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As I reported at the time, the banking crisis is not limited to Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank’s failure was followed by the failures of New York Signature Bank and First Republic Bank of San Francisco. Now three more banks have had their stock prices collapse–Western Alliance, PacWest Bankcorp, and Metropolitan Bank.

As I have emphasized, the Federal Reserve’s higher interest rates are the cause of the bank troubles. The decade of zero interest rates left banks with portfolios of low interest rate assets on their balance sheets. As the Federal Reserve raised rates, these assets declined in value.  Depositors saw that the banks were technically insolvent  and withdrew funds. Others withdrew funds because they can now get higher interest rates from money market funds.  

Banks losing deposits are subject to runs. Expecting the worse, shareholders sell their holdings of the banks’ stocks. As the banks lose market value, troubles increase.

The Federal Reserve is causing a banking crisis, because the Federal Reserve imagines that the inflation is a monetary inflation and not an inflation resulting from supply disruptions caused by Covid lockdowns and Russian sanctions. If the Federal Reserve succeeds in throttling the economy with higher interest rates, supply problems are aggravated by reductions in production. In other words, as usual, the Federal Reserve’s policy is counterproductive.

I have always been amazed that Americans look to government entities for solutions when incompetence is the main attribute of government.

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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. 

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

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Update as of May 8, 2023 at 2:20 AM ET:

Added a Preface and changed the title.

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Preface

The best of all ways for humanity to begin to heal the massive amounts of evil hatred, malevolent rage, unchecked violence, cancerous suspicions, and an all but total collapse of trust between the warring parties that the war in Ukraine has created and continues to foster, is to re-assert the supreme dominance of the human spirit through the higher plane and world of entertainment. To once more elevate the rich heritage and cultures of human existence through those gifted ones in the arts who have spent their entire lives developing and honing their God-given, or, if one prefers, their Creation-given, talents to showcase to the highest humanly levels possible the majesty of that rich heritage.

The supreme goal is to bring the war in Ukraine to some mutually-agreed upon conclusion before it further deteriorates into some dreaded nuclear or biological warfare conclusion. The answer isn’t for America and NATO to weaponize the arts and world of entertainment, as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera now has done by essentially blackballing the musical creations of the brilliant Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich, his critically-important historic Leningrad Symphony, as well as the host of dedicated and highly-skilled Russian performers adversely affected by this blackballing, that has now allowed those same evil forces afoot in the world to continue to create so much hatred, rage, violence and suspicion by using the world of entertainment as an ideological bludgeon to punish whatever warring parties.

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The latest unseemly chapter in the collective West’s ugly saga of military and cultural propaganda warfare in Ukraine, and the psychotic hysteria that continues to be waged upon the world’s populace against all things Russian has taken yet another ignorant, anti-intellectual, anti-humanist, cruel twist. As one critic noted, “It is but further evidence of the collective psychosis the entire world continues to suffer because of the West’s unflagging propaganda.”

It is particularly sad that the casus belli, of all things, should be Shostakovich’s LENINGRAD Symphony (No 10) that was composed during WWII in votive honor of the millions of civilians and brave Russian soldiers who died during the 900-day siege of Leningrad (Now Saint Petersburg).

The unending pressures levied by neo-conservative elements in the U.S., Canadian, Western European governments and corporate news conglomerates continues to attempt to erase from the public’s awareness anything to do about WWII history, especially the titanic struggles by the Russians on the Eastern Front and the heroic part they played in that struggle, and especially post WWII Cold War History; the story of which is embodied in the Siege of Leningrad. Their efforts reflect badly, as well, on the true story of modern-day Ukrainian Banderist neo-Nazi’s and other ultra-nationalists who still hold disproportionate influence in Ukraine and around the world in the perception of 21^st century sentiments that continue to enflame neo-fascist sentiments.

Recently, to their absolute disgrace, the leaders of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera, entered into the propaganda war as cultural collaborators against anything to do with Russian involvement in the war, by banning and suppressing the formerly-scheduled upcoming May performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony; which the Philharmonic Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera attempt to spin, not as a collaboration with modern-day anti Russian Neo-Nazism but as a twisted expression of humanist sentiment. Their current suppression of the LENINGRAD Symphony borders upon psychotic hysteria; its related decision to also forgo the appearance of the world-renowned soprano Anna Netrebko, at face value, seems an additional twisted, perverse expression of such humanism.

Fred Mazelis, who ran for Mayor of New York in 1989, and was a 3^rd Party candidate for Vice-President of the United States, with presidential running mates Helen Halyard in 1992 and Jerome White in 1996, representing the Socialist Equality Party, has in recent days called attention to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s quiet announcement of a complete change in the program for its May 10-12 performance at its newly-renovated Geffen Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center arts complex.

Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev was originally scheduled to lead the famous Leningrad Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. But the New York Philharmonic Orchestra has now quietly cancelled the performance and Tugan Sokhiev will not be on the podium; to be replaced by James Gaffigan and a performance of a work instead by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, along with Prokofiev’s Third Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto.

Fred Marzelis notes, “Yet, only a few months ago, the Philharmonic box office was still selling tickets for the May concerts that were clearly marked “Leningrad Symphony.” Marzelis goes on to say, “At some point this was changed, although not all ticket holders were even informed.

When asked about the change, the orchestra’s press office first cited “artistic decisions.” A day later, it was attributed to “scheduling conflicts.” A look at Sokhiev’s upcoming concert schedule reveals, in fact, that he is scheduled to be leading the Munich Philharmonic on those dates. But clearly more than a scheduling conflict is involved.”

Until last year, Sokhiev was the music director and principal conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, which he had led since 2014, and also the music director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse in France, a post he assumed in 2008. One year ago, he was scheduled to conduct a program of music by Russian composers in New York, an appearance that was suddenly cancelled about a month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The orchestra issued a press release explaining that, “out of regard for the current global situation,” Sokhiev would not lead the program. The decision was said to be a mutual one, but, as the global news site World Socialist Web (WSWS) pointed out at the time, Sokhiev likely had little choice in the matter. At the same time, last year’s press release announced that the Philharmonic “very much looks forward to welcoming him [Sokhiev] next season.”

But, as the World Socialist Global Web site also now points out, “Well, next season is clearly here, and the “current global situation,” a euphemism for the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine, is continuing, with various NATO members calling for its escalation. This is the likely reason for the “scheduling conflict” that has suddenly appeared.”

The WSWS last year called the cancellation of Sokhiev’s appearance “giving in to anti-Russian prejudice,” and the same would seem to apply one year later. This time the Philharmonic has not issued a press release, nor is it promising an appearance in the future. The page on the orchestra’s website devoted to Sokhiev simply states, “NO CONCERTS” both for the 2022-23 season (the second consecutive year his appearances have been cancelled) and for the 2023-24 season.”

The WSWS goes on to report, “Philharmonic chief executive Deborah Borda, while denying any ban on Russian music, was quoted last year as saying there could be “no blanket decisions about performances by Russian musicians with the orchestra”. Whatever the Philharmonic officials may say, their action on the Leningrad Symphony, and their failure to announce any future date for its performance, can only be taken as a continuation and ever-deepening, broader anti-Russian propaganda campaign.

Sokhiev joins a list of others who have either been openly banned or more quietly shelved in the music world and performing arts. Prominent artists like soprano Anna Netrebko, bass Ildar Abdrazakov and conductor Valery Gergiev have been blackballed. New York City’s Metropolitan Opera has led the way, banning Netrebko and Gergiev last year.

In recent days, further word has arrived of yet new cancellations. Belarusian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk, who was announced as part of the cast of next season’s new production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino at the Met, has been removed, according to a report on the Opera Wire website. The website explains that Semenchuk recently performed several times at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and those appearances were apparently sufficient reason for the Met to change its plans. Semenchuk, like other Russian and Belarusian performers, still has dates in Europe. Semenchuk’s schedule includes appearances with the Bayerische Staatsopera in Munich and also at La Scala in Milan.

Another casualty of the anti-Russian campaign, declares the WSWS, is Russian-German soprano Anastasiya Taratorkina. The Queen Sonja Competition in Norway has eliminated her because she has both German and Russian passports, even though she has lived in Germany for many years.

Opera Wire reports on an email it received from the soprano. Quoting from a communication from the Competition, it explains, “This year’s regulations do not allow participants with Russian or Belarusian citizenship, which unfortunately means that you are disqualified even though you also have a German passport. We will of course reimburse your paid application fee and hope that the situation changes so we may welcome you to apply for the next competition.”

The more extremist among Ukrainian nationalists and their supporters have called not only for the banning of Russian performers, but also the music of Russian composers. Following a strong backlash on this issue, however, there have been US performances of Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and others. In fact, Sokhiev himself led the Philadelphia Orchestra in February in an all-Russian program, including works by Borodin and Prokofiev, in addition to Tchaikovsky.

The New York Philharmonic has not scheduled Sokhiev, however. The Philharmonic, as the World Socialist Web site pointed out last year, “may not be directly inspiring the anti-Russian campaign, but it is clearly transmitting it, and its acquiescence amounts to the same thing.” The orchestra management is very likely worried about the effect that Ukrainian protests would have on its public image. When the Osnabruck Music Festival in northwest Germany performed the violin concerto of Ukrainian Silvestrov alongside the towering Eighth Symphony of Shostakovich, like the Leningrad Symphony composed during the war, the then-Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany denounced the event.

Sokhiev made a further lengthy statement on Facebook last year. For the Ukrainian far right and fascistic elements, the fact that he is Russian is reason enough for many to oppose his work. In some circles, he could perhaps “atone” for this fact by lining up sufficiently behind the Ukrainian regime. However, as WSWS has reported, “Sokhiev expressed dismay at having “to make a choice and choose one of my musical family over the other. I am being asked to choose one cultural tradition over the other. I am being asked to choose one artist over the other. I am being asked to choose one singer over the other. I will be soon asked to choose between Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy. It is already happening in Poland, [a] European country, where Russian music is forbidden.”

The original presence of Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony on the Philharmonic Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera’s upcoming May 10-12 programs is of special importance within the context here of the ungoing unresolved war in Ukraine. They undoubtedly continue to infuriate the more frenzied advocates of the Ukrainian proxy war. Fred Mazelis and the World Socialist Web contend that perhaps no work in the symphonic repertory angers Ukrainian nationalists as much, even though The New York Philharmonic, under its conductor Jaap van Zweden, last conducted Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony Played by a Starving Orchestra

The symphony was composed during the horrific German siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), in which a million or more Soviet soldiers and civilians perished over a 28-month period that ended in January 1944. Shostakovich, who initially resisted orders to evacuate to the East for his own safety, completed the first three movements in Leningrad during the siege, which began in September 1941. The final movement was completed in Kuibyshev (now Samara), and the symphony was premiered in Moscow in March 1942. Most famously, it was performed in Leningrad during the siege, by an orchestra of 15 surviving, literally-starving, musicians, on August 9, 1942.

To know some of the details of this heroic performance it’s essential to read the BBC’s account of “Shostakovich’s Symphony Played by a Starving Orchestra”, and then try not to sob uncontrollably while attempting to fathom the cold, hard-heartedness that exists behind the Wars in Ukraine, and in America, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera’s, that could audaciously ban the performances of this historic symphony held in the bold human defiance of the monstrosity of war and hate. See Shostakovich’s symphony played by a starving orchestra – BBC News.

The symphony was named for the city of its birth and almost immediately became a symbol of the struggles and sacrifices of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders. Twenty-seven million soldiers and civilians ultimately died in this struggle, the largest toll for any country in the Second World War. Many millions of Soviet workers distinguished between their defense of the remaining conquests of the October 1917 Revolution, and the much-hated Stalin regime.

Shostakovich’s career and even his life were threatened during the years of the Stalinist Great Terror of the late 1930s. The composer came under renewed attack even after the war, during their struggles to defend the Soviet Union, in which Shostakovich and many others found renewed strength and purpose.

Those who fought in that war, and in so many cases gave their lives, included both Jews and non-Jews, Russians and Ukrainians, and many other nationalities. It is this fact of united struggle against the Nazis and their allies, particularly the Ukrainians led by the notorious Stepan Bandera, that the Ukrainian regime, in the midst of the current war, and Banderist supporters continue to evade and lie about. They seek to avoid answering the questions, “What were the Ukrainian nationalists, Banderites and open fascists doing in WWII while the Leningraders were under siege? Were many of them, and the Bandera Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in particular, directly assisting the Nazis or carrying out their own pogroms and murders of Ukrainian Jews? What were those pogroms?

Tellingly, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s executive Deborah Borda was quoted last year as saying there could be “no blanket decision” made about performances by Russian musicians with the orchestra”.

However, the decision they have made in this current instance on the Leningrad Symphony and their avoidance to announce any future date for its performance can only be interpretated as a further deepening in the future of a broader, ever more-concerted, anti-Russian propaganda campaign in the United States and abroad among others of it allies.

The actions by leaders of the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera, who apparently seek to suppress the performance of Shostakovich’s LENINGRAD Symphony for whatever reasons, can only be perceived as the twisted, perverse expression that it is of the extent to how far the war in Ukraine has contaminated and stifled human thoughts though out the world – in the arts, music, literature, dance, theatre, intellectual debate that continues to pollute the minds and thoughts of the entire world.

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The writer Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who originally was a Criminology student working in one of America’s local police departments. For decades, Irwin has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting world philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul. The author and his wife are long-time residents on the North Shore of British Columbia.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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In his 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy reassured Americans that the decline the United States was facing after a century of international dominance was “relative and not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order.” 

Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, and the rise of a formidable Global South. But the United States has indeed failed to “adjust sensibly to the newer world order,” using military force and coercion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter in a failed quest for longer lasting global hegemony. 

Kennedy observed that military power follows economic power. Rising economic powers develop military power to consolidate and protect their expanding economic interests. But once a great power’s economic prowess is waning, the use of military force to try to prolong its day in the sun leads only to unwinnable conflicts, as European colonial powers quickly learned after the Second World War, and as Americans are learning today.

While U.S. leaders have been losing wars and trying to cling to international power, a new multipolar world has been emerging. Despite the recent tragedy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the agony of yet another endless war, the tectonic plates of history are shifting into new alignments that offer hope for the future of humanity. Here are several developments worth watching:

De-dollarizing global trade 

For decades, the U.S. dollar was the undisputed king of global currencies. But China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and other nations are taking steps to conduct more trade in their own currencies, or in Chinese yuan. 

Illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions against dozens of countries around the world have raised fears that holding large dollar reserves leaves countries vulnerable to U.S. financial coercion. Many countries have already been gradually diversifying their foreign currency reserves, from 70% globally held in dollars in 1999 to 65% in 2016 to only 58% by 2022. 

Since no other country has the benefit of the “ecosystem” that has developed around the dollar over the past century, diversification is a slow process, but the war in Ukraine has helped speed the transition. On April 17, 2023, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that U.S. sanctions against Russia risk undermining the role of the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency. 

And in a Fox News interview, right-wing Republican Senator Marco Rubio lamented that, within five years, the United States may no longer be able to use the dollar to bully other countries because “there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

BRICS’s GDP leapfrogs G7’s  

When calculated based on Purchasing Power Parity, the GDP of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is now higher than that of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan). The BRICS countries, which account for over 40% of total world population, generate 31.5% of the world’s economic output, compared with 30.7% for the G7, and BRICS’s growing share of global output is expected to further outpace the G7’s in coming years.

Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested some of its huge foreign exchange surplus in a new transport infrastructure across Eurasia to more quickly import raw materials and export manufactured goods, and to build growing trade relations with many countries.

Now the growth of the Global South will be boosted by the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, under its new president Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil. 

Rousseff helped to set up the BRICS Bank in 2015 as an alternative source of development funding, after the Western-led World Bank and IMF had trapped poor countries in recurring debt, austerity and privatization programs for decades. By contrast, the NDB is focused on eliminating poverty and building infrastructure to support “a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future for the planet.” The NDB is well-capitalized, with $100 billion to fund its projects, more than the World Bank’s current $82 billion portfolio.

Movement towards “strategic autonomy” for Europe

On the surface, the Ukraine war has brought the United States and Europe geostrategically closer together than ever, but this may not be the case for long. After French President Macron’s recent visit to China, he told reporters on his plane that Europe should not let the United States drag it into war with China, that Europe is not a “vassal” of the United States, and that it must assert its “strategic autonomy” on the world stage. Cries of horror greeted Macron from both sides of the Atlantic when the interview was published. 

But European Council President Charles Michel, the former prime minister of Belgium, quickly came to Macron’s side,insisting that the European Union cannot “blindly, systematically follow the position of the United States.” Michel confirmed in an interview that Macron’s views reflect a growing point of view among EU leaders, and that “quite a few really think like Emmanuel Macron.” 

The rise of progressive governments in Latin America

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, which has served as a cover for U.S. domination of Latin America and the Caribbean. But nowadays, countries of the region are refusing to march in lockstep with U.S. demands. The entire region rejects the U.S. embargo on Cuba, and Biden’s exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from his 2022 Summit of the Americas persuaded many other leaders to stay away or only send junior officials, and largely doomed the gathering. 

With the spectacular victories and popularity of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, progressive governments now have tremendous clout. They are strengthening the regional body CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) as an alternative to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States. 

To reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar, South America’s two largest economies, Argentina and Brazil, have announced plans to create a common currency that could later be adopted by other members of Mercosur — South America’s major trade bloc. While U.S. influence is waning, China’s is mushrooming, with trade increasing from $18 billion in 2002 to nearly $449 billion in 2021. China is now the top trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and Brazil has raised the possibility of a free-trade deal between China and Mercosur.

Peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia 

One of the false premises of U.S. foreign policy is that regional rivalries in areas like the Middle East are set in stone, and the United States must therefore form alliances with so-called “moderate” (pro-Western) forces against more “radical” (independent) ones. This has served as a pretext for America to jump into bed with dictators like the Shah of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and a succession of military governments in Egypt.

Now China, with help from Iraq, has achieved what the United States never even tried. Instead of driving Iran and Saudi Arabia to poison the whole region with wars fueled by bigotry and ethnic hatred, as the United States did, China and Iraq brought them together to restore diplomatic relations in the interest of peace and prosperity. 

Healing this divide has raised hopes for lasting peace in several countries where the two rivals have been involved, including Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and as far away as West Africa. It also puts China on the map as a mediator on the world stage, with Chinese officials now offering to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Israel and Palestine.

Saudi Arabia and Syria have restored diplomatic relations, and the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers have visitedeach others’ capitals for the first time since Saudi Arabia and its Western allies backed al-Qaeda-linked groups to try to overthrow President Assad in 2011. 

At a meeting in Jordan on May 1st, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia agreed to help Syria restore its territorial integrity, and that Turkish and U.S. occupying forces must leave. Syria may also be invited to an Arab League summit on May 19th, for the first time since 2011.

Chinese diplomacy to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is credited with opening the door to these other diplomatic moves in the Middle East and the Arab world. Saudi Arabia helped evacuate Iranians from Sudan and, despite their past support for the military rulers who are destroying Sudan, the Saudis are helping to mediate peace talks, along with the UN, the Arab League, the African Union and other countries. 

Multipolar diplomatic alternatives to U.S. war-making

The proposal by President Lula of Brazil for a “peace club” of nations to help negotiate peace in Ukraine is an example of the new diplomacy emerging in the multipolar world. There is clearly a geostrategic element to these moves, to show the world that other nations can actually bring peace and prosperity to countries and regions where the United States has brought only war, chaos and instability.

While the United States rattles its saber around Taiwan and portrays China as a threat to the world, China and its friends are trying to show that they can provide a different kind of leadership. As a Global South country that has lifted its own people out of poverty, China offers its experience and partnership to help others do the same, a very different approach from the paternalistic and coercive neocolonial model of U.S. and Western power that has kept so many countries trapped in poverty and debt for decades.    

This is the fruition of the multipolar world that China and others have been calling for. China is responding astutely to what the world needs most, which is peace, and demonstrating practically how it can help. This will surely win China many friends, and make it more difficult for U.S. politicians to sell their view of China as a threat.

Now that the “newer world order” that Paul Kennedy referred to is taking shape, economist Jeffrey Sachs has grave misgivings about the U.S. ability to adjust. As he recently warned, “Unless U.S. foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly to World War III.” With countries across the globe building new networks of trade, development and diplomacy, independent of Washington and Wall Street, the United States may well have no choice but to finally “adjust sensibly” to the new order.

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Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. 

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022. They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: copyright Jerzy Wasiukiewicz

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

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For well over a year, the mainstream propaganda machine has been trying to convince everyone that the Kiev regime forces are “massively overperforming” against Russia. However, behind all the Western disinformation clutter, NATO military commanders are extremely concerned with the fact that what would be the second most powerful military in NATO (if it were a member) is being quite literally wiped out, with the casualty ratio going as high as 10:1 or even 11:1, and not in its favor. Worse yet, the Neo-Nazi junta forces include tens of thousands of NATO mercenaries and radicalized volunteers, whose casualties are estimated to be well into five figures counting. General Rajmund Andrzejczak, Chief of General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, recently warned about this.

“War always was, is, and there is nothing to indicate otherwise – a matter of politics, and in its determinants has a substantial number of economic factors: finance, infrastructure issues, social issues, technology, food production and a whole set of problems that must be put into this box to understand this conflict… When I look at the conflict in Ukraine, I mainly see it through these political lenses, and unfortunately it does not look good,” Andrzejczak stated in the closing days of April, during a strategic debate at the National Security Bureau, adding: “I think that there is nothing that indicates Russia would be unable to sustain its war effort, and that Western economic warfare efforts had failed to prevent this.”

“Those financial instruments which it had before the conflict, the dynamics of spending, the effectiveness of sanctions, and the whole complex economic situation speak to the fact that Russia will have the money for this conflict,” Andrzejczak said and then warned that Kiev doesn’t have remotely similar capabilities: “We know how much the country needs per month. We know what American assistance amounts to, that of the entire collective West amounts to. We also know what Polish assistance is in this area, because we are the second-largest donor and should probably be a major inspiration for others. The speed of attrition in the financial area is, in my opinion, unfavorable, unfortunately.”

The Polish Chief of General Staff further added:

“There was little indication that millions of Ukrainians who had left the country would be ready or willing to return home to rebuild. Many Western leaders failed to realize how far Ukraine is from winning the war. The Western Bloc just doesn’t have the ammunition, industry is not ready not only to send equipment to Ukraine, but to replenish our own stocks, which are melting [away]. This awareness is not the same there as it is here on the Vistula River, and it must be communicated firmly, without an aesthetic, to everyone and in all forums, wherever possible, which is what I’m doing.”

The top Polish general’s concerns are hardly misplaced, especially considering the fact that he’s getting actual, unbiased military reports from Polish and other NATO services. Expectedly, such reports are extremely unlikely to ever be published by the mainstream propaganda machine, but General Andrzejczak’s words alone should be enough to indicate the actual state of the Kiev regime forces. Indeed, in recent days, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced that its forces have been able to neutralize nearly 600 enemy combatants and dozens of pieces of hardware in the Donetsk area alone, along with over 200 tons of various types of NATO-supplied munitions.

Battlefield reports for May 1 indicate that the Russian military used long-range weapons to destroy at least two air defense divisions composed of S-300 SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems in a strike on depots in Pavlograd, a city in the Dnepropetrovsk oblast (region). Apparently, these systems were defending a depot in which the Neo-Nazi junta’s “Grom-2” tactical ballistic missiles were housed, which were also destroyed in one of the subsequent strikes. A third strike destroyed an ammunition depot of the 127th Mechanized Brigade based in the Kharkov oblast. Only a day prior, an entire network of munitions manufacturing facilities was also destroyed.

Perhaps the most disappointing (for both Kiev and the political West) aspect of the grossly overhyped performance of the Kiev regime forces is the recent admission that the much-touted HIMARS is nowhere near its declared capabilities. While the mainstream propaganda machine extensively reported on the alleged successes of this system, in reality, it has shown less than limited performance, as Russian air defenses have been able to intercept most HIMARS rockets, while the Russian Aerospace Forces “took care” of most launchers sent by NATO. Modernized versions of the “Buk” SAM system, particularly the M3 “Viking” variant, have proven to be extremely effective in virtually nullifying this threat.

HIMARS was portrayed as one of the Neo-Nazi junta’s “wunderwaffen”, a supposedly “decisive weapon” that could “turn the tide” against Russia. However, just like many of the actual “wunderwaffen” deployed by Nazi Germany in the closing months of the Second World War, this is proving to be futile. Poland’s top general essentially confirms this by pointing out what virtually all military commanders in NATO are perfectly aware of, but can’t disclose publicly.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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*** 

Athens, GA – 21 year old University student Liza Burke had brain bleed on Mar. 10, 2023 while on vacation in Mexico, was diagnosed with a glioblastoma on her brainstem, and died 4 weeks later on April 28, 2023 (click here).

Boston, MA – Boston Celtics VP of Public Relations, Heather Walker, age 52 died from Glioblastoma on April 26, 2023 (she was initially diagnosed July 2021) (click here)

Hoboken, NJ – 28 year old doctor Dr.Ahntu Vu (family medicine resident) died 2 months after being diagnosed with Glioblastoma, he died on April 18, 2023 (click here)

“While awaiting the start of his treatments, Anhtu’s symptoms worsened and new imaging has shown rapid progression of the tumor over the last month”

19 year old hockey star Braydin Lewis died on April 15, 2023. In March 2022 he had a seizure, was diagnosed with a 2-inch brain cancer (glioblastoma) and had surgery. He died less than 11 months after diagnosis (click here)

Los Angeles, CA – 55 year old Toronto Film Festival Co-Director & Film Exec Noah Cowan died on Jan. 25, 2023, one year after diagnosis of Glioblastoma (click here)

Billingham, UK – 57 year old Mark Bellergy died 3 months after being diagnosed with Glioblastoma, died on Jan. 4, 2023 (click here)

Norwood, OH – 26 year old Emily McLean died on Oct. 22, 2022 after a 10 month battle with Glioblastoma (click here)

Maryland – 65 year old news anchor Wendy Rieger died on April 16, 2022 after 11 months of glioblastoma (click here)

UK – 26 year old Oliver Amess died from Glioblastoma only 20 days after diagnosis, on Jan. 28, 2022 (click here)

4 Canadian fully COVID-19 Vaccinated doctors who died of brain or spinal cancers within about a year or less

All 4 doctors developed brain or spinal cancers after two doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

UK – Teacher and musician, 40 year old James Lamerton died from Glioblastoma 3 months after being diagnosed, in Nov. 2021 (click here)

Twitter testimonials

My Take… 

In the post COVID-19 vaccine era, these brain cancer Glioblastomas seem much more aggressive and kill much more quickly. Usually patients would survive on average 1.5 to 2 years, but now they are dying in a matter of weeks or months.

I see a strong signal of COVID-19 Vaccine induced Turbo brain cancers here. These brain tumors behave differently.

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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.

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Syria is a land of mystery traffic jams. Despite the shortage and high price of petrol, vehicles fill the streets and avenues of Aleppo and Damascus.  No one knows how Syrians achieve these bumper-to-bumper events.

During Eid, thousands of cheerful Syrians left their electricity-less homes to drive or walk through Aleppo’s dark streets to the Citadel, the city’s protector and symbol, to celebrate. Families gathered at long tables erected in the plaza where the Citadel stands tall in its moat to drink tea and smoke water pipes. Children surrounded vendors selling popcorn, ice cream and pink spun-sugar or rushed from place to place to release energy in the chill air.  Cars blaring loud music swished by, motor bikes roared and raced. 

Throughout the country, Syrians celebrated eid after eid. They took two days for Western Easter and went back to work but Orthodox Easter stretched through the four days of Eid Al Fitr.  Government offices closed, shops remained shuttered or opened late. Since many people did not go to work, streets were deserted until afternoon when families visited relatives and friends. When night came, most streets and homes were dark due to the lack of fuel for electricity. Here and there a window emitted bright battery-powered white light which blazed in the darkness or the weak flicker of the soft light of a candle.

The direct 300 kilometre highway from Damascus to Aleppo passes through rich agricultural land and orchards of squat pistachio trees stretching as far as the eye can see. There are few cars and lorries on this stretch of road. For more than 100 kilometres villages on both sides are uninhabited, empty, their houses have been stripped of furnishings, doors and windows. The villagers were driven out by the war that consumed Syria for eight years before fighting wound down. Families were forced to flee elsewhere in Syrian or abroad, reducing the population from 24 to 18 million.  Six million took refuge in Europe, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, six million were displaced within Syria swelling the already overpopulated cities and towns where violent men and boys backed by external powers took up weapons against the government.

They have been largely defeated and contained and Damascus has extended its control over 70 per cent of Syria.  The US-backed Syrian Kurdish Protection Forces (YPD) hold 25 per cent of Syria’s territory in the northeast and east and have seized the oil fields which produce 80 per cent of Syria’s crude which used to provide enough petrol and fuel oil for domestic consumption as well as some for export. The Kurds sell some to the government and smuggle the rest to Iraq and Turkey, depriving Syrians who live in government-held areas of fuel for cars, lorries, factories, power stations and businesses.  Unemployment is rife. Ninety per cent of Syrians suffer in poverty.  

Turkey controls about 5 per cent consisting of the northern half of north-western Idlib province — where Al Qaeda’s Hay ’at Tahrir Al Sham rules — and several enclaves on the Syrian side of the Syria-Turkey border.

My friend Paul believes the refugees should stay where they are.  He says Syria has enough people to rebuild and restore its economy. Businessman Issa disagrees. He argues there is a shortage of labour and refugees must come home.  The government promotes the return of farmers who can reclaim their land and produce crops once again while urban refugees would increase demand for electricity, water, housing, and services which are already at critical levels in cities and towns.

If the refugee return were backed by the UN which would continue funding exiled families at current rates, their presence would inject hard currency into the economy. At present Syria is starved of foreign exchange and its currency has plunged from 48-30 to the dollar to 6,600-7,000 to the dollar. To buy anything Syrians need a wad of currency.  For large purchases, a thick brick of notes changes hands after a quick count.

Refugees could also provide urgently needed, well trained construction workers who could rebuild abandoned villages and finish thousands of built but unfinished apartment blocks which stand empty on the outskirts of Aleppo and other cities.  The flats in these buildings could house returning refugee families.

Unfortunately, Syria’s fate has for years depended to a large extent on the US, which dominates the UN, imposes punitive sanctions which amount to illegal collective punishment of the Syrian people, and controls international banking. Driven by a neoconservative agenda drawn up by influential figures promoting the 1997 “Project for the New American Century”, Washington wants to weaken and divide Syria. Since Syria occupies the geographic centre of the Eastern Arab world, this weakens Syria’’s neighbours, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq and the entire region.

Most Arabs understand the solution for Syria is its return to the Arab fold and development of bilateral economic relations with Arab governments so that traders, manufacturers and investors can safely flout US sanctions and provide Syria with the means to reconstruct and recover. Additionally, the Arabs need to exert pressure on Turkey to withdraw its troops and surrogate forces from Syrian territory in the north and on the Syrian Kurds to return the area they hold to government control and effect the exit of the 900 US troops based illegally in Syria.

The object of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, and Jordan — which are working for reconciliation with Syria — is to extend Damascus’ sovereignty over all Syrian territory and ensure that the country’s borders are respected. 

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The month of May has arrived but without the long-awaited Ukrainian “counteroffensive”. The western media is speculating that it may come by late May. There is also the  spin that Kiev is judicious to “buy time.” 

The chances of Ukraine making some sort of  “breakthrough” in the 950-km long Russian frontline cannot be ruled out but a Russian counteroffensive is all but certain to follow. An open-ended war will not suit Western powers.

Last week, NATO’s top commander, US Army General Christopher Cavoli stated that the Russian army operating in Ukraine is larger than when the Kremlin launched its special military operation and the Ukrainians “have to be better than the Russian force they will face” and decide when and where they will strike.

Cavoli said Russia has strategic depth in manpower and has only lost one warship and about 80 fighters and tactical bombers in an air fleet numbering about 1,000 so far. The general gently contradicted Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chief of General Staff Gen. Mark Milley who have been propagating that Russia is on the brink of defeat.

Speaking at the House panel on Wednesday, Gen. Cavoli said, “This war is far from over.” On Thursday, he went further to tell the Senate, “I think [the Russians] can fight another year.” At the House hearing, Cavoli also said Russian submarine activity has only picked up in the North Atlantic since the beginning of the war and none of the Kremlin’s strategic nuclear forces have been affected by operations in Ukraine.

He said at one point in his written testimony,

“Russian air, maritime, space, cyber, and strategic forces have not suffered significant degradation in the current war. Moreover, Russia will likely rebuild its future Army into a sizeable and more capable land force… Russia retains a vast stockpile of deployed and non-deployed nuclear weapons, which present an existential threat to the US.” 

Clearly, the entire narrative of lies and obfuscation created by the neocons in the Biden Administration through the past year has unravelled. The balance sheet shows there is nothing to justify the massive amount of aid to Ukraine through the past one-year period — in excess of $100 billion dollars, which is pro rata vastly more than what the US had spent in the twenty years of war in Afghanistan. 

Gen. Cavoli’s testimony came soon after the leaked Pentagon documents recently, which has presented a grim picture of the state of Kiev’s military preparedness and the Biden Administration’s lack of confidence in the Zelensky regime.

The Pentagon documents echoed, in effect, a January study titled Avoiding a Long War by the RAND Corporation, which recommended that “the paramount US interest in minimising escalation risks should increase the US interest in avoiding a long war (in Ukraine).  In short, the consequences of a long war — ranging from persistent elevated risks to economic damage — far outweigh the possible benefits.” 

Indeed, it appears that there is a significant stream of dissenting opinion within the US security and defence establishment, which estimates that President Biden has taken the US on a disastrous policy trajectory that is fated to have a calamitous outcome — a humiliating defeat in Ukraine that may damage the NATO alliance, weaken the transatlantic system and erode the US’ credibility as a global power. 

Well-informed veterans of the US intelligence community regard the leaking of Pentagon documents itself as a mini-mutiny. The former CIA analyst Ray McGovern told China’s CGTN,

“I believe it could be that some senior policymakers in the Pentagon at the highest reaches of the Department of Defence have decided, ‘You know, it’s a fool’s errand in Ukraine. Maybe, we got to get out the truth. Maybe, we got to expose people like Joint Chief of Staff Milley and Secretary Austin for the lies they have told about Ukrainian progress and Russians being just pulverised. And, maybe, that will stop this widening of the war.’ ”

The well-known former CIA analyst Larry Johnson shares the same view. He wrote:

“This looks like a controlled, directed leak… the leaked material is not random intelligence material. It is designed to tell several stories. The most prominent is the deterioration of Ukrainian capabilities and the major obstacles confronting the United States and the rest of NATO in supplying badly needed air defence, artillery shells, artillery pieces and tanks. In other words, Ukraine is going to crash and burn.”

Johnson added,

“Let me suggest one possibility for this leak — create a predicate for forcing Joe Biden from office. The revelations in the classified documents are not fabrications designed to deceive the Russians. Nor are they the kind of material to rally more U.S. support for pouring more resources into the black hole of Ukraine. These leaks feed the meme that the Biden team is incompetent and endangering American interests overseas.”  

Make no mistake, such coup attempts by the Deep State are nothing new in US presidential history — Eisenhower was undercut when he sought détente with the Soviet Union; a whole corpus of materials available today suggests that CIA framed Nixon in the Watergate affair. Today, all this is happening against the backdrop of President Biden seeking a second term in the 2024 election.

As for Zelensky himself, he is acutely conscious that success or failure of his “counteroffensive” will be critical for continued western support. All things taken into account, a messy diplomatic scenario is looming ahead, one that would also open up divisions between western countries, and in which China could play a more important role. 

There is no guarantee that public support for Biden’s proxy war would hold through the 2024 election. Suffice to say, it is  increasingly doubtful whether Biden will sacrifice his presidency over the Ukraine war. These are of course early days. A large ship needs a big arc for turnaround. 

