadic pastorals taking herds of cattle,  goats and other animals to seasonal pastures, making the best and most sustainable use of existing resource constraints, preventing existing natural resource base from coming under too much pressure.

Image: Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston, British Province of South Carolina, in 1769 (From the Public Domain)

This changed with the advent of colonial plunder and loot. Its worst manifestation was the slave trade.

The Atlantic slave trade lasted for 400 years, taking away 15 million Africans to the Americas under conditions so terrible that about 40% of the captives died on route and huge numbers died within a few years of reaching the destination. Another large number of able-bodied African men were forcibly taken away by colonial predators, or their local collaborators, to operate their mines and plantations, depriving sustainable farming of manpower, increasing the burden on women. To make way for colonial projects, there was land grab and the traditional routes followed by pastorals were disrupted. 

At the same time, as more taxes were imposed, small farmer communities came under increasing pressure to grow cash crops for sale in place of staple foods, further endangering food security. To pay taxes the pastorals had to go on increasing herd size beyond sustainability needs, further increasing pressure on land and natural resources. 

Colonial wars and land grabs led to the arbitrary drawing up of new land boundaries which further disrupted pastoral routes. Communities which had existed in harmony with each other were drawn into conflicts as the existing sustenance systems broke down, while hostilities on narrow ethnic and other grounds were also instigated by colonial rulers and predators.

As more countries tried to gain freedom, in some countries colonial violence was stepped up greatly, coming on top of world war battles. This brought in more destructive weapons and people trained in using them. As more countries started gaining freedom, former colonial masters hastened to ensure that elites friendly to their interests remained in power. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, the immensely popular leader Patrice Lumumba committed to a path of justice and equality was assassinated by a joint conspiracy of Belgium and the USA (probably Britain as well), paving the way for the rule of dictator Mobutu’s long, disastrous regime of plunder and oppression. 

As such dictators and other elites allowed the richest countries to plunder their country’s resources while importing luxuries for their use, their countries became heavily indebted, leading to stringent conditions being imposed which further impoverished the poor. At times they had to continue exporting cash crops while people at home died of hunger due to lack of staple foods. When this was widely condemned, new western aided plan for increasing food production emerged which too were linked to promotion of agribusiness interests and the expensive, dependence increasing technology promoted by them led to more indebtedness of farmers.

Policies of supporting dictators and collaborating elites who would perpetuate neo-colonialism were by now means confined to African countries. Several elites notorious for their cruel exploitation of their own people became much more powerful due to support from big powers. In Latin America when one such dictator was being supported by the USA and there was criticism of this by someone who called the dictator the “son of a bi…” the response of a US leader was— “he may be the son of a bi.. but he is our son of a bi…”

In fact the USA and other big powers even provided military help to some of these dictators and elites and even proxy wars were started by big powers promoting rival sides. A clever dictator like Mobutu could manage to get the support of both the USA and China.

In the middle of all this, it is the common people, particularly the small famers and pastoral communities who suffered the most and their resilience was harmed the most when it needed to be strengthened to cope with climate change.

It is the many sided injustices suffered by people which are responsible the most for the humanitarian crises being suffered by so many countries but when this is not even acknowledged in many reviews of these crisis situations, how can we expect that strategies based on resisting and reducing such injustices can evolve? This is a basic problem of the existing humanitarian crisis response which must be corrected.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.            

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Gut health plays a crucial role in nutrient absorption, hormone balance, energy levels, mood, and inflammation

A healthy gut typically involves regular bowel movements (1-3 times a day), minimal skin issues, and the ability to enjoy a variety of foods without discomfort

Your gut lining regenerates every three days, and your gut microbiome can change daily based on diet, suggesting that lengthy gut healing protocols are unnecessary

Hypothyroidism can reduce stomach acid and other digestive juices, leading to bloating, constipation, and food allergies due to its effect on gut motility and enzyme production

Maintaining a good energetic state is crucial for gut health, as systemic energy production influences digestive processes and microbial balance in the gut

*

Gut health is incredibly important for our overall health and the state of our gut plays a huge role in how we respond to foods and the environment, how we absorb nutrients, hormone health, our energy and mood, systemic inflammation, and so much more.

But instead of finding the root cause of gut issues, symptoms are commonly addressed with band-aid treatments.

If you have heartburn, you are prescribed an antacid (which further lowers your stomach acid levels). If you have IBS this is treated with fiber, laxatives and sometimes an antidepressant. If you have food sensitivities, you are told to remove this food … but none of these Band-Aids fix the root cause of the issue.

We have to understand why the gut got to where it is right now — what lifestyle and dietary choices led us to the current state.

But What Even Is Good Gut Health?

Given that we are all in different environments, have different pasts, eat different foods, and have different day to day activities — there is no one single way to define a ‘good’ gut health. But in general, with a properly functioning digestive system you should have …

• Daily poops (at least 1 time a day, ideally 2-3), solid structure, easy to pass. The more we can poop, the better we will feel! You should be pooping at least 1X a day.
• Minimal skin or acne issues.
• Relief from bloating or stomach discomfort after meals.
• Enjoy a wide range of food, within reason, without experiencing severe issues. You shouldn’t have to extremely restrict your food in the long run. Having a lot of food intolerances is a sign of a sluggish digestive system.

Just like every system in the body, digestion is energy dependent.

“Systemic metabolic problems make local problems worse” ~ Dr. Ray Peat

Thyroid health and energy metabolism are intimately involved since the thyroid is the metabolic regulator. In hypothyroidism there is less stomach acid and other digestive juices, so gas, slow transit time, food allergies, bloating and constipation are common.

But the good news: The lining of the gut is replaced every THREE DAYS!¹ And on top of that, your gut microbiome can change within a single day based on what you eat.²

Meaning, long gut healing protocols don’t make ANY sense. This doesn’t mean you will fix your gut overnight — just sharing to motivate and encourage you that your gut can and will heal. It won’t take 1 day, but it also shouldn’t take years.

If you are still trying to fix your gut several months or years later, the approach you are taking may not be working.

How Do You Fix Gut Health?

For most individuals, I believe in a rather stand-offish approach for the gut as I believe that we should not interfere with Mother Nature. The microbiome is incredibly complex, and rather than trying to micro manipulate, I truly believe in giving her the tools and resources, and letting her do her thing.

Pooping 1-3 times a day, and giving the digestive system adequate energy and nutrients — and she will fix herself. But you have to be in a good energetic state for this to happen. There are now thousands of studies in the literature documenting the connection between digestive health and thyroid health.³

And while many of these studies are for ‘clinical’ hypothyroidism, subclinical hypothyroidism will still manifest as some sort of digestive issue, maybe not as severe, since any down regulation in systemic energy production will negatively impact digestion, a very energy intensive process.

Let’s analyze examples of how energy production and thyroid health are intimately connected to gut health:

Your energetic state impacts your internal environment, and your internal environment impacts how your body (and gut) functions. The composition of the gut microbiome is extremely complex.

And while it is near impossible to define what the ideal microbiome should look like (resident microbes are highly diverse, vary between individuals, and change with diet), recent evidence supports that colonic bacteria should be dominated by obligate anaerobic bacteria that are able to benefit us by breaking down non-usable fibers with lower levels of facultative organisms since these facultative anaerobic bacteria do not specialize in consuming fiber and might even interfere with host nutrition.¹⁸ (Plus, they produce really problematic endotoxins that wreak havoc in the body!)

Now, we will always have some amount of both obligate and facultative species, but balanced gut microbiomes are characterized by the dominance of obligate organisms, while an expansion of facultative organisms is a common marker of gut dysbiosis.

We want more obligate anaerobic bacteria, but these beneficial species cannot survive in high oxygen environments. (While facultative anaerobes, on the other hand, grow well in the presence of oxygen.)