The Russians are taking their decisions on the basis of own assessments. There has been a perceptible scaling up of Russian strikes against Ukrainian military facilities. Massive strikes deep into Ukrainian military’s rear areas have been reported.

An attack on Sunday on railroad infrastructure and depots for ammunition and fuel in Pavlograd, a major communication hub near Ukraine’s fourth-largest city of Dnepropetrovsk, was particularly devastating. The Ukrainian troops had been accumulating in Pavlograd for an offensive toward Zaporozhye. Two S-300 missile divisions were destroyed.

In the weekend, former president Dmitry Medvedev wrote in Telegram channel that Russia should seek “mass destruction” of Ukrainian personnel and military equipment and deal a “maximum military defeat” on the Armed Forces of Ukraine; strive for “the complete defeat of the enemy and the final overthrow of the Nazi regime in Kiev with the complete demilitarisation of the entire territory of the former Ukraine”; and press ahead with reprisals against key figures of the Zelensky government, “regardless of their location, and without limits.”

Medvedev added, “Otherwise, they will not calm down… and the war will drag on for a long time. Our country doesn’t need that.” The mood has turned ugly and the conflict is set to take a vicious turn, as diplomacy has run aground completely.

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More than 5,000 tons of toxic chemicals are released from consumer products every year inside homes and workplaces, according to new research. The study reveals that people are exposed to multiple chemicals in everyday products, such as shampoos, body lotions, and mothballs, which can cause cancer or birth defects.

The study by researchers from Silent Spring Institute and UC Berkeley found that many products contain toxic volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. Exposure to these chemicals, whether through touch or inhalation as they travel in the air, can lead to various health problems. In California alone, over 5,000 tons of toxic chemicals were released from consumer products inside offices and homes in 2020, with nearly 300 tons coming just from mothballs.

“This study is the first to reveal the extent to which toxic VOCs are used in everyday products of all types that could lead to serious health problems,” says lead author Kristin Knox, a scientist at Silent Spring Institute. “Making this information public could incentivize manufacturers to reformulate their products and use safer ingredients.”

To reach their findings, the team examined data from the California Air Resources Board (CARB). For more than 30 years, CARB has tracked VOCs in consumer products to help reduce smog since VOCs react with other air pollutants in sunlight to form ozone, the main ingredient in smog.

The data included information on the concentration of VOCs in various types of products and the sales of each product type in California. Study authors analyzed the most recent data, focusing on 33 VOCs listed under California’s right-to-know law, Prop 65. This law is in place because these chemicals could cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive problems.

Prop 65 requires companies selling products in the state to warn users if their products could expose them to significant amounts of harmful chemicals. The team’s analysis found that more than 100 types of products contained these harmful VOCs. They identified 30 products, including a dozen different types of personal care products, that are especially harmful and may pose serious health risks.

Workplace products are of particular concern, as workers often use many different types of chemical-containing items throughout the day. For example, nail and hair salon workers use nail polishes and polish removers, artificial nail adhesives, hair straighteners, and other cosmetics. The study found that these types of products combined contain as many as nine different Prop 65 VOCs.

Janitors might use a combination of general cleaners, degreasers, detergents, and other maintenance products, potentially exposing them to more than 20 Prop 65 VOCs.

“The same thing goes for auto and construction workers. All these exposures add up and might cause serious harm,” says study co-author Meg Schwarzman, a physician and environmental health scientist at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, in a media release. “At the most basic level, workers deserve to know what they’re exposed to. But, ultimately, they deserve safer products, and this study should compel manufacturers to make significant changes to protect workers’ health.”

Out of the 33 VOCs listed under Prop 65, the researchers identified the top 11 chemicals that manufacturers should eliminate from products. Among the products used on the body, formaldehyde was the most common Prop 65 VOC — found in nail polish, shampoo, makeup, and other personal care items. For home products, general-purpose cleaners, art supplies, and laundry detergents contained the most. Adhesives had more than a dozen, indicating that workers can be exposed to many toxic chemicals just by using one product.

“Although Prop 65 has reduced the public’s exposure to toxic chemicals both through litigation and by incentivizing companies to reformulate their products, people continue to be exposed to many unsafe chemicals,” says co-author Claudia Polsky, Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law. “This study shows how much work remains for product manufacturers and regulators nationwide because the products in CARB’s database are sold throughout the U.S.”

The authors suggest that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) consider regulating five additional chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). These chemicals are ethylene oxide, found in antifreeze and detergents; styrene, present in foods like fried chicken and nectarines; and 1,3-dichloropropene, used in pesticides. The final two are diethanolamine, which can be found in shampoos and perfumes, and cumene, used as a thinner in paint or found in the manufacture of rubber, iron, and steel.

Dozens of unknown ‘mystery chemicals’ discovered inside people

In 2021, researchers from the University of California-San Francisco uncovered over 100 different foreign chemicals inside of people. Even more unnerving, 55 of these substances have never been discovered in humans before.

“These chemicals have probably been in people for quite some time, but our technology is now helping us to identify more of them,” says Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at UCSF, in a university release.

Researchers say many of these chemicals come from common consumer products and industrial materials. However, the team called 42 of these substances “mystery chemicals” whose sources are unknown at this time.

Study authors made the discovery through an examination of pregnant women and their babies. The findings reveal these chemicals are not only in the blood of the expecting mothers, but also in their newborns. This suggests that many chemicals can travel through the mother’s placenta before birth.

“It is alarming that we keep seeing certain chemicals travel from pregnant women to their children, which means these chemicals can be with us for generations,” Woodruff adds.

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American government and media statements have led the public to believe that the Russian military has been shockingly ineffective and there should be confident optimism for a Ukrainian victory. Ukrainians have indeed fought courageously and performed above expectation. But there has been a vast gulf between private and public assessments. Recent leaks have confirmed what has long been suggested: there is a need to re-evaluate the performance of the Russian army and to recalibrate the optimistic expectations.

The ridiculing and mocking of the Russian military has been possible only because of a deliberate self-delusion that demanded turning away from two important admissions.

First, in the three quarters of a century since the United States became the world’s dominant power, it has seldom decisively won a war or fully achieved its explicit policy goal for going to war. Honestly evaluating Russia’s military performance requires comparing it to the exemplar of recent American wars. The United States has consistently failed to defeat armies far more ragtag than the modern Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Since Vietnam, the United States has failed to achieve its military and political goals in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. After twenty years of fighting in Afghanistan, the U.S. was forced to withdraw. They were in disarray; the Taliban is back in power. The United States has twice withdrawn from Iraq because their government refused to capitulate to Status of Forces Agreements. The first withdrawal left Saddam Hussein in power; the second removed him and left Iran (not the U.S.) strengthened in Iraq. The war in Libya left a failed state to bleed weapons into extremist movements throughout North Africa. In none of these wars did the United States leave victorious nor with their foreign policy objectives achieved. Each of them left a government in power that was not pro-American. The war in Syria has also left Bashar al-Assad in power.

If the Russian military has fared badly against the modern Ukrainian army, it has fared no worse than the United States has against much less modern adversaries.

The second point is the reason why Russia is fighting such a modern Ukrainian army. Ukraine has become a de facto member of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies are providing everything but the bodies in the war against Russia, which is not only pulling off this level of performance against Ukraine: it is pulling off this level of performance against the combined resources of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies have provided and maintained the weapons, trained the Ukrainian soldiers to use them, and provided the intelligence on where to target them. The U.S. is providing “stepped up feeds of intelligence about the position of Russian forces, highlighting weaknesses in the Russian lines.” The U.S. has essentially assumed planning, conducting war-games, and “suggesting” which “avenues…were likely to be more successful.” In March, the U.S. hosted members of the Ukrainian military at an American military base in Germany for war games to strategize for the next phase of the war. In April, they “held tabletop exercises with Ukrainian military leaders to demonstrate how different offensive scenarios could play out” in the expected counter offensive, for which the U.S. has “worked” with Ukraine “in terms of their surprise,” according to General Christopher Cavoli.

But even though Russia is facing an enhanced Ukrainian military, recent leaks confirm what private assessments have long suggested: Ukraine’s losses have been understated while its prospects have been overstated, and Russia’s losses have been overstated while its achievements have been understated.

Long before the recent leaks revealed that many more Ukrainian soldiers than Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded on the battlefield, that Ukraine will be out of antiaircraft missiles by early May, that they are short of troops and ammunition and their counteroffensive will fall “well short” of its goals, attaining, at best, only “modest territorial gains,” U.S. generals and government officials had been quietly admitting as much.

In February, The Washington Post reported that privately the U.S. intelligence’s “sobering assessment” that retaking Crimea “is beyond the capability of Ukraine’s army” has been “reiterated to multiple committees on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks.” As early as November, 2022, U.S. officials shared that assessment with Ukraine, suggesting they “start thinking about [their] realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea.” That same month, western military analysts began to warn of an “inflection point” at which Ukraine’s battlefield gains were at an apex. And on January 21, 2023, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said publicly that Ukraine would not be able to retake all of its territory.

But it was not only that Ukraine’s ambitions had been inflated and their prospects overstated. Their losses had also been understated. Despite public claims of parity in losses or worse for Russia, the leaked reports of a much higher ratio of Ukrainian deaths and casualties to Russian deaths and casualties had been forecasted by military analysts who frequently put the ratio of soldiers killed at closer to 7:1 or 10:1 Ukrainian versus Russian losses. Der Spiegel has reported that German intelligence is “alarmed” by the “high losses suffered by the Ukrainian army” in the battle for Bakhmut. They told German politicians in a secret meeting that the loss of life for Ukrainian soldiers is in “three-digit number[s]” every day on that battleground alone. The Washington Post has reported that the most highly trained and experienced Ukrainian soldiers are “all dead or wounded.”

And it is not only Ukrainian losses that may have been understated. Russian losses, ineptitude, and material setbacks may have been just as overstated. After suffering high casualties at the beginning of the war, Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, says Russia began to pursue a more methodical battlefield strategy and lowered their losses.

On April 26, General Cavoli, the commander of United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, gave a congressional audience of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee a report that is very different from what they’d been told just a month earlier. The public is constantly told that Putin is throwing his soldiers into a meatgrinder. General Mark Milley recently reported that Russian troops are “getting slaughtered.” He told the House Armed Services Committee in late March, “It’s a slaughter-fest for the Russians. They’re getting hammered in the vicinity of Bahkmut.”

But in April, General Cavoli told that same body,

“The Russian ground force has been degenerated somewhat by this conflict; although it is bigger today than it was at the beginning of the conflict.” And it is not only the ground force. Cavoli went on to report, “The air force has lost very little: they’ve lost eighty planes. They have another one thousand fighters and fighter bombers. The navy has lost one ship.”

And as for the larger Russian military, Cavoli said,

“Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict…despite all of the efforts they’ve undertaken inside Ukraine.”

Historian Geoffrey Roberts, an authority on Soviet military history, told me:

“Russia’s Armed Forces have made many mistakes and suffered severe setbacks during the course of its war with Ukraine and NATO, but overall it has performed very well. Like the Red Army during the Second World War, the Russian military has shown itself to be a resilient, adaptable, creative, and highly effective learning organization—a modern war-making machine whose lessons and experience—positive and negative—will be studied by General Staffs and military academies for generations to come.”

After initial territorial setbacks, the Ukrainian military countered with two shocking victories in Kharkiv and Kherson provinces. But in each of those cases, Russia seems to have either decided to leave or redeployed, offering little defense. Military analyst and ret. Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis has pointed out that in each situation where the Russian military “chose to stand and fight, Ukraine has not defeated them.” Russia has not lost a battle it has chosen to fight.

Since then, the Russian military has settled itself in Bakhmut where, like death’s maw, it has devoured everyone Kiev has sent in to displace it. A Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut has said that “the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians. If this goes on like this, we could run out.” Daniel Davis has pointed out that, even if Ukraine were to launch and win a counteroffensive, the rate of casualties and deaths would be so high, they would “have spent [their] last remaining force with which to conduct offensives” or future operations. Military historian Geoffrey Roberts recently told an interviewer, “if the war continues for much longer, I am worried that Ukraine will collapse as a state.”

Professor Hill argued in November 2022 that “had Zelensky’s Ukrainian government been willing to negotiate back in April [2022] then the eventual outcome on the ground would probably have ended up being better for Ukraine than is likely to be the case today or in the future.” It’s a prognosis, he told me, that still stands.

The Ukrainian military may have performed above expectation, and the Russian military may have performed below expectation. But recent statements, both leaked and on the record, suggest the need for an updated, more sincere evaluation. Russia is not struggling only against the Ukrainian Armed Forces: they are struggling against a military seriously swollen by NATO resources, training, and planning. And even still, they are faring no worse than the U.S. military has fared against much less equipped, trained, and prepared forces over the past several decades. The dismissive mocking of the Russian military has been helped by underestimating Ukrainian losses, overestimating Ukrainian capabilities, and by overestimating Russian losses and degeneration and underestimating Russian capabilities and achievements.

Both senior U.S. military leadership and major western media must begin reassessing the Russian military and its capabilities for what they are, instead of how narratives wish them to be.

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Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

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*** 

On Wednesday, two drones exploded over the Kremlin in Moscow, the official residence of the president of the Russian Federation. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the explosions an attempt by the Ukrainian government to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the President,” Moscow said.

The Ukrainian attack on the Kremlin and attempted assassination of Putin is a criminally reckless provocation, serving no other purpose than to provoke retaliation by Russia that would then be used to justify a massive escalation of NATO’s involvement in the war. 

Critically, the attack on the Kremlin took place just after Zelensky had left Ukraine for NATO territory, arriving in Finland just hours ahead of the bombings, in what was no doubt in an effort to shield him from retaliation in kind by Moscow.

The attack took place on the eve of the much-publicized Ukrainian offensive, which the Kiev regime believes is critical to the very viability of the war effort.

Leaked Pentagon documents indicate that Ukraine is in a far worse military position than the public has been led to believe, meaning that the success of the offensive is highly unlikely and could even end in catastrophe without the direct intervention of NATO forces.

The response of the United States, exemplified by the statements of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, directly implicates the United States in the attack, and as such testifies to a staggering level of recklessness at the highest levels of the American state.

Shortly after the attacks, Blinken was asked by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius to comment on “the news overnight from the Kremlin accusing Ukraine of having tried to assassinate President Vladimir Putin with a drone strike. … What is the United States’ position on such attacks on leadership during this war by Ukraine?”

Far from separating the United States from responsibility, Blinken explicitly sanctioned the legitimacy of such attacks, declaring, “We leave it to Ukraine to decide how it’s going to defend itself.”

Ignatius asked him again: “If Ukraine decided on its own to strike back in Russian territory, the United States would not criticize them?” To this, Blinken again reiterated, “These are decisions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself, how it’s going to get its territory back, how it’s going to restore its territorial integrity and its sovereignty.”

Later in the day, during a White House briefing, Jean-Pierre was asked a variant of the same question: “Does the administration see Putin as the commander-in-chief of Russian troops that have waged this war against Ukraine, as a lawful military target?”

She refused to condemn the potential assassination of Putin, declaring, “I’m just not going to speculate.”

These statements make clear that the aim of the United States in the conflict is regime-change, with Putin placed in the same category as previous leaders Washington has overthrown and murdered: Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, both of whom were killed by US proxy forces, and Slobodan Milošević, who died while in custody.

It has long been recognized that the assassination of a political leader is a casus belli. George W. Bush, in justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq, cited the false claim that Saddam Hussein had previously planned the assassination of his father. World War I was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.

Even though the bombing in Moscow did not succeed in killing Putin, it was an attack on the Kremlin, the seat of the Russian government.The United States gave as its primary reason for invading Afghanistan and as a significant reason for invading Iraq the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In planning the attack on the Kremlin, Kiev knew full well that it would intensify pressure within Russia to escalate the war.

In the aftermath of Blinken’s statement, there were attempts by Washington and Kiev to walk back their open involvement in the operation. “We didn’t attack Putin,” said Zelensky. But this claim was belied by the announcement by the Ukrainian Postal Service just hours after the attack that it would issue a stamp depicting the Kremlin in flames.

US officials likewise told the New York Times, Washington Post and other newspapers that the United States did not know about the attacks beforehand. Going a step further, James Nixey of the pro-imperialist Chatham House think tank declared the attack was a “false flag” by the Kremlin.

These efforts to deny responsibility lack all credibility and have been contradicted by open gloating by US officials.

Colonel Alexander Vindman, a leading figure in the run-up to the war, hailed the attack, declaring that it “demonstrates how vulnerable Russia really is.” He continued, “The most important thing about drone strikes on the Kremlin is the shear [sic] embarrassment for Putin. He looks terribly week [sic].”

The denials by Ukrainian and US officials follow the pattern set by the October 8, 2022 attack on the Kerch Bridge, in which Washington and Kiev denied involvement. US media accounts later revealed that the attack was carried out by Ukrainian special forces.

The response of the White House to the bombing makes clear that it is giving the Ukrainian government what amounts to a blank check to escalate the war. This means that the world is effectively being held hostage to whatever criminal actions the Zelensky government may take.

As the war has progressed, everything that the Biden administration has declared it would not do in the war it has proceeded to do. The United States is intent on breaking every barrier to the escalation of the conflict as a means to achieve its military objectives.

The statements by US officials legitimizing a potential assassination of Putin expose the degree of recklessness, desperation and unhinged stupidity that now dominates in Washington and other NATO capitals. The war is expanding not just in intensity but in geographic scope, threatening to metastasize from Eastern Europe to the Pacific.

This war must be stopped. It is urgently necessary to build a mass international movement against the war, oriented to the growing struggles of the working class, and armed with a socialist program.

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Featured image: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin are seen during a meeting with Germany’s foreign minister in Moscow, Russia, March 23, 2016. (Credit: Kremlin)

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*** 

On the night of May 2, there were two unsuccessful drone strikes against Kremlin and Senate facilities in the Russian capital. The purpose of the operation was allegedly to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin. The reaction to the case has been serious, with members of the Russian parliament demanding that tough measures be taken to respond to the provocation on the battlefield.

The attacks were made with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), but Russian defense forces managed to disable the equipment using electronic warfare techniques. Several videos, some of which unverified, circulate on the internet showing the moment when the UAVs were neutralized near Russian state facilities.

There were no reports of damage caused by the attack, as the quick action of the Russian security forces was efficient in preventing the success of the terrorist operation. It is believed that the main objective would be to reach the residence of the President of the Russian Federation, assassinating him which anyway would not be possible since at that moment Vladimir Putin was not in the place.

The Russian government blamed the Kiev regime for the attacks, which was promptly rejected by the Ukrainian authorities. Without showing any evidence, spokespersons for the neo-Nazi regime accused Moscow of having carried out a false flag attack whose aim would be to legitimize escalations of violence on the frontlines. As expected, some western media outlets have adopted this narrative, accusing Moscow in an unsubstantiated way. However, a deeper analysis of the case shows that this interpretation seems absolutely wrong.

The attack on the Kremlin was not a one-off event, but part of a larger wave of Ukrainian air raids into Russia’s pacified or undisputed sovereign space. In recent days, the regime reportedly attacked, in addition to the Russian capital, the regions of Bryansk and Krasnodar, having hit oil facilities in the latter, which caused fires in the city. As well known, for months Kiev has been launching sequential irresponsible incursions against Russia in what appears to be a desperate attempt to provoke violent Russian responses, thus justifying that NATO sends more weapons.

In this sense, it seems illogical to claim that Moscow would be interested in performing a false flag operation against its own capital to justify escalations, when it is the Western-Ukrainian side that shows interest in escalating. If it were in Russia’s interest to increase the intensity of its attacks on Ukraine, there would be already enough reason to do so, as Kiev has carried out several provocations in recent months.

The main problem, however, is that Russian patience may be running out. After the attack on Moscow, many Russian officials reacted by demanding quick, strong and incisive actions to retaliate. There is strong pressure for orders to be given to the Russian armed forces to destroy the entire enemy firepower as quickly as possible. Some politicians even suggest that direct actions against Ukrainian officials should be taken.

The day after the Kremlin incident, heavy Russian attacks took place across Ukraine, mainly in Zaporozhye, Odessa and Kiev. The intensity of the attacks is expected to increase even more in the coming days. Some advisers are urging Zelensky, currently visiting Europe, to stay out of Ukrainian territory indefinitely. In the same vein, the American Embassy in Kiev asked American citizens to leave the country as soon as possible.

The Ukrainian side believes that with the intense Russian attacks, it will have greater arguments to ask the West for help with new military packages. However, this calculation may be wrong. If Moscow maintains a high intensity of attacks, the tendency is that Kiev may be neutralized even before the new Western weapons are eventually used on the battlefield. Russia has been using only a small portion of its military power in the special operation, while Ukraine is fighting with everything it has. Even if it receives more sophisticated weapons from the West, Kiev certainly will not have any chance of maintaining the conflict for long time if the Russians decide to increase their combat mobilization.

Indeed, Moscow has its right of retaliation in the face of such a provocation, but the situation is much more serious than that. There are arguments for the Ukrainian State itself to be considered a terrorist organization, against which Russian forces would be authorized to use all available means of combat. This would lead to a formal change in the nature of the special military operation, pushing the conflict to new levels. In this hypothetical scenario, NATO should be considered an organization sponsor of terrorism for insisting on arming Kiev despite the crimes committed by the regime.

There is still not enough information to know whether this step will be taken, but it is one of the possibilities given the current scenario. What is known, however, is that some serious retaliation is certainly on the way.

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Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

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*** 

The cycle of empires

It is not as if President Macron and his administration needed a new crisis to add to the turmoil of his second term in power. Unlike Mali or Burkina Faso, where French troops were bluntly asked to leave by military juntas, Mayotte is in effect a full-fledged French department. The reminiscence of a vast empire that has almost entirely vanished. All empires fade in their respective historical time frames.

Some finished abruptly, like the Ottoman empire in the immediate aftermath of World War I when the imperial victors (the United Kingdom and France) dismantled it through the Syke-Picot secretive 1916 treaty that determined their respective colonial spoils of war in the entire Middle-East. Some empires, like the British and French empires in more recent times, face a slow erosion following the flux of struggles for self determination and finally independence of indigenous populations from colonial powers.

Even in vanishing empires struggle against colonialism continues

In the giant geopolitical turmoils of post World War II some anti-imperialist leaders emerged. One of them was the Indonesian revolutionary figure Sukarno, who headed the struggle of Indonesia’s independence from the Dutch colonial power. In a statement that has a universal appeal, Sukarno wrote: “I hate imperialism. I detest colonialism. And I fear the consequences of their last bitter struggle for life. We are determined, that our nation, and the world as a whole, shall not be the plaything of one small corner of the world.”

Mayotte a mini-Algeria in the making for Macron?

First of all, some brief historical elements are necessary here. The two small islands of Mayotte are part of the Comoros Archipelago. The Comoros were first populated by migrants from East Africa, then invaded by Arabs during the 15th century. The Arabs brought Islam to the Comoros, and 600 years later Islam remains by far the dominant religion. The Mahorais in Mayotte are the local and legal population; a large majority are proud to be French, and many consider the illegally immigrated Comorans to be interlopers who should be kicked out, as they feel their standards of living is under assault.

In many ways, even though the two populations, Mahorais on one side and Comorans on the other, are racially and religiously quasi identical, it is as if the Mahorais are the privileged white colonists, which in Algeria were called Pieds Noirs, and the Comorans are Mayotte’s equivalent of the oppressed Arab population. This indicates that the economic gap between groups of people struggling for their rights to the same land matter more than cultural, racial, or religious divides.

In this case, it is a struggle between the poor, the Mahorais, and the destitute who are the freshly arrived illegal Comorans. There is nothing better than reducing the size of the pie to turn vicious the fights at the family table! Since the 1974 referendum, which kept Mayotte as a French territory, with two-thirds of Mahorais voting in favor, France has not done enough for its citizens in Mayotte. It has also neglected to provide financial assistance to the Comoros, which would have avoided the large illegal migrants flux. It has been pretty much 50 years of bad policies, but mostly neglect towards Mayotte from one Paris administration after another.

Forget Operation Wuambush (take back) instead fight poverty

Operation Wuambush is headed by France’s Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin. The name is highly symbolic as it implies a reconquest after an invasion. The muscle of the cleaning, or pacification, operation involves 2,000 Gendarmes and the French riot police, CRS. The ill-advised plan appears to be simple: it consists of the demolition of countless shantitowns, and the expulsion, manu militari, of the illegal migrants to the Comoros. But, there is a huge problem for the Macron administration and Mr. Darmanin.

According to a very official Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), if an official census of 2017 established the legal population of Mayotte at 256,500, in reality, considering that more than 50 percent are illegal migrants, and therefore not registered, the real number of Mayotte’s booming population could be as high as 500,000. The two communities, by and large, do not get along.

To grasp fully the explosive nature of the Mayotte situation, some key figures are needed. The birth rate in Mayotte is extremely high: in 2021 it was 4.6 children per woman. Furthermore, half of the population is below 18-years-old. Yet more disturbing official data from INSEE: in Mayotte, an astounding four in ten residences are precarious dwellings made of scavenged materials such as pieces of plywood and corrugated metal sheets; three out of ten habitations lack running water; in 2022 Mayotte’s unemployment rate was 34 percent; last but not least, in 2018, 77 percent of the population was living below France’s poverty level.

Darmanin’s naked ambitions?

One must wonder: why this repressive anti-migrant operation, and why now, while in France proper a deep political turmoil is at play in the aftermath of the extremely unpopular retirement reforms? Unless it is a diversion tactic, the timing of it seems completely off. Could the operation of pacification of Mayotte be a stepping stone for Mr Darmanin’s own political ambitions?

Many political insiders in France have said that the ambitious Interior Minister has his eyes on the job of current Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne. It might also be a sign of bigger goals for him down the line, and why not the presidency of France? Spearheading this policing operation could boost Darmanin’s appeal to the anti-immigration xenophobic electorate of Marine Le Pen’s party, which is substantial.

He has certainly established himself as a tough law-and-order proponent, modeling his persona to that of Nicolas Sarkozy who, by the way, started his political career as Jacques Chirac’s Minister of the Interior. As the Minister of the Interior, the advantage of heading France’s vast security apparatus is that you know where the skeletons are buried.

At the last presidential election’s second round in 2022, Marine Le Pen obtained almost 60 percent of the vote in France’s overseas territories. This vote, considering that Le Pen’s party is rooted in a culture of nationalism and xenophobia, is sociologically highly disturbing as it is completely detached from history in places that have been so deeply marked by the memory and collective pain of slavery and colonialism.

More specifically, in Mayotte during the 2022 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen obtained 43 percent in the first round, against 24 percent for Jean-Luc Melenchon of the left party La France Insoumise, and 17 percent for Emanuel Macron. During the second round, which opposed Macron to Le Pen, Marine Le Pen garnered 59 percent of the vote versus 41 percent for Macron. Needless to say her edge and appeal to a majority of Mayotte’s electorate was based on her anti-immigration Trumpist-like nationalist and populist agenda.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who fought in France’s colonial wars first in Indochina and then Algeria, was echoing and embracing the Algerie Francaise! battlecry of French colonists. By contrast to his daughter, Le Pen was less than welcome in the overseas territories when he was politically active. In fact he was banned from landing in Martinique by the local authorities.

Despite what Mr. Macron and Mr. Darmanin, or other people in their fancy offices in Paris, think and plot, the time of France-Afrique is long gone. Mahorais and Comorans are brothers and sisters. In faith, race and unfortunately poverty they must learn how to get along and manage their own conflicts without becoming the instruments of French politicians of various stripes. A comprehensive dialogue must open up between all the citizens of the Comoros archipelago which, like it or not, includes Mayotte.

While it is the most far-right anti-migrant Mahorais that have formed quasi vigilante groups to attack Comorans and torched their makeshift homes, the government of the Comoros is not blame free. Their refusal to take back their citizens who have migrated to Mayotte could also be a way to modify Mayotte’s demographics in the medium term. Migrants can be easily weaponized, like Qaddafi did in Libya, or Erdogan did in Turkey with Syrian refugees, to blackmail the European Union. Soon having (right now it is 50 percent) more Comorans on the island than Mahorais could validate their claim that the island, despite the 1974 referendum, belongs to the Comoros and not to France.

Mayotte is a case study not only in neocolonialism, but also in the global migration crisis, as it illustrates that the world at large will have to absorb and manage, in a non-repressive human way if at all possible, the flow and cost of massive migration due to the increasing catastrophic impact of climate collapse.

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This article was originally published on News Junkie Post.

Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by David Stanley

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*** 

In 1975, Philip Agee published his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary. In the introduction, he wrote:

“When I joined the CIA, I believed in the need for its existence. After twelve years with the agency I finally understood how much suffering it was causing, that millions of people all over the world had been killed or had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing and so began work on this book.”

Enrique Prado’s book, Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2022), is written for the opposite purpose. Prado says,

“This book is my attempt to correct the misperceptions that make the Agency one of the least understood and most mistrusted institutions in America today. The reality we faced on the ground in places from Muslim Africa to East Asia, to our own streets here at home, is one of persistent threats that must be countered to keep our people safe.”

Prado’s memoir was approved for publication by the CIA. It is self-laudatory and highly critical of restraints on the CIA. It confirms that, while the ability to assassinate at will was temporarily restricted, CIA sabotage and paramilitary operations against other nations have continued non-stop.

Background

Enrique (Ric) Prado’s father lost his business in the Cuban Revolution and Ric came to the U.S. as a youth in the early 1960s. He grew up in greater Miami. The Vietnam War was raging and his “dream was to go to Vietnam.”

After high school, Ric enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and received training in rescue operations including parachute jumping and scuba diving. Prado’s dream was dashed because the Vietnam War was winding down and the U.S. military downsizing.

Prado alludes to his involvement with Cuban-American gangs and some troubled years. Then, starting with contract work, Prado began to perform assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Prado and the Contras

Prado’s timing was late for Vietnam but just right for Central America. In 1979 the Sandinista Revolution overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. As a Spanish-speaking Latino, Prado was not a typical Anglo-American. He was recruited as a CIA officer responsible for overseeing the development of the Contra army based in Honduras and conducting cross-border attacks on communities in Nicaragua.

He writes, “In these early days, there were only five CIA officers who interfaced directly with the Contras in Tegucigalpa; none were yet in the field.” There were “ten camps that lay scattered along the Honduran Nicaraguan border.” Ric Prado became the CIA officer responsible for going to the camps to coordinate support and conduct weapons training.

Prado admits the Contra leadership came from the corrupt Somoza regime: “Others who had been part of Somoza’s military…formed the core leadership of the Contras.” Initially, Washington subcontracted the job of mobilizing the Contras to Argentinian military officers who had experience from their own dirty war and death squads. Prado is extremely critical of the Argentinian military trainers, calling them a “den of snakes” and stating that, “to a man, I found them to be useless parasites.” The Argentinian military trainers were supplanted by CIA personnel, with Ric Prado playing a leading role overseeing Contra operations from Honduras and later in the “southern front” in Costa Rica.

The CIA is funded by Congress and acutely aware of its public image. Whether it is creating negative press for “enemies” such as Nicaragua, Cuba or Russia, or creating positive press for itself, manipulating the media is an important part of its work. Prado talks about the political benefits of recruiting Indigenous Miskitos to the Contras: “Miskitos were popular with several U.S. political sectors. Among Native Americans and some prominent liberals, the Miskitos were considered to be the oppressed, indigenous forces untainted by association with Somoza. That political viability back in the States with elements often hostile to the Agency helped us enormously.”

The unofficial war on Nicaragua included attacks on infrastructure which echo today with the U.S. sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Prado proudly documents the attack on the Puerto Cabezas pier and underwater gas pipeline: “The dock included an integrated fuel pipeline for faster transfer of oil from tankers. If we could destroy this…we’d make a big statement by blowing up the key link between the Sandinistas and their communist allies….We received exactly what we needed: a specialized underwater demolition charge that combined compactness with tremendous blast power….The charge exploded…the blast was so large it destroyed the fuel pipeline.”

Prado documents the failed attempt to blow up a bridge at Corinto on the Pacific coast. For unknown reasons, Prado was re-assigned and left Honduras in March 1984 after four years managing the Contras. He returned to the Contra campaign in the summer of 1986. They had safe houses and secret bases in ranches along the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. It was more difficult because the Costa Rican government did not support the Contras as Honduras did.

Prado briefly describes the sensational events in October 1986 when a CIA plane dropping supplies and weapons to Contras was shot down. The pilot and two others on the flight died, but ex-Marine Eugene Hasenfus survived and was captured. Unmentioned in the book, this was a sensational news event at the time. Beyond the drama of an American plane being shot down over Nicaragua and an American captured and taken prisoner, it revealed the CIA was violating the congressional Boland Amendment prohibiting U.S. military support for overthrowing the Nicaragua government.

The Reagan administration denied responsibility. Elliott Abrams, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, said:“The flight in which Mr. Hasenfus took part was a private initiative…It was not organized, directed or financed by the U.S. Government.” The counter-evidence was overwhelming and the CIA was caught red-handed violating the congressional resolution and then lying about it. This is unmentioned in the book. Instead, Prado criticizes Hasenfus for having personal identification papers in his possession.

Prado’s Pride

In 1990, after ten years of terrorist attacks by the Contras, combined with economic and political attacks from Washington, Nicaraguans cried “Uncle” and voted the Sandinistas out of power.

Prado says, “our Contra program was a definitively successful black op carried out solely by key personnel from the CIA.” Prado stated further that “that Cuban kid who lost his native country to revolutionaries now helped cut off some of the communist tentacles that threatened to engulf Latin America.”

Prado believes the use of a proxy army to fight against a perceived enemy was an important victory and re-established the credibility of the CIA. He says, “The Contras resuscitated the post-Vietnam decimated CIA back to relevance.”

Prado is annoyed at negative media portrayals of the CIA Contra program. The movie American Made, depicting the story of an American pilot taking guns to the Contras and bringing cocaine back into the U.S., is especially annoying to Prado. He ignores the fact that tens of thousands of Nicaraguans died and cocaine inundated some U.S. cities as a byproduct of the Contra program.

Source: streetsoflima.com

Prado believes that the CIA were the “good guys” in Nicaragua. The International Court of Justice thought otherwise.

In 1986 the court ruled that the U.S. attacks on Nicaragua were violations of international law. The Reagan administration and media largely ignored the ruling.

Later, journalist Gary Webb documented the catastrophic social damage inside the U.S. caused by the cheap cocaine flooding some U.S. cities. Webb was attacked by establishment media. However, in 1998, the CIA Inspector General acknowledged, “There are instances where C.I.A. did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations.”

The 2014 movie Kill the Messenger, based on the true and tragic story of Gary Webb, was undoubtedly another movie that irritated Ric Prado.

Justifying Terrorism and Sabotage

Prado’s justification for CIA crimes against other countries is U.S. national security. He says, “The spread of communism through Central and South America became a direct threat to the security of the United States.” He compares the war against “communism” to the World War II fight against Nazi Germany. He says, “The Sandinistas quickly consolidated their power through Nazi-like pogrom and oppression.”Prado says that training the Contras was like “being an OSS officer trying to train and supply the French resistance to the Germans in WW2.”

The U.S. deployed Nicaraguans, Afghans and extremist Arab recruits in proxy wars across the globe. Prado assesses this a great success: The Mujahedin in Afghanistan and Contras in Nicaragua “played crucial roles in the Cold War’s final act.”

Prado does not mention the fact that the Sandinistas were voted back into power in Nicaragua in 2006 after 16 years of neo-liberal rule. The country was in very poor shape with privatized education, little health care, and terrible infrastructure. Since being voted back, the Sandinistas have won increasing levels of support because they have substantially improved the lives of most Nicaraguans. As in the 1980s, Nicaragua is back on the U.S. enemy list and Western media portrayals are universally negative.

Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas enjoy great popularity today despite the CIA efforts to destroy the revolution that they led in the 1980s. [Source: resumenlatinamericano.org]

Prado in Other Countries

The “CIA shadow warrior” went on to conduct operations in Peru, the Philippines, South Korea and an unnamed African country, probably the Central African Republic. “We were the leadership cadre, spearheading America’s effort against global terrorism.”

Prado says, “Radical Islamic terrorism at the turn of the century morphed into a deadly new enemy.” With the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. homeland was suddenly the victim of a real attack. The timing was very convenient for war hawks and those who wanted a “new American Century.” From being a president who took office under highly contested circumstances, Bush became a “war President.” The 9/11 attack provided a Pearl Harbor moment justifying U.S. military aggression in the Middle East.

Prado describes the fervor and intensity with which the CIA responded: CIA agents worked long hours to identify, capture and sometimes kill those deemed to be “enemy combatants.” Some of these suspects were tortured in violation of the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. is a signatory. The “CIA shadow warrior” is dismissive of the critics. The “much maligned enhanced interrogations [were] sparingly performed on known terrorists.”

“Jungle of Criminality”

Prado views the world as “a jungle of criminality, corruption, betrayals, and atrocious human rights abuses we were determined to help eradicate.” There are numerous allusions to the “good guys” fighting the “bad guys.”

Prado does not attempt to argue with critics who say some CIA actions are violations of international law and human rights. It is estimated that 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the Contra War. This is ten times more than died in the attacks of 9/11 in a country that only had 3.3 million people at the time.

Prado’s claim that Sandinista Nicaragua posed a threat to U.S. “national security” stretches credulity. The CIA actions not only violated international law; they violated U.S. law.

Prado never questions why some people around the world hate the U.S. government. For him, they are simply the “bad guys.” This is much more convenient than looking at the real causes. Chalmers Johnson, in the introduction to his book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Holt Books, 2001), put it succinctly: “The attacks of September 11 descend in a direct line from events in 1979, the year in which the CIA, with full presidential authority, began carrying out its largest ever clandestine operation—the secret arming of Afghan freedom fighters (mujaheddin) to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union, which involved the recruitment and training of militants from all over the Islamic world.”

The results in Afghanistan were even more disastrous than in Nicaragua. They toppled a popular government, creating decades of chaos and extremism. With the Soviets gone, the U.S. dumped Afghanistan and moved on to attack Iraq and place troops in Saudi Arabia. As Johnson says, “The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not ‘attack America,’ as political leaders and news media in the United States have tried to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy.”

Intelligence Serving the War Machine

In the 1960s and 1970s, CIA officers Phil Agee and John Stockwell, author of In Search of Enemies, came to realize that U.S. foreign policy is not in the national interest. Performing coups, destabilizing foreign governments and promoting death squads (as is documented in the 2020 book, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World) is not only against international law and the UN Charter, it is against what the U.S. claims to be for. They spoke out courageously. Ric Prado is far from this realization.

No doubt there are many hard-working and dedicated analysts and officers at the CIA. No doubt they come up with real intelligence. But given the biases and delusions, they can also be wildly inaccurate. Prado writes,

“Threats America faced that summer came from many quarters, but two in particular were seen as significant threats. Hezbollah was considered among the most dangerous. They had carried out operations all over the world that had killed thousands of people…Danger lurks from seemingly innocuous sources. You’ll find Hezbollah sleeper cells in your own town…Terrorists lurking and lying in wait.”

Prado says that, when 9/11 happened, one CIA officer was certain that Hezbollah was behind it. This suggests they have poor analysis because Hezbollah is very different from al-Qaeda. Hezbollah is a Lebanese resistance movement, much demonized by Israel because they successfully expelled the Israelis from southern Lebanon. They are a substantial part of the Lebanese government and oppose extremist al-Qaeda ideology and actions.

Prado’s comments about President John F. Kennedy also indicate a poor analysis. He explains away the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 to “betrayal and broken promises of the Kennedy Administration.” Looking back, it seems clear the invasion was doomed to failure. Vitriol against Kennedy may be widespread in the CIA. In recent years, important new evidence on the assassination has been revealed in several books, including JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, among others.

As a sign of the times, Ric Prado transitioned from the CIA to a private security company, Blackwater. The “revolution in military affairs” proposed by neo-cons in the 1990s has been realized as U.S. intelligence and “black ops” are increasingly performed by private contractors. There are clear advantages: They do not have the same constraints and accountability. Prado documents how he has recruited other CIA leaders for the infamous private company.

The CIA and U.S. Foreign Policy

Ric Prado is very proud of his work at the CIA and pours compliments on many of his CIA leaders and fellow officers. He is critical of constraints on the CIA.

“Our nation’s leadership often failed to measure up. When you have pit bulls ready and willing to go after America’s enemies, only to be chained in the yard by career-obsessed managers, you cannot win a war. It only gets prolonged.”

Prado admits: “Our job was to break the laws of other nations without getting caught to defend ours. It is dark and murky work.”

In a postscript Prado says “confronting China” is now one of the Agency’s primary tasks. He recommends,

“the CIA needs to be led by vigorous, aggressive, and fearless leaders willing to take the fight to the enemy on their turf, wherever that turf may be.”

Taking “the fight to the enemy” is clearly a recipe for new conflicts. Ric Prado has learned nothing from past failures and blowback. Judging by the positive reviews of his book, neither has the Washington foreign policy establishment.

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Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is active with the Taskforce on the Americas and other organizations including Syrian Solidarity Movement and  the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center. He can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research

Featured image: CIA officer Ric Prado with his new book lionizing the Agency. [Source: spymuseum.org]

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Russian and African media representatives and practitioners marked the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day and the 32nd anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting the Development of an Independent and Pluralistic African Press by establishing a new association.  

Both Russian and African media practitioners pledged to continue to uphold the highest standards of journalism – including accuracy, fairness and impartiality – and also embrace innovation to adapt to the fast-changing media landscape. 

This initiative is an important milestone in the long history of mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and Africa. The importance of interaction in the field of creating, exchanging and disseminating objective and reliable information is growing even more in the light of common goals and aspirations to build a fair and equitable system of international relations based on the principles of national identity and cultural diversity.

According to the document which was signed, it recognized the importance of international cooperation in the field of creation, exchange and dissemination of objective and reliable information, strengthening cooperation in the development of information and communication technologies.

It further plans to expand cooperation in the information sphere, including strengthening ties between national, regional and local media, information exchange, training (retraining) of journalists, contacts through relevant ministries and departments, as well as commercial structures and public organizations. 

The Memorandum on Information Cooperation between African and Russian Media affirmed the principles of fair cooperation between the continents in the field of information exchange. The establishment of the Association of Journalists of Russia and Africa becomes necessary in order to coordinate efforts to form and strengthen Russian-African relations in this area. 

In accordance with the initiatives and projects put forward on May 3, 1991 at the UNESCO seminar in Windhoek (Namibia) – to assist in the creation of a data bank for the independent African press, which would receive the news reports necessary for newspapers and other publications. 

In accordance with paragraph 10 of the Declaration of Windhoek, to assist in providing financial support for the development and creation of non-governmental newspapers, magazines and periodicals that would express public opinion in general and the various points of view existing in the communities for which these publications are intended.

Happy World Press Freedom Day!

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Welcome the canons of pseudoscience. Open your arms to the dribbling, sponsored charlatans. According to a growing number of India’s top officialdom, teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to children in their ninth and 10^th grades is simply not on.

Last month, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a purportedly autonomous government organisation responsible for curricula content and textbook publishing for India’s 256 million primary and secondary students, continued its hostility against Darwin as part of its “content rationalisation” process. NCERT had taken the scrub to evolution during the COVID-19 pandemic, implausibly arguing that it was necessary to drop its teaching in moving classes online. (Darwin would have been most bemused.)

A closer look at the list of dropped and excluded subjects in the NCERT publication of “rationalised content in textbooks” from May last year is impressive in its philistinism. In addition to dropping teaching on Darwin, the origin of life on earth, evolution, fossils and molecular phylogeny, we also see the scrapping of such subjects as electricity, the magnetic effects of electric current and the “sustainable management of natural resources”.

Evolutionary biologist Amitabh Joshi of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research was less than impressed, calling the measure “a travesty of the notion of a well-rounded secondary education”.

On April 20, the non-profit Breakthrough Science Society launched an open letter demanding a reversal of the decision.  “Knowledge and understanding of evolutionary biology is important not just to any subfield of biology, but is also key to understanding the world around us.” Though not evident at first glance, “the principles of natural selection help us understand how any pandemic progresses or why certain species go extinct, among many other critical issues.”

A sense of despondency reigns on whether NCERT will change course, even in the face of protest. In the view of biologist Satyajit Rath, “Given the recent trajectories of such decisions of the government of India, probably not, at least over the short term. Sustained progressive efforts will be required to influence the long-term outcomes.”

The anti-evolutionary streak in Indian politics, spearheaded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been present for some time, always threatening to spill over with acid implications into the education syllabus. In 2018, India’s then Minister for Higher Education, Satyapal Singh, urged the removal of evolution from school curricula, remarking that no one had ever seen “an ape turning into a human being.” Before a university gathering at a university in Assam, he claimed to “have a list of around 10 to 15 great scientists of the world who have said there is no evidence to prove that the theory of evolution is correct.” He even threw poor Albert Einstein into the mix to justify the stance, claiming that the physicist had thought the theory “unscientific”.

As ever with such characters, ignorance is garlanded with claims of expertise. Singh was speaking as a “man of science”. As a man of science, “Darwin’s theory is scientifically wrong”. Man, he claimed, “has always been a man.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure has been characterised by a coupling of mythologisation and anti-scientific inquiry, grouped under the notion of Hindutva – that India was, and is, the sacred homeland of Hindus, with all other religious groups foreign aberrations. By blending the two, outrageous claims purportedly scientific can be drawn from ancient folklore and texts. Myth is rendered victorious.

In 2014, Modi gave a most extravagant example of this exercise by claiming that “plastic surgery” and “genetic science” explained the creation of Lord Ganesh’s elephantine head and Karna’s birth respectively. Given that the latter, an epic figure of the Mahabharata, “was not born from his mother’s womb”, Modi could confidently state that “genetic science was present at that time.”

Such astonishing, crude literalism is tantamount to stubborn claims that Indians were the first to discover the means of flying, given Arjuna’s ride in a chariot piloted by Lord Krishna at the Battle of Kurukshetra. And sure enough, the 102^nd session of the India Science Congress, hosted in January 2015, featured a panel led by a number of BJP government members claiming that Indians had pioneered aviation that could fly not only across planet Earth but between planets.

Other instances of this abound, some blatantly, and dangerously irresponsible. In April 2019, BJP parliamentary member Pragya Singh Thakur told the television network India Today that a heady “mixture of gau mutra” (cow urine), along with “other cow products”, including dung and milk, cured her breast cancer. Oncologists mocked the conclusions, but the damaging claim caught on.

With such instances far from infrequent, academics and researchers feel beleaguered in a landscape saturated by the credo of Hindutva. In 2016, number theorist Rajat Tandon observed that the Modi approach to knowledge was “really dangerous”. Along with more than 100 scientists, including many heads of institutions, he signed a statement protesting “the ways in which science and reason are being eroded in the country.”

A number trying to buck the trend, notably those numbered among rationalists and the anti-superstition activists, have been threatened and, in some cases, murdered. The scholar and writer M. M. Kalburgi paid with his life in North Karnataka in August 2015 for a remark made quoting Jnanpith awardee U. R. Ananthamurthy that urinating on idols was not a transgression that would necessarily attract divine retribution.

In September 2017, the progressive journalist and publisher Gauri Lankesh was gunned down returning to her home from work. She had become yet another victim of what the police in India euphemistically call “encounters”, drawing attention to herself for her stand against the Hindutva stampede and her sympathetic stance towards the Maoist Naxalites.

The recent bureaucratic assault on Darwin and the continued elevation of mythology above sceptical scientific inquiry, bode ill for India’s rationalists. But despite being browbeaten and threatened, many continue to do battle, defiantly and proudly.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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Jordan played host to the newest regional meeting on the road to the reinstatement of Syria as a member of the Arab world. Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met privately with Syria’s Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad in Amman on May 1, before the larger group meeting which included foreign ministers of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

Jordan has put forth an initiative to reach a political solution to the Syrian crisis which began in 2011, and was a US-NATO attack on Syria for regime change.  The plan failed but was supported by many Arab countries that are US allies.

Almost all of the members of the Arab League have decided to reinstate Syria to its position at the round table which is set to meet May 19 in Riyadh; however, Qatar and Kuwait are hold-outs. Syria was suspended in 2011 following the conflict erupting. Two weeks ago, a meeting was held in Jeddah but failed to reach a consensus on whether Syria will be at the upcoming Arab League meeting.

The US is against any rapprochement with Damascus, and Qatar and Kuwait may be signaling their continued willingness to follow US directives from the State Department. 

The meeting covered refugees, water issues, and border security, including the fight against smuggling the highly-addictive amphetamine Captagon. Jordan is both a market for and a main transit route to the oil-rich Gulf countries for Captagon.

Progression toward reconciliation

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has participated in a flurry of visits in recent months on the road to resuming his legitimate position in the Middle East after 12 years of isolation dictated by Washington.  

Both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia have led the way in repairing the broken relationship between Syria and the world.  President Assad and his wife visited the UAE, and last month Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud visited Assad in Damascus.

An outpouring of humanitarian aid was sent to Syria following the devastating February 6 earthquake which killed about 50, 000, including about 6,000 in Syria. On March 10, China brokered a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.  That was a political ‘earthquake’ felt throughout the Middle East, and further paved the road to reconciliation with Damascus.

Syria is hoping the wealthy Gulf monarchies will assist Syria in its reconstruction after 12 years of conflict.

Turkey killed ISIS

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed that the Turkish intelligence agency, MIT, killed ISIS Chief Abu Hasan Al-Hashimi Al-Qurashi in Idlib province on Saturday. Turkey illegally occupies territory in northern Syria following a series of invasions to drive Kurdish groups away from the Turkish-Syrian border.

Abu Hussein Al-Qurayshi was named the chief of ISIS in October 2022 after its previous chief was killed.

This marks three ISIS chiefs all killed in Idlib province in Syria. Beginning with the 2019 killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US military operation ordered by President Trump.

Next came his successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who was killed in a similar raid in February 2022. 

This latest killing was in Jindires, in Idlib province, which is under the control of Turkish-backed terrorist groups following Radical Islam. Erdogan is a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood and his AKP party is also Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, is a US-backed Kurdish paramilitary in northeast Syria, and Erdogan has invaded Syria intending to dismantle the SDF and their communist partner the YPG, which is linked to the outlawed terrorist group, the PKK, which has killed 30,000 people over three decades.

ISIS came to the world stage in 2014 when its leader Baghdadi declared an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In a combined victory, but fought separately by the Syrian Arab Army, Russian Army, Iranian forces, the SDF, YPG, and the US military, ISIS was defeated in March 2019 in their last remaining stronghold in Syria, on the Iraq border.

Who controls Idlib?

Abu Mohammad al-Julani is a Syrian who fought in Iraq with Al Qaeda, then became an associate of the first leader of ISIS, Baghdadi, then went to Syria and formed Jibhat al-Nusra, but when the US decided to outlaw al-Nusra, he re-branded himself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham so he could continue to be supported by the White House and Congress. 

Julani is the man who receives all humanitarian aid in Idlib and distributes it to those he chooses while denying aid to his enemies, and the leftovers he sells to the civilians in Idlib out of his new multi-storied shopping Mall, Al Hamra.

Julani took off his terrorist uniform and headscarf, put on a tailored suit and tie, and gave an interview to the US media outlet NPR.  He was in the process of re-branding himself from head-chopping radical, to a modern statesman capable of working with the US government, his partner.

In 2020, the US Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of al-Julani. He is not hiding, every UN aid truck which comes into Idlib from Turkey is met by him.

Julani made some Western humanitarian groups upset when he and his terrorists stormed into their warehouses and seized valuable aid, and when he dictated that no charity program should be focused on women or women’s rights.  His administration of Idlib, which he calls the Salvation Government rules by strict Islamic law.  The punishment for theft is to have the accused’s hand chopped off.

Julani sees himself in a new position in the future Syrian government in Damascus. This might be the concession that Biden and Blinken demand to allow Assad to be recognized and the sanctions lifted. Julani has committed so many war crimes it would be a very hard sell for the Syrian people to accept him, and even harder among the 3 million human hostages, he rules in Idlib.

Turkish election May 14

Turkish voters will head to the polls on May 14, and the second round is scheduled for May 28. The incumbent president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu are battling for the support of the Turkish citizens who are living under hyper-inflation, devalued currency, and the aftermath of an earthquake deemed the ‘disaster of the century’.

Erdogan has publically stated his intent to repair relations with Assad, but Damascus prefers to wait out the election first, and then deal with the winner.

Regardless of who wins, Damascus and Moscow are demanding Ankara withdraw its occupation forces from Idlib, Afrin, Jarabulus, and the area between Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain.

Both candidates promise if they win they will return all Syrian refugees to their homeland. Turkish citizens see the almost 4 million Syrian refugees in their midst as a source of instability and a financial drain. Lebanon is already deporting Syrian home forcibly, and many European countries will be waiting for the right time to institute their repatriation plans. 

Israel attacked Aleppo

The international airport in Aleppo has been a main channel of humanitarian aid to the earthquake-hit areas of northwest Syria. Israel bombed the airport and stopped all aid deliveries.

One Syrian soldier was killed by Israel, with five other soldiers injured, along with two civilians.

In March, Israel struck Aleppo’s airport on two different occasions and put it out of commission for several days.

Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on Syria in recent years, and on Saturday Israeli air raids over Homs wounded three civilians, and a civilian gasoline station was burned up.  

Syria had been energy efficient before the US-NATO attack in 2011, but now the US occupation forces control the main oil fields, which prevents Syria from refining their petroleum into gasoline, which has caused a chronic gasoline shortage, with long lines sometimes for days to fill up a car.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MD

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Alain Badiou is undoubtedly among the greatest of living philosophers; one that may fairly be credited with rescuing philosophy from academic irrelevance, and the twin enemies of scientism and historicism. For Badiou, philosophy does not merely interpret the world (as Marx famously asserted in his “Theses on Feuerbach”). For an interpretation of the world, we would do better to look to myths, religions, and the various wisdom schools. Philosophy, presupposing mathematics, is a fundamentally rational and conceptual rather than hermeneutic undertaking, aimed at answering the question: does there exist anything with a universal value, and if so, how is this possible?  Badiou secured his place in the philosophical pantheon with three massive tomes, which together provide a rigorous account of Truths, or the production in time and space of things to which we may ascribe universal value: Being and Event (1988), Logics of Worlds (2006), and The Immanence of Truths (2018).

Images of the Present Time (Columbia University Press, 2023) contains a series of three seminars delivered between 2001 and 2004. The first section presents a sustained philosophical analysis of contemporary nihilism and is initially taken up with the question of identifying the ‘emblem,’ that is, the master signifier of the present time – and Badiou’s claim is that democracy is that emblem, a political system that “does not prohibit or restrain, or not excessively.” This raises the question of how democracy is correlated with freedom: given that fewer and fewer things are prohibited, what does that say for freedom under this regime? Ultimately, not so much: as Descartes already knew, indiscriminate freedom, or the freedom to do whatever you want, is at best ‘the lowest degree of freedom.’ “Thinking you’re a free Subject just because whatever you want to do or say is not prohibited is sheer nonsense.” It is true, for example, that almost nothing is prohibited in public speech, yet that does not mean that something significant has been “publicly pronounced… if nothing is prohibited and yet nothing, properly speaking, has been said, freedom does not exist.”

Badiou’s central thesis is that, at the present time, there is no world – in fact, there is no present, strictly speaking. Why isn’t the democratic world a world?

In brief, because it is a world “in which everything is assumed to be equivalent to everything else.” Endorsing Plato’s notion that such a condition “precludes the configuration of a world,” Badiou argues that the critique of a world where everything is assumed to be equivalent to everything else, can be easily transposed to modern democracy in terms of the monetary principle of exchange, the rule of exchange-value over use-value in capital. Modern democracy creates a “potential zone of equivalence of everything with everything else through its monetary presentation.”

Perhaps not since Socrates has a philosopher been so genuinely concerned with youth, with the young, as Badiou. This is perhaps not so surprising when we consider that Badiou puts himself squarely in the Socratic tradition by affirming that the task of the philosopher is precisely to “corrupt the youth” (one of the main charges brought against Socrates) – which means to show them that another life is possible, what he calls ‘the true life,’ which, as “something worth living for, far outstrips money, pleasure and power.” What youth under capitalism forgets is that “the substitutability of pleasures is only one particular form of freedom and by no means the definition of freedom as such.” True freedom means to live by an Idea, one that invariably includes the idea of a future, and that in turn will involve subjection or discipline, without which there can be no meaningful or genuinely creative project.

Under capitalism we must constantly be available to the encounter with commodities. Badiou refers to this as validation, “to be the eternal equivalent of a consumer, the customer body…” This is distinguished from but closely related to valuation, which is formally biologizing and translates into the requirement that we keep fit and have the requisite body. “Through validation and valuation, the democratic individual becomes identical to their body,” which is now a commodified body. Hence, Badiou’s insistence on the ‘democratization of prostitution.’ The prostitutional, that is, “the reduction of every norm to the commercial potentialities of bodies,” has become paradigmatic. It is worth noting that this is perfectly compatible with the suppression of prostitution as such. What Badiou is underscoring with the notion of the prostitutional is “the equating of everything with a space reduced to the exchange of bodies and money.”

It requires violence and ferocious power to reduce the person to a commodified body – but this is not a violence against bodies so much as “violence against the body’s capacity for ideas.” The imperative today is “Live without any ideas.” This injunction is propped up with familiar arguments, which generally turn on the good of animalistic contentment: the horrors of the twentieth century showed us what living with Ideas leads to, namely, violence against bodies, so, “Live by life; don’t live by Ideas! Live to live, or, in other words, to survive.” It is a mindset that “plunges us into a sort of commercial animality” – which is to say that capitalism is the animalization of the human beast, who no longer lives except in terms of its interests, and what it deems to be its due. The body without Ideas is a body that is prepared to submit “obediently to the encounter with commodities.”

The reigning ideology is, live without any purpose, without any universality because the alternative is totalitarianism. In other words, totalitarianism has become a kind of bogeyman used to legitimate the contemporary hegemonic system in which a “terrible unity” prevails, “supported by effective built-in material mechanisms.” We have not managed to banish disorder, but ours is a system which has indeed achieved the “absolute capacity to keep otherness out.” Nowhere is this more evident than in the incontestability of democracy, that is, in the untouchability of the democratic emblem. Fidelity to the democratic emblem comes at the cost of a constraint that involves the subject’s having to confront “the commercialized world as a consuming subjectivity.”

In the second series of lectures, entitled “The Logic of Exceptions,” Badiou examines what constitutes an exception to the emblem or the naked power that the emblem sustains. What would count as an exception to the imperative of commodity circulation? Badiou identifies four types of noncirculation, that is, four types of declaration that are heterogenous to commodity circulation. These are demonstration, the paradigm of which is a mathematical theorem; contemplation, which arises in relation to the work of art; action, or emancipatory politics; and passion, that is, love, the one that becomes two.

For Badiou, one of the great tasks of philosophy is to safeguard the various forms of truth (mathematical-scientific, artistic, political and amorous) from subservience of any kind, but especially to the imperative of circulation (commodification). Philosophy safeguards science by defending the radical independence of science from technology and the dominance of capital. Hence, Badiou’s privileging of mathematics, which by its very nature “works against the idea of usefulness.” For its part, art is fundamentally an instrument of combat against the imperative of democratic materialism that we live without any ideas. Affirmative art gives us a fictionalization, a semblance, or illusion of life under the Idea; and even the most pessimistic and painful art, still operates a fictional world that gives us an image what a world without pain or alienation might be like. Art is the “radiance of joy,” whatever its subject; and philosophy is the guardian of this vocation of art, against an overly critical view of art’s function. In fact, as Badiou observes, criticism has worn itself out: it is not criticism we need now as much as ‘heterogenous affirmation,’ an affirmation heterogenous to the market.

In the final series (interrupted after four sessions), Badiou takes up the age-old, or rather ‘time-worn’ philosophical question of “what it means to live.” Much of the material here is developed in Logics of Worlds, beginning with his critical appraisal of the ordinary metaphysics of our era, meaning the metaphysics that everyone shares, almost spontaneously as it were. It is the metaphysics that all of us will at times catch ourselves holding if we bother to examine what we think about what there is. Badiou refers to this ordinary metaphysics as democratic materialism, and its essential thesis is that there are only bodies and languages. So, it really is a metaphysics because it is a claim about what is real: namely, bodies seized to varying degrees by languages – which, of course, is not to be understood as limited to natural languages but includes all ‘language-games.’ to use Wittgenstein’s term, and all possible semiotics.

Democratic materialism is defined by three characteristics: First, it is a metaphysics without categories (unlike metaphysical systems from Aristotle to Hegel). To say there are only bodies and languages is to say that “there are no categories of logical universalism transversal to bodies or to languages.” There are no transversal categories by which the dissemination of languages across cultures can be understood – simply put, there are no universals that can be applied across cultures. The idea is that it is democratic not to have categories, because in the end they are totalitarian: a category “purports to subsume all the different bodies and languages.”

Second, democratic materialism is a metaphysics cleansed of truth. It is not simply that Truth is the name of a category and so must needs be banished or allowed to ‘fade away.’ That there is no truth, strictly speaking, means that “there is basically a relativism. You can move around the many different bodies and languages, but you can’t extract anything like a truth from them.” In the place of truth, we get relevancies, where a relevancy is a “certain type of temporary seizing of bodies by languages.” Yet a truth is nothing like a relevancy: truths cannot be dependent on the variations of language, the vicissitudes of perception or historical traits. What is true here is true everywhere, and what is postulated for one and all is cannot be grasped by the logic of cultural differences or relevancies.

The third negative feature of the reigning metaphysics is that there is no eternity, there is only time. The denial of eternity is ultimately a denial of the separability of the forms, as Plato understood: “If you want eternity, there has to be a minimum separability of the forms.” For democratic materialism there is only the relevancy of the forms; there are no ‘eternal truths.’ What does Badiou mean by an eternal truth? In fact, there is no shortage of examples. That there is an infinite number of prime numbers is an eternal truth: it did not descend from a heaven, Platonic or otherwise. All truths are immanent, they appear in time. In this case, it appeared when Greek mathematicians proved it. When that occurred, “something like a separability of the forms was created” – eternity means, in other words, that the truth is irreducible to language, or the specific historical context in which it emerged, separable from the relevancy in which it was constituted. For Badiou, it is correct to say that we are ‘Immortals’ – but this is not to propose an afterlife of the soul, or anything of that nature. It means that there are truths, or creations of universal value and insofar as we can participate in universality we are tapping into eternity.

Since Plato, the mark of a great philosopher has been that they aim to rescue the concept of truth, while understanding that it is necessary, with each rescue attempt, to modify the concept. For Badiou, truth is not to be understood as correspondence between a proposition and a state of affairs. Truths are immanent exceptions: they arise at a given time and place but are irreducible to their historical context. They represent the emergence of something new and unforeseen – something which from the standpoint of the given world was indeed unforeseeable. What makes Badiou such an important philosopher, an essential thinker of our time, is that he refuses to forfeit the great calling of philosophy, which is to safeguard truth, to safeguard that which makes us Immortal – which is to say, that philosophy bears witness to a new dawn that remains ever on the horizon.

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Sam Ben-Meir is an assistant adjunct professor of philosophy at City University of New York, College of Technology. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The Ukraine Victory Resolution, which was introduced in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate on April 25th, now appears likely to become passed in both houses of the Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

The Resolution says that,

“It is the policy of the United States to see Ukraine victorious against the invasion and restored to its internationally recognized 1991 borders,” which means that unless Russia will return to Ukraine all of the land that it now is controlling within what had been the 1991 borders of Ukraine (Crimea, Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia), America will declare war against Russia, supposedly to force Russia to yield those populations and lands back to Ukraine’s government as they had been prior to Obama’s 2014 coup’s having overthrown the democratically elected and neutralist President of Ukraine and replaced him with a rabidly anti-Russian and illegal U.S.-imposed government, which even Ukraine’s Presidents after that time have acknowledged to be illegitimate but which both of them led to invade the breakaway former Donbass region and threatening to invade the breakaway former Crimea region. All of the proposed Resolution’s congressional sponsors are shown here.

On May 2nd, Rome’s Catholic Church, which competes worldwide for members against Moscow’s Eastern Orthodox Church, headlined in its “Our Sunday Visitor” news service from Washington DC, “Helsinki Commission examines Russia’s attack on religious liberty in Ukraine”, and reported on a hearing at the Capitol, in which the two authors of this Resolution were instead described as

chairman and ranking member of the Helsinki Commission, respectively, expressed concern about the Putin regime’s use of the state-run Russian Orthodox Church in an effort to achieve its ends in the invasion of Ukraine.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has backed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, equating it to a defense of the Orthodox faith, despite international condemnation.

Though the Helsinki Commission was described there as “an independent U.S. government agency,” the American Roman Catholic news-report says nothing about what the word “independent” means when applying it to an agency of the U.S. Government, especially since that Government is clearly against Russia’s Government. Nor does it explain how that Commission’s having its headquarters at the corner of 3rd and D Streets, SW, Washington, DC, in room 234 of the Ford House Office Building, fits with the “independence” of that Commission, which is also misleadingly named there as being the “Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe” and which Commission often refers to itself as the “CSCE”, in order to deceive the public into believing that it is related to the OSCE or Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which actually is in Europe, and does have at least a nominal independence from the U.S. Congress.

Anyway, this news-report, from the U.S. Roman Catholic Church against the Moscow Orthodox Church, went on to assert that:

In a hearing at the Capitol, Reps. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., chairman and ranking member of the Helsinki Commission, respectively, expressed concern about the Putin regime’s use of the state-run Russian Orthodox Church in an effort to achieve its ends in the invasion of Ukraine. …

Wilson said in a statement. “Ukrainian victory is good for U.S. national security and economic stability, denies Putin any reward for his invasion, and deters China and Iran. Ukraine’s existence depends on victory.”

Cohen said Ukrainian victory “is also critical for the United States.”

“Ukraine is preventing an incursion into NATO and demonstrating to autocrats that borders cannot be changed by force alone — a fundamental underpinning of the peaceful international system,” Cohen said in a statement. “The Ukrainian fight is our common fight. There is no alternative to victory.”

The resolution that they wrote and are leading through the Congress will, if it passes and becomes signed by the President, then be followed by the necessary U.S. Declaration of War against Russia in order to fulfill upon the commitment which that Resolution is promising, which commitment is victory against Russia in Ukraine. Russia’s determination to defend itself against the U.S.’s having grabbed Ukraine in order to place its missiles there only 317 miles away from The Kremlin would then be serving as the U.S. Government’s pretext for starting WW III.

The earlier history of the Ukraine war can be seen here.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

The Kremlin Under Drone Attack, Failed Attempt to Assassinate President Putin?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 03, 2023

The drone attack directed against the Kremlin (allegedly) with a view to killing President Putin is no trivial matter. The Kremlin is the seat of the Russian government, comparable to the White House. How would America have reacted in the case of a drone attack directed against the White House?

Kiev’s Counterattack Unlikely to be Successful Due to Big Casualties

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, May 03, 2023

Ukrainian plans to launch a counteroffensive look rather difficult to implement. At a meeting of Russian top military officials held on May 2nd, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reported the official assessments on Ukrainian casualties during the last month.

Taiwan—A Pawn for U.S. War on China

By Sara Flounders, May 03, 2023

While the U.S.-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine continues unabated, the U.S. is preparing at breakneck speed for war with China, using Taiwan as the excuse. Taiwan, like Ukraine, is a pawn. The military and economic threats on both China and Russia are a desperate bid to quash the emergence of a multipolar world. 

In Canada We Must Say: Give Peace a Chance

By Robin Breon, May 03, 2023

In Canada today, the war hawks are circling overhead in swiftly scudding skies while on the ground, the drum majors of militarism are leading the call for an arms race with the tenacity of a snare drummer performing “The Downfall of Paris.”

Disarm the IRS, De-Militarize the Bureaucracy, and Dismantle the Standing Army

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, May 03, 2023

What does it say about the state of our freedoms that there are now more pencil-pushing, bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with weapons than U.S. Marines?

What China Is Really Playing at in Ukraine

By Pepe Escobar, May 03, 2023

Imagine President Xi Jinping mustering undiluted Taoist patience to suffer through a phone call with that warmongering actor in a sweaty T-shirt in Kiev while attempting to teach him a few facts of life – complete with the promise of sending a high-level Chinese delegation to Ukraine to discuss “peace”.

The Pending WW III Resolution in Congress to Defend Ukraine Against Russia

By Eric Zuesse, May 03, 2023

On April 25th, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Joe Wilson (SC-02) and Ranking Member Rep. Steve Cohen (TN-09) introduced the Ukraine Victory Resolution in the House of Representatives. Then, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), introduced the same resolution in the Senate.

Rerunning Biden’s Blunderland, “I’m Running for Reelection”

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, May 03, 2023

President Joseph Biden has done what many from his own party dreaded but dare not say. Last month, via a painful video (watch below), the aged Democrat declared his candidacy for a second term in the White House, branding himself a defender of US democracy.

2.4 Million Participate in May Day Demonstrations Across France

By Abayomi Azikiwe, May 03, 2023

In France since January millions have taken part in rolling general strikes and mass demonstrations in response to the government’s pension reforms, which will not only raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64, the new law imposes a 43-year work requirement in order to receive full benefits.

Obama’s Broken Promises in Afghanistan

By Shane Quinn, May 03, 2023

The election victory in November 2008 of an African-American, Barack Obama, seemed to signal an ongoing decline for America’s white elites, those who had long controlled the centres of power in the US; but shortly before Obama’s inauguration on 20 January 2009, he proposed another bailout of America’s private banks worth $1.18 trillion, and after he assumed the presidency he dispensed with a further $412 billion in 2010. 

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It’s hardly breaking news that the United States is meddling in the affairs of virtually every country on the planet. The simple fact that Washington DC is the only geopolitical player that operates under the doctrine of so-called “full spectrum dominance” is a testament to that. Perhaps the most obvious example of that is former Ukraine, a country that has been hijacked by a US-backed Neo-Nazi junta in 2014. However, it would seem the meddling isn’t always one-sided, at least according to the latest reports regarding the background of Tucker Carlson’s firing from the Fox News Channel (FNC).

All things considered, Carlson is the most popular news anchor in American history. His rational, highly informed, witty and mostly unbiased (with the notable exception being his views on China) analyses are extremely popular, both in the US and worldwide. However, as such, they are also an insurmountable obstacle for the warmongering propaganda machine. Years before the start of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe, Carlson had been warning against antagonizing Moscow. For this, the rabid Russophobes keep accusing him of supposed “pro-Russian bias”.

These attacks on Tucker Carlson and his family went on for years, but escalated dramatically after the start of the SMO (special military operation). Any attempt to actually analyze this new stage of the US-induced Ukrainian conflict is effectively considered “heresy”. Carlson dismissed this, convinced that his country is still a “bastion of freedom”. However, although the attacks from the establishment became more direct, he refused to back down and continued his reporting, at that point the only one in an American mass media outlet not going 100% with the official narrative.

According to Semafor, Fox Corporation Chair Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan spoke on the phone with the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky before Carlson was ousted on April 24. The report claims that “the elder Murdoch held a call with the Ukrainian leader in March where the two discussed the war in the Eastern European country as well as the anniversary of the deaths of two Fox News journalists outside of Kyiv in March 2022”, further adding that “a similar conversation took place between Zelensky and the younger Murdoch, Fox Corporation Executive Chairman, on March 15, which was noted in a national broadcast last month”.

If the reports are accurate, this would mean the phone calls took place just weeks before Carlson’s contract was officially terminated. Citing “a person familiar with the calls”, Semafor reports that “senior Ukrainian officials had raised their objections to Carlson’s coverage of the war to Fox Executives, but Zelensky did not address these objections [directly] during the calls”. While Zelensky may have skipped direct appeals to have Carlson fired, he certainly must have “strongly implied” that this would be “good for freedom and democracy” in the US and worldwide.