So maintaining a LOW oxygen environment and thus a HIGH CO₂ environment in our gut helps keep the microbiome in check. And you cannot maintain a high CO₂ level without a high metabolic rate and good energy production. (Which can be assessed by body temperature measurements.)

The metabolism of the cells that line your gut, meaning how they make energy, changes the internal environment of the gut, thus impacting the types of bacteria that can thrive.

 

“During gut homeostasis (left), b-oxidation of microbiota-derived butyrate causes epithelial hypoxia, which maintains anaerobiasis in the lumen of the large bowel. In turn, luminal anaerobiasis drives a dominance of obligate anaerobic bacteria within the gut microbiota. During gut dysbiosis (right), surface colonocytes obtain energy by anaerobic glycolysis, which leads to increased epithelial oxygenation. This epithelial dysfunction disrupts anaerobiasis in the lumen, thereby driving an expansion of facultative anaerobic Proteobacteria by aerobic respiration. The color scale shown at the bottom (O₂ gradient) indicates oxygen availability.” Image from COMICR Volume 39, October 2017, Pages 1-6.

 

These cells have two options for energy production: beta oxidation or glycolysis. Ideally, they perform oxidative phosphorylation through beta oxidation of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) — that can come from the food we eat like butter, or from obligate anaerobes (the types of bacteria we want in our gut that can only survive in low oxygen environments) breaking down fiber, or both.

Butyrate oxidation consumes high amounts of oxygen, which then maintains a low oxygen environment inside the colon.

Glycolysis, on the other hand, is relied on more when someone is in a LOW ENERGY state. Glycolysis doesn’t use up nearly as much oxygen, thus leading to a high oxygen state inside the gut. This type of high oxygen environment allows facultative anaerobes and pathogens to take over.

Inflammatory signals and low levels of systemic energy production can shift the colonocyte metabolism towards anaerobic glycolysis¹⁹ thereby lowering oxygen consumption and lowering ATP generation, which ultimately leads to a shift in the microbial community from obligate to facultative anaerobic bacteria due to a higher oxygen environment.^20,21 Enter dysbiosis.

“The energy metabolism of colonic epithelial cells functions as a control switch of the gut microbiota, mediating shifts between homeostatic and dysbiotic communities.”

The left side of the image is what we want to happen, where there is a low oxygen environment. The epithelial cells perform beta oxidation which uses up a lot of oxygen and produces a lot of ATP. On the right, the gut lining cells instead perform glycolysis, less oxygen is used so the inside of the gut has higher oxygen levels, and creates an ideal environment for facultative bacteria to thrive, inducing dysbiosis.

Plus, excessive glycolysis means less energy is produced, so the gut lining cells will have less energy to maintain structure and function.

 

A low oxygen environment inside the colon ensures the colonic microbiota is dominated by obligate anaerobic bacteria, which provide benefits to us by converting fiber and food waste into short chain fatty acids, the food source for our gut lining cells. Higher oxygen levels inside the colon increases the population of facultative anaerobic bacteria. Image from SCIENCE Volume 357, 11 Aug 2017, Issue 6351.

 

So instead of trying to micro manipulate the microbiome, the body can find the right balance of microbes when given the right environment and sufficient energy. Even if you temporarily ‘fix’ your gut with a supplement or short-term restriction — if you don’t fix the underlying low energetic state that led to the high oxygen gut state to begin with — there is a high chance you will end up back to where you started.

I share all of this to again remind you that fixing how the body produces energy at the systemic level will improve gut health. Understanding systemic energy production is also FREEING — as there is nothing wrong with you! You are just slightly out of balance.

Every part of the digestive process requires cellular energy, so every part of digestive function can be impacted with low energy production.

So, subclinical or clinical hypothyroidism, and thus hindered energy production, is one of, if not the root cause of most digestive issues. And you don’t have to go to extremes to fix your gut health (in fact, extremes can often lead to long-term gut health problems).

Instead, the focus should always be on improving metabolic rate and systemic function. When the body is working as intended, gut health will improve!

Transform Your Health — One Step at a Time

Ashley and her sister Sarah have put together a truly groundbreaking step-by-step course called “Rooted in Resilience.” They have compiled what clearly is the best application of Dr. Ray Peat’s work on Bioenergetic Medicine that I have ever seen.

It is so good that I am using the core of their program to teach the many Health Coaches that I am in the process of training for the new Mercola Health Clinics I am opening this fall. It took these women working nearly full-time on this project for a year to create it.

This has to be one of the absolute best values for health education I have ever seen. If you want to understand why you struggle with health problems and then have a clear program on how to reverse those challenges, then this is the course for you.

It is precisely the type of program I wish I would have had access to when I got out of medical school. I fumbled around for decades before I reached the conclusion they discuss in the course and share with you so you can restore your cellular energy production and recover your health.

Learn more about Rooted in Resilience here.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Ashley Armstrong is the cofounder of Angel Acres Egg Co., which specializes in low-PUFA (polyunsaturated fat) eggs that are shipped to all 50 states (join waitlist here), and Nourish Cooperative, which ships low-PUFA pork, beef, cheese, A2 dairy and traditional sourdough to all 50 states. Waitlists will reopen shortly.

Notes

¹ Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology 12 November 2020 Sec. Stem Cell Research

² Science Translational Medicine 2009 Nov 11;1(6):6ra14

³ World Journal Gastroenterol 2009 Jun 21; 15(23): 2834–2838

⁴ Nigerian Journal of Physiological Science 2015 Dec 20;30(1-2):59-64

⁵ The Journal of Endocrinology 1996 Dec;151(3):431-7

⁶ Molecular Endocrinology 2004 Aug;18(8):1941-62

⁷ Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery 2001 Jan-Feb;5(1):49-55

⁸ Indian Journal Endocrinology Metab. 2014 May-Jun; 18(3): 307–309

^9, 11 Gastroenterology Research and Practice 2009; 2009: 529802

¹⁰ Israel Journal of Medical Sciences 1997 Mar;33(3):198-203

¹² Neuropeptides 1996 Jun;30(3):237-47

¹³ Handbook of Clinical Neurology 86:343-55 DOI: 10.1016/S0072-9752(07)86017-9

¹⁴ Acta Endocrinologica (Copenh) 1980 Nov;95(3):341-9. doi: 10.1530/acta.0.0950341

¹⁵ QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, Volume 95, Issue 9, September 2002

¹⁶ Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism 2019 Aug;30(8):479-490. doi: 10.1016/j.tem.2019.05.008

¹⁷ Nutrients 2020 Jun; 12(6): 1769

^18, 20 Science 2018 Nov 30; 362(6418): eaat9076. doi: 10.1126/science.aat9076

¹⁹ Cell Host Microbe 2018 Jan 10;23(1):54-64.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.chom.2017.11.006. Epub 2017 Dec 21

²¹ Science 2017 Aug 11; 357(6351): 570–575. doi: 10.1126/science.aam9949

Featured image: Darryl Leja, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health (Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

On day 209 (May 3, 2024) of this atrocious Gaza killing, cruelties are reaching a new low.

It cannot even be called a war because the Palestinians are not armed and the Zionist fighting is not really against Hamas, but against the civilian population, predominantly women and children.

Just to remind people, Hamas was created by Israel in 1987 as a “terror” organization during the first Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. A “false flag” – one of many Zionist-Israeli false flags – allowing Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) a violent crackdown on Palestine’s uprising for their Right.

The October 7 Hamas “attack” on Israel was planned by the Netanyahu government, the US and the UK at least five years ahead. Knowing Israel’s security obsession, especially along the Gaza border since 2008, it is ridiculous to believe that it was a “surprise attack”, as our corrupted Western mainstream media still try to indoctrinate the “innocent” Western people.