“Clearly, he spooked a lot of members into not being fully supportive of Ukraine,” an unnamed senior GOP congressional aide told Semafor, adding: “Carlson’s ouster probably reduces the loudest voice out there against US support.”

Fox Corporation is yet to reveal which of the numerous reports on the Ukrainian conflict, including exposing the lies about Russia’s long-debunked “battlefield failures” and the staggering level of corruption associated with the Kiev regime, got Carlson fired. However, whichever it was, his ouster is certainly in the interest of Zelensky, whom Carlson even called a “dictator” on several occasions (although a “puppet” would be more suitable). It is also in the interest of numerous high-ranking US officials, particularly since Carlson’s investigative approach that revealed just how corrupt the Kiev regime frontman is could easily incriminate them as well.

This notion is further reinforced by the reactions of top-ranking officials like the Republican congressman from Texas, the infamous warmonger Michael McCaul, one of the most prominent GOP warhawks and an outspoken supporter of US meddling in Ukraine and Taiwan, who described Carlson’s reporting as “Russian disinformation”. Needless to say, without providing any evidence for such bold claims. Carlson (rightfully) slammed the attack as slander. Although some of his fellow journalists supported Carlson, the vast majority, particularly those working for the mainstream propaganda machine, almost uniformly applauded his ouster from the FNC.

One of the founders of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, is among the former, as he criticized Carlson’s removal and the open suppression of his stances against the proxy war in Ukraine and the rapidly escalating confrontation with Russia. Greenwald also commented on the revelations about Zelensky’s involvement.

“This article strongly suggests that the Murdochs talked to Zelensky, and Tucker’s opposition to the US proxy war in Ukraine was a major factor in his firing. I’ll await confirmation, but one thing is for sure: his removal eliminated the most influential anti-war voice from TV,” Greenwald posted on Twitter.

“From the start of Biden’s war policy in Ukraine, the establishment wings of both parties were – as usual – in lockstep. Schumer and AOC have the same views as McConnell and Lindsey Graham,” Greenwald noted, adding: “The only DC opposition came from the populist right, and Tucker was its key media voice.”

Considering the fact that Zelensky officially leads an unashamedly Neo-Nazi regime that openly persecutes Ukrainian Orthodox Christians, essentially kidnaps regular Ukrainians and sends them to die as cannon fodder for a “NATO mission”, the American people should be terrified of the prospect that the same person is regulating what they can (or cannot) watch on TV.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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*** 

 

 

 

It is not surprising that Deep State President Joe Biden, who is the oldest living American President ever, has the audacity to announce that he will be a candidate in the 2024 Presidential campaign even though 70% of Americans believe he should not make a second run. 

That percentage includes 51% of Democrats as 67% of voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. With Kamala Harris as his vice president, 37% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance and even the pathetic Sen. Bernie Sanders has endorsed Biden’s re-election.

In a pre-packaged three minute video rather than a real live recitation, Biden’s claim to ‘let’s finish the job’ as he continues to spread a fabricated reality with false assertions while encouraging a divisiveness in today’s political landscape with an attack on former President Trump and MAGA supporters. 

There was no mention of his fiasco presiding over an unnecessary $113 Billion proxy war in Ukraine that began with the 2014 coup, Seventh Fleet invasion of China’s territorial waters in the South China Sea and most recently, challenges to North Korea’s ‘aggression’ with deployment of a nuclear-armed submarine as well as a series of severe economic sanctions against recalcitrant nations (which have boomeranged against the US economy) and the Nord Stream pipeline bombing which is categorized as an ‘act of war.’    

Since Biden is little more than a front man for a highly motivated team of political operatives led by former President Barack Obama or the diabolic WEF Klaus Schwab or some equally malevolent dark political entity, the country has been seized by the totalitarian clique as his administration targets the First Amendment as if free speech is tyrannical permitting government to criminalize political dissent. At the same time, the Biden Administration has allowed an invasion of titanic proportions at the southern border as UN-funded NGO’s threaten US sovereignty with an expected infiltration of up to one million illegal immigrants awaiting the potential lifting of Title 42 on May 11^th.  

All Biden policies display an utter contempt for the rule of law as the result of a deliberate strategy to collapse the US and its Constitution from within as the US rules-based order has replaced international law, dictating its imperialist foreign policy based on an interventionism-at-will strategy with a bankrupt Country able to only print Monopoly paper money of no real value.

While the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has a forbidding reputation for engineering favorable election result for their choice of candidate; legitimacy, ethics and public opinion notwithstanding, they have “with no plan to sponsor primary debates.” With Biden as its favored candidate, partisan politics has morphed into spiritual warfare, as a diabolic contest of wicked proportions contrary to the country’s divinely inspired beginnings and yet the Dems remain the odds-on-favorite to win via ballot harvesting and other election day trickery.   

It is, however, a fitting response to the discredited Democrats and its handlers that an exceptional Presidential primary challenger has emerged who is genetically opposed to the malicious agenda espoused by Biden and its authoritarian elite. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of the prestigious political Kennedy clan, is the most superior and influential Democrat who could have entered the campaign; not because of his last name but rather because he is a gifted orator, an incisive thinker with a penetrating analytical mind and fortunate enough to be imbued with integrity and a strength of character.

Having viewed RFK’s speech at Hillsdale College on “Anthony Fauci and the Public Health Establishment,” at Dartmouth University on “College Covid 19 Mandates” and his interview as one of Tucker’s last guests, the American public would be wise to pay attention and listen closely to the most knowledgeable and talented extemporaneous Presidential candidate on the American political scene since….1963.  

Author of The Real Anthony Fauci as well as a history of voluminous lawsuits all predicated on science have established Kennedy’s bona fides as a professional advocate  on Covid 19 and the methodical study of the material world known as ‘science.’  He is more knowledgeable than any other candidate with regard to all the implications of the  pandemic and its mandated minutiae of masks, distance, shutdowns, vaccinations, impacts on American culture and health of its children. 

Kennedy’s accomplishments are extensive and remarkable as Founder, Chair and General Counsel of the Children’s Health Defense, Founder of the Waterkeepers Alliance, legal counsel at Morgan and Morgan personal injury law firm with a BA from Harvard, a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, an LLM from Pace University School of Law and studied at the London School of Economics. He is recipient of numerous awards with a forthcoming book entitled “The Wuhan Coverup: How US  officials Conspired with Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of Covid 19”.

RFK’s appearance at Hillsdale, the only college in the country that did not shutdown during the Covid Pandemic, occurred in early March just prior to his formal announcement as a candidate. An appreciative and receptive audience, Kennedy’s provided a wide ranging extraordinary presentation on a variety of formidable topics beginning with his efforts on behalf of the Hudson River Riverkeepers to clean up industrial pollution. 

He especially focused on collusion between regulatory ‘captured’ state-federal agencies and powerful corporations like big Pharma, detailing the impacts of mercury and DPT vaccines on children and his experiences with Dr. Fauci. Kennedy outlined Covid related attacks on the Constitution including government imposed ‘arbitrary and capricious’ censorship to limit conversation about the truth of Covid including violations of freedom of assembly, enforced social distance w/no due process,  compulsory closing of churches with no supporting science and reiterated that ‘the Constitution is the heart and soul of this country.”  

Adding that President Reagan’s agreement to provide full vaccine immunity as a liability shield (due to “unavoidable adverse side effects”) allowed that vaccines are the only medical product never required to conduct pre-licensing safety studies as Big Pharma has paid $35 billion in criminal penalties in last ten years. In addition, Kennedy cited a 1989 explosion in chronic health issues for children related to mandated vaccines. 

As a lifelong student of the CIA, Kennedy identified the role of his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, former US Ambassador to the UK, who served on the Hoover Commission and voted to disband the CIA; thus beginning a sixty year Kennedy family fight with the CIA which led RFK to write “American Values: Lessons Learned from my Family.” He identified the CIA in developing bioweapons at Ft. Detrick including the anthrax attack during Patriot Act consideration in 2001. On JFK’s assassination, RFK shared that evil doer Allen Dulles who had been fired from the CIA, was quoted “I’m glad the little shit is dead. He thought he was a God.”   

Kennedy’s Hillsdale appearance was followed by formal announcement of his candidacy in Boston which added current foreign policy and economic crisis to  his agenda questioning whether pushing Russia and China together is in US national interest and what is objective of the war.  Suggesting the US is in Ukraine ‘for the right reasons” although he questioned a nuclear exchange with a country that has more nukes and US prolonging the war is not a good idea. Like the majority of Congress including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Kennedy would benefit from an in depth briefing by Scott Ritter and/or Colonel Doug MacGregor for a total understanding of the CIA initiated 2014 coup, Russia’s Special Military Operation and NATOs presence threatening Russian sovereignty.

RFK told the audience that after the Soviet Union collapse in 1990, the US never activated its peace dividend which was expected to decrease defense spending from $6 billion to $2 billion as the US made more foreign enemies around the world while increasing its military budget to $8.8 billion. Citing the economy as a source of American strength, ‘not bullets and weapons’ and that while the US spent $8 Trillion in Iraq, China built bridges, ports and infrastructure as it is displacing the US as a trading partner. “While China is earning good will, the US spends $800 Billion on the military.” Having lost Saudi Arabia as “our number one ally in the Shia Crescent”, which has been a key foreign policy objective in the Mideast, RFK suggested that “US foreign policy has collapsed and is no longer a coherent strategy.” 

With de-dollarization, lowered oil production, Iraq now a proxy state of Iran, the entire US strategy in the Middle East has disintegrated. RFK suggested we need to do something FAST and committed to “close 800 US overseas bases and bring American troops home immediately in order to make the US an exemplary democracy again” as the Democratic party has lost its identity. 

“The worse thing Trump did was the lockdown. In fairness, the bureaucrats rolled him on it; he did not want to do it. But that it not a good enough excuse. He was President of the United States. In May 2020, six hundred doctors sent a letter to Trump asking him to not do the lockdowns.”  He said “bureaucrats were coming after him; he had the right instincts.  He knew he shouldn’t close down the country but he didn’t; he got rolled by his bureaucracy. At this time in history, you need a President who can stand up to his bureaucracy.”

Kennedy pointed to Trump’s appointment of Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a well known  physician with ties to the pharmaceutical industry as an FDA Commissioner  in March, 2017 to eliminate some of the agency’s “regulatory burdens”. Two years later, on June 27, 2019, Gottlieb was elected to Pfizer’s Board of Directors to serve on its  Regulatory and Compliance Committee. According to US Federal Election Commission documents (page 163), Pfizer, Inc. donated $1 million to Trump’s Presidential Inauguration Committee on December 22, 2016 and received four tickets to the Leadership Luncheon with Cabinet appointees and House and Senate Leadership. 

Only a political neophyte might not recognize the ‘coincidence’ that within days after RFK’s appearance as a Presidential candidate on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Tucker was unceremoniously removed from his Fox program. 

Kennedy called for an end to the “corrupt merger of corporate and state power,” also known as an embedded administrative state within the Federal government which controls implementation of almost every Federal program at will as they use their influence to create outcomes on behalf of their corporate entities. Kennedy identified the “corporate kleptocracy as a‘cushy socialism for the rich’ and a ‘brutal merciless capitalism for the poor.’ 

He continued

“It keeps us in a state of  war, it bails out banks. Last month the Federal government told 30 million Americans they were cutting their food stamp checks by 90%. It took fifteen million people off Medicare, the same month it gave $300 million to the Silicon Valley Bank and tapped up cost of the Ukraine war to $113 billion. The entire budget of EPA is $12 billion, the CDC budget is $11 billion. The way we do this is printing money; we printed ten centuries of money in the last fourteen years.” We have raised food prices for basic foods like chicken, dairy, milk  by 76% in the last two years and now we’re cutting food stamps and bailing out banks in the same month. We need to get rid of this corporate control of our government.”  

RFK’s appearance at Dartmouth was nothing short of a brilliant analysis as, given that the topic was part of a larger conference, he focused exclusively on health issues as related to government-industry collusion, the perversion of the science by government regulators, the explosion of chronic childhood diseases and that ‘vaccine effects are impervious to the facts or reality.”

RFK provided shocking and disturbing numbers as he is adamant that lockdown was not a success but an economic catastrophe that cost the US $16 Trillion according to a Harvard Study with a massive GDP drop for the next ten years. With 4.2% of the world population, the US had 16% of covid deaths shifting $4 Trillion from the American middle class to billionaires as 41% black businesses shut down permanently. Toddlers lost 22 IQ points during lockdown and many in need of remedial attention. The CDC revised its milestones that a toddler no longer walk at one year but now walk at 1.5 years. 

Most impressive has been the quality of Kennedy’s scholarship, the level of his ability to identify essential data to his audience with no slipping and sliding around the unpleasant facts; never hesitating to be straight, true and factual in the belief that all citizens needed to have access to the same information he is familiar with.

In conclusion, RFK:

“Any power that government takes will never be returned voluntarily, every power government will abuse to the max possible and no one ever complied their way out of totalitarianism = the only way is to resist.”

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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

Members of the U.S. Army‘s Special Operations Command fired Carl Gustaf recoilless rifles, breached tunnels and operated Switchblade drones that flew with an unsettling whiz over a training area on Thursday. The exercise combined some of the hallmark tactics and weapons that were used during the Global War on Terror with other tools reflecting a seismic shift for the command as it prepares for potential conflict against major military rivals.

The training was part of the USASOC’s annual capabilities exercise, or CAPEX, and the mission they were gaming out was an insertion into Taiwan to defend against a Chinese invasion.

It was the first-ever use of a Taiwan scenario for the exercise, with a concrete mock-up meant to represent that country. So instead of hovering eight thousand miles away in the South China Sea where the island actually is perched, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s Chinooks landed on Range 68 at Fort Bragg.

“The [People’s Republic of China], in accordance with our national defense strategy, is our true pacing challenge out there,” Lt. Gen. Jonathan P. Braga, commanding general of USASOC, said in a speech ahead of the exercise.

“Ultimately, what we are trying to do is prevent World War III,” he said. “That’s our job.”

The exercise comes as U.S. defense planners are focusing their attention on deterring China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific and around the world, part of escalating hostilities that have made headlines when Chinese spy balloons penetrated U.S. airspace and Chinese drones circled the island of Taiwan, for example.

While the “ultimate backstop” remains America’s nuclear capabilities, according to the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy, USASOC leaders view it as their mission to prove that they’re also ready for conventional conflict if it arises.

The organization pulled no punches in naming China and its military, the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, however as the opposition force during the exercise, an unusually direct move, given the military’s hesitancy to overtly suggest conflict.

“I’m going to receive a brief from my boss giving us a task to conduct an operation to counter the PLA on the island of Taiwan,” a Green Beret officer announced to a crowd of more than 100 members of the public, most of whom were from nonprofit or charity organizations that support the special operations community, prior to a demonstrated attack.

Soldiers who participated in the exercise requested that Military.com not use their names to protect their identities ahead of potential future deployments.

Some civilians even got to participate in the exercise, acting as partner forces as the kitted-out Special Forces soldiers walked them through a squad attack, for example, in which troops on foot close in on an enemy.

But before they kicked down doors to meet the hypothetical escalatory advances of the ghost People’s Liberation Army, the soldiers participating in the exercise described their work as perfecting the fundamentals of warfare.

“We have to be a lot more prepared and be better at the basic things,” one senior civil affairs noncommissioned officer told Military.com. The soldier also left Ukraine in early 2022 after training Ukrainians.

“It’s just reinforcing the basics and then putting it in a different perspective, applying it in a different way,” they said, specifically referencing how directing displaced people after a crisis has been a staple of their trade since the Global War on Terror, and before.

Soldiers demonstrated their language capabilities, though instead of the Pashto and Dari, they employed intermediate to high levels of Mandarin or Russian. In fact, the language school at USASOC broadly no longer teaches those two languages spoken in Afghanistan, instead offering tests to keep soldiers who already know them fresh, according to one of the instructors. Now, it is looking to offer courses in Ukrainian and Japanese.

NCOs gestured around miniature prison camps, with primitive bamboo bows and fire starters as they offered instruction on evasion from capture tactics. A black uniform with Cyrillic text sat next to these items to demonstrate what instructors might now wear at the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE school.

Perhaps the most prevalent theme came from the psychological operations soldiers who preached the information operation game as critical for the Army during a crisis with a near-peer actor. Instead of leaflets and megaphones, they talked of memes and enemy disinformation on a global scale.

“The information environment — it can seem overwhelming at times — just the sheer size of it, the amount of information going in and out of it,” one senior psychological operations NCO said.

“What’s important, what’s just white noise?” he added. “How do you navigate all of that, and create order out of chaos, so that you can gain the informational advantage over an enemy that does not operate with the same restrictions and rules that you’re going to have to operate under.”

A term that came up often was “the gray zone,” a euphemism referring to tactics that countries like Russia and China use, for example, working through non-state actors in the cyber realm to carry out state missions. It’s a means of flouting international law and creating legal deniability while engaging in low-level war.

Braga said that staying competitive without escalating to a crisis or direct conflict is “a nuanced game of shadows in the gray-zone” — one that requires a balance that USASOC is trying to maintain.

That nuance has not come without challenges, however, especially when it comes to shedding or pocketing some of the tactics and mindsets so baked into the organization from its intense time fighting the Global War on Terror, a mission that still is ongoing today, though at a much smaller scale than before the withdrawal from Afghanistan nearly two years ago.

“We don’t necessarily want to lose it. We need to use the lessons learned from that and tailor it to a different fight against a near-peer competitor in a multi-domain environment, essentially,” a Green Beret told Military.com on Thursday.

“And it’s difficult because fighting a near-peer requires a lot more preparation that’s not really the cool stuff that we’ve been doing for the last 20 years. I’m telling my guys as a company commander to stop going to the shoot houses and do more preparation tasks, which aren’t nearly as cool or fun to do,” he said.

“So there’s some growing pains there, but we’re getting the formation in the right direction, and I think we’re going to be alright when the time comes.”

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Drew F. Lawrence can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @df_lawrence.

Featured image: Soldiers in the 75th Ranger Regiment conduct a fast rope onto a building during a mock Chinese invasion into Taiwan (Courtesy, U.S. Army)

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Iraq’s Office of Public Prosecution has named former prime minister Mustafa Kadhimi in the investigation into the illegal US assassination of Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi resistance leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis – which took place in January 2020 at Baghdad airport.

On 16 March, a member of Iraq’s parliament, Hussein Mones, filed an accusation against Kadhimi at the Public Prosecution Office for “gross negligence” and “failing to provide necessary security information to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to take appropriate measures that would prevent endangering the safety of civil aviation at Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.”

Mones’ official accusation also highlights “intentional damages to public property,” which include the vehicles that were transporting Soleimani and Muhandis when the illegal US strike happened.

The accusations pertain to Kadhimi’s tenure as the head of the country’s National Intelligence Service – a role he occupied before his becoming prime minister in May 2020.

In July 2020, Iran suggested that it had evidence that linked Kadhimi to the killing of Soleimani and Muhandis.

At the time, a top commander in Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah resistance group, Abu Ali al-Askari, made a similar accusation and referred to Kadhimi’s candidacy for the premiership as a “declaration of war on the Iraqi people.”

Other resistance groups linked to Iran and the IRGC echoed the accusation. There are also reports linking the Iraqi Kurdish counterterrorism service to the killing.

In December last year, it was reported that Iraqi lawmakers were considering slapping an arrest warrant against Kadhimi for his alleged role in the US assassination. At the time, it was revealed that the former prime minister was being sheltered inside the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone area.

The former prime minister is already implicated in what Iraqis are calling the ‘heist of the century,’ which saw the embezzlement of at least $2.5 billion worth of Iraqi public funds between September 2021 and August of last year.

Arrest warrants have been issued against several officials from Kadhimi’s government, and the former prime minister may be subject to one as well.

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Ukrainian plans to launch a counteroffensive look rather difficult to implement. At a meeting of Russian top military officials held on May 2nd, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reported the official assessments on Ukrainian casualties during the last month. The government estimates that more than 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers were neutralized – killed or seriously wounded – in April. According to Shoigu, Kiev is unable to prevent its troops from suffering serious damage on the frontlines, “despite unprecedented military assistance by Western powers”.

The Russian data comes amid a scenario of collective skepticism about the possibility of Kiev reversing the military scenario of the conflict. More and more Western public opinion seems skeptical about a Ukrainian victory, considering that the territorial losses of Kiev’s troops are notorious and that the Russians are increasingly advancing towards the complete liberation of the territories reintegrated to the Federation. Now, with the release of this data about the number of casualties, the tendency is for this skepticism to increase, which complicates the Western war plans.

The big Western media outlets have been reacting to this situation through a kind of damage control – partially admitting that things are not going well in Ukraine, but suggesting that if more weapons are sent, the scenario could change. Some journalists use the rhetoric that there is a supposed counteroffensive plan to be implemented sometime this season, which would allegedly allow Ukrainian troops to achieve a major territorial advance, expelling the Russians even from pacified territories such as Crimea. But the existence of data like this one revealed by the Russian Ministry makes it difficult to believe in the possibility of such a move.

Although the mainstream media tends to prevent the spread of information about Ukrainian problems, it will be difficult to stop the collective skepticism, as this is not the first time that numbers informing about the catastrophic situation of the Ukrainian forces have been revealed. On several occasions in recent months, reports on this subject have appeared. In the recent wave of leaked documents, it was published a Pentagon assessment that between 124,000 and 131,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed by Russian forces. In estimates made by other intelligence agencies, there are even higher figures, with some reports giving statistics as high as 200,000 to 300,000 Ukrainian casualties. These reports circulate freely on the internet, so, as much as there are attempts by mainstream media to censor the data, the multiplicity of sources makes this work really difficult.

As expected, the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev continues to deny all these reports and claim its ability to carry on the fight. In February, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov stated that the number of deaths among the regime’s troops was lower than the number of deaths in the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. According to official sources, the catastrophe in these two countries led to the death of 55,000 people, which shows how Reznikov is evidently lying, since even among the most openly pro-Ukrainian sources there is no belief in such a low number of casualties.

Similar declarations are also expected for the near future, especially responding to Shoigu’s statements. Kiev’s officials will try in every way to show that they have control over the situation of their troops and that their soldiers are in sufficient numbers for a counteroffensive – depending only on more Western weapons, thus justifying the “beggar” behavior for which Zelensky has already become known. At the same time, in Western countries governments will somehow have to convince their citizens that it is indeed prudent and necessary to continue sending arms to Kiev.

The wisest thing to do would be to admit the alarming numbers of Ukrainian casualties and stop the war machine behind the regime. Considering that it is an unwinnable conflict, negotiating peace is the best alternative for all sides. But neither Ukraine has the sovereignty to make such a decision, nor NATO has an interest in any possibility of peace. So, most likely, Ukrainian citizens will continue to die on the frontlines’ “meatgrinder”.

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Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

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While the U.S.-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine continues unabated, the U.S. is preparing at breakneck speed for war with China, using Taiwan as the excuse. Taiwan, like Ukraine, is a pawn. The military and economic threats on both China and Russia are a desperate bid to quash the emergence of a multipolar world. 

U.S. imperialist hegemony is being challenged from every side. De-dollarization among major economies of the Global South is a component of trade agreements among the powerful emerging economies of China, Russia, Iran, Brazil, India, Malaysia and South Africa. Even Saudi Arabia, a reactionary bulwark of U.S. domination in West Asia, is willing to seek new agreements with Iran and is interested in trading its oil in Chinese yuan renminbi, rather than be wholly dependent on U.S. dollars. 

Even more threatening to U.S. capitalists is that China is developing trade relations with the 40 countries sanctioned by Washington, and they are doing this by barter and direct currency exchanges. This works around the almighty dollar, the international reserve currency that has dominated global trade and capital flows for 100 years.

These are not the first efforts to find a replacement to U.S. dollar domination. There is no crime that U.S. imperialism will not commit to preserve the U.S. dollar. Both oil rich Iraq, which proposed a currency based on the dinar in 1990, and Libya, which attempted an African currency in 2010, found they had fabulous resources but no protection from U.S. bombs. Their efforts at sovereignty led to their brutal destruction by U.S. imperialism.

The aspiration to break free from U.S. corporate control is today being challenged by many more countries. China is a more formidable opponent, surpassing the U.S. in gross domestic product and the development of its economy. China is the top trading partner to more than 120 countries and the largest external trading partner of the European Union. 

The ability of China to provide trillions of dollars in development funds through the Belt and Road Initiative means that developing countries can now have more favorable trade relations without the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s onerous conditions. This option is a threat to every U.S. bank and U.S.-controlled financial institution.

China and a growing number of countries are in an increasingly stronger position to resist the U.S.’s unequal demands. Countries with three-quarters of the world’s population refused to go along with sanctions on Russia. Will they be willing to accept U.S. sanctions on China?

All of this poses a threat to the hegemony of the U.S., the center of world imperialism. The capitalist system is relentlessly driven to expand or die—and now it is shrinking. For multi-billionaires and corporate CEOs, this is a life-or-death crisis. 

Provoking Conflict to Retain Hegemony

U.S. strategy is to sabotage Taiwan and its trade with China by creating conflicts and imposing sanctions. These desperate efforts to reverse Washington’s declining global position will disrupt the global economy.  

Presently, Taiwan’s trade with China is far bigger than its trade with the U.S. Mainland China and Hong Kong accounted for 42% of Taiwan’s exports last year, while the U.S. had only a 15% share, according to official Taiwanese data. 

For Taiwan’s imports, mainland China and Hong Kong again ranked first with a 22% share. The U.S. only had a 10% share, ranking behind Japan, Europe and Southeast Asia. South Korea and Japan have greater trade levels with China than with the U.S. (cnbc.com)

The problem U.S. imperialists face is how to reverse this—how to force countries in the Asia Pacific to act against their own economic interests.

The U.S.-NATO war in Ukraine was a strategy to impose sanctions on Russia and to break the EU’s trade with Russia. In 2020 the EU was Russia’s leading trading partner; 36.5% of Russia’s imports came from the EU, and 37.9% of its exports went to the EU. The EU was the largest investor in Russia. Russian trade with the EU has since been reduced to 5.8%.

The U.S.-NATO war in Ukraine has failed to destabilize and collapse Russia, as the U.S. had hoped. But the war devastated the economy of Ukraine and disrupted the EU, which went along with the sanctions demanded by the U.S. The economies of Europe have suffered greatly. Inflation, recession and supply-chain chaos due to sanctions have harshly cut into the EU’s own markets and increased European dependence on the U.S. 

U.S. threats and escalating demands to sanction China will severely damage the economies of Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

To force high-tech companies to decouple from the People’s Republic of China, U.S. imperialism needs a political-military crisis with China. Every U.S. plan for sanctions on China starts with a manufactured crisis over Taiwan. 

Source: reddit.com

The U.S. is frantically seeking to stop China’s economic rise by militarily encircling it. Utilizing Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines, U.S. strategy is to create an Asian version of NATO, a military alliance to disrupt economic cooperation in Asia. This is a terrible danger to the people of Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. Throughout the entire region, people face a U.S.-created crisis that can destroy their lives and futures and ruin their economies. 

Poor and working people in the U.S. will be forced to pay for this war, as they pay for every war with steadily deteriorating conditions.

China Is One!

In the drive to find an excuse for war, the U.S. government is reversing the position it agreed to and signed with China more than 50 years ago. 

China has spent decades developing its economic relations with Taiwan; trade between the island and mainland China has grown, along with political and cultural relations. To counter this effort at peaceful reunification, the Pentagon is turning Taiwan into a porcupine, bristling with billions of dollars in military equipment. Another $10 billion in military aid was just promised. 

Washington is openly violating three signed agreements—joint communiques it made with China in 1972, 1979 and 1982—affirming that China is one country and Taiwan is a province of China. Such commitments are the political foundation for China’s diplomatic relationship with the U.S. and with every country.

China has not threatened Taiwan. China has only asserted what is recognized by the U.S. and 181 other countries, as well as the United Nations and all international bodies: Taiwan is part of China. Taiwan’s own constitution affirms that Taiwan is a province of China. It is the U.S. that has broken its promises not to interrupt China’s efforts to reunify the island peacefully. 

Instead of adherence to the One-China Policy, dangerous mobilization is taking place on military and political levels. The recent manufactured crisis over a Chinese hot air balloon followed by congressional hearings grilling the CEO of TikTok represent new levels in psychological war propaganda, designed to convince the U.S. population that China is an enemy and a threat. 

Democrats and Republicans try to outdo each other in condemning China. Taiwan was referred to as “the beating heart to our Indo-Pacific strategy” by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, a Democrat. 

Military preparations against China include U.S. pressure for Japan to double its military budget and become the third largest military in the world, in violation of the Japanese Constitution.

A new agreement, announced February 2, granted the U.S. military access to nine bases in the Philippines to counter China. Foreign bases are in direct violation of the Philippines Constitution. In 1992 a massive peoples’ movement forced the U.S. to close its bases in the Philippines.

More ominously, in early February, four-star Air Force General Michael Minihan, head of the Pentagon’s Air Mobility Command, in a “leaked memo” predicted war with China over Taiwan in two years. Gen. Minihan oversees 107,000 airmen and 1,100 cargo, tanker and transport planes. The memo includes training, drills and preparations for war in 2025 and specific orders: “Defeat China” and “Be prepared for deployment at a moment’s notice.”

Another threat was the largest-ever launch from a U.S. base of huge C-17 transport aircraft on January 5, as training for a naval blockade of China. This is the opening round of a massive missile-and-air assault on mainland China—the Pentagon’s Air-Sea Battle strategy. 

The U.S. Pacific Fleet consists of approximately 200 ships and submarines, nearly 1,200 aircraft and more than 130,000 sailors and civilian workers. The U.S. regularly sends naval patrols and destroyers through the 180-km-wide Taiwan Strait (about 112 miles).

China condemned these arrogant displays of U.S. military power as reckless, provocative and meant to apply pressure. 

U.S. Pacific Fleet. [Source: twitter.com]

Inflated media coverage greeted the visit to New York City of Tsai Ing-wen, the so-called “president” of Taiwan. (“President” is in quotation marks because Taiwan is recognized as an island province of China and not as an independent country by the UN and 181 countries.)

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning objected to this Taiwanese delegation visit and the receptions held in Tsai Ing-wen’s honor, as a violation of the One-China Policy: “China firmly opposes any form of official interaction between the U.S. and Taiwan.” Mao Ning said the U.S. was “conducting dangerous activities that undermine the political foundation of bilateral ties.”

Xu Xueyuan, charge d’affaires at the Chinese embassy in Washington, said China does not accept the U.S. claims that Tsai’s trip is merely a “transit,” saying “the so-called ‘transit’ is merely a disguise to her true intention of seeking breakthrough and advocating Taiwan independence” and accuses the U.S. of allowing Tsai to “make a splash” and of arranging her meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Tsai Ing-wen with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) during visit to the U.S. earlier this year. [Source: ketk.com]

While in New York City, Tsai Ing-wen was treated to a banquet and “Global Leadership” award from the Hudson Institute, an influential, right-wing think tank funded in part by Taiwan. The Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress, the Center for a New American Security, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Hudson Institute actively promote expanded arms sales and trade agreements with Taiwan and anti-China propaganda. These five prominent think tanks receive substantial funding from Taiwan. 

The visit reinforces Tsai Ing-wen’s standing, at a time when she is in a seriously weakened political position. She was forced to resign as head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan, after her party suffered a major setback in local elections in November, which was the DPP’s worst performance since its founding in 1986. The election debacle confirms that the DPP’s aggressive stand on independence is losing support in Taiwan. 

Tsai Ing-wen’s visit to Guatemala and Belize, two of only 13 remaining countries that recognize Taiwan, was overshadowed by the Honduran Foreign Ministry’s announcement that its government now recognized “only one China in the world” and that Beijing “is the only legitimate government that represents all of China.” 

The statement added that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, and as of today the Honduran government has informed Taiwan of the severance of diplomatic relations, pledging not to have any official relationship or contact with Taiwan.” Honduras is the ninth diplomatic ally Taiwan has lost since the pro-independence Tsai first took office in May 2016. 

China has held a consistent, well-understood position on its sovereignty and territorial integrity that is recognized internationally in all world bodies. China has repeatedly asserted its right to resolve this unfinished national reunification. China’s long-held position is that cooperation, trade and development can overcome differences; it is the only way forward. 

The preparation of U.S. imperialism for a possible war with China—surrounding it with military bases, nuclear weapons and military vessels—is a highly dangerous provocation. U.S. wars are for corporate profit. 

We must mobilize! U.S. hands off China!

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The world has been haunted by human violence since time immemorial. There are untold millions (billions?) of people all over the world who have been scarred by it in all its forms. There are two basic responses: one is to try to return that violence with violence and defeat one’s enemy; the other is, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, to “not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding” through a non-violent response. Politicians usually embrace the former, while those who are called dreamers advocate the latter.

Between these two, there are various mixed responses, with sane political leaders calling for mutual respect between countries and an end to aggressive provocations leading to warfare, such has occurred with the United States provoking the war in Ukraine.

We have entered the time when the destruction of all life on earth through nuclear war is imminent unless a radical transformation occurs. If the word imminent sounds extreme, it is worth considering that there will be no announcement.  The time to speak up is now. It is always now.

Great literature speaks to the issue of violence at the deepest levels.

Homer’s Odyssey is the classic case of violent revenge. At the end of the story, Odysseus, who was scarred in youth by a wild boar, finally returns home from the Trojan War after ten years of wandering. Doubly scarred now by the horrors of war with its horrendous slaughters (see The Iliad), he arrives at his home disguised in a beggar’s rags. His nursemaid from childhood recognizes him from the scar on his thigh. In his house he finds scores of suitors who are hitting on his wife Penelope. He is enraged and  steps onto the threshold, rips off his rags, and systematically massacres every last one of them. Flesh and gore swim in the blood-drenched room, while in the courtyard twelve unfaithful serving maids hang from their necks. This is the quintessential western story of revenge where the wounded hero kills the bad guys and the violent beat goes on and on.

It appeals to our lesser angels, for while Odysseus’s rage is understandable, its consequences leave a toxic legacy.

But there is another response that draws on another tradition that is symbolized by Jesus on the cross, executed by the Roman state as a subversive criminal. He didn’t die on a private cross, for his crime was public. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi are famous exemplars of non-violent resistance in modern times, as they too were executed by the state. Non-violence seems, on the surface at least, to be less effective than violence and contrary to much of human history.

If it is, however, we are doomed. For we have nuclear weapons now, not bows and arrows and spears. We have nuclear weapons hitched to computers. Digital weapons of multiple sorts and mad leaders intent on pushing us to the brink of extinction.

The United States’ instigation of the war in Ukraine against Russia and its push for war with China are current prime examples.  They are part of the continuing vast tapestry of lies that Harold Pinter spoke of in his 2005 Nobel Address. He said, in part:

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. . . . The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.

This is still true, as John Pilger has just warned us in a powerful article: “There Is A War Coming Shrouded In Propaganda. It Will Involve Us. Speak Up”

The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism,’ as you prefer. Ukraine as modern Europe’s fascist beehive has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy,’ which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,’ a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.

Today, Bandera is hero-worshipped in western Ukraine and scores of statues of him and his fellow-fascists have been paid for by the EU and the U.S., replacing those of Russian cultural giants and others who liberated Ukraine from the original Nazis.

In 2014, neo Nazis played a key role in an American bankrolled coup against the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was accused of being “pro-Moscow.” The coup regime included prominent “extreme nationalists” — Nazis in all but name.

The U.S. led support for this war must stop.  Who will stop it?

Homer told us something quite important once upon a time, as did many poets, artists, and writers in the twentieth-century. They warned us of the monsters we were spawning, as Pilger says: “Arthur Miller, Myra Page, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett warned that fascism was rising, often disguised, and the responsibility lay with writers and journalists to speak out.”  He rightly bemoans the absence of such voices now, as writers have disappeared into post-modern silence, a part of the cultural war on dissent.

On a subtler and more personal note than Homer’s tale of revenge, we have the testimony of Albert Camus who was part of the Resistance to the German occupation of France during WW II. At the beginning of his beautiful, posthumous, and autobiographical novel, The First Man, Camus tells us about Jacques Cormery (Camus), who never knew his father, a French soldier killed in World War I – the misnamed grotesque War to End All Wars – when Jacques was eleven months old.  Years later, when he is forty years old and horrors of WW II have concluded, Jacques visits the cemetery in France where his father is buried.  As he stands over the gravestone in this massive field of the dead, silence engulfs him.  Camus writes:

And the wave of tenderness and pity that at once filled his heart was not the stirring of the soul that leads the son to the memory of the vanished father, but the overwhelming passion that a grown man feels for an unjustly murdered child – something here was not in the natural order and, in truth, there was no order but only madness and chaos when the son was older than the father. The course of time was shattering around him while he remained motionless among those tombs he no longer saw, and the years no longer kept to their places in the great river that flows to its end.

The tale continues, as did Camus’s, who always supported the victims of violence despite harsh criticism from many corners, from the left and from the right. He wrote a famous essay, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” against capital punishment, based on his father’s nauseating experience of seeing a man executed by the state. After hearing this story from his grandmother, he would regularly have ”a recurrent nightmare” that “would haunt him, taking many forms, but always having the one theme: they were always coming to take him, Jacques, to be executed.”

Furthermore, Camus warned us not to become murderers and executioners and to create more victims, when he wrote a series of essays shortly after WW II for the French Resistance paper, Combat. – Neither Victims nor Executioners. He wrote that yes, we must raise our voices:

It demands only that we reflect and then decide, clearly, whether humanity’s lot must be made still more miserable in order to achieve far-off and shadowy ends, whether we should accept a world bristling with arms where brother kills brother; or whether, on the contrary, we should avoid bloodshed and misery as much as possible so that we give a chance for survival to later generations better equipped than we are. 

Which leads me to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his run for the U.S. presidency in this most dangerous time. He is a man not scared into silence despite all the efforts to censor him.

From a very tender age he was scarred by death; is surely a wounded warrior, not one of those who went to an actual war, but one who had a different war forced upon him when he was nine and fourteen years-old, when his uncle and father were assassinated by the CIA.  Some repress the implications of such memories; he has faced them and allowed them to spur him to truth and action.

No boar gored him, nor has he slain suitors in his house, because he has taken, not the road of revenge, but that of reconciliation, despite having lost his father and others to demonic government forces. This is the way of non-violence, a path unfamiliar to most of those seeking political office.

I don’t know his inner thoughts about this, but I read his words and actions to decipher where he is trying to take this very violent country. He is a non-violent warrior in the spirit of Gandhi’s truth force or satyagraha. Not a passive non-action, but an active resistance to evil and violence. Not one seeking revenge on all the warmongers and Covid liars (which does not preclude legal prosecutions for crimes), but one who seeks to reconcile the warring parties. To appeal to our higher angels and not the demons urging us to renounce the good, but to the love that is our only hope.

I am not saying he is a pacifist. Such a term muddies the water. He is clearly committed to the defense of the country if it were ever attacked. But he is emphatically opposed to the endless U.S. attacks on other countries. He knows the vicious history of the CIA. He is a very rare political candidate committed to reconciliation at home and abroad. He is waging peace.

Like his father Senator Robert Kennedy and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, he is anti-war, committed to ending the endless cycle of overseas wars sustained by the military-industrial complex and the corporations who feed at the trough of war spending. He opposes the policies of those politicians who support such endless carnage, which is most of them, including most emphatically Joe Biden. He realizes the danger of nuclear war. He tells us on his website, Kennedy24:

As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country. . . . We will lead by example. When a warlike imperial nation disarms of its own accord, it sets a template for peace everywhere. It is not too late for us to voluntarily let go of empire and serve peace instead, as a strong and healthy nation.

Those are very strong words and I am sure he means them. But he is opposed by demonic forces within the U.S., what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern aptly calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT). They run the propaganda shit show and will throw lie after lie (have already done so) at Kennedy and exert all their pressure to make sure he can not fulfill his promises. Their propaganda is endless and aims to hypnotize. Pinter described it thus: “I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love.”

It is this self-love and American exceptionalism that Bobby Kennedy will have to counteract by emphasizing the humanity of all people and their desire to live in peace. He will have to make it very clear that the U.S. government’s involvement in Ukraine was never humanitarian, but from the start was part of a plan to disable Russia. That is was an effort to continue the Cold War by pushing closer to Russia’s borders.

Only fools think that revenge and violence will lead to a better world.  It may feel good – and I know the feeling – to strike back in anger, but it is only a vicious circle as all history has shown. Revenge only brings bitterness, a cycle of recriminations and reactions. Reconciliation is the way forward, but it can only become a reality by an upswelling of resistance of good people everywhere to the lies of the war-loving propagandists who are leading us to annihilation.

RFK, Jr. can not do it alone. He can lead, but we need a vast chorus of millions of voices to resist, in Pilger’s words, “the all-powerful elite of the corporation merged with the state and the demands of ‘identity’.” If not, democracy will remain notional.  Kennedy is so right to say that the U.S.A. cannot be an empire abroad and continue to be a democracy at home. Silence must be replaced with resistance and his words made real by millions of people opposing the killers.

Writing in another time of extremity, but writing truly, Camus, said:

At the end of this tunnel of darkness, however, there is inevitably a light, which we already divine and for which we only have to fight to ensure its coming. All of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism. But few of us know it.

So let us fight with words and actions. As MLK, Jr. told us about the U.S. war against Vietnam: “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts.  He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

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Even during the height of the Vietnam War, as the bombs fell daily and heavily upon the Vietnamese people, there were peace talks occurring in Paris that brought both sides of the conflict to the negotiating table.

In Canada today, the war hawks are circling overhead in swiftly scudding skies while on the ground, the drum majors of militarism are leading the call for an arms race with the tenacity of a snare drummer performing “The Downfall of Paris.”

With the war in Ukraine as the impetus, a recent editorial in the Globe and Mail encouraged the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau to raise its commitment to NATO by spending fully 2 per cent of GDP on defence by enlarging the armed forces. Although the editorial admits “That’s a large number,” it concludes by stating, with great disappointment, that the “The government simply isn’t prepared to sacrifice other priorities over spending on defence.” (4/25/23, Globe editorial: “Canada needs to honour its pledge to NATO”)

Other priorities? Is the Globe and Mail referring to areas such as improved health care and pandemic responses, access to higher education, daycare, infrastructure maintenance and renewal, job training and other pursuits within the public sphere of interest? Are those the priorities the Globe and Mail is suggesting should be sacrificed?

Not to be outdone, Globe and Mail columnist, Andrew Coyne, reminded his readers that Canada is a founding member of NATO and that other members including the U.S., Germany and Turkey are “fed up with our chronic malingering.” (“The world is growing tired of Canada’s freeloading on defence: Our refusal to pay our way is leading to us being increasingly shunned by our allies” G&M 4/29/23).

Coyne continues to speak on behalf of “the world” in a most remarkable display of hubris by going on to assert: “But the world has grown all too familiar, not only with Canada’s record as an international freeloader, but with our habit of reneging on such commitments as we do make.” Who all in the world is disappointed with Canada you might ask? Without naming any more names, Coyne states flatly: “It is everyone.”

Presently, the silence from mainstream media outlets in Canada with regard to the need to implement a timetable toward conflict resolution and the need to aggressively pursue a cease fire is very disturbing for many people who fully embrace the resistance of the Ukrainians against Russian aggression. Why this “malingering” when it comes to pursuing the peace?

Even during the height of the Vietnam War, perhaps the defining military conflict of my own generation, as the bombs fell daily and heavily upon the Vietnamese people, peace talks were occurring in Paris that brought both sides of the conflict to the negotiating table.

The Vietnam War never had a formal beginning and it never had a formal conclusion that marked the cessation of hostilities. The U.S. never declared war against the Vietnamese nor did it sign a peace treaty at the end of the war. But the war ended, that is the important thing. During this period, Canada sent a clear signal to the U.S. that draft resisters and deserters opposed to the war were welcome and would not face extradition back to the U.S.

The war against the people of Iraq was never declared because the U.S. was never attacked by Iraq. Surely one of the greatest misadventures in the history of modern warfare, the Iraq War still stands as a clear demarcation between the foreign policy aims of the United States and Canada. Many believe it was Canada’s finest hour when Prime Minister Jean Chretien declared thumbs down to George Bush’s invitation to join the fight. Had it been Stephen Harper leading a Conservative government at the time, Canada would certainly have committed substantial blood and treasure to this disastrous encounter.

It is clearly time for Canada to return to the world stage as an honest broker for peace. In an article for the Financial Post, editor Kevin Carmichael called Canada’s participation in the G7 economic bloc “an anachronistic club in which Canada’s main purpose is to help Washington argue with Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy (Japan is the other member).” (“The Great Rethink: Why Canada Needs to Return to its ‘honest broker’ role in world affairs. 10/23/20 Financial Post).

Why not also throw in NATO for good measure? Is there no role for Canadian diplomacy to play other than as a subaltern to U.S. foreign policy and NATO’s military interests abroad?

There is a reason that we do not have the daily responsibility to monitor and maintain hyper-sonic nuclear warheads, chemical or biological weapons buried in missile silos throughout the country. It is because Canada refused pressures from the United States to install these weapons systems during the governments of John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson (Conservative and Liberal, respectively) in the late 1950s and early 60s even as they were under pressure to do so by both presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Kennedy (Republican and Democrat, respectively).

But make no mistake about it, at the time, Canadian governments of the day were divided on the question of nuclear weapons and—in the absence of a strong peace movement—any government today could easily begin to backslide on these issues.

How might Canada begin to advocate for peace in Ukraine? First of all, by taking a firm political stance against those who would be pushing us into an arms race that is unwinnable. With each new wave of advanced military and information technology there is simply no zero-sum game at play. There is only zero-sum loss for millions in the event of nuclear war.

Developing a strategy for peace may not be as difficult as it sounds. Canada has a long and honourable tradition in advocating for peace in the world. Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1957); the scientist, Joseph Rotblat, and the Pugwash movement (who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995); and the scientist, peace activist and feminist Ursula Franklin (awarded the Pearson Medal of Peace in 2001) are names that spring immediately to mind who have much to say about the role of peace movements, peace negotiations and compromise that can lead us away from armed conflict and toward the peace.

Where there is political will, there is a way. The readiness is all.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Robin Breon is an independent journalist based in Toronto.

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More than 300 Italian veterans who developed cancer after being exposed to depleted uranium ammunition have won court cases against Italy’s military. Some of the cases were brought by their bereaved relatives.

The judgments have mounted in recent years, with Italian courts repeatedly finding a link between cancer and service in the Balkans where such weapons were fired.

Although Italy does not have depleted uranium weapons in its own arsenal, Italian police and soldiers were deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo where NATO allies fired the controversial ammunition in the 1990s.

Depleted uranium (DU) is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal produced as waste from nuclear power plants. Britain uses it to make armour-piercing tank shells, which are now being supplied to Ukraine. 

Scientific debate continues about DU’s long-term risks to human health and the environment in post-conflict zones. British ministers insist it is low risk, and that there is only “some potential heavy metal contamination localised around the impact zone.”

But in the Balkans and Iraq, many believe it has caused cancer. That view was shared in 2009 by a coroner in England, who held an inquest into the death of Stuart Dyson, a British army veteran.

Dyson cleaned tanks during the Gulf war in 1991 and later developed a rare cancer, passing away in 2008. An inquest jury found it was “more likely than not” that depleted uranium had caused his death.

The Ministry of Defence rejected the ruling and refused to pay his widow a pension for those who die from service. By contrast, the widow of Captain Henri Friconneau, a French gendarme who served in Kosovo, was granted a service pension when he later died from cancer.

An appeal court in Rennes ruled in 2019 that Friconneau’s death was due to his exposure to DU dust. France’s interior ministry accepted the judgment and added his name to a monument for those who died on operations in Kosovo.

When in Rome

But it is in Italy where the highest number of veterans have won compensation. One family received a 1.3m euros pay out in 2015 after the court of appeal in Rome found “with unequivocal certainty” a link between exposure to depleted uranium dust and cancer.

The Il Fatto newspaper said the judgement went further than previous rulings, as it recognised a causal link beyond just the balance of probabilities.

A more recent ruling in 2018 seen by Declassified found the court could not “rule out the possibility that a soldier who served” in the Balkans “would have been exposed to genotoxic pollutants, thus increasing the likelihood of illness.”

An Italian Parliamentary commission into the issue found “shocking” levels of exposure among Italian veterans and said it had “helped sow deaths and illnesses”.

Last month, Euronews reported that 400 Italian soldiers who were exposed to DU in the Balkans had since died from cancer, and another 8,000 were suffering from the disease. They interviewed the lawyer at the centre of the litigation, Angelo Tartaglia, who urged Britain to “think about the risks and the consequences” of supplying Ukraine with DU shells.

Tartaglia said: “There’s the possibility that both Ukrainian and Russian military officials might fall ill but most importantly pollution caused by military activities could cause irreversible damage to the environment which means that civilians too would be at risk”.

‘Panic in Italy’

Depleted uranium has been a controversial topic in Italy ever since soldiers returned from Kosovo. It was discussed in 2001 by Tony Blair’s cabinet, which felt “the panic in Italy…[was] premature since there had been no time for cancers to have developed.”

Although Blair wanted to “appear sympathetic”, he was also anxious not to jeopardise the UK-US special relationship as George W. Bush entered the White House. 

Blair’s cabinet decided:

“The government should handle this in a low key manner and avoid the impression that it was distancing itself from the United States of America – which was the country that had used depleted uranium in Kosovo – just at the moment when a new US administration was coming to power.”

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw British and US forces firing the ammunition, triggering widespread concern. Britain’s Ministry of Defence recognised a ‘moral obligation’ to help Iraq clean up the shells after the war and published the firing locations.

The same approach is not being followed in Ukraine, where Britain has supplied thousands of tank shells, including some made from DU. 

Armed forces minister James Heappey has told parliament:

“British-supplied Challenger 2 tanks and depleted uranium ammunition granted to Ukraine are now under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). The Ministry of Defence does not monitor the locations from where DU rounds are fired by the AFU in Ukraine.”

He added:

“There is no obligation on the UK to help clear up depleted uranium rounds fired from Challenger 2 tanks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

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Phil Miller is Declassified UK’s chief reporter. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo

Featured image: Challenger 2 battle tank

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In his early 20’s, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attacked the overthrow of Allende in Chile. (See Atlantic Monthly, February 1974). In 1975, before the Church Committee completed revelations, he condemned American assassinations of foreign leaders. (See Wall Street Journal, December 16, 1975). When others stayed silent as we unleashed Islamic jihad through Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, RFK pushed back in twin articles in February of 1979 published in the Post and the Boston Globe against the coups. RFK continue to criticize almost every major foreign intervention in his lifetime, which started with Vietnam alongside his father’s campaign in 1968 through his criticism of both Iraq wars, the intervention in Syria, and the involvement in Afghanistan, criticizing these oil-driven wars, as his commentary in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2016, and 2018 detail. As the latest iteration of that, see a pre-campaign, but recent piece in Politico.

RFK’s dissident history doesn’t stop there. Just as he opposed regime change, anti-democratic coups, and foreign assassinations, he continued in his critique of torture and mass state surveillance. See his 2005 article on the best of America reflecting an “anti-torture tradition” in the December 17, 2005 edition of the Los Angeles Times, or his interview from 2005 in Oprah’s magazine. This led to early criticism of the globalist agenda of mass surveillance on Covid, as it did critique of digital currency and centralized banking power. An early focus of RFK criticism during Covid was Fauci, and he early-on spotted the Wuhan leak and gain of function problems.

RFK also questioned the integrity of American elections’, attributed his father and uncle’s assassinations to the intelligence agencies, and critiqued both the public health and food industries in America for decades, attacking the pharma-industrial complex, the food-industrial complex, and the military-industrial complex. Along the way, RFK attacked, by name, the likes of Bill Gates, and Klaus Schwab.

Kennedy’s Children Health Defense led the way against Covid policy.  He forecast the vaccine problems immediately. While much of his Covid criticism was being removed from YouTube, suppressed on social media, and smeared in the institutional press, his Children Health Defense led the way sponsoring writers, speakers and activists in challenging the narrative, while one of the first to warn of vaccine mandates, dangerous vaccines, and the pernicious role of Bill Gates. RFK said, in April of 2020, from the inception, that “the current lockdown measures that are in place during the Covid-19 pandemic are training society to do what it’s told, to accept this kind of surveillance, to accept these constraints on our civil rights, to allow the government to come in and tell us that we must stay at home and not send our kids to school”: while blasting the WHO as Bill Gates “owned.” His work was so significant that he was the primary target of media-state sponsored censorship, including his May 2, 2020 published broadcast with Patrick Bet-David.

This followed RFK’s long skepticism of globalist agendas on food and medicine. He condemned the FDA and USDA as just Big Food cutouts poisoning our bodies through their corporate cartel control over the food supply and its enabler regulators. Kennedy bashed “alternative” meat products, while attacking corporate controlled farms for replacing family farmers. RFK repeatedly represented family farmers and ordinary fishermen against corporations and their state-colluding allies. RFK’s sponsorship of the leading small farmer, direct-to-table, natural foods, the Weston A. Price Foundation, reflected that. This paralleled his legendary fight against Big Pharma, especially in the coerced vaccine environment. This extends to him critiquing the globalist aspects of the climate change movement, central bank digital currency, and promoting alternatives in the food, medicine, and financial markets.

Anyone ignoring this nearly half-century criticism of the establishment in RFK’s dissident voice on the critical issues of Deep State corruption, regulatory capture, crony capitalism, militaristic adventurism, the mass polluting of our bodies in the food, medical and local environmental support chains, the propagation of the war machine, the corrupting influence of the intelligence agencies, ignores one fact above all: RFK blames the Deep State for the murder of his father and uncle. There’s a reason they fear him, and it ain’t because they think he’s secretly on their side. The Sins Against the Father will be Remembered by the Son.

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The Russian Military has reportedly seriously depleted Ukrainian weapons stockpiles with a series of major strikes on its ammunition depots, which Western sources have assessed could seriously undermine prospects for a successful renewed Ukrainian offensive that was previously expected to begin imminently.

On May 1 it was reported that a railway echelon with up to 200 tons of Ukrainian munitions had been destroyed in a Russian missile strike in Donetsk, and separately that Russian forces destroyed two missile divisions’ worth of S-300 air defence systems in an attack on Ukrainian depots in Pavlograd in the Dnepropetrovsk Region. The latter strike reportedly also saw Grom-2 tactical ballistic missile systems destroyed. A third strike saw an ammunition depot of the Ukrainian 127th Mechanised Brigade in the Kharkov Region destroyed. This followed the destruction of a network of Ukrainian arms manufacturing facilities providing key sources of munitions on the night of April 30. These attacks come as both Ukrainian and Western sources have warned that the Ukrainian Military is falling increasingly short of munitions, particularly for its air defences which could soon end its ability to maintain air denial on the frontlines. The destruction of increasingly scarce S-300 missile systems follows a successful air strike that destroyed four missile launchers for Ukrainian S-300s on April 27, which indicates that placing further pressure on Ukraine’s increasingly strained surface to air missile network may be being prioritised.

Su-34 Fighter and TOS-1A Artillery Strikes in Ukraine (Source: Military Watch Magazine)

The destruction of key war materials comes amid indications that Russia has escalated strikes on Ukrainian frontline positions, where personnel suffered particularly high rates of attrition in the preceding days. On April 29 the Ukrainian Military and accompanying foreign military contractors reportedly took 575 casualties in Donetsk alone in just 24 hours, which was followed by a report on May 1 that 330 Ukrainian troops had been “destroyed” in the same region in 24 hours and the ammo depot of the Army’s 53rd Mechanised Brigade wiped out. April 24 had also seen Georgian Legion foreign fighters take heavy losses in Donetsk to a precision strike using Iskander ballistic missiles. Heavy attrition for Ukrainian and allied forces comes amid growing speculation that the war may be nearing a turning point that would favour Russia, amid warnings that Ukrainian cities may soon become unviable, reports of a massing Russian reservist force equipped with hundreds of new T-90M tanks and other equipment, and a near collapse of Ukrainian air defences which could allow the Russian Air Force to play a much greater role. Polish Armed Forces Chief of General Staff Rajmund Andrzejczak accordingly warned in the final week of April that Ukraine was in a far poorer position to sustain the war effort than Russia, in part due to the failure of Western economic warfare efforts to cripple the Russian economy, but that many Western leaders failed to realise how far Ukraine was from winning the war.  

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Featured image: Russian T-90M Tank Operating Ukraine (Source: Military Watch Magazine)

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“There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789

What does it say about the state of our freedoms that there are now more pencil-pushing, bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with weapons than U.S. Marines?

Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the IRS, Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.

Add in the Biden Administration’s plans to swell the ranks of the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] by 87,000 new employees (some of whom will be authorized to use deadly force) and grow the nation’s police forces by 100,000 more cops, and you’ve got a nation in the throes of martial law.

We’re being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun.

Make that hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of federal agents armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorized to make arrests, and trained in military tactics has nearly tripled over the past several decades.

As Adam Andrzejewski writes for Forbes, “the federal government has become one never-ending gun show.”

While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, federal agencies have been placing orders for hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point bullets and military gear.

For example, the IRS has stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns.

The Veterans Administration purchased 11 million rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical lighting.

The Department of Health and Human Services acquired 4 million rounds of ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms for its Office of Inspector General.

According to an in-depth report on “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns.

The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. The Smithsonian now employs 620-armed “special agents.”

Even agencies such as Amtrak and NASA have their own SWAT teams.

Ask yourselves: why are government agencies being turned into military outposts?

What’s with the buildup of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies? Even the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department have their own SWAT teams. Most of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice.

Why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?

For that matter, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?

Why do local police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?

Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?

Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of these realistic urban training drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.

We should be alarmed.

As James Madison warned, “We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”

Unfortunately, we’re long past the first experiment on our freedoms, and merely taking alarm over this build-up of military might will no longer suffice.

Nothing about this de facto army of bureaucratic, administrative, non-military, paper-pushing, non-traditional law enforcement agencies is necessary for national security.

Moreover, while these weaponized, militarized, civilian forces which are armed with military-style guns, ammunition and equipment; trained in military tactics; and authorized to make arrests and use deadly force—may look and act like the military, they are not the military.

Rather, they are foot soldiers of the police state’s standing army, and they are growing in number at an alarming rate.

This standing army—a.k.a. a national police force—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution and rule by force is exactly what America’s founders feared, and its danger cannot be overstated or ignored.

This is exactly what martial law looks like—when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it: Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.

The militarization of America’s police forces in recent decades, which has gone hand in hand with the militarization of America’s bureaucratic agencies, has merely sped up the timeline by which the nation is transformed into an authoritarian regime.

Now we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of administrative, police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military with little to no regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.

This quasi-state of martial law has been helped along by government policies and court rulings that have made it easier for the police to shoot unarmed citizens, for law enforcement agencies to seize cash and other valuable private property under the guise of asset forfeiture, for military weapons and tactics to be deployed on American soil, for government agencies to carry out round-the-clock surveillance, for legislatures to render otherwise lawful activities as extremist if they appear to be anti-government, for profit-driven private prisons to lock up greater numbers of Americans, for homes to be raided and searched under the pretext of national security, for American citizens to be labeled terrorists and stripped of their rights merely on the say-so of a government bureaucrat, and for pre-crime tactics to be adopted nationwide that strip Americans of the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and creates a suspect society in which we are all guilty until proven otherwise.

Don’t delude yourself into believing that this thinly-veiled exercise in martial law is anything other than an attempt to bulldoze what remains of the Constitution and reinforce the iron-fisted rule of the police state.

This is no longer about partisan politics or civil unrest or even authoritarian impulses.

This is a turning point.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

If we are to have any hope of salvaging what’s left of our battered freedoms, we’d do well to start by disarming the IRS and the rest of the federal and state bureaucratic agencies, de-militarizing domestic police forces, and dismantling the police state’s standing army.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: IRS location sign on Constitution Avenue, Washington, D.C. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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In 2022, Pfizer became the first drug company in history to break $100 billion in annual sales. That year, Pfizer spent $2.8 billion on ads, an increase of $800 million from 2021

But Pfizer’s success isn’t due to direct ads. It’s because

a) the U.S. government spent $1 billion of taxpayers’ money to promote the experimental COVID jab, and

b) Pfizer paid millions to consumer, medical and civil rights groups that lobbied for COVID jab mandates on Pfizer’s behalf

Special interest groups paid by Pfizer to push for COVID jab mandates and coercive vaccine policies include the Chicago Urban league (which argued that the jab mandate would benefit the Black community), the National Consumers League, the Immunization Partnership, the Advertising Council and a long list of universities and cancer, liver diseases, cardiology, rheumatology and medical science organizations

April 19, 2023, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its COVID jab guidance. The original monovalent mRNA shots are no longer recommended for use in the U.S. Instead, the CDC recommends people 6 years old and older get an updated bivalent mRNA COVID shot, even if they’ve not completed the monovalent series

While the World Health Organization seems to be backing off from endless COVID boosters for all, there’s clear evidence that mRNA gene therapy is here to stay. mRNA “vaccines” are in the works for influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), shingles, genital herpes and cancer, just to name a few

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Thanks to its experimental gene therapy injection for COVID-19, in 2022, Pfizer became the first drug company in history to break $100 billion in annual sales.¹ But its mere existence didn’t ensure Pfizer’s success.

No, massive media promotion and government-backed coercion did that. Not only did the U.S. government pay news media a staggering $1 billion to promote and build public confidence in the experimental jab, but as reported by Russell Brand in the video above, Pfizer also poured billions of dollars into advertising.

In 2022, Pfizer spent $2.8 billion on ads, an increase of $800 million from 2021. On top of that, Pfizer also paid big bucks to consumer, medical and civil rights groups to lobby for COVID jab mandates. Journalist Lee Fang reviewed this in his interview with Brand (video above) and in an April 24, 2023, Substack article.² As Fang told Brand:

“San Francisco … in September of 2021, enacted a very kind of strong mandate with no exemption for prior immunity … or … natural immunity. Pfizer was not playing a visible role here. They didn’t comment on any of the articles. They weren’t really talking to the press.

You saw consumer groups, civil rights groups, patient groups, doctors groups, public health organizations, all saying these mandates are necessary, even though there wasn’t a lot of scientific evidence to support the basis that we needed these mandates. [The shots] were sold to us with the claim that they would stop transmission of the virus.

[The drug industry doesn’t] have to disclose how much they’re spending on television, how much they’re spending on TikTok ads, how much they’re giving to these front groups, or these doctors groups, or these public health groups that set the nature of the debate.

They appear in the news media, they create events, and they create a discourse that looks authentic, that looks organic, but it benefits the bottom line of their benefactors — companies like Pfizer.

And the vaccine debate … has shaped our lives in the last three years of the pandemic. But it’s also not that unique in the sense that every major pharmaceutical company in the United States engages in these practices. They pressure regulators, they spend so much money on direct-to-consumer advertising.

And really, they kind of just dominate the entire public policy debate. So we can talk about a lot of other special interest groups, but Pharma is unique [in terms of] the raw amounts of money they spend to control the entire public sector, on regulatory policy, on everything, in terms of how it affects medicine …”

Dozens of Health Care Organizations Called for Mandates

Special interest groups paid by Pfizer³ to push for COVID jab mandates and coercive vaccine policies include the Chicago Urban league (which argued that the jab mandate would benefit the Black community), the National Consumers League, the Immunization Partnership, the Advertising Council and a long list of universities and cancer, liver diseases, cardiology, rheumatology and medical science organizations.

Each of these organizations received anywhere from several thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars from Pfizer in 2021 alone. Is it any wonder, then, that more than 50 major health care organizations called for vaccine mandates that year, including for their own workers?⁴ I don’t think so.

Pfizer didn’t have to take a prominent stand to argue for vaccine mandates, which would have been an obvious conflict of interest. They paid others to push the mandates for them. Of course, Pfizer and the U.S. government are also in partnership, as acknowledged on Pfizer’s Political Partnership page.⁵ 

New COVID Jab Guidelines Issued

In related news, April 19, 2023, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its COVID jab guidance.^6,7,8 The original monovalent mRNA shots are no longer recommended for use in the U.S. Instead, the CDC recommends people 6 years old and older get an updated bivalent mRNA COVID shot, even if they’ve not completed the monovalent series.

The update comes on the heels of the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization’s (SAGE) meeting in late March 2023, during which they decided that continued injection efforts should be focused on getting boosters into the arms of the elderly and those with underlying conditions, including young children, young adults and pregnant women with diabetes, heart disease or immunocompromising conditions. As reported by the WHO:⁹

“For the high priority group, SAGE recommends an additional booster of either 6 or 12 months after the last dose, with the timeframe depending on factors such as age and immunocompromising conditions.

All the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations are time-limited, applying for the current epidemiological scenario only, and so the additional booster recommendations should not be seen as for continued annual COVID-19 vaccine boosters …

Separate to the roadmap, SAGE also updated their recommendations on bivalent COVID-19 vaccines, now recommending that countries can consider using BA.5 bivalent mRNA vaccine for the primary series.”

Pfizer Intent on Replacing Conventional Vaccines With mRNA

But while the WHO seems to be backing off from endless COVID boosters for all, there’s clear evidence that mRNA gene therapy is here to stay — unless enough of us wake up and refuse them all. For example, as reported by BioProcess International, Pfizer is pushing mRNA as an alternative to current flu vaccines:¹⁰

“Last September, Pfizer initiated a Phase III study of its messenger RNA (mRNA) based flu vaccine, following a 2018 partnership with a then little-know German biotech BioNTech. In 2020, both BioNTech and mRNA were thrown into the global spotlight due a successful COVID-19 vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech in just nine months.

Now Pfizer is leveraging a similar approach to mRNA beyond COVID through a roadmap that aims to reduce bureaucracy and increase collaboration.

According to Pfizer’s VP of mRNA Commercial Strategy & Innovation and Global Pandemic Security Lead Jane True … mRNA-based vaccines have the ability to replace current technologies in the long-term.”

Moderna also launched an mRNA flu jab trial in the fall of 2022.¹¹ We now know the COVID shot doesn’t protect you against SARS-CoV-2 infection or transmission, so why would anyone believe the flu shot will be any different? Are they tweaking it somehow to block infection? Or will it be a repeat of COVID — all risk and no benefit?

There’s cause for additional concern when it comes to mRNA flu shots, because they’ve already admitted that the viral strains targeted can and will be updated on the fly in the middle of the flu season, should it turn out that the flu strains selected in February are a mismatch to the circulating strains that following winter.¹²

The industry wants you to believe that changing the antigen has no bearing on the potential side effects, but they have no evidence to support that assertion. Whenever you change the antigen, you run the risk of new side effects, because not all viral antigens affect your immune system the same way.

New mRNA Shots Are Being Fast-Tracked

In addition to mRNA-based flu shots, a number of other ones are also in the works, and several are being fast-tracked. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is fast-tracking Moderna’s mRNA shot for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which is based on the same platform as the COVID jab.

At present, there’s no approved vaccine available for RSV, and the reason for that is because none were ever able to pass trials. As with coronavirus, previous efforts to develop an RSV vaccine met with failure as test subjects had a pesky tendency to die or become seriously ill when exposed to the wild virus, thanks to paradoxical immune enhancement (PIE), also known as antibody dependent enhancement (ADE).

By fast-tracking Moderna’s mRNA RSV shot, the FDA is completely ignoring the possibility that they may be creating an avalanche of ADE-related illness from the COVID shot. Adding another injection for a respiratory virus that has historically been associated with ADE could be extremely risky, yet they’re moving full steam ahead.

Moderna’s personalized cancer shot is also being fast-tracked, both in the U.S.¹³ and the European Union.¹⁴ mRNA shots for shingles and genital herpes are also in the works.¹⁵ Overall, the entire industry, and governments around the world, seem hell-bent on transitioning to mRNA-based gene therapy for just about everything.

Putting Patients in the Driver’s Seat

On a final side note, I recently interviewed Laura Bartlett and Greta Crawford, founder of protocolkills.com, about how to put patients back in the driver’s seat when they’re admitted to the hospital. I hope to run their interview May 7; you won’t want to miss it.

A key “weapon” in your arsenal to put yourself squarely in the driver’s seat is a novel informed consent document that specifies the treatments that you do NOT consent to, such as mRNA injections and other vaccines, remdesivir and other deadly COVID-19 drugs, and mechanical ventilation for COVID-19. It also specifies the COVID treatments you DO request and consent to, such as oxygen, nutrition, hydration, ivermectin and other remedies.

It’s basically a document that lists your current consent wishes, and it needs to be written, signed and notarized BEFORE you go to the hospital. It must also be entered into your medical record, so that everyone involved in your care has access to it and know what your wishes are.

Bartlett and Crawford have developed a template for this document that you can use and amend as you wish. This strategy is also being promoted by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden. You can find the template here. I will be offering a revised template that is modified to make sure you don’t get disease-producing food while in the hospital loaded with LA (linoleic acid).

This form is basically one of the most effective ways to protect yourself against harmful treatments in the hospital that can kill or permanently disable you.

Hospital staff are REQUIRED to follow your written directives. So, having this notarized document entered into your electronic medical record, sent to the hospital CEO and given to any doctor that treats you could literally save your life and prevent you from being taken “hostage” if you’re ever hospitalized. The KEY is to have this document ready BEFORE you go into the hospital.

Vaccine makers like Pfizer are using every possible means to ensure their products are forced on the population, but patients still do have rights. We must exercise those rights to the fullest, and this is the most effective way I have ever encountered to do that.

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Notes

¹ Fierce Pharma April 21, 2023

² Lee Fang Substack April 24, 2023

³ Document Cloud Pfizer 2021 Funding Report

⁴ ABC News July 26, 2021

⁵ Pfizer Political Partnership

⁶ WHIO TV April 24, 2023

⁷ CDC April 19, 2023

⁸ NCDHHS April 20, 2023

⁹ WHO March 28, 2023

¹⁰ BioProcess International April 20, 2023

^11, 12 Time September 14, 2022

¹³ The Guardian April 8, 2023

¹⁴ Zacks.com April 10, 2023

¹⁵ Newsmax Health February 18, 2022

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*** 

During the freedom convoy, the media seemed to ignore Lich’s contributions to the movement or actively work to discredit her. In her book, she offers an essential fact-check on the misrepresentation of her story and the trucker convoy.

Last week on The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra hosted a special feature interview with Tamara Lich, author of the best-selling book Hold The Line, who shared her experiences as the spiritual leader of the trucker convoy in Canada.

As a grassroots uprising against government overreach, the trucker convoy faced enormous challenges, not in the least having their crowdfunding attempts seized or frozen by the government.

However, Lich explained that the convoy’s independence only served to strengthen its resolve and inspire the nation. The government’s response, invoking the Emergencies Act, only further exposed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a tyrant and set the stage for his eventual downfall.

Despite being a crucial figure during the convoy, Lich’s voice was noticeably absent from mainstream media outlets. The media seemed to ignore her contributions to the movement or actively work to discredit her. In her book, Lich offers an essential fact-check on the misrepresentation of her story and the trucker convoy.

Lich, who is Indigenous, also shared her disappointment with how her ethnic background was treated by the media. Rather than being celebrated as a diverse and tolerant leader, she was met with skepticism, even by the Aboriginal People’s TV Network.

In the interview, Lich expressed gratitude for alternative news organizations like Rebel News, who worked tirelessly to report on the convoy’s real story. Despite the media’s attempts to silence her, Lich remained steadfast in her message of love, unity, and respect.