According to a recent Israel-Palestine news analysis by “If Americans Knew” (IAK), Israel cruelty reaches a new low – if that is even possible.

IAK reports that Zionist Israel is now booby-trapping food. A teenage Palestinian boy is the latest to be severely wounded while opening “booby-trapped food”, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Israel snipes at aid-seekers, as they did before, killing hundreds; Israel is withholding bodies of Palestinians, who died in inhumane prison conditions, threatens with the support of  Washington’s the Palestinian Authority (PA) over possible International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants of PM Netanyahu, his War Minister and other high-ranking Israeli.

There is no language to adequately express disgust for a country – not really a legitimate country – for luring and trapping Palestinians driven to famine by very Israel, into food loaded with explosives. See this for more details.

*

Recently, Turkish authorities cracked down on an Israeli organ trafficking network in Adana, Southern Turkey. Bloomberg already in 2011 described Israel as having been for long at the center of what Bloomberg described as a “sprawling global black market in organs where brokers use deception, violence, and coercion to buy kidneys from impoverished people, mainly in underdeveloped countries, and then sell them to critically ill patients in more-affluent nations.”

More recently during this massacring of the Gazan population, hundreds of Palestinian bodies were found with missing organs and skinned, many of them in mass graves. See this for more details.

*

Dr. Pascal André, a French emergency doctor returning from Gaza, speaks to ‘TRT Français’ about the genocidal intent and terrorism of the State of Israel towards civilians in Gaza. TRT is the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation.

This is a brief (3-min) video clip – in French – of Dr. André’s interview with TRT, followed by an English transcript of the interview.

English transcript of the interview

“More children and women have died in Gaza in 5 months than in 2 years in Ukraine. So that’s the situation on the ground, with injuries that are absolutely mind-boggling.  We’ve joined teams there who have been on rotation since January 25.

Many of them have died, because in Gaza, nurses are shot at, ambulances are shot at, ambulances, hospitals.

As you know, we can truly say that the terms imposed by the International Court of Justice on January 26 have not been respected.

The genocidal intent is well confirmed, at least as far as we’ve been able to ascertain. Just imagine, people like you and me being bombed with no place to hide, it’s a massacre.

Colleagues who specialize in medicine, who know war medicine, tell us, we’ve never seen a conflict like this, where people have no way out. It’s the first time.

There were 25,000 people all around the European hospital. All corridors were as saturated as a metro, to the point where treatment conditions, treatment and access to care were unbearable. The terror is constant.

The regime of terror is really constant, and one can really wonder what the word terrorist means today, and what a state’s terrorist action means towards an unarmed civilian population. It’s unbearable.

It took us 3 weeks to separate ourselves from this noise. They continue to live with it, and when it’s not the drones, of course, it’s the bombings.

When the carers there (in Gaza) tell us to go home, because if we’ve been living like this for 78 years, it’s because you Europeans and Americans are pretending to support a situation that’s an application of international law.

Go home to make people realize that we are like them; that we are not animals, that we are human beings.

We dare to discuss with people who do not think like we do, who have no other narrative than the one that has been distilled for months and months by a power that is a colonial power and that also controls the media.

It’s time for this to stop, immediately.

It’s a nursing speech. It’s about taking care of humanity.

I can tell you everything I’ve seen as an infectiologist and an emergency doctor, but in two words, I’d say it’s infectious and it’s urgent.

The other day I treated a 12-year-old child with a shrapnel wound at least 15 cm deep in the skull. One had just died.

I had taken in three dead children in the previous half-hour. I had to spend half an hour looking for anesthetic and pliers, and I spent almost three quarters of an hour to an hour doing stiches that I could have done in a quarter of an hour, because the equipment was so faulty.

Help is just a few kilometers away. It’s crammed into trucks that carry rotten foodstuffs.

The medicines are there, while the patients who need them are a few hundred meters or a few kilometers away.

There’s no point in communicating, no point in sending by air, no point in sending by sea, when everything is there, and Israel and the United States are simply preventing entry into Gaza.

Because I’m white, because I have a Christian first name, my Arab colleagues who are doctors like me, often far more competent than I am, tell me to speak up for us. You will be heard.

What kind of democracy is this?  Where are liberty, equality and fraternity?”

*

For so much cruelty, atrocious killing of unarmed people – reason has not yet found a vocabulary to aptly describe the evil and horror carried out by Zionist Washington, UK and ultimately Zionist Israel.

As already announced, next may be Netanyahu’s final attack on Rafah where close to a million or more Palestinian refugees are crowded into concentration camp-like conditions at the border to Egyptian Sinai. On the other side of the “locked gate”, Egypt has already built new concentration camps, tent cities to accommodate some of those Palestinians that manage to escape the next – and possibly final – Netanyahu attack. It may just be prolonged agony.

*

And this may be the ultimate “hammer” of the United States attempting to put the final nail into the coffin for Palestine: The Biden administration will bring some Palestinian refugees to the United States to contribute to the US economy, and where they could eventually live a life in peace and harmony.

No concern for the Palestinians, not just wishes, but Right to their own country – and contributing to their own homeland, Palestine’s, economy. Instead, the US and Israel are semi-clandestinely building a huge port, just inside Gaza, where Palestine stolen trillion-plus cubic feet of gas (hundreds of billions-worth of dollars) will be processed and shipped to destinations around the globe.

The construction of the port is advancing rapidly and will be protected by some 1,000 American armed servicemen. See this for more details.

May Palestine LIVE!

Live PALESTINE!

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world, including about 4 years in Palestine. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020). 

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image: A Red Crescent worker carries a child to the hospital after a bombing in Deir al-Balah, December.Credit: Palestine Red Crescent Society

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Canadian civil society organizations across multiple sectors are escalating their push to end Canada’s trade in military and security technology with Israel. In a joint statement issued today for an “Arms Embargo Now,” Palestinian associations, labour unions, human rights organizations, and community groups representing more than 2 million people across Canada are calling on the Canadian government to utilize new and powerful tools to definitively end military trade with Israel, including immediately implementing an official arms embargo using Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act. 

The organizations note that while Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly has verbally committed to pausing approvals of future arms export permits to Israel, this is insufficient to address the problem of Canada’s complicity in Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Nor does Canada’s half-hearted approach to arms exports meet its legal obligations to protect Palestinians from genocide or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.

For example, on April 29, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) officials confirmed to the Senate Defence Committee that GAC continues to allow further transfers of arms to Israel under already authorized export permits dating up to January 8, 2024. Therefore, the #ArmsEmbargoNow statement calls on the Foreign Affairs Minister to utilize the Special Economic Measures Act to enforce immediate sanction on the two-way military trade between Israel and Canada. Canada must prevent further weapons and military equipment from leaving or reaching Israel.

Canadian companies produce and export vital parts of the fighter jets, warships, drones, and attack helicopters that are decimating Gaza right now. At the same time as military exports to Israel continue, Canada continues to sign new contracts to purchase Israeli weaponry for the Canadian military, including missiles by Israeli state-owned weapons company Rafael advertised as battle-tested in Gaza. By continuing to arm, fund, and collaborate with the Israeli military, Canada is directly complicit in and profiting from the slaughter of over 14,000 Palestinian children in Gaza.

The #ArmsEmbargoNow statement for a comprehensive two-way arms embargo on Israel was initiated by organizations including the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), the Palestine Solidarity Network, World BEYOND War, Labour 4 Palestine, and Labour Against the Arms Trade. It has been endorsed by 26 organizations including unions such as the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Public Service Alliance of Canada, National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), Centre international de solidarité ouvrière, and Canadian Association of Professional Employees; and a wide range of human rights and advocacy organizations including the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council (CMPAC), Indigenous Climate Action, the Council of Canadians, and many more.