Her book is a testament to her resilience and provides an inside look at the trucker convoy, debunking mainstream media narratives and shining a light on her experiences during the event.

You won’t find Tamara’s book in Chapters/Indigo, even though it’s the best-selling book in Canada, even bigger than Prince Harry’s autobiography.

But if you click here or go to www.TheConvoyBook.com, you can get a copy shipped directly to your home.

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*** 

Imagine President Xi Jinping mustering undiluted Taoist patience to suffer through a phone call with that warmongering actor in a sweaty T-shirt in Kiev while attempting to teach him a few facts of life – complete with the promise of sending a high-level Chinese delegation to Ukraine to discuss “peace”.

There’s way more than meets the discerning eye obscured by this spun-to-death diplomatic “victory” – at least from the point of view of NATOstan.

The question is inevitable: what’s the point of this phone call? Very simple: just business.

The Beijing leadership is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of an American direct war against the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Until recently, and since 2019, Beijing was the top trade partner for Kiev (14.4% of imports, 15.3% of exports). China essentially exported machinery, equipment, cars and chemical products, importing food products, metals and also some machinery.

Very few in the West know that Ukraine joined BRI way back in 2014, and a BRI trade and investment center was operating in Kiev since 2018. BRI projects include a 2017 drive to build the fourth line of the Kiev metro system as well as 4G installed by Huawei. Everything is stalled since 2022.

Noble Agri, a subsidiary of COFCO (China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation), invested in a sunflower seed processing complex in Mariupol and the recently built Mykolaiv grain port terminal. The next step will necessarily feature cooperation between Donbass authorities and the Chinese when it comes to rebuilding their assets that may have been damaged during the war.

Beijing also tried to become heavily involved in the Ukraine defense sector and even buy Motor Sich; that was blocked by Kiev.

Watch that neon

So what we have in Ukraine, from the Chinese point of view, is a trade/investment cocktail of BRI, railways, military supplies, 4G and construction jobs. And then, the key vector: neon.

Roughly half of neon used in the production of semiconductors was supplied, until recently, by two Ukrainian companies; Ingas in Mariupol, and Cryoin, in Odessa. There’s no business going on since the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO). That directly affects the Chinese production of semiconductors. Bets can be made that the Hegemon is not exactly losing sleep over this predicament.

Ukraine does represent value for China as a BRI crossroads. The war is interrupting not only business but, in the bigger picture, one of the trade and connectivity corridors linking Western China to Eastern Europe. BRI conditions all key decisions in Beijing – as it is the overarching concept of Chinese foreign policy way into mid-century.

And that explains Xi’s phone call, debunking any NATOstan nonsense on China finally paying attention to the warmongering actor.

As relevant as BRI is the overarching bilateral relationship dictating Beijing’s geopolitics: the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

So let’s transition to the meeting of Defense Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) earlier this week in Delhi.

The key meeting in India was between Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Chinese colleague Li Shangfu. Li was recently in Moscow, and was received by Putin in person for a special conversation. This time he invited Shoigu to visit Beijing, and that was promptly accepted.

Needless to add that every single player in the SCO and beyond, including nations that are for the moment just observers or dialogue partners as well as others itching to become full members, such as Saudi Arabia, paid very close attention to the Shoigu-Shangfu camaraderie.

When it comes to the profoundly strategic Central Asian “stans”, that represents the six feet under treatment for the Hegemon wishful thinking of using them in a Divide and Rule scheme pitting Russia against China.

Shoigu-Shangfu also sent a subtle message to SCO members India and Pakistan – stop bickering and in the case of Delhi, hedging your bets – and to full member (in 2023) Iran and near future member Saudi Arabia: here’s where’s it at, this the table that matters.

All of the above also points to the increasing interconnection between BRI and SCO, both under Russia-China leadership.

BRICS is essentially an economic club – complete with its own bank, the NDB – and focused on trade. It’s mostly about soft power. The SCO is focused on security. It’s about hard power. Together, these are the two key organizations that will be paving the multilateral way.

As for what will be left of Ukraine, it is already being bought by Western mega-players such as BlackRock, Cargill and Monsanto. Yet Beijing certainly does not count on being left high and dry. Stranger things have happened than a future rump Ukraine positioned as a functioning trade and connectivity BRI partner.

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This article was originally published on Strategic Culture Foundation.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

On April 25th, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Joe Wilson (SC-02) and Ranking Member Rep. Steve Cohen (TN-09) introduced the Ukraine Victory Resolution in the House of Representatives. Then, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), introduced the same resolution in the Senate. It states that U.S. policy is to assure Ukraine’s victory against the Russian invasion, and that, if Ukraine fails to defeat Russia there, then the U.S. Government will guarantee that Russia will be defeated in Ukraine.

It is not yet a formal U.S. declaration of war against Russia, but commits the U.S. to going to war against Russia if Russia wins its war in Ukraine. In other words: it says that there will be WW III if Russia wins in Ukraine. If this Resolution becomes U.S. law, then there will be only two possibilities: either Ukraine will defeat Russia in Ukraine, or else America will go to war against Russia thereby producing WW III.

Original cosponsors of the resolution in the House of Representatives also include: Mike Lawler (NY-17), Richard Hudson (NC-09), Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18), Mike Quigley (IL-05), Doug Lamborn (CO-05), Bill Pascrell (NJ-08), Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27), Brendan Boyle (PA-02), Lloyd Doggett (TX-37), Deborah Ross (NC-02), Jim Costa (CA-21), David Trone (MD-06), Joe Morelle (NY-25), Susan Wild (PA-07), and Marcy Kaptur (OH-09).

The Resolution says: “it is the policy of the United States to see Ukraine victorious against the invasion and restored to its internationally recognized 1991 borders.” This means that unless Russia will return to Ukraine all of the land that it now is controlling within what had been the 1991 borders of Ukraine, which includes Crimea, Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, there will be World War Three between America and Russia.

Consequently, I phoned my two U.S. Senators and one member of the House to tell each, that every member of Congress has the most solemn obligation not only to vote against this prelude to WW III, but to state publicly that it is insane, for the following 5 reasons:

1. To place the entire world at severe risk in order to assure that Russia will be defeated in Ukraine is insane and is psychopathic, and is stupid if not viciously evil.

2. It would be viciously evil if only because the war in Ukraine started with the U.S. coup during 20-27 February 2014 when the Obama Administration overthrew the democratically elected leader of Ukraine in a very violent coup, which was carried out behind the scenes by U.S.-trained Ukrainian rabidly racist-fascist anti-Russian white-supremacist ideological nazis who had their organizational origins back during WW II fighting with Germany’s Nazis to cleanse away Jews and defeat Russia, which had been America’s key ally during WW II.

3. There is even a smoking gun recording of Obama’s agent planning and directing the coup, Victoria Nuland, instructing the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev on 27 January 2014 whom to place in charge of Ukraine’s government after the democratically elected Ukrainian President gets overthrown — and that person, “Yatsenyuk,” did become appointed exactly a month later.

4. The reason for Obama’s coup was in order to get into NATO the one country whose border is the nearest of all to The Kremlin, being just 300 miles away from Moscow. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, America refused to allow the possibility that Soviet missiles would be only a 30-minute missile flight (1,131 miles) away from a blitz nuclear attack beheading America’s central command in Washington DC. The present version is instead about the possibility that American nuclear missiles might become placed in Ukraine only a 5-minute missile flight (317 miles) away from blitz-beheading Russia’s central command in Moscow. Putin won’t accept something that would be even more dangerous to Russians than JFK rejected in October 1962 as being a national-security threat to Americans.

5. Putin tried to prevent the necessity of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, by on 17 December 2021 seeking a promise from both the U.S. Government and its NATO anti-Russian military alliance NOT EVER to allow Ukraine into NATO, but, on 7 January 2022 got firm rejections from both, which made inevitable then that Russia would invade Ukraine in order to achieve by force what America refused even to negotiate with Russia about Russia’s central national-security concern (which mirrored JFK’s for America in 1962).

Any member of Congress who fails to condemn publicly, and to explain the insanity of the Ukraine Victory Resolution, doesn’t belong in Congress, because that person is a mortal threat to the entire world. This proposed law must not pass.

Please forward this article on to your two Senators and one House member.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

President Joseph Biden has done what many from his own party dreaded but dare not say. Last month, via a painful video (watch below), the aged Democrat declared his candidacy for a second term in the White House, branding himself a defender of US democracy. For a politician lacking the mettle of competence, awareness, and, at certain points, basic clarity of the world he inhabits, this was astonishing. The doddery are in; the young, or younger, are frowned upon as incapable of taking the mantle.

The result is a candidate being kept, like the Mikado, close at hand, let out on occasion to see some sunlight, but otherwise shut off from the world. Even when Biden is allowed out for his walk and scripted speech, his handlers only do so with a sense of dread: when will he slip or, as Hilary Clinton liked to call it, succumb to “misstatement”?

The New York Times was careful on the lead-up. “Behind the scenes, advisers, and allies are weighing how soon the president should set in motion a re-election operation – an announcement that will surprise no one but will signal the start of a challenging new phase of his presidency.”

What an understatement. Most Democrat voters do not want a second Biden presidency. A vote cast his way will be done grudgingly, especially if the rival GOP candidate is Donald Trump. The machinery of the party is already getting ready to deny oxygen to fresher faces.

Biden does command a following, of sorts, though the thinking behind it is shallow. Ezra Klein, for instance, has decided that age is not quite the problem some claim it to be. The aging figure “proved – and keeps proving – doubters like me wrong. He won the Democratic primary, even though voters had no shortage of fresher faces to choose from. He won the general election handily, despite Donald Trump’s vaunted talents as an insult comic and a social media force.” Klein goes on, with almost delusionary conviction: “Voters seemed perfectly happy with Biden as a communicator.”

One who could not disagree more with the idea of Biden 2.0 is Julian Epstein, who served as Chief Counsel to the US House Judiciary Committee and was Staff Director to the House Oversight Committee Democrats. While accepting that Trump gave the Democrats ample subject matter to draw upon, a seemingly endless well of bile to feed on – the refusal of Republicans to detach themselves from the orange ogre; his treatment of the pandemic; his heavily flirtatious dabbling with extremists – the Democrats had their own problems.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Epstein declared that his fellow Democrats had “shown their own kind of cowardice by refusing to say that President Biden shouldn’t run for re-election.” The Democratic elites had decided “that any dissent from party leadership or independent thinking – even in the name of the obvious truth – is dangerous to their job security.”

Attacking Biden, or dismissing him as woefully uncredible, has become “tricky”. To regard the president as blithering, vague, and barely present, is to run the risk of being labelled an ageist, or even sadist. But on the policy front, Biden’s policy legacy, Epstein argues, is questionable, domestically bleeding the blue-collar vote, while baffling the foreign policy establishment with spectacular moments of foggy-headed utterances.

Over Taiwan, he has been nothing short of abysmal, fumbling, gaffing (to the truth, perhaps?) over US policy towards the island entity. In May 2022, he bamboozled commentators and the press corps on whether the US would go to war over the island were it to be attacked by China, thereby holing the policy of “strategic ambiguity” in place since 1979. “Yes,” came his reply to the question. “That’s the commitment we made.”

At the time, White House correspondent for Agence France-Presse, Sebastian Smith, was stunned. “Biden’s affirmation that ‘yes’ the US would defend Taiwan really raised adrenaline levels in that palace briefing room right now. Next, we all get to try and explain what it all actually means.”

The efforts to explain did not stop there. By September 2022, Biden had mangled strategic ambiguity no less than four times.  Zack Cooper, Senior Fellow for the American Enterprise Institution, observed bluntly that, whatever Biden’s strategists might claim about the unchanged nature of US-Taiwan policy, “the strategy for achieving this objective has changed. Biden is choosing to be less ambiguous about US intentions in case of an unprovoked attack on Taiwan.” His advisers should, accordingly, “acknowledge this inescapable reality.”

On his trip to Ireland in April this year, Biden’s blunders were also monumental, though largely laughed off (“delicious,” declared the Irish Times) as the product of an entertainingly addled mind. During a speech at the Windsor pub in Dundalk, County Louth, he confused the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team with the odious Black and Tans, infamous for their bloodletting during the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence.

Biden’s distant cousin, former Irish rugby player Rob Kearney, played a role in Ireland’s first victory over the often invincible All Blacks in 2016. “He was a hell of a player,” remarked the president, “and he beat the hell out of the Black and Tans.” Staff at the White House promptly went to work airbrushing this error from history; those in Ireland were left “in stitches”.

On a more serious note, another Biden administration, flavoured by the bouquet garni of error, is likely to make more wars, not fewer, likely. In the Indo-Pacific, a containment strategy of China is being pursued with militaristic glee, with a bewitched Australia supplying the strategic real estate in a policy of forward defence. In Ukraine, a proxy war with Russia continues to be waged, drawing NATO and the US into ever closer conflict. Biden’s Blunderland does not promise to be pretty, let alone an entertaining place.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University.  He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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***

May 1 is International Worker’s Day and around the world people were in the streets demanding a living wage and improved conditions of employment.

In France since January millions have taken part in rolling general strikes and mass demonstrations in response to the government’s pension reforms, which will not only raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64, the new law imposes a 43-year work requirement in order to receive full benefits.

In Paris there were more than a half-million people who demonstrated against the declining status of working people. Police utilized teargas and other brute force in their attempts to curtail the militancy of the actions.

Reports indicate that nearly 300 people were arrested on May Day. In addition, 108 police officers were injured in the clashes, according to figures released by Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.

The Interior Minister remarked that the high number of police injuries were rare. Darmanin said that one police officer was struck by a Molotov cocktail suffering severe burns although his life is not in danger.

Fires were set in the streets of Paris along with damage to private property. Thousands of police were deployed to cities around the country and there were additional claims of brutality and misconduct by law-enforcement personnel. Over the last four months, the French police have been cited by numerous human rights organizations for the mistreatment of protesters.

The May Day demonstrations reflected the widespread discontent with President Emmanuel Macron who signed the pension reform bill into law absent a vote within the National Assembly. Recent polls reveal that Macron’s disapproval rating was at 75%.

Many people in the Labor Day demonstrations demanded the president’s resignation. Efforts by Macron to reset his administration’s second term have been met with mass rejection. During one public speaking engagement by Macron, technicians refused to activate the public address system. Others bang pots and pans to make noise when Macron was in the area expressing their anger with the French government.

In a report published by Al Jazeera, it described the atmosphere on May Day as follows:

“Video footage from various cities showed massive damage to property. In the capital and other major cities, police used drones for the first time to monitor the situation…. In Paris, radical protesters threw projectiles at police and broke windows of businesses such as banks and estate agents, with security forces responding with tear gas and water cannon, AFP correspondents said. Darmanin condemned protesters he described as being from the far left, known as ‘black blocs,’ saying they numbered around 2,000 in Paris and another 1,000 in Lyon. He urged that ‘those who attacked the police and public property be severely punished’. Security forces deployed tear gas in Toulouse in southern France as tensions erupted during demonstrations, while four cars were set on fire in the southeastern city of Lyon. In the western city of Nantes, police also fired tear gas after protesters hurled projectiles, AFP correspondents said. The windows of a Uniqlo clothing store were smashed. Protesters briefly occupied the luxury InterContinental hotel in the southern city of Marseille, breaking flowerpots and damaging furniture.” 

All of the eight major trade unions in France united for the demonstrations on May Day. Since the beginning of the year there have been 13 days of action which has mobilized both seasoned workers along with students and youth.

French clashes on May Day 2023 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Other issues of concern to the French people such as privatization and climate change were also addressed on May Day. Environmentalists attacked the cultural center in Paris which is linked to one of the wealthiest people in the world. The center is sponsored by the Louis Vuitton Foundation that is owned by the 74-year-old multi-billionaire Frenchman, Bernard Arnault. Activists spray-painted slogans which included the words: “You’re watching direct action against the rich this May Day 2023.”

The rate of inflation has worsened the already decline in living standards among the French people as well as workers living in the western capitalist states. The United States-led proxy war in Ukraine has fueled inflation particularly in the energy, housing and agricultural sectors. Washington and its allies within NATO are sending billions to continue the war while imposing austerity on the workers and nationally oppressed living within the highly industrialized capitalist countries.

May Day Witnesses Upsurge Around the World

In other countries demonstrations were held in support of the working class. Britain has experienced numerous strikes over the last several months.

Nurses, Junior Doctors and Teachers among others in the civil service and the transport systems have been engaged in work stoppages for several months. The National Health Services (NHS) in Britain is suffering cuts while the Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has refused to negotiate adequate wage increases as the situation deteriorates.

The government is attempting to split the workers as a number of unions such as UNISON, which represents public service employees, have accepted a one- time payment of several thousand pounds along with a pay raise of 5% for the next fiscal year. This offer was rejected by the Royal College of Nurses and UNITE trade unions.

In other parts of the globe, May Day was marked by mass demonstrations and unrest as well in response to the rising inflation. Demonstrations took place in Sri Lanka, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, Spain and Turkey.  

In the Republic of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the united rally of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC). Ramaphosa and the leaders of the SACP and COSATU expressed different views on the future of the tripartite alliance which was pivotal in the democratic breakthrough of 1994 that brought the ANC to power in the former apartheid state.

President Ramaphosa told the crowd that:

“Workers in our country and across the world have fought for the right to gather and celebrate. It has been really good that we have worked together as an alliance, under the leadership of the African National Congress…. Much as Workers’ Day is taking place today during a very difficult time for our country, we want to say that, yes, issues such as poverty, unemployment, inequality are challenges that can only be effectively addressed if we, as the alliance, continue working together, if we as the alliance continue holding hands to ensure that the ideals set out in the national democratic revolution are indeed achieved.” 

In the U.S. May Day as a commemoration of working class struggles had been suppressed since the post World War II era when anti-communism became pervasive. The holiday which originated due to the campaigns to win the eight-hour working day in the U.S. was slandered by the ruling class as a socialist holiday.

Since 2006-2007, the celebration of May Day has resurfaced as a mass action resulting from the efforts of immigrant workers seeking equal treatment and legalization. However, the harassment and deportation of immigrant workers and their families has accelerated over the last fifteen years by successive administrations both Democratic and Republican.

On May 2, the administration of President Joe Biden announced the deployment of 1,500 U.S. troops to the border with Mexico. The White House claims this is in response to the expiration of a law which restricts immigration due to the COVID-19 pandemic which began three years ago.  The administration says that the Pentagon troops will not be involved in police actions. However, this is clearly a military provocation against the Republic of Mexico along with other states in the Caribbean, Central and South America.

As the social conditions in the U.S. among the working people and oppressed worsen, the Biden White House will inevitably enhance capitalist-imperialist militarization both abroad and domestically. It will be the responsibility of those most negatively affected to organize and mobilize to defeat these attacks on the interests of the proletariat and oppressed domestically and around the world.

*

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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 from the author

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By 2008 US president George W. Bush was no longer talking about winning in Iraq. Around 500,000 American soldiers had been sent to Iraq between 2003 and 2008, but the US military was unable to overcome the Middle East country. Bush’s expectations of victory in Iraq gradually disappeared and the defeat dealt a severe, permanent blow to America’s standing as a global power. 

The election victory in November 2008 of an African-American, Barack Obama, seemed to signal an ongoing decline for America’s white elites, those who had long controlled the centres of power in the US; but shortly before Obama’s inauguration on 20 January 2009, he proposed another bailout of America’s private banks worth $1.18 trillion, and after he assumed the presidency he dispensed with a further $412 billion in 2010. 

With the US military position in Iraq irretrievable by the time Obama became president, he directed much of his attention instead towards the US war in Afghanistan (2001–21), a landlocked Asian country located over a thousand miles to the east of Iraq. Obama escalated the offensive against the insurgency in Afghanistan, by sending an extra 30,000 troops there from late 2009, added to the 70,000 US soldiers already in the country along with 30,000 NATO-backed personnel (1). The NATO offensive was made more difficult, by the fact that the number of Taliban fighters quadrupled from 2006 to 2009. 

Obama spent $100 billion in 2009 alone with his troop surge in Afghanistan (2). He wanted to continue this military campaign because of what he said was a “war of necessity” until victory was secured. The increase in US troops led to a worsening in sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia elements. In addition out of the many thousands of NATO casualties in Afghanistan, the majority of them were American deaths. 

Between 2006 and 2007 the US Geological Survey, an agency of the US government, analysed 70% of Afghanistan’s terrain from the air using magnetic and gravitational equipment. The Americans discovered that the area of Afghanistan which they surveyed contains $1 trillion worth of natural resources, including lithium, oil, natural gas, copper, gold and iron (3). This wealth was virtually untapped because of the lack of infrastructure to exploit it, along with the unstable nature of the country. 

The Pentagon appointed the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, with the aim of dividing up Afghanistan’s areas of economic significance. In May 2010 Germany’s president Horst Köhler informed the media that the German troops in Afghanistan, as part of the US-led NATO, were there due to economic reasons. The 5,350 German soldiers on Afghan soil were not “combatting terrorism” but, as Köhler said, they were in Afghanistan “to protect our interests” which included “free trade routes” (4). Köhler, who was telling the truth, resigned from the presidency a few days later due to strong criticism of his remarks. 

The NATO assault on Afghanistan related further to the country’s strategic importance, as it borders Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan and to the far north-east, China. Should the US have succeeded in subduing Afghanistan, it would have allowed Washington to increase its encirclement of Iran. Therefore a NATO defeat in Afghanistan would be a major setback to US hegemony, which it was, on top of the debacle in Iraq. 

President Obama in 2010 designated $688 billion for the Pentagon’s military budget, which had more than doubled since 2001, when weapons expenditure amounted to around $316 billion that year (5). Even had Obama wanted to, it would have been difficult for him to change the structure of the American state, which is dominated by the interests of private sectors like the military-industrial complex. Some of America’s biggest states, such as California and Texas, are heavily reliant on income from Pentagon spending. 

The “wars on terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq had cost Washington about $2 trillion each year. The invasions were funded to a large extent by loans, with interest payments that added further hundreds of billions of dollars to the final cost. The main beneficiaries of this expenditure were the arms manufacturers, the military-industrial complex. 

The driving force behind Afghanistan’s economy has been poppy cultivation, relating to the production of opium, a highly addictive drug. During the second and third years of Obama’s presidency, opium production in Afghanistan increased from 3,600 tons of opium (in 2010) to 5,800 tons (in 2011). In the year that Obama’s presidency ended, 2017, Afghanistan’s opium production reached a record level of 9,000 tons produced. (6) 

The size of land for poppy cultivation in Afghanistan amounted to 131,000 hectares in 2011. By 2017 there was 328,000 hectares of Afghan land devoted to the poppy (7). Obama had said in a pre-election campaign speech of July 2008 that, once in power, his government would “invest in alternative livelihoods to poppy-growing for Afghan farmers, just as we crack down on heroin trafficking”. More broken promises. 

Opium can be manufactured into heroin, another very addictive substance. American soldiers in Afghanistan were increasingly found to be consuming heroin. From 2002 to 2010, the number of US troops caught taking heroin in drug tests increased tenfold, to 116 in 2010, and eight died from drug overdoses between 2010 and 2011. In the opening 5 months of 2012, a remarkable 154 American soldiers killed themselves. (8) 

US forces struggled to adapt to the harsh climate, as Afghanistan is among the world’s highest and most mountainous nations, where the air is thin and the land arid. No outside power ever really managed to secure a military victory in Afghanistan, mainly because about 80% of the country is covered by either mountain or desert. The local forces were well accustomed to the conditions. Attempting to defeat the anti-American opposition in the Hindu Kush mountains, which stretch across Afghanistan into neighbouring Pakistan, was beyond the capabilities of the US military. The 1,500 mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan also offers numerous, unmanned entry and exit points. 

NATO troops in Afghanistan were often guarding the opium-producing areas, which was disguised under the pretext of counterinsurgency operations. Matthew Hoh, an ex-captain in the US Marine Corps, said that in protecting the poppy fields and opium production lines, “The logic was ‘we [NATO] don’t want to take away the livelihoods of the people.’ But really, what we were doing at that point was protecting the wealth of our friends in power in Afghanistan” (9). The Afghan drugs trade was operated by many of the warlords and politicians collaborating with the Americans. Afghanistan was in effect a narco-state. 

US intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, were aware of the location of the big heroin processing laboratories in Afghanistan and where the drugs were sold, but did not prevent the operations from continuing.

The historian Alfred McCoy rightly accused the CIA of involvement in the narcotics industry (10). He wrote in 2010, “the CIA successfully mobilized former warlords long active in the heroin trade to seize towns and cities across eastern Afghanistan. In other words, the Agency [CIA] and its local allies created ideal conditions for reversing the Taliban’s opium ban and reviving the drug traffic”. McCoy noted further “in their counterinsurgency operations, U.S. forces worked closely with local warlords who proved to be leading druglords”. 

The narcotics produced in Afghanistan was regularly flown out of the country in US military planes, where most of the drugs were flown to European and Central Asian states to be sold. This provided the Americans with $50 billion of yearly profit, which helped to sustain NATO forces in Afghanistan. (11) 

According to Hamid Gul, the former Director General of Pakistan’s intelligence agency (ISI), some of the drugs produced in Afghanistan was sent directly to America. General Gul felt it was “most disturbing” that US warplanes were being used to transport drugs (12). He also said that the intelligence service created by the US with the assistance of India, Research and Analysis Milli Afghanistan (RAMA), was used primarily to cause instability in Pakistan. 

General Stanley McChrystal, appointed by Obama as overall commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan in June 2009, believed he would be able to pacify the country with 80,000 NATO soldiers in a kill/capture offensive. McChrystal later admitted the Americans had “a frighteningly simplistic view” of Afghanistan’s recent history, and that his own understanding of Afghanistan was “very superficial”, which he said was the case with many of his colleagues. 

In May 2009, just before McChrystal’s arrival, US elite troops from the Special Operations Forces (SOF) carried out 20 military raids that month. In November 2009, five months after McChrystal’s appointment as overall commander, the US SOF executed 90 kill/capture raids in Afghanistan. By the spring of 2010, the US SOF was carrying out almost 250 night raids per month, and in the summer of that year the number had risen to nearly 600 each month. It continued rising and by the spring of 2011 the US SOF may have been executing over 1,000 raids a month in Afghanistan, or up to 40 every night. (13) 

Two senior American commanders told the Washington Post that, on at least half of these raids, the US special forces had not targeted the right house or person. The American public was becoming disillusioned with the military’s continued presence in Afghanistan, a far away and remote country. More than 11 years after the US invasion began a survey was conducted in March 2012, by CBS News/New York Times, which stated that 69% of Americans did not want their country involved in the conflict in Afghanistan (14). Their views were ignored and the fighting went on. 

Even though US troops were equipped with some advanced military hardware, the limits of Washington’s power was evident in Afghanistan, as it had been in Iraq and Vietnam. Instituting a popular US-friendly regime in the Afghan capital Kabul proved a fantasy, and the Taliban was growing stronger. Washington and its NATO allies did not attain any of their strategic objectives, and with no stability or legitimacy they could not exploit Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. 

The NATO-led Afghan National Army contained around 195,000 soldiers, and it was meant to assume control of Afghanistan by 2014. The reality was that the Afghan National Army was in a sorry condition. Over half of its soldiers were spending their time intoxicated on chemical substances. Around 33% of them deserted every year and Kabul found it hard to find replacements (15). The deserters complained about corruption among their officers, lack of money, inadequate medical care and food supplies.

*

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes 

1 “Obama’s Afghan plan represents big gamble”, NBC News, 2 December 2009

2 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer; 1st ed., 23 June 2017) p. 112 

3 Ibid., p. 117 

4 “Germans question involvement in Afghanistan”, Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2010

5 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 112 

6 “Afghan opium production jumps to record level, up 87 per cent: Survey”, United Nations, 15 November 2017

7 Ibid. 

8 “More suicides than casualties in the U.S. Army”, Der Spiegel, 8 June 2012

9 “Geopolitics, profit, and poppies: how the CIA turned Afghanistan into a failed narco-state”, Mronline.org, 29 June 2021

10 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 119 

11 Ibid. 

12 Ibid., p. 120 

13 “How McChrystal and Petraeus built an indiscriminate ‘killing machine'”, Truthout, 26 September 2011

14 “Poll: Record 69% oppose Afghan War”, Politico, 27 March 2012

15 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 125

Featured image is from The Last Refuge

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America’s “War on Terrorism”

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 0-9737147-1-9

Year: 2005

Product Type: PDF File

Price: $9.50

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

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.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

Click here to order.

Turbo Cancer Leukemia: Children From Ages 11 to 21 Are Dying Within Hours or Days of Cancer Diagnosis

By Dr. William Makis, May 02, 2023

Leukemia is a broad term for cancers of the body’s blood-forming tissues, including the bone marrow and the lymphatic system. Leukemia usually involves the white blood cells. In people with leukemia, the bone marrow produces an excessive amount of abnormal white blood cells, which don’t function properly (click here).

First Republic Bank, the Latest Victim in US Banking Crisis

By Ahmed Adel, May 02, 2023

California-based First Republic Bank was seized by US financial authorities on May 1 and sold to JPMorgan Chase in a desperate effort to alleviate the two-month banking crisis that has gripped the US. 

ABC News Censors Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

By Jonathan Turley, May 02, 2023

ABC’s Linsey Davis began the interview by introducing Kennedy as “one of the biggest voices pushing anti-vaccine rhetoric, regularly distributing misinformation and disinformation about vaccines, which scientific and medical experts overwhelmingly say are safe and effective based on rigorous scientific studies.”

There Is a War Going On in Our Schools!

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, May 02, 2023

The demands on school education, Bildung and teachers have always been immense. Nevertheless, the profession of a teacher is the “most beautiful” profession a person can have. Students can rub up against teachers and cool their chins – but they can also grow.

Who Stole the 2020 Presidential Election?

By Philip Giraldi, May 02, 2023

The corruption engaged in by the Democratic Party leadership appears to be never-ending and no one is ever held accountable. A recent report described how Michael Morell, the former acting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, colluded with Antony Blinken, who was then a senior official in the 2020 Joe Biden presidential campaign, to prepare and find signatories to a letter to discredit those seeking to exploit the emerging Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which was threatening to do real damage to the Biden electoral prospects.

Foiled Escape: Security Firm UC Global, the CIA and Julian Assange

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, May 02, 2023

However described, the shabby treatment of Julian Assange never ceases to startle. While he continues to suffer in Belmarsh prison awaiting the torments of an interminable legal process, more material is coming out showing the way he was spied upon while staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Ayatollah Abbas-Ali Soleimani: Random Attack or Attempt to Sow Discord? Geopolitical Upheaval

By Gavin OReilly, May 02, 2023

April 26th, 2023 murder of senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Abbas-Ali Soleimani, shot dead as he attended a bank meeting in the northern city of Babolsar, comes amidst a time of dramatic geopolitical upheaval in the Islamic Republic.

A Call for Peace, Reason, Equality and Development

By Živadin Jovanović, May 02, 2023

The participants of the Annual Assembly of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, held on April 22, 2023, in Belgrade, voiced their profound concern over the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and an increased risk of its uncontrolled spreading, and made a public call for an immediate ceasefire and urgent peace negotiations. 

The Concept and the Causes of War

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, May 02, 2023

There are many definitions and/or understandings of war. However, from the very academic point of view, war can be understood as an armed conflict between at least two sides usually but not necessarily states fought usually for some (geo)political goals. The focal conceptual idea of war is the use of force between large-scale political subjects like states, empires, or coalitions.

The Enemy From Within. Chris Hedges

By Chris Hedges, May 02, 2023

America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored.

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

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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.

*** 

Philadelphia, PA – 16 year old Kyle Limper died within 24 hours of leukemia diagnosis on April 13, 2023 (click here)

His father, Ken Limper, initially brought his son to urgent care for back pain after Kyle played basketball before taking him to Jefferson Hospital.

“They told me in a couple of days, if he doesn’t get better, to bring him back. Well, in a couple of days he couldn’t even stand up,” the grieving dad said. “He couldn’t even get out of bed and I had to help him up and stand him up, then he fell right back down on the bed.”

Limper was eventually rushed to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, where doctors said the multi-sport athlete’s organs were shutting down from leukemia. Within 24 hours after he arrived at the hospital, he died. (click here)

Omaha, NE – Kavieriona White, 11 year old girl died two days after leukemia diagnosis, died on Feb. 16, 2023

11 year old Kavieriona died suddenly after being diagnosed with Leukemia just a few days prior (click here)

It started when she was sent home from school with a fever. A few days later she was found unresponsive, rushed to hospital where she was diagnosed with leukemia and she died two days later.

“The blood disease was leukemia. The doctor informed me it was treatable and curable but the main problem was the brain bleeds”

Augusta, GA – Julia Chavez, 13 year old girl died hours after leukemia diagnosis, on Feb. 13, 2023

“A 13-year-old girl from Harlem Middle School in Georgia died hours after she was diagnosed with leukemia when she went to the ER with a headache and ear infection.” (click here)

“she had bleeding in her brain, lungs, stomach’ and throughout her body.”

 ‘We never knew she had it,’ Jenna told the news outlet. ‘She never had more than a sniffle and she’s never been hospitalized for anything since she was born.’

Vallejo, CA – Evan Fishel, age 21, died 4 days after leukemia diagnosis, on Feb. 10, 2023

VAERS ID: 2228276 – 13 year old girl (non-US) had her 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine, was diagnosed with leukemia 5 days later, died 41 days after 2nd Pfizer jab on March 02, 2022

A 13 year old girl had 2nd Pfizer on Jan.20, 2022, and felt very tired. She previously had headache and dizziness after 1st Pfizer dose.

On Jan.24, 2022 she presented to emergency weak and pale. On Jan.25, 2022 she was diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL). She was hospitalized and died on March 2, 2022 from heart failure, shock and ALL.

Lake Charles, LA – 17 year old Washington Marion High School student Rhyann Green lost her battle with Leukemia on April 22, 2023.

It is unclear how long she had been battling the disease or how rapidly it progressed.

My Take… 

I wrote an extensive substack on this topic on March 7, 2023, that wasn’t widely seen or read (click here)

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines deliver LNPs with mRNA to the bone marrow

Leukemia is a broad term for cancers of the body’s blood-forming tissues, including the bone marrow and the lymphatic system. Leukemia usually involves the white blood cells. In people with leukemia, the bone marrow produces an excessive amount of abnormal white blood cells, which don’t function properly (click here).

The fact that Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines deliver a large payload of LNPs filled with mRNA to the bone marrow, is a very serious problem.

The COVID-19 vaccine spike protein is extremely toxic, and once it is expressed in the bone marrow, it may be initiating these extremely rapid leukemias that are fatal within hours or days.

All of these cases should be investigated.

*

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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 Children’s Health Defense

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Einleitung 

Die Anforderungen an die schulische Erziehung und Bildung sowie an die Lehrer sind seit jeher immens. Trotzdem ist der Beruf des Lehrers der „schönste“ Beruf, den der Mensch haben kann. Am Lehrer können sich die Schüler reiben und ihr Mütchen kühlen – aber auch wachsen. Gemeinsam können Lehrer wie Schüler den Weg zu einem friedlichen Miteinander finden in einer Welt endloser Kriege, in der auch vor einem „präventiven Atomkrieg“ nicht zurückgeschreckt wird (Prof. Chossudovsky).

Als ehemaliger Lehrer und Doktor der Pädagogik werde ich das näher erläutern und damit für den nicht mehr sehr attraktiven Beruf des Lehrers angesichts eines sich abzeichnenden großen Bildungs-Desasters eine „Lanze brechen“. 

„Für eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung“ 

Bereits vor 21 Jahren, am 20. Mai 2002 verfasste ich als Leiter der „Staatlichen Schulberatungsstelle für die bayerische Landeshauptstadt München“ einen Diskussionsbeitrag zum 17fachen Mord oder Amoklauf in der Stadt Erfurt und meinte abschließend, dass „nur ein gesellschaftlicher Konsens über Werte, Ziele und Vorbilder in der Erziehung der heranwachsenden Generation Orientierung und Halt geben kann“ (1). 