“As a result of the persistent organizing of activists across the country, the Canadian government has been forced to pause some arms exports to Israel. However, Canada has refused to halt many aspects of its military trade, and therefore remains deeply complicit in Israel’s genocide. We refuse to let Canada get away with doing less than the bare minimum,” said Shatha Mahmoud of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

“Workers do not want to be complicit in Israel’s war crimes and possible genocide in Gaza. We recognize that ending Canadian arms exports to Israel may impact some workers in the arms and technology industries, which is why the government must work with their labour unions to plan for a just transition,” said Anne-Marie Roy, Labour for Palestine.

“The Canadian government needs to act decisively to save Palestinian lives and that begins with cutting off the Canada-Israel arms trade. Frankly ending the flow of weapons to and from Israel is the bare minimum Canada should be doing right now, and failure to take even this action makes a mockery of the government’s stated commitment to ending the violence in Gaza,” said Rachel Small, Canada Organizer with World BEYOND War.

“Minister Joly has promised Parliament to stop arms exports to Israel, but her actions so far have left many aspects of Canada-Israel military trade untouched. We cannot tolerate loopholes and half-measures during a genocide. Canada must impose sanctions on Israel using the Special Economic Measures Act to stop all dealings of military goods and technology with Israel, period,” said Alex Paterson, Senior Director, Parliamentary Affairs for CJPME.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image: Nur Dogan

No meio da paranóia anti-Rússia na Europa, alguns líderes querem que a UE se militarize. Recentemente, uma autoridade polaca sugeriu a criação de uma “brigada” para a Europa, capaz de responder rapidamente em situações de risco militar. Considerando o elevado nível de russofobia no continente europeu, este tipo de medida certamente prejudicaria ainda mais a arquitetura de segurança regional.

As palavras foram proferidas pelo Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros da Polônia, Radoslaw Sikorski. Segundo ele, este tipo de brigada especial seria vital para que a Europa conseguisse resultados militares satisfatórios, independentemente de haver ou não envolvimento americano na mobilização militar. Sikorski acredita que a Europa está fortemente ameaçada pelos movimentos recentes em regiões como os Balcãs e o Norte de África, razão pela qual a criação da sua própria força militar deve ser uma prioridade.

“Sou a favor de uma brigada com capacidade de rápida reação na UE, para que não tenhamos de recorrer aos recursos dos EUA para todas as emergências na nossa periferia, como alguma questão de ordem inferior nos Balcãs ou no Norte de África, ” ele disse.

Esta “brigada especial” proposta por Sikorski supostamente permitiria aos europeus agir militarmente de forma soberana, sem autorização americana. O objetivo central do projeto parece ser garantir os meios para os países europeus agirem rapidamente em caso de ataque estrangeiro, o que revela que os países da UE têm medo de uma possível indiferença americana num cenário de guerra. Na prática, a desconfiança em relação aos EUA está a crescer entre os europeus.

O projeto de uma brigada europeia não é algo novo. Este é um dos temas mais discutidos pelos estrategistas europeus. O ceticismo em relação à amizade dos EUA tem vindo a crescer nos últimos anos, levando os políticos locais a propor a criação de programas militares extra-OTAN. No final, os europeus temem que a aliança liderada pelos EUA não seja capaz de resolver os seus problemas se houver uma emergência.

O próprio presidente francês, Emmanuel Macron, que é atualmente uma das figuras públicas que mais incentivam o envolvimento direto da OTAN na Ucrânia, afirmou em diversas ocasiões que a criação de um exército europeu é necessária para que o bloco alcance a sua autonomia regional, libertando-se da dependência de Washington.

Em teoria, a ideia de criar unidades militares europeias parece realmente ir contra os interesses americanos. Para Washington, os países europeus devem manter níveis baixos e controlados de desenvolvimento militar, não saindo assim do “guarda-chuva de defesa” da OTAN. A dependência militar é um fator chave para os europeus permanecerem subservientes aos EUA, razão pela qual muitos dissidentes políticos na Europa tendem a apoiar qualquer medida de militarização.

Contudo, o simples fato de criar unidades militares não é suficiente para garantir a autonomia europeia. Se houver uma forte subserviência aos EUA em temas como cultura e política, um possível “exército europeu” apenas funcionaria para servir os interesses americanos de uma forma mais “rápida e eficiente”. Isto torna-se particularmente preocupante quando se analisa o atual caso russo. Vários países europeus são absolutamente fanáticos pelo ódio russofóbico, sendo mesmo praticadas livremente medidas de apartheid étnico em alguns estados da UE e da OTAN.

Uma possível “brigada” europeia seria certamente controlada por oficiais anti-russos, dispostos a usar rapidamente o poder militar contra Moscou para “reagir” a um possível “risco”. Um exército europeu fanático pela russofobia teria consequências graves para a arquitecura de segurança, bem como daria liberdade aos tomadores de decisões europeus para se envolverem em conflitos reais com a Federação Russa, mesmo sem a aprovação dos EUA. Obviamente, não há interesse por parte de Moscou em ir à guerra, pois todas estas “ameaças russas” são apenas propaganda ocidental, mas o medo irracional dos europeus é capaz de levar o continente a uma verdadeira catástrofe devido a decisões erradas.

É importante sublinhar que a Polônia junta-se agora à França na exigência de um exército europeu. Embora Paris esteja a planejar enviar tropas para a Ucrânia, o governo polaco é amplamente conhecido pela sua postura agressiva anti-russa, e há até expectativas de uma possível invasão polaca da Ucrânia num futuro próximo para recuperar territórios étnicos polacos. Processos como o avanço da russofobia e a reabilitação do nazismo estão extremamente avançados na sociedade polaca, razão pela qual a militarização do continente impulsionada por Varsóvia deve ser vista como um perigo.

Antes de iniciar um processo de militarização, a UE deve alcançar a soberania e a independência dos EUA.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês : Poland encourages EU’s militarizationi, InfoBrics, 3 de Maio de 2024

Imagem : InfoBrics

*

Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

Madkind vs. Mankind. A Race Against Time. Madkind’s Digitalization, A.I. Momentum, Economic Chaos and More…

By Julian Rose, May 06, 2024

‘The Great Reset’ is the appropriately named most recent clock setting event initiated by Madkind. It has placed some key dates in its agenda for the transference of organic life into a digitally controlled robotic look-alike, with the purpose of rendering Mankind obsolete. 

How China’s Naval Strategy Exposes Decades of America’s Sinophobic Lies

By Drago Bosnic, May 06, 2024

Another important aspect of the overall strategic shift in China’s geopolitical planning is its new naval doctrine. Namely, it has changed so much that it completely nullifies decades of America’s wet dreams about having Moscow and Beijing at each other’s throats while the US goes unchallenged in its incessant aggression against the world.

The Mediated Palestinian-Israeli Deal

By Al Mayadeen, May 06, 2024

Al Mayadeen has acquired the details of the latest proposed deal between the Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli occupation, specifically related to the prisoner exchange deal and related clauses. 

COVID Pandemic Was a Fraud, a Lie, a Hoax! There Was Never Ever a Pandemic, Never Met the Threshold of a Pandemic and We Were Lied To Deliberately for Nefarious Reasons by Governments

By Dr. Paul Elias Alexander, May 06, 2024

COVID was a fraud PCR created pandemic. A fraud! A lie! Greatest hoax in history on peoples. Populations. I can say it no other way. We were detecting a pathogen that was always circulating, it was not ‘new’, not ‘novel’, our immune systems dealt with this prior in some manner.

Worldwide Military Spending Reaches $2400 Billion. Plenty of Money for Weapons. Shortfall in Funds for United Nations (OCHA) Humanitarian Endeavours

By Bharat Dogra, May 06, 2024

In 2023, the world spent $2400 billion on military expenditure. During the same year the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) tried to raise $57 billion for people facing humanitarian crisis all over the world. This was just about 2.4% of the world’s military budget. However it could actually raise only about $20 billion. This amounted to just 0.8 per cent of the military expenditure of the world. 

Where Are the National Intelligence Estimates? Seymour Hersh

By Seymour M. Hersh, May 06, 2024

I was told that the president and his top national security aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, have yet to request a study that delves deeply into any of the international crises of the day: the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Let Israel’s Leaders Get Arrested for War Crimes

By Gideon Levy, May 06, 2024

The killing and destruction in Gaza has gotten Israel in way over its head. It is the worst catastrophe the state has ever faced. Someone led it there – no, not antisemitism, but rather its leaders and military officers. If not for them, it wouldn’t have turned so quickly after October 7 from a cherished country that inspired compassion into a pariah state.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

The history of thalassocracies has always been one of sea dominance, as the name itself implies. However, whenever they become too powerful, they all seem to make one persistent mistake – trying to go against tellurocracies or land powers on their home turf. Even then, thalassocracies usually realize just how hopelessly outclassed they are in such a fight, so they resort to cunning strategies of pushing one tellurocracy against another, an approach that sometimes results in conflicts of global proportions, with devastating consequences for anyone but the sea powers themselves.

So far, land powers have been the most unfortunate in this regard, bearing the brunt of the damage while gaining very little for such a massive sacrifice. A good example is Germany, which foolishly tried to implement its “Drang nach Osten” strategy not once, but twice, thus playing right into the hands of the likes of the United Kingdom, United States and their allies.

And indeed, the latter two (particularly the US) profited immensely from both world wars, drastically expanding their colonial empires and exploiting the world to the fullest, even to this very day.

The UK, although unable to maintain its direct colonial power during the (First) Cold War, still kept much of it indirectly, both through the British Crown and organizations such as the Commonwealth.

Thanks to the Soviet Union, this extremely exploitative neocolonialist system largely crumbled, although it did come back after the USSR’s unfortunate dismantling. Nowadays, both Russia and China are working virtually in lockstep to ensure that the system is defeated once again.

Cooperation between the two superpowers is a massive problem for the political West

The US and its vassals and satellite states once employed actual diplomacy to undermine such an alliance and it worked to a large degree, freezing the Soviet-Chinese relations for decades.

However, there has been a 180-degree turn in Washington DC since then (or 360, as Annalena Baerbock once “wisely” said). World-class diplomats were replaced by bureaucratic yes-men who go to other countries and engage in what can only be described as arm-twisting. Now, that might work against helpless opponents, but the leadership of the political West has become so hopelessly delusional, that it now thinks this could work against actual superpowers. And not just one, mind you, but two. Recent visits of top-ranking American officials to China serve as a testament to that, when Beijing promptly sent them back after they tried masking literal threats as “diplomacy”. A year earlier, the troubled Biden administration even tried sending Henry Kissinger to China in order to play into his Sino-Soviet split legacy. Obviously, it failed, but it certainly demonstrates how desperate the US is. Meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing keep breaking one record after another.

Ever since they announced their “no limits” partnership, the mainstream propaganda machine has been trying to ridicule it or at least present it as ineffective. However, both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are actual sovereign leaders of their countries. In stark contrast to the political West, they’ve kept their promises and the Russo-Chinese alliance is now growing much faster than initially predicted. Bilateral trade is close to a staggering $250 billion, an enormous 25% increase of the targeted $200 billion promised by the leaders of the two (Eur)Asian giants. The US is trying to torpedo this in any way it can, mostly by falsely accusing China of selling so-called “dual-use” goods. Such claims have been dismissed by both countries, as Russia alone is outproducing the entire NATO in several key aspects, meaning that Moscow doesn’t really need Beijing’s military assistance. Washington DC certainly knows this as well, but it will not stop trying to prevent further trade growth.

China’s geopolitical planning is its new naval doctrine.

However, another important aspect of the overall strategic shift in China’s geopolitical planning is its new naval doctrine.

Namely, it has changed so much that it completely nullifies decades of America’s wet dreams about having Moscow and Beijing at each other’s throats while the US goes unchallenged in its incessant aggression against the world.

For decades, the mainstream propaganda machine has been spreading ludicrous propaganda about China supposedly “setting its eyes on Siberia”. Such titles are so numerous that it’s nearly impossible to list them all. Still, here are some examples – link, link, link, link, link, link. It’s more than enough to simply read the titles. Now that you’ve finished catching your breath after laughing for five minutes, a rather simple question arises – has even 1% of these ridiculous doom and gloom “predictions” come true? Exactly, none. In fact, quite the opposite, China’s massive navy is the living proof of this.

Namely, Beijing has drastically reduced its land military forces and invested hundreds of billions into building up its naval power. Does anyone in their right mind think that aircraft carriers and large surface combatants can be used to take over Siberia? Obviously, given its horrible knowledge of even the most basic geography, the political West certainly might think so. However, China’s virtually complete refocus on its navy is a clear indicator of who the Asian giant sees as the true threat to its national interests. On May 1, Beijing started with the sea trials for its first supercarrier – the “Fujian”. The development of the 90,000-ton monstrosity represents a landmark achievement both for the country’s navy and the overall balance of power in the increasingly contested Asia-Pacific region. China operates two more aircraft carriers and is planning to have a fleet of up to six by the early 2030s. Once again, this serves as undeniable evidence of its strategy.

While Washington DC keeps dreaming of making Moscow and Beijing hate each other, the two are increasing military and scientific cooperation by sharing their vast knowledge and expertise in various fields. In addition, Russia and China are closely coordinating their efforts to push back against US/NATO aggression, particularly as the political West is openly surrounding both countries with missiles and hostile vassals and satellite states. This partnership is indeed based on mutual respect for their respective national interests. The Sino-Russian alliance (because that’s what it effectively is, in all but name) serves as the blueprint of how diplomacy and geopolitics should be conducted. It also demonstrates the dynamics of relations within BRICS (now BRICS+) – non-interference in internal or external affairs of any country. This will be the global formula of peace in the future and will stand in stark contrast to the political West’s violent thalassocracy.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

All decent Israelis must ask themselves the following questions: Is their country committing war crimes in Gaza? If so, how should they be stopped?

How should the culprits be punished? Who can punish them? Is it reasonable for crimes to go unprosecuted and criminals to be exculpated?

One may, of course, reply in the negative to the first question – Israel is not committing any war crimes in Gaza – thereby rendering the rest of the questions superfluous.

But how can one answer in the negative in the face of the facts and the situation in Gaza:

about 35,000 people killed and another 10,000 missing, about two-thirds of them innocent civilians, according to the Israel Defense Forces;

among the dead are around 13,000 children, nearly 400 medical workers and more than 200 journalists; 70 percent of homes have been destroyed or damaged;

30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition;

two people in 10,000 die each day from starvation and disease. (All figures are from the United Nations and international organizations.)

Is it possible that these horrific figures came to be without the commission of war crimes?

There are wars whose cause is just and whose means are criminal;

the justice of the war does not justify its crimes. Killing and destruction, starvation and displacement on this scale could not have occurred without the commission of war crimes. Individuals are responsible for them, and they must be brought to justice.

Israeli hasbara, or public diplomacy, does not try to deny the reality in Gaza. It only makes the claim of antisemitism: Why pick on us? What about Sudan and Yemen?

The logic doesn’t hold: A driver who is stopped for speeding won’t get off by arguing that he’s not the only one. The crimes and the criminals remain. Israel will never prosecute anyone for these offenses. It never has, neither for its wars nor its occupation. On a good day, it will prosecute a soldier who stole some Palestinian’s credit card.