Weiter habe ich geschrieben:

 „Destruktive gesellschaftliche Einflüsse wie eine Unterhaltungsindustrie, die über Film, Fernsehen, Video, Computerspiel und Musik im Wesentlichen eine Mischung aus Gewalt, Perversion und Nihilismus vermittelt sowie die Unsicherheit der Erzieher führten bei der Jugend zu Desorientierung und Haltlosigkeit. (…). 

Die Uneinigkeit in der Gesellschaft über diese Fragen hat der heranwachsenden Generation in den letzten Jahrzehnten nicht zum Vorteil gereicht. Eine Zunahme der Gewaltbereitschaft, des Drogenmissbrauchs, des Nihilismus waren die Folge. Eine breite gesellschaftliche Diskussion tut Not, an deren Ende ein Konsens stehen muss (…). Diese Diskussion muss geführt werden ohne Tabuisierung und Abstempelung anderer Meinungen und muss sich unter anderem an den vielen wertvollen Forschungsergebnissen der Entwicklungspsychologie, besonders der Bindungs- und Erziehungsstilforschung sowie den Forschungen zu den Bedingungen prosozialen Verhaltens und an der Medienwirkungsforschung orientieren.“ (2) 

Dieser Diskussionsbeitrag ist auch nahezu ein viertel Jahrhundert später noch zeitgemäß. 

Situation der schulischen Erziehung und Bildung heute 

„Bildung! Bildung! Bildung! Über kaum ein Thema wird häufiger und härter gestritten. Bildung soll die Persönlichkeit entwickeln und ein erfülltes Leben ermöglichen. Bildung soll gut ausgebildete Fachkräfte für den Arbeitsmarkt bereitstellen und unsere Wirtschaft wettbewerbsfähig halten. Bildung soll Frieden und Demokratie sichern und unser kulturelles Wissen über die Generationen weitergeben.“ (3) 

Dieser Definition von „Bildung“ können sich westlichen Gesellschaften sicher anschließen. Es stellt sich jedoch die Frage, ob sie diesem Anspruch auch gerecht werden und die Bildungschancen ihrer Kinder fördern. Und das vor allem nach dem verhängnisvollen „Krisenjahr“ 2022 mit Corona-bedingten Schulschließungen, einem erschreckenden Lehrermangel und einem hohen Migrationshintergrund der Schüler. Ganz zu schweigen von der Bildungssituation in den sogenannten Entwicklungsländern. 

Dabei gibt es kein menschliches Problem, das nicht von Lehrern thematisiert werden könnte und sollte, angefangen vom schulischen Lernen, der Unterhaltungsgewalt auf den Handys von Kindern bis hin zum Drogenkonsum, zur Desinformation der „kriegstreibenden Presse“ (Karl Kraus), zur Geschichte des Faschismus‘ (Vera Sharav) und bewährten Wegen zu einem friedlichen Zusammenleben. 

Bildung im psychologischen Sinne hieße auch noch, den Menschen zu vermitteln, wie sie ihre Probleme lösen sollen und können. Hierzu zählen ihr Lebensgefühl sowie ihre Meinung über sich selbst, die Mitmenschen und die Gemeinde.

„In unseren Schulen herrscht Krieg!“  

Im Jahr 1975 schätzte der Individualpsychologe Prof. Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs die Situation an Schulen nicht ganz unrealistisch ein, als er geschrieben hat: 

„Ob der Lehrer es möchte oder nicht, ob er sich dessen bewusst wird oder nicht, gewöhnlich wird er in einen Machtkampf hineingezogen, aus dem er sich nicht befreien kann.“ (4)

Doch gleichzeitig hat er angemerkt: 

„Jedes Kind wird gelegentlich aus Gründen, die ihm selbst verborgen bleiben, Widerstand leisten. Zu wiederholen, was es tun sollte, verbessert nicht die Situation, ruft im Gegenteil einen Konflikt im Kind hervor und verstärkt seinen offenen Widerstand gegenüber dem Lehrer. Nur jemand, der die psychologischen Mechanismen, die das richtige Funktionieren des Kindes blockieren, versteht, kann ihm helfen, sich einzufügen und Fortschritte zu machen.“ (5) 

Es kommt also darauf an, dass sich der Lehrer mit oder ohne Hilfe eines pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachmanns dieses Machtkampfs bewusst wird und Frieden schließt mit seinen Schülern. Im Artikel „Wir Bürger sollten den Humanismus erproben…“ habe ich den positiven Fall eines Lehrer-Kollegen geschildert, dem es gelang, sich mit einem ehemals störenden Schüler zu versöhnen und den Kriegszustand in der Klasse zu beenden (6). 

Die heiligste Pflicht eines Erziehers  

Bereits zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts hat Alfred Adler, der Begründer der Individualpsychologie, jedem Lehrer und Erzieher ins Stammbuch geschrieben: 

„Die wichtigste Aufgabe eines Erziehers – man kann fast sagen: seine heiligste Pflicht – besteht darin, Sorge zu tragen, dass kein Kind in der Schule entmutigt wird und dass ein Kind, das bereits entmutigt in die Schule eintritt, durch seine Schule und durch seinen Lehrer Vertrauen in sich selbst gewinnt.“ (7) 

„Lehrer, das ist der schönste Beruf, den der Mensch haben kann.“ 

Mein Psychologie-Lehrer Friedrich Liebling drückte es einmal so aus: 

“Lehrer, das ist der schönste Beruf, den der Mensch haben kann. Es gibt keinen schöneren.

Das gemeinsame Wachsen aneinander durch die tägliche Beziehung, die intensive Auseinandersetzung, die den ganzen Menschen fordert mit all seinen Schwächen und Stärken, das Gespräch, das tägliche Ringen um die Lufthoheit im Klassenzimmer. Damit der Störer, der sich im Grunde nur das Lernen nicht zutraut, nicht die Oberhand gewinnt und dadurch andere ansteckt und ablenkt, die Stimmung in der Klasse verdirbt. 

Der Lehrer musss die Oberhand behalten, Vorbild sein, Anführer beziehungsweise Rudelführer der ganzen Bande bleiben, an dem sich die Schüler reiben können, an dem sie ihr Mütchen kühlen können, an dem sie aber auch wachsen können. Lehrer, das ist der schönste Beruf…!“ (8)

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer in der Erwachsenenbildung. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Für seine Verdienste um Serbien bekam er 2021 von den Universitäten Belgrad und Novi Sad den Republik-Preis „Kapitän Misa Anastasijevic“ verliehen.

Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.

Noten

(1) Dr. Hänsel Rudolf (2002). Für eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Wertevermittlung. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zu Erfurt. Staatliche Schulberatungsstelle für München. Zentrale pädagogisch-psychologische Beratungsstelle für die Schulen in der Landeshauptstadt und im Landkreis München.

(2) A. a. O., S. 1f.

(3) https://www.bpb.de/themen/bildung/dossier-bildung/282582/was-ist-bildung-eine-einfuehrung/

(4) Dreikurs Rudolf (1975). Psychologie im Klassenzimmer. Stuttgart, S. 19

(5) A. a. O., S. 40

(6) https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-citizens-should-prove-humanism-…ood-capable-living-together-without-weapons-wars/5817065?/

(7) Hänsel Rudolf (2020). Wie geht es Ingo? Oder: Wie wird man Mitmensch? Ein Dank an meinen Lehrer. Gornji Milanovac, S. 15

(8) A. a. O., S. 34

Vorgestellte Bildquelle: ClipartMax

 

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America’s military is the only branch of the federal Government that the American people respect, and “The military” is also the most respected of all institutions in America. The military is also the most corrupt part of the federal Government, and the only part of the federal government that’s so corrupt that it has never been audited. Although the U.S. Congress recently required it to pass an audit — i.e., to become approved by an independent team of auditors as to the completeness and honesty of its financial records — the five audit-attempts that were then made all failed and had to be aborted, and no audit has yet been successfully completed on the most corrupt and publicly respected branch of the U.S. federal Government.

Instead of the military getting less money in the federal budgets as a consequence of that, it still keeps getting not only increasing budgets but an increasing proportion of the Government’s money. It gets rewarded as-if it weren’t what it is. And what it is, isn’t merely corrupt, but a stunning failure at what any military is supposed to achieve, which is to win wars.

It has failed not only in Afghanistan, and not only in Syria, and not only in Libya, and not only in Iraq, and not only in Vietnam, but in many other countries. But what’s especially shocking is that it’s getting rewarded, instead of punished, for flouting the (now obviously insincere) “demand” by Congress to be audited.

Is this too much to expect from a nation’s military? It is, in America.

This unaudited “it,” which routinely fails at its basic task, constantly produces mayhem and mass-murder instead of democracy, or even any type of improvement, in other countries, the ones it invades, and the ones — including America’s ‘allies’ or vassal-nations — which it militarily occupies, such as by its 231 military bases in Germany. And it (plus America’s sanctions and coups) produced the majority of the world’s refugees.

Yet it’s the only federal branch that Americans respect. The reality about it is effectively hidden from the public. And the politicians serve it, even if they serve nothing else. While the Representatives and Senators want the public to think these public officials to be disturbed by ‘waste, fraud or abuse in the military’, they even more want the campaign donations by the billionaires’ various agents, and their other fronts to praise them and to advertise them during political campaigns and thus to deceive the public so as to keep these corrupt persons in office. Because the only thing that is actually bipartisan — and even essentially unanimous — in the U.S. federal Government, is support for the military weapons-makers and weapons-users and for the invasions that provide excuses for those weapons to be purchased by the federal Government and used by its military, in America’s 900 foreign military bases (in addition to America’s 749 domestic U.S. military bases). The biggest winners of America’s recent wars have actually been America’s billionaires (look at this graph, which shows that ever since the 1991 termination of the Cold War on Russia’s side, America’s armaments-makers’ profits soared, instead of plunged). America’s military consumes annually about half — this year it’s 53% — of all of the federal Government’s spending that Congress and the President authorize, throughout the year. Only 47% goes to all other purposes.

The reason for this rotten military and its admiring public is that this is a country that at its topmost level — its Executive branch, and its Legislative branch, and its Judicial branch, especially at the very top of each one of those branches, all of them doing what the megadonors want instead of what the public needs or even wants — is profoundly and virtually 100% corrupt. The owners of the megacorporations, and especially of the ones (such as Lockheed Martin) that sell to the Government and to its allies (such as in NATO) instead of to the public, will and do pour into political-campaign donations and lobbying expenses, and funding ‘non-profit’ think tanks, whatever money is necessary in order for them to be able to control the federal Government, which is their main (if not exclusive) market. That is what they do and how they get it done, through their hired employees and sub-contractors and their other paid agents both inside and outside of the Government and their ‘non-profits’ and their ‘news’-media — whatever must be done in order to ‘earn’ their extraordinarily rates of return on their investments (both profit and ’non-profit’) that make and keep them as billionaires. And it works, for them, but against the public everywhere. And that’s the way it works.

Right now, it has gotten so bad, so that there are at least two pieces of proposed new legislation in the U.S. Congress in order to facilitate, if not to produce, a U.S. declaration of war against Russia (to keep those armaments-sales going): one which would commit the U.S. Government to Ukrainian “victory” against Russia (which would mean WW III), and the other which would introduce martial law over all U.S. media in order to make the public accept going to WW III in order to defeat Russia. How far will America’s rulers go in order to sell weapons and to expand yet farther the U.S. empire? We’ll see.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush landed in a twin-engine Navy jet on an aircraft carrier, strode across the deck in a bulky flight suit and proceeded to give a televised victory speech under a huge red-white-and-blue banner announcing “Mission Accomplished.” For Bush, the optics on May 1, 2003 could hardly have been more triumphant. From the USS Abraham Lincoln, he delivered a stirring coda, proclaiming that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” just six weeks after the United States led the invasion of that country.

But Bush’s jubilant claim unraveled as combat escalated between Iraqi insurgents and occupying forces. During the next nine years, the official death toll among U.S. troops went from under 200 to more than 4,400, while the deaths of Iraqi people surged into the hundreds of thousands. The physical wounds were even more numerous, the emotional injuries incalculable.

The “Mission Accomplished” banner and Bush’s speech going with it have become notorious. But focusing only on his faulty claim that the war was over ignores other key untruths in the oratory.

“We have fought for the cause of liberty,” Bush declared. He did not mention the cause of oil.

By dodging inconvenient truths about the impacts of U.S. warfare on “the innocent,” Bush was reasserting the usual pretenses of presidents who elide the actual human toll of their wars while predicting successful outcomes.

A few months before the invasion, a soft-spoken Iraqi man who was my driver in Baghdad waited until we were alone at a picnic table in a park before saying that he wished Iraq had no oil—because then there would be no reason to fear an invasion. Years later, some U.S. authorities were candid about Iraq’s massive oil reserves as an incentive for the war.

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan wrote in his 2007 memoir. That same year, a former head of the U.S. Central Command in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, had this to say: “Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that.” And Sen. Chuck Hagel, who later became Defense Secretary, commented: “People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are.”

While touting the war effort as entirely noble, Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech credited the Pentagon’s “new tactics and precision weapons” for avoiding “violence against civilians.” The president added that “it is a great moral advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.”

Such soothing words masked brutal realities. Civilian deaths accounted for 40 percent of “people killed directly in the violence of the U.S. post-9/11 wars,” according to the Costs of War project at Brown University. In fact, a large majority of the casualties of those wars have been civilians. “Several times as many more have been killed as a reverberating effect of the wars—because, for example, of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural issues, and war-related disease.”

By dodging inconvenient truths about the impacts of U.S. warfare on “the innocent,” Bush was reasserting the usual pretenses of presidents who elide the actual human toll of their wars while predicting successful outcomes.

On May 1, 2012, exactly nine years after Bush’s speech on the aircraft carrier, President Barack Obama spoke to the American people from Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. With U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan near a peak of 100,000, Obama expressed confidence that “we will complete our mission and end the war in Afghanistan.”

Both Bush and Obama would later be widely faulted for voicing undue optimism about fulfilling a war’s “mission.” But the critiques have rarely devoted much attention to scrutinizing the assumptions that propelled support for the missions.

The U.S. government’s inherent prerogative to intervene militarily in other countries has seldom been directly challenged in America’s mainstream media and official discourse. Instead, debates have routinely revolved around whether, where, when, and how intervention is prudent and likely to prevail.

But we might want to ask ourselves: What if Bush had been correct in May 2003—and U.S. forces really were at the end of major combat operations in Iraq? What if Obama had been correct in May 2012—and U.S. forces were able to “complete our mission” in Afghanistan? In each case, conventional wisdom would have gauged success in terms of military victory rather than such matters as adherence to international law or regard for human life.

Today, it’s a wonder to behold the fully justified denunciations of Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine from some of the same U.S. government leaders who avidly supported the horrific invasion of Iraq. The concept that might makes right doesn’t sound good, but in practice it has repeatedly been the basis of U.S. policy. Wayne Morse, the senator from Oregon who opposed the Vietnam War from the outset, was cogent when he said: “I don’t know why we think, just because we’re mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for right.”

George W. Bush’s performance with the “Mission Accomplished” banner—a rhetorical victory lap that came before protracted bloodshed—deserves all of its notoriety 20 years later. His claims of success for the Iraq war mission are now easy grounds for derision. But the more difficult truths to plow through have to do with why the mission should never have been attempted in the first place.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His next book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, will be published in June 2023 by The New Press.

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No single work has influenced the American alt-Covid discussion as much as Robert F. Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci, an extended attack on the medical-industrial complex and its purported kingpin, recently-retired National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci. Across 450 pages of narrow margins and densely-set type, Kennedy argues that the entire Covid pandemic unfolded as a second act to the AIDS scare from the 1980s and 1990s. In Kennedy’s view, Fauci played a key role managing both pandemics, to steer massive profits into the coffers of corrupt pharmaceutical companies by pushing harmful proprietary drugs over vastly less profitable but more effective remedies, leading in both cases to untold unnecessary mortality.

Kennedy’s discussion of Covid is split between the opening and the concluding sections of his long book. Chapter 1 on “Mismanaging a Pandemic” – at 100 pages, a small monograph unto itself – argues that most if not all of American Covid mortality arises from Fauci’s cynical suppression of early treatments like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. The final two chapters expand the narrow focus of this opening barrage, by tracing the history of “phony epidemics” like the 2009 Swine Flu that have occurred under Fauci’s watch (Chapter 11), as well as the strange tradition of pandemic wargaming, from Dark Winter to Event 201 (Chapter 12).

The middle chapters are wholly different. They draw on long-standing progressive critiques of Fauci’s role in the AIDS pandemic, particularly his promotion of expensive and dangerous antiviral drugs like AZT over much cheaper and more readily available treatments (Chapters 2-4); his alleged role in cementing the scientific orthodoxy of HIV as the cause of AIDS over the views of “heretics” like Peter Duesberg (Chapters 5–6); ethical scandals surrounding AIDS drug trials (Chapter 7); and the campaign to reduce the maternal transmission of AIDS in Africa with Nevirapine, which culminated in the firing of key AIDS Division policy director Jonathan M. Fishbein (Chapter 8). Thereafter the focus shifts to the “Philanthrocapitalism” of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Africa (Chapter 9) and the questionable success of and controversies plaguing Gates-supported vaccination initiatives there (Chapter 10).

There’s a reason this review has been much announced and much delayed: While Kennedy’s book is highly readable, it covers a great deal of ground, and presents a complex series of arguments that it’s taken me two readings to understand fully. This has been worthwhile, insofar as it’s improved my perspective on the broader Covid debate in America, and the leading dissident voices there. A recurring thesis of the plague chronicle, is that Europe – and specifically Italy – is ground zero for Corona in the West. The American response happened somewhat later and from its earliest moments was much more deeply politicised, and this has inevitably left its mark on TRAF, in ways that are sometimes salutary, but sometimes also limiting.

Because much of what follows will be devoted to exploring my disagreements with Kennedy’s thesis, I will open with words of praise:

Image is from Ghion Journal

Above all, the focus that Kennedy brings to bureaucratic actors like Fauci is absolutely correct and vitally important. All of our countries spent years subject to the tyranny of an arbitrary gaggle of Corona tsars, unelected and very often unofficial advisors who became the public face of pandemic policies and the incarnation of The Science for hysterical journalists and terrified television-bound Covidians sheltering at home. This phenomenon arises from the fact that the pandemic represented in almost all of our countries a kind of bureaucratic coup, as the institutional apparatus seized the initiative from the political arm of the state. While this isn’t exactly the argument that Kennedy makes, his focus is in exactly the right place, and TRAF includes excellent discussions of the dynamics at work, alongside good, detailed and heavily-cited accounts of how bureaucratic actors like Fauci amassed their power in the first place.

Second, Kennedy is absolutely right to point out that pandemic policies involved an enormous amount of dishonesty, scientific fraud, and misrepresentation, none of it redounding to the health or well-being of anybody. While I differ on the details and the purpose of this massive exercise in deception and medical malpractice, one of the most vital things to understand about the pandemic (and pandemicism in general) is that it’s not about human health. It’s a bunch of antisocial, fundamentally unhealthy, illogical and insane policies that never had any hope of suppressing a virus. These policies were defended and implemented via the authority of avatars for The Science like Fauci, who “encouraged his own canonization and the disturbing inquisition against his blasphemous critics,” and at one point even famously declared that “‘Attacks on me … quite frankly, are attacks on the science’” (xvii).

Third and finally, TRAF is best seen as an attempt to revive an older, increasingly forgotten progressive tradition of regime-critical activism and thought. It is one massive reminder, page after page, that many of the very same left-leaning Americans currently worshipping at the altar of St. Fauci were, not that long ago, openly opposed to the machinations of public health bureaucrats and deeply sceptical of heavily promoted proprietary pharmaceuticals. They were some of the first to complain about things like regulatory capture and exorbitant pharma profits. The entire Western world has undergone a massive political transformation since 2020, one which has conveniently aligned compromised regulators, powerful corporations, and their erstwhile leftist critics, and Kennedy is one of very few left-leaning progressives to have taken notice.

But this is also where my praise must end, because I think there are important limitations to Kennedy’s perspective here, and that this is a strength that also entails some substantial weaknesses.

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TRAF was not the book I expected. On first reading, I was surprised to find that key pandemic policies such as lockdowns and mask mandates play such a small part in his account, as do the misuse of propagandised disease statistics to terrorise the populace, gain-of-function research and the origins of SARS-2, the failed predictions of virus modellers, the overuse of ventilators and many other themes in this vein. To be sure, Kennedy acknowledges and condemns all of this, but the bulk of his analysis is focused elsewhere. I was also surprised to find that such a well-known vaccine sceptic should have so little to say about the Covid vaccines, confined mostly to a brief discussion of pathogenic priming in Chapter 1.

In many ways, those chapters that Kennedy devotes to Corona are his least impressive and original. His argument here is heavily indebted to American critics of pandemic policy like Pierre Kory, Ryan Cole and especially Peter McCullough, who are quoted in extenso to make the case for early treatment and the dire consequences of its suppression. Kennedy is at his strongest in the middle sections of TRAF, on Fauci’s role in the AIDS crisis. Here citations to contemporary reporting abound, and while he covers controversial ground – like Duesberg’s thesis that HIV is not the cause of AIDS – his approach is entertaining and also in many ways careful and sensitive to a broad range of possibilities.

Kennedy shares the view of many gay activists that much early AIDS mortality is to be laid at the feet of public health managers like Fauci, who were more interested in promoting expensive proprietary antivirals than saving lives, leaving the gay community to fend for itself (149f.):

[B]ustling networks of community-based AIDS doctors mushrooming in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas [became] specialists in treating the symptoms of AIDS. As Dr. Fauci swung for the fences – the miraculous new antiviral ‘cure’ for AIDS – these community doctors were achieving promising results with off-label therapeutic drugs that seemed effective against the constellation of symptoms that actually killed and tormented people with AIDS. These included off-the-shelf remedies like ribavirin, alpha interferon, DHPG, Peptide D, and Foscarnet for retinal herpes; and Bactrim, Septra and aerosol pentamidine for AIDS-related pneumonias.

The toxic Fauci-promoted antiviral azidothymidine, or AZT – which HIV sceptics like Duesberg invoke to explain early AIDS mortality – becomes in Kennedy’s telling a direct precedent for the failed and toxic antiviral Remdesivir, which Fauci and others promoted as a Covid treatment according to the very same “worn rabbit-eared playbook” (67) from the AIDS era. In this analysis, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are cast accordingly as the 21st-century counterparts to the off-the-shelf drugs procured for informal AIDS treatment by the buyers’ clubs of activist legend.

This brings me to the most serious disagreement I have with my many American readers. Just as I’m very sceptical that the Covid vaccines were any kind of success, I am also unconvinced that early treatments could have significantly ameliorated or stopped the pandemic. This doesn’t mean I’m happy with their suppression; doctors should be given wide latitude to treat diseases as they see fit. But, I don’t believe that this is the central knot in the pandemic tapestry, and I cannot bring myself to believe, like many of Kennedy’s informants, that any of these proposed treatments are likely to be “miraculous.”[1]

Kennedy is surely right in suspecting that attacks on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were related in part to the heedless promotion of Remdesivir, but I also can’t buy the associated thesis of regulatory wrangling to pave the way for vaccine emergency use authorisations. The pandemicists violated all kinds of laws and rules in their eccentric three-year crusade, and fudging an EUA would rank among their lesser offences. I’d also suggest that respiratory viruses like SARS-2 and influenza are an old, pervasive phenomenon, which afflict livestock as well as humans and against which a century of obsessive research has uncovered no very effective remedies. I know there are studies that show the opposite, but there are also studies that show the vaccines are safe and effective. Because Covid isn’t actually that dangerous and wasn’t even that transmissible before Omicron, a lot of interventions, from masks to lockdowns, will at times seem to work, and I have no trouble believing that doctors who eschewed first-wave over-ventilation of patients saw substantially better results for that reason alone.

But the empirical question, of what we can reasonably hope that any specific drug will achieve, is for me almost a side issue. Far graver is the framing that the entire discourse on early treatments assumes. The advocates whom Kennedy quotes and people like Fauci appear to be in agreement not only that Covid presented a serious danger, but that it was a problem to solve. They differ merely on the solutions, with public health technocrats on the side of lockdowns, masks, vaccines and remdesivir; and early treatment advocates on the side of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. This has uncomfortable consequences, as when Kennedy uncritically cites Covid mortality statistics to demonstrate Fauci’s failure in pandemic management, or when he attributes falling mortality to things like the authorisation of hydroxychloroquine. This is exactly how pandemic managers themselves argued, and I submit this entire ideological system around viruses as a thing to prevent and manage – whether via ivermectin or masks or anything else – is the root of all evil. This is a natural blindspot for progressive critics of pandemic policy like Kennedy, who generally support the mission of modern bureaucratised liberal democracies; it’s why he laments the “global war on … public health” in his subtitle. After the hell of the past three years, I think there are few things we ought to welcome more enthusiastically than a war on public health, which is no longer by or for the public and no longer about health.

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As I said above, TRAF includes some excellent discussions of the malign public health bureaucracy that rules us. The managers who dominate our institutions are manifestly not selected for their vision, their compassion or their scientific knowledge, but rather for their abilities to ascend byzantine bureaucratic hierarchies and defend their positions in them. Thus we read (132) that

[Fauci’s] gifts were his aptitude for bureaucratic infighting; a fiery temper; an inclination for flattering and soft-soaping powerful superiors; a vindictive and domineering nature towards subordinates and rivals who dissented; his ravenous appetite for the spotlight; and finally, his silver tongue and skilled tailor.

Kennedy also provides a wealth of apposite remarks on what he calls the “medical cartel,” namely the complex and intertwined system of “pharmaceutical companies, hospital systems, HMOs and insurers, the medical journals, and public health regulators” (135), along with a detailed and well-cited analyses of how this system works (120):

Dr. Fauci’s drug development enterprise is rife with …corrupting conflicts. Most Americans would be surprised to learn, for example, that pharmaceutical companies routinely pay extravagant royalties to Dr. Fauci and his employees and to NIAID itself. Here’s how the royalty system works: Instead of researching the causes of the mushrooming epidemics of allergic and autoimmune diseases … Dr. Fauci funnels the bulk of his $6 billion budget to the research and development of new drugs. He often begins the process of funding initial mechanistic studies of promising molecules in NIAID’s own laboratories before farming the clinical trials out to an old boys’ network of some 1,300 academic “principle investigators” … who conduct human trials at university affiliated research centers and training hospitals, as well as foreign research sites. After these NIAID-funded researchers develop a potential new drug, NIAID transfers some or all of its share of the intellectual property to private pharmaceutical companies, through HHS’s Office of Technology Transfer. The University and its PIs can also claim their share of patent and royalty rights, cementing the loyalty of academic medicine to Dr. Fauci.

He also rehearses standard and useful left-leaning critiques of major philanthropists like Bill Gates, with an equal awareness of the broader system in which they participate and the dividends their apparently charitable activity pays them (291):

Gates strategically targets [the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s] charitable gifts to give him control of the international health and agricultural agencies and the media, allowing him to dictate global health and food policies so as to increase profitability of the large multinationals in which he and his foundation hold large investment positions. Following such tactics, the Gates Foundation has given away some $54.8 billion since 1994, but instead of depleting his wealth, those strategic gifts have magnified it. Strategic philanthropizing increased the Gates Foundation’s capital corpus to $49.8 billion by 2019. Moreover, Gates’s personal net worth grew from $63 billion in 2000 to 133.6 billion today. Gates’s wealth expanded by $23 billion just during the 2020 lockdowns that he and Dr. Fauci played key roles in orchestrating. …

In 2017, the Huffington Post observed that the Gates Foundation blurs “the boundaries between philanthropy, business and nonprofits” and cautions that calling Gates’s investment strategy “philanthropy” was causing “the rapid deconstruction of the accepted term.

These are, again, attacks from a forthrightly progressive perspective, which is fine and in view of Kennedy’s audience maybe even a strength, but I see these matters in broader terms.

What we have before us are not so much hierarchies, with managers like Fauci at the top commanding an army of loyal principal investigators in the trenches, as they are complex densely interconnected networks of personal and institutional relationships and loyalties, which extend beyond the institutional confines of government agencies to embrace broad swathes of academia, NGOs, pharmaceuticals, and philanthropists. When money flows in one direction across a given node, power very often flows in the other direction. NIAID grants are a way of extending the institutional influence of the public health institutions to academia, while academics and pharmaceuticals are in turn increasingly important in often informal and difficult-to-assess roles in formulating policy. This is one instance of a pervasive phenomenon I have returned to many times, namely the diffusion of political power downwards, out of the bureaucratic institutions and into an ever wider range of corporate, university and media actors.

It is a complicated system, not a fiefdom managed by any single person, and while I accept that there may be rhetorical advantages in focusing critique on a single emblematic personality like Fauci, there is also a cost in the concomitant tendency to overstate the importance of specific individuals. The “quarantine of the healthy” which “would kill far more people than COVID” can’t be laid entirely or even primarily at Fauci’s feet; nor was he alone responsible for “obliterat[ing] the economy, plung[ing] millions into poverty …. and grievously wound[ing] constitutional democracy globally” (xviii). Fauci is one face of a widely distributed bureaucratic consensus, and his personal significance, while surely substantial, is also often obscure.

To take one of many possible examples, it wasn’t Fauci who “dispatched the handpicked elite of virology’s officer corps to draft and sign the consequential editorials published in Nature and The Lancet … assuring the world that the lab leak hypothesis was a ‘crackpot’ conspiracy” (297). As later emails leaks (not available to Kennedy at the time of writing) seem to suggest, he was merely one participant in a broader discussion involving Jeremy Farrar and key virologists, and far from the most active contributor. From the partial view that we have, it seems that Christian Drosten, not Fauci, was the most strident voice in favour of natural origins early on. Relatedly and in another connection, I find the oft-repeated thesis – hardly original to Kennedy – that “Gates controls the WHO” (300) or that he exercises “dictatorial authority” (302) over the global vaccinator cabal known as GAVI far too limited. Gates’s agenda with respect to third-world medical interventions and vaccines is not even all that original. This is an agenda he supports to transform some of his wealth into social and cultural regard. Gates is a follower even more than he is a leader.

One cost of this focus, is the fact it sidelines a lot of key actors whose motivations to this day await adequate explanation. This is especially the case with Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, who is cast in his all-too-brief cameo here as a mere agent of Farrar and Bill Gates (361f.). Ferguson’s role in promoting virus panic over decades is a crucial one, and it’s probably not a good idea to discount him as the mere agent of other, bigger men.

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Summing up, I would say there’s a narrowness in the approach that TRAF takes to the pandemic, which is easy to miss because Kennedy’s scope is so broad in other respects. The final chapters on “Hyping Phony Epidemics” and “Germ Games” read like efforts to include topics otherwise excluded by the internal logic of Kennedy’s argument. It’s absolutely right and necessary to draw attention to the failed panic mongering of the pandemic establishment, and there’s a particularly valuable account here of the overhyped 1976 Swine Flu, which all too many (including myself) have neglected. Far more important for understanding Corona, however, are very real outbreaks like SARS-1 in Asia from 2003/4 and Ebola in West Africa from 2014. These events drew vast funding and attention to the pandemicist programme and made their virus apocalypse scenarios much more credible in the eyes of the public. The most proper precedents and parallels to the 2020 Covid response lie here, rather than with the AIDS crisis that first brought Fauci to prominence.

In Kennedy’s final chapter, meanwhile, Fauci all but disappears in favour of new personalities like Peter Daszak and Robert Kadlec. Here, the civilian bureaucrat responsible for organising the catastrophic pandemic response is displaced by much different theses about the biosecurity aspects of pandemic wargaming and Covid as “a military project” (from 433). I find that the book is at its weakest in these pages. Particularly the discussion of pandemic wargaming is too superficial; as I’ve said many times, what’s significant about these exercises is not that they planned mass containment policies in advance, but precisely that overtly coercive virus suppression is missing from them. They often toy with the prospect of authoritarian measures, it is true, but a sensitive reading shows that they do so largely to provoke handwringing histrionic discussions about the importance of civil liberties. Mass containment was not Fauci’s invention, but an insanely repressive and largely theatrical exercise in virus suppression that originated in China, to which Fauci was a relatively late convert.

Because these matters are fairly far from Kennedy’s most central concerns, I don’t want to press too hard here; and to those readers who are irritated, I’ll extend at the end of this review the concession that has been implicit throughout: Kennedy is a long-time political activist, and it’s probably true that his approach has important tactical advantages. My concerns are much more empirical. I want to understand the pandemic response, how it arose and how it persisted for so long. It’s up to other people to find the most effect ways to discredit pandemic policies before the voting public.

There is one point that I won’t concede, though, and that the plague chronicle will insist upon so long as there are still bits flowing through the internet. This is that the overgrown overcomplicated self-serving bureaucracies of Western states must be kept, in future, as far as possible from preventing or mitigating virus outbreaks. The problem is not that they alighted upon the wrong solution in this case; it is that they assumed the project of solving pervasive seasonal respiratory viruses in the first place. Even if ivermectin worked as well as its advocates argue, the technocratic leviathan would hardly be satisfied with that, and the reason is not merely pharmaceutical profits. It’s the predilection of our institutions for intractable problems and highly complicated solutions via which they justify their own existence and ensure their propagation and the expansion of their jurisdiction. Once they get ahold of something like a virus, which spreads via social contact, you will seeing nothing but the proliferation and brutal enforcement of anti-social anti-human policies again and again.

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Note

[1] The assertion occurs repeatedly in the first chapter, where I wish the argument were much more moderate. See p. 8, where Pierre Kory claims that “The efficacy of some of these drugs as prophylaxis is almost miraculous”; p. 17, where we hear that “McCullough used his own money … to teach doctors the miraculous benefits of early treatment with HCQ and other remedies”; p. 18, for Ryan Cole on the “miraculously effective medicines to treat this virus”; p. 24 for “miraculous results following early treatment with HCQ”; p. 39 on the “miraculous efficacy” of ivermectin; p. 46 about Andrew Hill’s research supporting “IVM as a miraculous cure for COVID”; p. 52, where Tess Lawrie is found “endorsing the miraculous efficacy of IVM”; p. 56, where a “dying woman miraculously began to recover” following the administration of ivermectin; p. 62, for McCullough once more on ivermectin as “a molecule that is miraculously effective against parasites and viral infections along multiple pathways and mechanisms of action.”

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California-based First Republic Bank was seized by US financial authorities on May 1 and sold to JPMorgan Chase in a desperate effort to alleviate the two-month banking crisis that has gripped the US. First Republic became the second-largest bank by assets to collapse in US history after it announced a loss of more than $100 billion in deposits in the first quarter and failed to produce a satisfactory rescue plan. The federal government believes a total of $13 billion will have to be forked out to cover the bank’s losses.

When First Republic stock prices nosedived, US authorities solicited bids from potential buyers and then took possession. As part of the deal, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), an agency in charge of guaranteeing bank deposits, was appointed as the receiver of First Republic. The FDIC then immediately sold First Republic to the largest bank in the US, JPMorgan Chase, which will recover all the deposits and “almost” all the assets of the failed bank.

“Our government invited us and others to step up, and we did,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s CEO, said in a statement after the deal was announced.

“[The transaction] modestly benefits our company overall,” JPMorgan said in a news release.

It is no surprise that JPMorgan shares went up 4.3% in pre-market trading following its takeover. 

“Hopefully this will help stabilise everything,” Dimon said on a conference call with reporters before the US stock market opened.

It is recalled that the agency’s takeover and sale of First Republic comes only two months after the liquidation of Silvergate Bank — a cryptocurrency-focused bank — and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). This was then followed by Signature Bank, which closed only a few days after SVB.

The collapses not only affected the banking sector in the US because it was also felt across the Atlantic. Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse became a victim of the US banking crisis and was forced by regulators to merge with its rival, UBS.

It is recalled that US financial authorities in March reached a deal with 11 major banks to give a $30 billion handout to First Republic. This was obviously not enough to reassure investors as First Republic plummeted in value to only $654 million from more than $20 billion at the start of 2023, and $40 billion at its peak in November 2021.