But the human sense of justice wants to see criminals brought to justice and prevented from committing crimes in the future. By this logic, we can only hope that the International Criminal Court in The Hague will do its job.

Every Israeli patriot and everyone who cares about the good of the state should wish for this. This is the only way that Israel’s moral standard, according to which it is permitted everything, will change. It is not easy to hope for the arrest of the heads of your state and your army, and even more difficult to admit it publicly, but is there any other way to stop them? 

The killing and destruction in Gaza has gotten Israel in way over its head. It is the worst catastrophe the state has ever faced. Someone led it there – no, not antisemitism, but rather its leaders and military officers. If not for them, it wouldn’t have turned so quickly after October 7 from a cherished country that inspired compassion into a pariah state.

Someone must stand trial for this.

Just as many Israelis want Benjamin Netanyahu to be punished for the corruption of which he is accused, so should they wish for him and the perpetrators subordinate to him to be punished for much more serious crimes, the crimes of Gaza. 

They cannot be allowed to go unpunished.

Nor is it possible to blame only Hamas, even if it has a part in the crimes.

We are the ones who killed, starved, displaced, and destroyed on such a massive scale. Someone must be brought to justice for this.

Netanyahu is the head, of course. The picture of him imprisoned in The Hague together with the defense minister and the IDF chief of staff is the stuff of nightmares to every Israeli.

And yet, it is probably warranted. 

It is highly unlikely, however. The pressure being exerted on the court by Israel and the United States are enormous (and wrong). But scare tactics can be important.

If the officials actually refrain from traveling abroad in the next few years, if they actually live in fear of what may come, we can be sure that in the next war, they’ll think twice before sending the military on campaigns of death and destruction of such insane proportions. We can find a little comfort in that, at least.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Al Mayadeen has acquired the details of the latest proposed deal between the Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli occupation, specifically related to the prisoner exchange deal and related clauses. 

The framework of the agreement aims to achieve the release of all Israeli civilian and military captives, be they dead or alive, held in the Gaza Strip. The agreement will not only encompass captives taken on October 7 but all Israeli captives. 

Primarily, the deal’s objective is to achieve calm in the area and work on reaching a ceasefire, the document acquired by Al Mayadeen explains.  

What Does the First Stage of the Prisoner Exchange Deal Entail?

In the first stage of the prisoner exchange deal, Israeli occupation forces will withdraw eastward, away from densely populated areas. Forces will be relocated to areas near the separation fence between the Gaza Strip and Israeli-occupied ’48 Palestinian territories. 

Israeli aircraft, both combat and reconnaissance, will be barred from flying over the Strip for a period of eight hours on a daily basis. However, on days when prisoners are being exchanged, Israeli aircraft will not fly over the Gaza Strip for a period of 10 hours. 

On the seventh day of the deal and after women included in the deal are released, Israeli occupation forces will withdraw from al-Rashid Street and head eastwards, parallel to the Gaza Strip’s main road, to Salah al-Din Street. 

The withdrawal of occupation forces is expected to ease the entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and will allow non-armed civilians to return to their homes. 

On the 22nd day, and after one-third of the Israeli captives are released, the Israeli occupation forces will withdraw from the central Gaza Strip to an area near the separation fence. 

The Return of Displaced People and the Entry of Aid

This process will allow Palestinians forcibly displaced from the northern Gaza Strip to return to their residences. 

The entry of concentrated amounts of humanitarian aid, including relief aid and fuel, will be facilitated in all stages of the agreement. 

33 Israeli Captives to be Released

In the first stage, Hamas will release at least 33 captives, which includes all Israeli captives that are still alive. This group includes female Israeli servicepeople, civilians, children, elderly people, wounded individuals, and patients. 

In turn, “Israel” will release 20 Palestinian children and women for every female or male Israeli captive released. The names of the released detainees will be agreed upon by the sides, in pre-set lists. 

In detail, Hamas will release every living Israeli captive over the age of 50, wounded Israeli captive, and sick Israeli captive. “Israel” will therefore release 20 Palestinian captives, aged over 50, wounded, or sick. 

Hamas will also release every living Israeli female conscript, who was serving on October 7, 2023. In return, “Israel” will release 40 Palestinian detainees in return for every Israeli servicewoman. 

This includes 20 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 20 Palestinian prisoners serving shorter sentences. 

Hamas will also release three captives on the first day of the deal, which will be followed by three captives every three days, encompassing female civilians and soldiers. 

“Israel” will then release the agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners, according to the pre-set lists. 

On the seventh day of the deal, Hamas will submit a list of the names of the remaining captives that it holds. These captives will be released on the 34th day of the deal. 

Halting Military Operations and the Continuity of the Deal

Military operations will be halted for a number of days, determined by the number of Israeli captives remaining in captivity. 

The continuity of the exchange process will be directly correlated with the Israeli side’s commitment to the clauses of the deal, including the halting of military operations, the relocation of occupation forces, and the return of the displaced people. 

Among the clauses is that released Palestinian detainees must not be re-detained on charges that they had previously been detained on. 

On the 14th day, an agreed-upon number of wounded Palestinian military personnel will be transferred to hospitals outside the Gaza Strip, through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, to receive adequate medical attention. 

On the 16th day of the deal, the sides are obligated to participate in indirect talks for sustainable calm in the region. 

During the period of every stage, the United Nations, its agencies, and international organizations will begin to work on distributing and providing aid to Palestinians across the entirety of the Gaza Strip. 

Rebuilding Gaza

In the first stage, work will commence on the Gaza Strip’s destroyed infrastructure. A coordinating body will also begin delivering the necessary heavy equipment to the Palestinian Civil Defense. 

Facilitating the entry of necessary supplies, to establish temporary camps to accommodate forcibly displaced people who lost their homes during the war, is also among the clauses included in the deal. 

What About the Second Stage?

The second stage of the deal will extend for 42 days, in which both sides are expected to agree on the necessary actions to reach and implement a sustainable calm.

In the second phase, the necessary arrangements will be made for the comprehensive reconstruction of housing units, civil facilities, and civilian infrastructure.

The Final Stage of the Deal: Exchanging Bodies

The third stage of the deal will also extend for a period of 42 days, in which the bodies and remains of both killed individuals on both sides will be exchanged. 

A 5-year reconstruction plan for the Gaza Strip will be implemented which will include the construction of housing units and civilian facilities and infrastructure. The Palestinian side will refrain from rebuilding military installations and infrastructure during that period. 

Moreover, the Palestinian side will not import any equipment, raw materials, or other components to be used for military purposes. 

According to the document obtained by Al Mayadeen, Qatar, Egypt, and the United States are the stated guarantors of the agreement. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Getting enough vitamin B3 could help maintain muscle mass and strength as you age, while also helping control body fat and blood sugar levels

A study found consuming more niacin was linked to stronger hand grip, increased muscle mass and higher bone mineral content

People with higher niacin intake also had less body fat and a lower risk of losing muscle mass as they age

Niacin also helped with blood sugar control, showing benefits in reducing insulin resistance and keeping fasting blood sugar and insulin levels in check, especially in people without diabetes

For optimal health, I recommend taking 50 milligrams of niacinamide — one form of vitamin B3 — three times per day

*

Vitamin B3 comes in two primary forms: niacin, also known as nicotinic acid, and niacinamide (NAM), which is sometimes referred to as nicotinamide. Both forms of vitamin B3 are essential to human health and play important roles in cellular metabolism, converting the food you eat into energy.

These forms of vitamin B3 also serve as precursors for the coenzymes nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP), which are vital for energy production, DNA repair and cell signaling. Increasing your intake of vitamin B3 as you age may also be useful for supporting optimal health, with research showing it not only improves body composition but also glucose control.

Vitamin B3 Increases Muscle Mass, Decreases Fat and Improves Glucose Homeostasis

A study published in The Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging suggests getting enough vitamin B3 in your diet could help maintain muscle mass and strength as you age, while also helping control body fat and blood sugar levels.¹

The study involved people aged 40 and older, with researchers analyzing information from three data sets: one focusing on hand grip strength, with 3,772 participants, another on body composition like muscle and fat, with 3,279 participants, and a third on how the body handles glucose, or blood sugar, with 9,189 participants.

The scientists looked at niacin intake and other factors like physical activity and diet, then used various statistical methods to see how they related to muscle strength, muscle mass, fat levels, bone health, insulin resistance, blood sugar levels and the risk of losing muscle mass with age, or sarcopenia. 

Consuming more niacin was linked to stronger hand grip, increased muscle mass and higher bone mineral content. People with higher niacin intake also had less body fat and a lower risk of losing muscle mass as they age. Further, niacin seemed to help with blood sugar control, showing benefits in reducing insulin resistance and keeping fasting blood sugar and insulin levels in check, especially in people without diabetes.

Vitamin B3 Increases NAD+ and NADP Levels, Leading to Significant Health Gains

One reason why vitamin B3 may be so useful as you age is due to its ability to increase NAD+ and NADP levels. As noted in the blog To Extract Knowledge From Matter, which is inspired by the work of the late Ray Peat:²

“The study is epidemiological and it did not distinguish between the various forms of vitamin B3 available through the diet or supplements. However, it was well-controlled and its findings match the known biochemical effects of vitamin B3, which the study authors cite themselves as the likely reasons for the observed results.

Namely, vitamin B3 increases NAD and NADP levels, which results in improved glucose metabolism as well as higher tissue anabolism (through NADP).”

NAD+ modulates energy production and many enzymes and in so doing controls hundreds of processes in your body including the survival of cells and energy metabolism. NAD+ is influenced on a daily basis by what you eat, exercise levels and more, and also declines with age, leading to changes in metabolism and an increased risk of disease.³

Boosting NAD+ levels may be akin to a fountain of youth, which is where vitamin B3 — as an NAD+ precursor — comes in. Supplementation with NAM has been found to improve insulin sensitivity in models of human diabetes, for instance, and it also decreases oxidative stress and prevents fatty liver.⁴

It also shows impressive promise for fighting obesity and associated diseases, including stroke, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain cancers, which have reached epidemic levels worldwide.⁵

Writing in The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, researchers from Tsinghua University, Beijing, revealed that NAM reprograms adipose cellular metabolism and increases mitochondrial biogenesis to ameliorate obesity.⁶ In a study on obese mice, NAM supplementation led to significant reductions in fat mass and improved glucose tolerance, while increasing mitochondrial biogenesis in fat tissue.⁷

‘Striking’ Dose-Dependent Effects — But Only to a Point

The featured Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging study found that niacin improves insulin resistance and glucose homeostasis at doses commonly consumed in the U.S. diet.⁸ However, it also revealed a strong dose-dependent effect. As reported by To Extract Knowledge From Matter:⁹

“Perhaps the most useful finding of the study was the striking dose-dependence of the effects it discovered — i.e., for every extra 1 mg/kg of weight of daily vitamin B3 consumed, a person lost 60 g of fat and gained 60 g of muscle. Oh, and if this was not already a spectacular result, the effects of vitamin B3 were the strongest in people with obesity (high BMI), hypertension, or advanced age — precisely the people who need benefits the most.”

The researchers pointed out that high doses of niacin may cause undesirable effects, including promoting insulin resistance. This is due to its dosage:¹⁰

“Some previous studies have suggested that niacin promotes insulin resistance, which is a significant side effect when niacin is used as a lipid-lowering drug. The reason for this inconsistent result lies in the dosage of niacin. When niacin is used as a lipid-lowering drug, its daily dose is 2-6 g, which far exceeds the daily dietary dose.”

To Extract Knowledge From Matter further explained:¹¹

“Now, the study did have a cutoff in its vitamin B3 intake range. The maximum intake included in the study was about 238 mg daily. We don’t know if the benefits of vitamin B3 hold beyond those daily intake levels, but animal studies seem to suggest at least the metabolic benefits hold until at least a human-equivalent dose (HED) of 5mg/kg daily.

Since muscle and fat mass are largely a function of the metabolic rate, the study seems to suggest that an intake of vitamin B3 up to 5mg/kg daily may be even more beneficial.

The study does caution that when vitamin B3 is used as a lipid-lowering agent (i.e. in doses of 2g+ daily) negative effects and even reversal of the benefits may occur, so I’d suggest careful experimentation until the optimal daily dose is found, which will probably be different for each person.”

As I’ve explained in previous articles, however, too much niacinamide can backfire. A dose of just 50 milligrams (mg) three times per day will provide the fuel for nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NAMPT), the rate limiting enzyme for NAD+. Nichola Conlon, Ph.D., a molecular biologist, antiaging specialist and founder of a nutraceutical company that produces an NAD+ boosting supplement, explained in our past interview:¹²

“The reason the salvage pathway declines with age is because of this one key enzyme. NAMPT actually recycles niacinamide and converts it into NMN [nicotinamide mononucleotide], which then gets converted back into NAD. The rate limiting step, the bottleneck in that process, is NAMPT. And lo and behold, that is the key enzyme that declines as we get older.

Studies have demonstrated that you get a 50% decrease in this enzyme between the ages of 45 and 60. That’s a significant decline considering how important this is for new NAD production. The decline in the levels of this enzyme again correlate with the decline in NAD that we experience.

Many diseases and issues that are associated with NAD decline are found to be because of a reduction in this enzyme. So, it’s absolutely critical to try and improve the activation and expression of this enzyme in the body to enhance NAD. It worked brilliantly to give us high NAD levels when we were younger, so why not restore it back to that?”

Tips for Vitamin B3 Intake

For optimal health, I recommend taking 50 mg of niacinamide three times per day. This dosage has been shown to optimize energy metabolism and boost NAD+ levels, which are foundational for everything else to work. It can be taken four times a day if you space them out. Take a dose as soon as you get up, another before going to bed, and two more evenly spaced between those times.

The problem with taking too much vitamin B3, whether in the form of niacin or niacinamide, is that it might backfire and contribute to cardiovascular disease as documented by the Cleveland Clinic.¹³Also, please note that although niacinamide and niacin are both forms of vitamin B3, niacin will not activate NAMPT like niacinamide, so it is best to use niacinamide. Additionally, niacinamide, unlike niacin, will not cause flushing, which is due to a large release of histamine.

It would also be helpful to make sure you’re getting all the other B vitamins, as they too are crucial for good health, including optimal mitochondrial function — especially regular niacin, riboflavin and folate. Decreased mitochondrial function is often due to a deficiency in B vitamins, and that’s easy to fix with a low-dose, high-quality B complex.

As for food sources, vitamin B3 is found in grass fed beef, mushrooms and avocados.¹⁴ Vitamin B6 is plentiful in grass fed beef, potatoes, bananas and avocados.¹⁵ You can find folate, or vitamin B9, in spinach, broccoli, avocado and asparagus.¹⁶ Vitamin B12-rich foods include grass fed beef liver, wild rainbow trout and wild sockeye salmon.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Notes

^1, 8, 10 The Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging September 2023, Volume 27, Issue 9, Pages 709-718

^2, 9, 11 To Extract Knowledge From Matter February 23, 2024 (Archived)

³ Cell Metabolism, 28 Feb 2018, 27(3):529-547

^4, 5 The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry May 21, 2022, Introduction

⁶ The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry May 21, 2022

⁷ The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry May 21, 2022, Abstract

¹² Substack March 28, 2022

¹³ Nature Medicine February 19, 2024; 30: 424-434

¹⁴ My Food Data, Top 10 Foods Highest in Vitamin B3 (Niacin) April 25, 2024

¹⁵ My Food Data, Top 10 Foods Highest in Vitamin B6 April 25, 2024

¹⁶ My Food Data, Top 10 Foods Highest in Vitamin B9 (Folate) April 25, 2024

Featured image is from Mercola

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

Just under the surface of daily life two starkly opposing forces are at work:  ‘the will for life’ and ‘the will for no life’. Both are wrestling their way towards becoming the dominant reality of this era.  It’s a race against time.

The clock has been set by Madkind, with the disturbingly passive acceptance of much of Mankind. 

Madkind is obsessed by mechanical time. It sets the clock and demands its agenda be implemented according to the time frame it decrees.

‘The Great Reset’ is the appropriately named most recent clock setting event initiated by Madkind.

It has placed some key dates in its agenda for the transference of organic life into a digitally controlled robotic look-alike, with the purpose of rendering Mankind obsolete. 

It finds 2025/26, 2030 and 2045/50 useful markers by which to achieve particular phases of this ambition. 

We know Madkind’s game plan because it is explicitly laid out in UN Agenda 2030 and the World Economic Forum’s Fourth Industrial Revolution/Green New Deal.

On the financial side, for a start, a central bank digital currency with a social credit compliance  program to control individual’s access to their bank accounts, is clocked in for circa 2026.

Global economic stagnation and swathes of human starvation are timed to follow. 

By 2030, Madkind’s agenda states that the process of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (IT) will have usurped much of Mankind’s emotional and rational thinking capacity; with natural powers of reproduction also sterilised into submission by ever increasing atmospheric geoengineering, water and food denaturing, electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) and weaponised vaccination programmes.

By the same date around fifty percent of food is planned to be created in factory laboratories. Synthetic, genetically modified and with no connection with soil. 

Insects are high on the list for protein replacement, once milk, meat and eggs have been rendered ‘off the menu’ due to their being identified as complicit in Madkind’s mad global warming invention.

Energy production is slated to be largely divorced from fossil fuel burning practices by this same date. Replaced by what it sees as ‘Green’ solutions taking over the powering of what is left of productive industry.

By 2045/50 Madkind sees itself in the driving seat with its so called ‘Net Zero’ (no carbon dioxide) policy having further reduced natural biodiversity and world populations to a fraction of current levels, replacing Mankind with the AI Transhuman cyborg version and a slave race of Humankind  preserved for menial duties unsuited to robots.

This is a purely cursory, indicative list – as there is far more insanity in the pipeline than mentioned here. And Madkind has a plan B, C and D if A fails to materialise (on time).

To further remind one’s self, just check Mad Schwab’s description of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Mad Harari’s declaration “We will do better than God”.

Meanwhile, in the race against time, a still small but steadily growing percentage of Mankind is realising that its future on this planet is under threat, like never before. 

Information concerning the nature of this crisis is humming through the internet ether; is under discussion in thousands of conference venues, private homes and work places. 

Mankind is stirring and Madkind is trying to block the growing momentum.

There are energetic forces at play here that we cannot see, but can feel. They counteract the brain targetted torpor manufactured by Madkind’s ‘Cerebral Valley’ military industrial complex and directed at chosen targets by devious ‘intelligence’ operatives in the CIA, Mossad, MI5, MI6, FBI and more.

Mankind is awakening to the reality of its slavery to Madkind’s mad ambitions. This is the epicenter of the clash Life-v-Death. And we are all, whether we know it or not, active players in this unprecedented drama. 

Yes, it’s a race against time: will the power of awakened spirit get there first and break the Satanic code of the psychopaths – thereby freeing Mankind from Madkind’s inhuman prison?

Or will the psychos keep their grip on the mental and physical health of enough mortals to maintain its grinding momentum?

Nobody can second-guess the future; but everyone capable of ringing the bell and jumping onto the fire engine cannot any longer turn their backs on the challenge facing Mankind. But must turn to face and to combat the threat of extinction that Madkind has planned and already set in motion on may levels.

Although there are one hundred and one ways of taking up the call to action, there are two foundational principles which we should all respect in order to build our strength of purpose and our pureness of intent to be victors of life over death: an inner nurturing of light and an outer manifestation of that light’s powers.

These two actions should become instilled in us, to constitute the central daily rhythm of our lives.

By ‘outer manifestation of light’s powers’ I specifically mean taking action in support of social, economic, environmental and political change for the overall emancipation of Humanity and nature.

No matter what other tasks or work schedules we have to maintain, each day should start and end with a space dedicated to the nurturing of our deeper self and the activation of resulting powers in the cause of breaking our oppressor’s cult of death.

Always inner reflection leading to outer action, never just one or the other. 

Highly recommended is also a point during each day when one remembers why one is here, what one’s bigger role is in this life and how one can properly manifest it.

Our (human) soul lives forever. Its journey is eternal and the area of travel is infinite.

But this onward journey into the bosom of creation – and ever closer to the birth place of Life, will not materialise from wishful thinking or from prayer. 

Only through our determination to realise and to manifest our true selves, our higher energies – and, I repeat, channel these into actions dedicated to the emancipation of all mankind and of nature. That is our passport to eternal freedom.

There is therefore no point in thinking “I’ll be glad to leave this crazy world and finally be free.”

Such is the great deception perpetrated by religious authoritarianism and the teachers of spiritual escapism, that many suffer this grand illusion.

Until we gain the power to break out of Madkind’s selfish and seductive soul trap, we have no passport to freedom, in this life or in the after life. 

Without making a continuous effort for self realisation – and without cultivating the will to direct  the fruits of this process towards the manifestation of justice and truth, one commits a form of soul suicide.

This means never escaping the wheel of repeating returns to the ‘slave status’ one has been trapped in, in previous existences.

Madkind’s extinction agenda counts on us not taking-up this daily commitment for the realisation of true freedom. This beautiful sense of finally being settled on the path of a profound truth. Of oneness with the Cosmic Nucleus from whence we came. 

How many times must one return to this planet, only to find the same – but further rotted – garbage one left behind on the last time around?

Failure to clean up and move on – means being caught-up in a perpetual cycle of mental and physical imprisonment. 

This is a universal law – which in the East is called Karma – from which there is no escape. Except the one based on the process I have outlined, however briefly. 

There is no time to loose. We are in this race against time, and it’s probably the most meaningful stimulus any of us will ever get in order to train ourselves to become spiritual warriors. 

In order to manifest that which is impregnable to Madkind’s agents of degradation and destruction, our focus must be on becoming fully primed for victory.

This is our raison d’etre. Why we came to this tarnished yet radiant planet earth. 

We are brothers and sisters engaged in birthing the global realisation of our true potentiality.

We are empowered since our inception with all that’s needed to rise up and defeat Madkind.

If it’s only due to a lack of necessity that we have squandered this potential thus far, then that time has passed. 

Have no doubt about our ability to defeat Madkind. Over fifty percent of what it takes to win our battle simply involves reinforcing our determination to fully express our humanity – that which contains the seeds of invincibility.

Nurturing all that is warm, loving, true, determined and courageous. I stress ‘courageous’, as Madkind is essentially cowardly. 

Behind its facade of pomp and power is a debilitating weakness, a Godless void. Madkind has no spunk – it cowers behind its digitalised surveillance weaponry and addiction to broadcasting fear.

Just stand up to Madkind – and it is finished. 

Armed with courage and gifted with a determined sense of self belief – we hold the Ace card.

It’s time to play it!

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Julian Rose is an organic farmer, writer, broadcaster and international activist. He is author of four books of which the latest ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’ is a clarion call to resist the despotic New World Order takeover of our lives. Do visit his website for further information www.julianrose.info 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by Birch Gold Group staff