Although First Republic seemingly appeared to be strong because of its wealthy clientele who deposited large sums, the banking defaults across the US scared customers. Because most First Republic loans were fixed-rate mortgages, a financial meltdown was guaranteed when the fixed-rate mortgages lost value due to soaring interest rates

First Republic is the second-largest bank in US history to collapse when not including investment banks, such as Lehman Brothers. With assets standing at $233 billion just days before the takeover, First Republic still only comes in second place due to Washington Mutual’s collapse during the 2008 financial crisis. Just like First Republic, Washington Mutual was ultimately acquired by JPMorgan.

Before the JPMorgan takeover, Nicolas Veron, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said: “First Republic was identified as a problem bank as early as mid-March and the announcement of its closure is not a new reason to worry. If another bank proved to be fragile, that would be another problem.”

In trying to alleviate concerns despite the evident banking crisis, the US Treasury said: “The banking system remains sound and resilient, and Americans should feel confident in the safety of their deposits and the ability of the banking system to fulfil its essential function of providing credit to businesses and families.”

The crisis also comes as the Federal Reserve struggles to counter inflation through massive interest rate hikes, which they will expectedly do once again in May. 

The latest bank collapse was followed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warning that the US may not be able to meet its debt obligations “as early as June 1” if Congress does not raise the debt limit.

“After reviewing recent federal tax receipts, our best estimate is that we will be unable to continue to satisfy all of the government’s obligations by early June, and potentially as early as June 1, if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt limit before that time,” Yellen wrote in a letter to Congress on May 1.

The letter also highlighted that “federal receipts and outlays are inherently variable, and the actual date that Treasury exhausts extraordinary measures could be a number of weeks as more information becomes available.”

“Given the current projections, it is imperative that Congress act as soon as possible to increase or suspend the debt limit in a way that provides longer-term certainty that the government will continue to make its payment,” Yellen urged.

This once again demonstrates that for all the brave talk by the Treasury, there is immense stress on the US financial and banking system, something that is only worsening as Washington continues to pump billions of dollars to the Kiev regime, an action that is proving increasingly unpopular in the country as well as Europe.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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Before he was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy declared that “hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard.” That does not appear to be the view of ABC News, which censored his son who is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination. ABC objected to Kennedy’s views on COVID-19 vaccines, so it simply announced that it was preventing viewers from hearing those views to protect them from dangerous ideas.

ABC’s Linsey Davis began the interview by introducing Kennedy as “one of the biggest voices pushing anti-vaccine rhetoric, regularly distributing misinformation and disinformation about vaccines, which scientific and medical experts overwhelmingly say are safe and effective based on rigorous scientific studies.”

That apparently was not enough. After telling viewers that this is one of his most famous stances (and its own disagreement), it then censored those views.

After airing the interview, Davis announced “[w]e should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines. We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview.”

Kennedy tweeted that “47 USC 315 makes it illegal for TV networks to censor Presidential candidates but Thursday, ABC showed its contempt for the law, democracy, and its audience by cutting most of the content of my interview with host Linsey Davis leaving only cherry-picked snippets and a defamatory disclaimer.”

47 USC 315 makes it illegal for TV networks to censor Presidential candidates but Thursday, ABC showed its contempt for the law, democracy, and its audience by cutting most of the content of my interview with host Linsey Davis leaving only cherry-picked snippets and a defamatory…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) April 28, 2023

The provision is designed to guarantee equal time for presidential candidates and does add “such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast.” However, that does not mean that a candidate is given carte blanche and cannot be edited. In this case, however, ABC is affirmatively stating that it censored his remarks because it disagreed with them.

Putting aside the federal law, this is wrong. ABC can challenge such views, but it is actively seeking to prevent voters from hearing a presidential candidate on an issue of great public interest and debate.

It is particularly troubling after prior media censorship has been shown to have been wrong in silencing dissenting scientific views.

We have seen various journalistic and scientific figures banned for expressing skepticism over pandemic claims from the origins of the virus to the efficacy of certain treatments. For example, when many people raised the possibility that the virus may have been released from the nearby Chinese virology lab (rather than the “wet market” theory), they were denounced as virtually a lunatic fringe. Even objections to the bias of authors of a report dismissing the lab theory were ridiculed. The New York Times reporter covering the area called it “racist” and implausible.  Now, even W.H.O. admits that the lab theory is possible and Biden officials are admitting that it is indeed plausible.

The same is true with the debate over the efficacy of masks. For over a year, some argued that the commonly used masks are ineffective to protect against the virus. Now, the CDC is warning that the masks do not appear to block these variants and even CNN’s experts are calling the cloth masks “little more than facial decorations.”

Yet, the W.H.O. head is now embracing censorship as a means of combating the “infodemic.” There are also calls, including from the White House, for Spotify to ban or curtail Joe Rogan’s show for allowing dissenting views to be aired on Covid or its treatment.

If there had not been such extensive censorship of dissenting viewpoints, there might have been more discussion on the costs and science behind the lockdowns. Instead, there was a chilling effect on such dissenting voices and those expressing doubts were labeled extremists or conspiracy theorists. Recently, for example, scientists have come forward to admit that they also suspected the Wuhan lab was the origin of virus but were silenced by the backlash at the CDC and universities.

It is also not clear where ABC draws the line. Joe Biden has made so many false statements that the Washington Post gave him a “bottomless Pinocchio.” Likewise, many view contested claims over climate change and transgender issues to be dangerous. Will ABC now be censoring these other candidates or positions?

As noted by ABC, the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion still disagrees with Kennedy. That is fair to note. However, ABC is now claiming the right to censor presidential candidates to protect the public from harmful thoughts or disinformation, including major issues behind a campaign. It is wrong for both the country and for journalism.

We do not have to be protected from dangerous thoughts by the media. A far greater danger lurks in the indoctrination and orthodoxy that comes from censorship.

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The US Army Cyber Command told defense contractors it planned to surveil global social media use to defend the “NATO brand,” according to a 2022 webinar recording reviewed by The Intercept.

The disclosure, made a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, follows years of international debate over online free expression and the influence of governmental security agencies over the web. The Army’s Cyber Command is tasked with both defending the country’s military networks as well as offensive operations, including propaganda campaigns.

The remarks came during a closed-door conference call hosted by the Cyber Fusion Innovation Center, a Pentagon-sponsored nonprofit that helps with military tech procurement, and provided an informal question-and-answer session for private-sector contractors interested in selling data to Army Cyber Command, commonly referred to as ARCYBER.

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Last week the House passed legislation increasing the debt ceiling. The bill was supported by all but four Republicans. For some Republicans, this was the first time they had ever voted for a debt ceiling increase. Perhaps the reason they did so this time was because the legislation also promised to reduce federal spending by $4.5 trillion over the next decade. Most of those spending reductions are achieved by rolling back Fiscal Year spending to 2022 levels and then limiting increases in spending to one percent for the next ten years. The bill also returns unspent COVID relief money to the US Treasury and eliminates President Biden’s student loan forgiveness programs.

Perhaps the most significant part of the bill is the REINS Act. This legislation requires congressional approval of any new federal regulation that will have an impact of more than $100 million, will have significant harmful impact on the economy, or will increase consumer prices. Even though the bill increases spending and debt, there are reasons a supporter of limited government might vote for it.

However even in the unlikely event that this bill is passed in the Senate and signed into law by President Biden, it is unlikely that the one percent spending cap would remain in force for the full ten years. Historically, spending caps imposed as part of a balanced budget or debt ceiling deal do not last for more than one or two Congressional terms. This is because every spending program is “protected” by members of Congress whose constituents and/or donors benefit from the program. This process already occurred with this bill before it was even voted on, as Speaker McCarthy had to remove provisions limiting ethanol subsidies to appease several farm state Republicans.

Surely lobbyists for the military industrial complex are already plotting to use hysteria over China, Putin, Iran, or one of the US’s many other designed enemies to justify greater than one percent increase in military spending.

The only reason the US government is able to run up such huge deficits without experiencing a complete economic meltdown is the dollar’s world reserve currency status. But the growing de-dollarization movement-fueled by the US government’s fiscal recklessness and hyper-interventionist foreign policy should be a wake-up call to Congress.

Sadly, few in DC seem to be paying attention.

The government’s fiscal situation will soon worsen, as both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds will likely be bankrupt within the next decade, forcing Congress to find an additional $116 trillion to fully fund them.

The looming economic crisis is a symptom of our moral and philosophic crisis. Too many Americans have bought into the lie that government can and should provide them with economic and physical safety while promoting “global democracy” abroad. Therefore, the most important step in the liberty movement now is convincing more people to apply the same moral code to theft and murder committed by government as they apply to those same crimes by private citizens. The government, at the very least, should be held to the same moral codes as the people it governs.

Ensuring that government follows the same nonaggression principle as law-abiding citizens is the key to a society of freedom, peace, and prosperity.

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Introduction 

The demands on school education, Bildung and teachers have always been immense. Nevertheless, the profession of a teacher is the “most beautiful” profession a person can have. Students can rub up against teachers and cool their chins – but they can also grow.

Together, teachers and students can find the way to peaceful coexistence in a world of endless wars, in which even a “preventive nuclear war” is not shied away from (Prof. Chossudovsky).

As a former teacher and doctor of education, I will explain this in more detail and thus “break a lance” for the no longer very attractive profession of teaching in the face of a looming major educational disaster.

“For a conscious ethical-moral values education”.

As early as 21 years ago, on 20 May 2002, as head of the “State School Advisory Office for the Bavarian capital Munich”, I wrote a contribution to the discussion on the 17-fold murder or killing spree in the city of Erfurt and concluded that “only a social consensus on values, goals and role models in education can give orientation and support to the growing generation” (1).

I went on to write:

“Destructive social influences such as an entertainment industry that essentially conveys a mixture of violence, perversion and nihilism via film, television, video, computer games and music, as well as the insecurity of educators, led to disorientation and a lack of support among the youth. (…).

The disagreement in society over these issues has not been to the advantage of the growing generation in recent decades. An increase in violence, drug abuse and nihilism were the result. A broad social discussion is needed, at the end of which there must be a consensus (…). This discussion must be conducted without tabooing and labelling other opinions and must be oriented, among other things, to the many valuable research results of developmental psychology, especially attachment and parenting style research, as well as research on the conditions of prosocial behaviour and media effects research.” (2)

This contribution to the discussion is still timely almost a quarter of a century later.

Situation of school education and Bildung today

“Bildung! Bildung! Bildung! Hardly any other topic is argued about more often and more heatedly. Bildung should develop the personality and enable a fulfilled life. Bildung should provide well-trained skilled workers for the labour market and keep our economy competitive. Bildung should secure peace and democracy and pass on our cultural knowledge across the generations.” (3)

Western societies can certainly subscribe to this definition of “Bildung”. However, the question arises whether they also live up to this claim and promote the opportunities of their children. And especially after the disastrous “crisis year” of 2022 with Corona-related school closures, a frightening teacher shortage and a high migrant background of pupils. Not to mention the situation in the so-called developing countries.

There is no human problem that cannot and should not be addressed by teachers, from learning at school, entertainment violence on children’s mobile phones to drug use, disinformation from the “war-mongering press” (Karl Kraus), the history of fascism (Vera Sharav) and proven ways to live together peacefully.

Bildung in the psychological sense would also mean teaching people how they should and can solve their problems. This includes their attitude towards life as well as their opinion about themselves, fellow human beings and the community.

“There is a war going on in our schools!”

In 1975, the individual psychologist Prof. Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs was not entirely unrealistic in his assessment of the situation in schools when he wrote:

“Whether the teacher likes it or not, whether he realises it or not, he is usually drawn into a power struggle from which he cannot extricate himself.” (4)

But at the same time he noted:

“Every child will occasionally resist for reasons that are hidden from himself. Repeating what he should do does not improve the situation; on the contrary, it evokes a conflict in the child and increases his open resistance to the teacher. Only someone who understands the psychological mechanisms that block the child’s proper functioning can help him to fit in and make progress.” (5)

What matters, then, is that the teacher, with or without the help of a pedagogical-psychological expert, becomes aware of this power struggle and makes peace with his students. In the article “We citizens should try out humanism…” I described the positive case of a teacher colleague who succeeded in reconciling with a formerly disruptive pupil and ending the state of war in the class (6).

The most sacred duty of an educator

As early as the beginning of the 19th century, Alfred Adler, the founder of individual psychology, wrote in every teacher’s and educator’s book:

“The most important task of an educator – one can almost say his most sacred duty – is to see to it that no child is discouraged at school and that a child who enters school already discouraged gains confidence in himself through his school and through his teacher.” (7)

“Teacher, that is the most beautiful profession man can have.”

My psychology teacher Friedrich Liebling once put it this way:

“Teacher, that is the most beautiful profession man can have. There is none more beautiful.

Growing together through the daily relationship, the intensive discussion that demands the whole person with all his weaknesses and strengths, the conversation, the daily struggle for air supremacy in the classroom. So that the troublemaker, who basically just doesn’t trust himself to learn, doesn’t gain the upper hand and thereby infect and distract others, spoiling the mood in the class. 

The teacher has to keep the upper hand, be a role model, remain the leader or pack leader of the whole gang, against whom the pupils can rub themselves, against whom they can cool their chins, but also from whom they can grow. Teacher, that is the most beautiful profession…!” (8)

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educational scientist and qualified psychologist. After his university studies he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a retiree he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and professional articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education in values as well as an education for public spirit and peace. For his services to Serbia, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 2021.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes 

(1) Dr. Hänsel Rudolf (2002). For a conscious ethical-moral teaching of values. A contribution to the discussion in Erfurt. State School Counselling Centre for Munich. Central educational-psychological counselling centre for schools in the state capital and in the district of Munich.

(2) op. cit., p. 1f.

(3) https://www.bpb.de/themen/bildung/dossier-bildung/282582/was-ist-bildung-eine-einfuehrung/

(4) Dreikurs Rudolf (1975). Psychology in the Classroom. Stuttgart, p. 19

(5) op. cit., p. 40

(6) https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-citizens-should-prove-humanism-…ood-capable-living-together-without-weapons-wars/5817065?/

(7) Hänsel Rudolf (2020). How is Ingo? Or: How does one become a fellow human being? A thank you to my teacher. Gornji Milanovac, p. 15

(8) op. cit., p. 34

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America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East have disappeared into the vast cavern of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licenses the war machine to economically disembowel the country and drive the Empire into one self-defeating conflict after another. The militarists win every election. They cannot lose. It is impossible to vote against them. The war state is a Götterdämmerung, as Dwight Macdonald writes, “without the gods.”

Since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. Military systems are sold before they are produced with guarantees that huge cost overruns will be covered. Foreign aid is contingent on buying U.S. weapons. Egypt, which receives some $1.3 billion in foreign military financing, is required to devote it to buying and maintaining U.S. weapons systems. Israel has received $158 billion in bilateral assistance from the U.S. since 1949, almost all of it since 1971 in the form of military aid, with most of it going towards arms purchases from U.S. weapons manufacturers. The American public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments. It is a circular system of corporate welfare. 

Between October 2021 and September 2022, the U.S. spent $877 billion on the military, that’s more than the next 10 countries, including China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined. These huge military expenditures, along with the rising costs of a for-profit healthcare system, have driven the U.S. national debt to over $31 trillion, nearly $5 trillion more than the U.S.’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This imbalance is not sustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency. As of January 2023, the U.S. spent a record $213 billion servicing the interest on its national debt. 

The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation. It revels in the despicable beauty of our military prowess. It speaks in the thought-terminating clichés spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation.

The intoxication of war is a plague. It imparts an emotional high that is impervious to logic, reason or fact. No nation is immune. The gravest mistake made by European socialists on the eve of the First World War was the belief that the working classes of France, Germany, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia and Great Britain would not be divided into antagonistic tribes because of disputes between imperialist governments. They would not, the socialists assured themselves, sign on for the suicidal slaughter of millions of working men in the trenches. Instead, nearly every socialist leader walked away from their anti-war platform to back their nation’s entry into the war. The handful who did not, such as Rosa Luxemburg, were sent to prison.

A society dominated by militarists distorts its social, cultural, economic and political institutions to serve the interests of the war industry. The essence of the military is masked with subterfuges — using the military to carry out humanitarian relief missions, evacuating civilians in danger, as we see in the Sudan, defining military aggression as “humanitarian intervention” or a way to protect democracy and liberty, or lauding the military as carrying out a vital civic function by teaching leadership, responsibility, ethics and skills to young recruits. The true face of the military — industrial slaughter — is hidden.

The mantra of the militarized state is national security. If every discussion begins with a question of national security, every answer includes force or the threat of force. The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil. Militarized societies are fertile ground for demagogues. Militarists, like demagogues, see other nations and cultures in their own image – threatening and aggressive. They seek only domination. 

It was not in our national interest to wage war for two decades across the Middle East. It is not in our national interest to go to war with Russia or China. But militarists need war the way a vampire needs blood.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev and later Vladimir Putin lobbied to be integrated into western economic and military alliances. An alliance that included Russia would have nullified the calls to expand NATO — which the U.S. had promised it  would not do beyond the borders of a unified Germany — and have made it impossible to convince countries in eastern and central Europe to spend billions on U.S. military hardware. Moscow’s requests were rebuffed. Russia was made the enemy, whether it wanted to be or not. None of this made us more secure. Washington’s decision to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs by backing a coup in 2014 triggered a civil war and Russia’s subsequent invasion. 

But for those who profit from war, antagonizing Russia, like antagonizing China, is a good business model. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin saw their stock prices increase by 40 percent and 37 percent respectively as a result of the Ukraine conflict. 

A war with China, now an industrial giant, would disrupt the global supply chain with devastating effects on the U.S. and global economy. Apple produces 90 percent of its products in China. U.S. trade with China was $690.6 billion last year. In 2004, U.S. manufacturing output was more than twice China’s. China’s output is now nearly double that of the United States. China produces the largest number of ships, steel and smartphones in the world. It dominates the global production of chemicals, metals, heavy industrial equipment and electronics. It is the world’s largest rare earth mineral exporter, its greatest reserve holder and is responsible for 80 percent of its refining worldwide. Rare earth minerals are essential to the manufacture of computer chips, smartphones, television screens, medical equipment, fluorescent light bulbs, cars, wind turbines, smart bombs, fighter jets and satellite communications. 

War with China would result in massive shortages of a variety of goods and resources, some vital to the war industry, paralyzing U.S. businesses. Inflation and unemployment would rocket upwards. Rationing would be implemented. The global stock exchanges, at least in the short term, would be shut down. It would trigger a global depression. If the U.S. Navy was able to block oil shipments to China and disrupt its sea lanes, the conflict could potentially become nuclear.

In “NATO 2030: Unified for a New Era,” the military alliance sees the future as a battle for hegemony with rival states, especially China. It calls for the preparation of prolonged global conflict. In October 2022, Air Force General Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, presented his “Mobility Manifesto” to a packed military conference. During this unhinged fearmongering diatribe, Minihan argued that if the U.S. does not dramatically escalate its preparations for a war with China, America’s children will find themselves “subservient to a rules based order that benefits only one country [China].”

According to the New York Times, the Marine Corps is training units for beach assaults, where the Pentagon believes the first battles with China may occur, across “the first island chain” that includes, “Okinawa and Taiwan down to Malaysia as well as the South China Sea and disputed islands in the Spratlys and the Paracels.”.

Militarists drain funds from social and infrastructure programs. They pour money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies. Bridges, roads, electrical grids and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. The public is impoverished. The harsh forms of control the militarists test and perfect abroad migrate back to the homeland. Militarized Police. Militarized drones. Surveillance. Vast prison complexes. Suspension of basic civil liberties. Censorship.

Those such as Julian Assange, who challenge the stratocracy, who expose its crimes and suicidal folly, are ruthlessly persecuted. But the war state harbors within it the seeds of its own destruction. It will cannibalize the nation until it collapses. Before then, it will lash out, like a blinded cyclops, seeking to restore its diminishing power through indiscriminate violence. The tragedy is not that the U.S. war state will self-destruct. The tragedy is that we will take down so many innocents with us.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

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*** 

The corruption engaged in by the Democratic Party leadership appears to be never-ending and no one is ever held accountable. A recent report described how Michael Morell, the former acting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, colluded with Antony Blinken, who was then a senior official in the 2020 Joe Biden presidential campaign, to prepare and find signatories to a letter to discredit those seeking to exploit the emerging Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which was threatening to do real damage to the Biden electoral prospects.

Following in the footsteps of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, which sought to use fabricated information from the Steele dossier to smear Donald Trump and some of his advisors, Blinken suggested that Morell promote the argument that the laptop story involved Russia and should be dismissed as little more than a disinformation operation ordered by President Vladimir Putin. At the time, there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Russia had had anything to do with spreading fabricated information regarding Hunter Biden or his laptop, but that was regarded as immaterial.

The conspiracy to use a false narrative to corruptly influence the outcome of the election, for that is what it was, was recently revealed in testimony by Morell to the House Judiciary Committee, led by Republican Representative Jim Jordan. Morell described how he had been instrumental in convincing 50 other former colleagues in the intelligence and national security community to sign on to the letter that he had drafted. Morell told the committee that Blinken acting for the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the timing and distribution for the public release of the letter and he described how his two objectives in drafting and releasing the statement was “to help then-Vice President Biden in the upcoming presidential debate and assist him in winning the election.”

Presumably Morell, known for his ambition and ruthlessness, may have expected Biden to appoint him head of the CIA when it came time to hand out rewards after the election was over. Concerning his own political ambitions and inclinations, one recalls how in 2016 Morell wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that was picked up nationally which headlined “I ran the CIA: now I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton.”

By virtue of exploiting his own top level connections inside the Agency, five of Morell’s letter’s signatories were former Directors of the CIA. The letter included the assertion by the signatories that they were “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case…If we are right this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.” It concluded that the laptop allegations exhibited “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

After the letter was prepared, Blinken advised Morell on its most advantageous timing, selecting a date close to the election so it would have maximum impact. The laptop story itself had appeared in the New York Post on October 14^th, revealing emails demonstrating how the Vice President Joe Biden appeared to have pressured Ukrainian officials into firing a prosecutor who was investigating corruption in the energy company Burisma. Joe met with a top company official, which led to the granting of a sinecure position on the Burisma board to his influence peddling son Hunter, which paid him $50,000 per month. Material also included on the laptop revealed Hunter’s moral turpitude and drug use.

The Morell rebuttal appeared in Politico five days later, two weeks before the election, on October 19^th, and was picked up by the mainstream media all over the United States. Joe Biden also used the material in his debate with Trump on October 22^nd, accusing Moscow of targeting his son in an elaborate propaganda operation, claiming that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” Biden referred to the many signatures on the intelligence community letter to declare that “nobody believes” that the laptop is real. And the denial did have a genuine impact on the campaign. After the Morell letter appeared, nearly all major social and news media platforms that had allowed linking to or discussion of the Hunter laptop story either censored the material completely or limited access to it while also posting warnings that the tale had been debunked by knowledgeable experts. Also to be considered is how the Blinken-Morell letter fueled the false perception that Russia and Putin were supporting Trump through clandestine and underhanded means.

Investigative journalist Jim Bovard, writing in the New York Post, reports ironically how Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the closing speech at last month’s Summit for Democracy “piously proclaimed” that “As President Biden has said, democracy doesn’t happen by accident. ‘It requires constant effort.’” And shortly after he became Secretary of State, Blinken had had the nerve to claim that the US government doesn’t sweep problems “under the rug… We deal with them in the daylight, with full transparency.” Indeed, Blinken may have been rewarded by Biden with his cabinet position after his successful plausibly illegal intervention. Also apparently rewarded was a signatory on the Morell letter – Avril Haines who is now Director of National Intelligence.

To be sure, the “honorable” Secretary of State Antony Blinken should now be instead offering his resignation over the exposure of his blatant and possibly successful attempt to change the outcome of an election by conspiring to corrupt the electoral process with false information to sway voters. Bovard opines how the Morell letter defused what had become “the biggest threat to the Biden presidential campaign … Polls show that Biden would have lost the election if the media had accurately reported the contents of that laptop.”

And there’s more to the Hunter Biden story and the corrupt hand of government. An IRS employee has recently turned whistleblower and stated that his Agency has been moving sluggishly on an investigation of Hunter regarding tax evasion relating to foreign income derived largely from Ukraine and China. And he claims that another senior Biden appointed official is involved in the politically motivated foot dragging. No less than Attorney General Merrick Garland has been identified as the unnamed senior official whose sworn testimony to a congressional committee is being challenged in a letter from the whistleblower’s attorney alleging a cover-up of the Hunter Biden criminal investigation. Attorney Mark Lytle wrote that the longtime IRS employee would like to provide information to congressional leaders to “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee” — now identified as Garland — and also to provide details of claimed “preferential treatment” in the criminal probe of Hunter.

One more tale just might illustrate where this country is going under Joe Biden and company, where party and personal interests are all that matter to a leadership which regards “integrity” as a dirty word. In fact, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech or writing that in any way challenges its power, exposes its corruption, reveals its lies, and encourages the citizenry to resist government overreach. The Biden Administration has recently indicted four Americans and charged them with conspiracy to spread Russian propaganda and acting as unregistered Russian agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938. The four are members of the African People’s Socialist Party, which has criticized and opposed US foreign policy since 1971 and currently is against Washington’s promotion of the war against Russia in Ukraine. They potentially face 15 years in prison. This exploitation of quite plausibly unconstitutional “lawfare” is nothing new, as in my own experience the Justice (sic) Department has been moving to silence Americans who write for Russian news sites by threatening them with huge fines or even imprisonment. It is a tendency that is unfortunately not unique to any particular presidential administration which has been building since 9/11, though it has become far worse under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. In no cases that I know of have any of those pressured or accused actually been receiving direction or secret benefits from the Russian government.

That all means that the definition of illegal speech or writing has been considerably broadened of late. The Biden Administration has been actively waging a campaign to eradicate what it chooses to call “disinformation,” to include those who allegedly share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” with terrorists. It is, in fact, the United States government that is the world’s largest purveyor of disinformation, to include adopting the Israeli practice of defining anyone who resists US hegemony as a terrorist. For example, that is how the Justice Department labels white so-called supremacists as “domestic terrorists.”

And, of course, the government is being assisted and protected due to the fact that nearly all the negative stories about Biden and his crew have predictably been suppressed by the mainstream media, which has become a de facto a partner of the White House disinformation program. Consider, for example, the Seymour Hersh revelations about the hideous “act of war” Nord Stream pipeline destruction and the corruption in Ukraine, or the revelation of disinformation regarding the war in Ukraine itself exposed by leaker Jack Teixeira, or the biolabs in Ukraine, or the incessant lies denigrating Russia and its leadership. And where does one go to for any legitimate criticism of the reckless White House driven direct engagement in Ukraine that could go nuclear even though it is in support of no real national interest? Or the thoughtless threatening of China over Taiwan? And how about the State Department using overseas Embassies to promote “woke-ism” rather than protecting American travelers and interests? All these stories are targeted and diminished deliberately, gone or going, never to be seen again.

So it should surprise no one that the White House and media are right now trying to kill the exposure of how Blinken and Morell turned around the story of the Hunter laptop because that would confirm suspicions that Joe Biden may have actually stolen the 2020 election. And the back story is that the fabricated material planted by the Clinton and Biden campaigns in 2016 and 2020 only succeeded because of the media’s surrender of its traditional role as an exposer of government crimes and evasions. The phony Morell intelligence letter and its possible consequences is a scandal of huge proportions that would once upon a time have ended in resignations, impeachment, and plenty of jail time for all of those involved but Michael Morell and Antony Blinken have not even been touched or even interviewed by the FBI. Nor have the other fifty national security puppets who signed off onto claims made in a document that they must have known to be fabricated for political reasons experienced any discomfort. They have no shame and are all disgraces to the oath of loyalty to the Constitution that they once swore. And the real danger is that if the clueless government and media continue to be able to bury stories they do not approve of, the United States will cease to be a functioning democracy and every election will be little more than a farce.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

Record-breaking 18 year old powerlifter Laura Delava died within 24hr of developing myocarditis on April 24, 2023 – “it happened so fast” (click here)(click here)

Chicago – 63 year old Scott Minerd, a committed weightlifter known to bench press more than 400 pounds died suddenly in the afternoon from a heart attack during his regular workout, on Dec. 21, 2022 (click here)

America’s Strongest Woman Rebecca Lorch, age 32, died suddenly Dec. 18, 2022. Her death was unexpected. (click here)

Competitive powerlifter and professional wrestler Sara Lee (Sara Weston), age 30, died suddenly July 10, 2022, no cause of death given (click here)

Savannah, GA – 2-time Olympian 41 year old Oscar Chaplin III died suddenly on Feb. 4, 2022, cause of death not made public (click here)

Powerlifter Bud Jeffries, age 48, died suddenly on Jan. 21, 2022 while doing a light training session outside his house during which he collapsed (click here)

Australian Powerlifter James Kondilios, age 23, double COVID-19 vaccinated, died suddenly “with” COVID on Jan. 5, 2022 (click here)

Lagos, Nigeria – Paralympic powerlifting gold medalist Paul Kehinde, age 33, died suddenly on Nov. 18, 2021 “after a brief illness” (click here).

Reno, NV – Powerlifter Tyler Rippee, age 41, died suddenly of “COVID-19” on Sep. 22, 2021, he was training for 2021 UPA Legions Sports Fest (click here)

Powerlifter Glenda Presutti, age 64, nurse, died unexpectedly on June 13, 2021 (click here)

My Take…

This was not intended to be a series but there were so many sudden and unexplained deaths, they had to be split up into categories as they wouldn’t fit in one article.

Interestingly, Singapore’s first COVID-19 vaccine injury compensation was to a 16 year old boy who had an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest six days after receiving his first dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine on June 27, 2021.

He had developed myocarditis and had a heart attack after doing weightlifting. He survived and received $225,000 from the Singapore government (click here).

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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.

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However described, the shabby treatment of Julian Assange never ceases to startle. While he continues to suffer in Belmarsh prison awaiting the torments of an interminable legal process, more material is coming out showing the way he was spied upon while staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Of late, the Spanish daily El País has been keeping up its exemplary coverage on the subject, notably on the conduct of the Spanish-based security firm, UC Global SL.

There is a twist in the latest smidgens of information on the alleged bad conduct by that particular company. As luck would have it, UC Global was commissioned by Rommy Vallejo, the chief of Ecuador’s now defunct national intelligence secretariat, SENAIN, to give the London embassy premises a security and technological touch-up.

Vallejo may have sought their services, but seemed blissfully ignorant that he had granted the fox access to the chicken coop.  This access involved the installation of hidden microphones throughout the embassy by UC Global at the direction of its owner, David Morales. Morales, it seems, was updating the US Central Intelligence Agency with information about Assange’s meetings with his legal team throughout.

Much of this was revealed in the trial against Assange conducted at the Central Criminal Court in 2020, though the presiding Judge Vanessa Baraitser seemed oddly unmoved by the revelations, as she was by chatter among US intelligence operatives to engineer an abduction or assassination of the WikiLeaks founder.

The link between UC Global and the CIA was the fruit of work between Morales and one of his most notable clients, the casino company, Las Vegas Sands. Morales was responsible for supplying the owner of the company, the late billionaire magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, with personal security. In the merry-go-round of this field, one of those on Adelson’s personal security detail was a former CIA officer.

On December 20, 2017, Michelle Wallemacq, the head of operations at UC Global, penned a note to two technicians responsible for monitoring security at the embassy. “Be on the lookout tomorrow to see what you can get… and make it work.” The request was related to a scheduled meeting between Assange and Vallejo. The theme of the discussion: to get the Australian publisher out of the embassy, grant him Ecuadorian citizenship and furnish him with a diplomatic passport. This had a heroic, even quixotic quality to it: the grant of a diplomatic passport would not have necessarily passed muster; and the chances of Assange being arrested could hardly be discounted.

Eleven months prior to Morales passing on the tip that scuttled Assange’s escape plans, Morales was already chasing up his staff from one of Adelson’s properties, The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. One technician received the following: “Do you have status reports on the embassy’s computer systems, and networks? I need an inventory of systems and equipment, the guest’s [Assange] phones, and the number of networks.” He also warned his technicians to be wary “that we may be monitored, so everything confidential should be encrypted…  Everything is related to the UK subject… The people in control are our friends in the USA.”

On June 12, 2017, Morales, enroute to Washington, DC, requested his contact to activate a File Transfer Protocol server and web portal from their Spanish headquarters. The portal in question: the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Material began being collected on Assange’s guests, eclectic and of all stripes: journalists, doctors, lawyers, diplomats. Mobile phone data was also hoovered up. After his Washington stop, Morales popped into Las Vegas Sands, where he met his eager “American friends” to reveal the information so far gathered about Assange.

Over this time, it becomes clear, in Morales’s own words, that “he had gone over to the dark side” and that “they were working in the Champions League”. Emails sent on September 8 speak of offering “our information collection and analysis capability to the American client”. Discussions with a UC Global technician focus on gathering information from the microphones in the embassy. “The guest [Assange] has three rooms and uses two quite frequently… We would have all the audio from there except in one room.”

On September 21, it was clear to Morales that they had gotten sufficiently mired in the business of spying on Assange to be wary of any potential surveillance from SENAIN. “I would like my whereabouts to be kept confidential, especially my trips to the USA.” Instructions are distributed to gather data on the embassy’s Wi-Fi network, photos of the interior and furnishings of the embassy, and any data on Assange’s primary visitors, notably any members of his legal team.

The recording of one meeting would prove critical to upending plans to get Assange out of the embassy. Present Assange, his lawyer, now wife Stella Morris, Ecuadorian consul Fidel Narváez and Vallejo. The date for the getaway was slated for December 25, with the plan that Assange leave via one of the ambassador’s cars which would make its way through the Eurotunnel to Switzerland or some designated destination on the continent. “It’s very late,” wrote one of the technicians a few hours after the meeting’s conclusion to Morales. “Because it’s so big, I put the file in a shared Dropbox folder. Someone with experience in audio can make it more intelligible.” While Vallejo could be heard fairly clearly, the voices of Assange and Morris were “very muffled”.

Within a matter of hours, Morales had relayed the material to those “American friends” of his, greasing the wheels for proceedings that would culminate in Assange’s expulsion in 2019 and the indictment listing 18 charges, 17 of which are drawn from the Espionage Act of 1917. The plan to leave the embassy was never executed.

There are two significant events that also transpired before Vallejo’s visit to Assange. The first involved an advisor to the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister who is said to have had information about the plan regarding Assange’s escape. He was assaulted by a number of hooded men at Quito Airport on his return from the United States.

On December 17, 2017 it was time for hooded assailants to turn their attention to the Madrid law offices of Baltasar Garzón and Aitor Martínez. Their target: a computer server. The timing was ominous; both lawyers had just returned from meeting Assange in the London embassy. The intruders proved untraceable by the Spanish police, despite leaving prints.

In hindsight, it does seem remarkable that Vallejo and SENAIN remained ignorant of the rotten apples in UC Global. As things stand, Morales is facing a formal complaint filed by Assange in the Spanish National Court. He is also facing an investigation for alleged breaches of privacy, the violation of attorney-client confidentiality, misappropriation, bribery and money laundering. The presiding magistrate on the case, Santiago Pedraz, has requested the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to press the CIA in supplying information about the embassy spying.

Even better will be the abandoning of the entire proceeding, the reversal of the extradition order made in June 2022 by then Home Secretary Priti Patel, and a finding by the UK authorities that the case against Assange is monstrously political, compromised from the start and emptied of legal principle.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University.  He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Julian Assange was secretly recorded while living at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. (Source: EPV)

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***

Michel Chossudovsky’s interview with Dragan Vujicic, Serbia’s National News. (Excerpts and Edits by Chossudovsky, Part I)

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The Nord Stream sabotage was announced at a press conference in Washington on February 7, 2022, by President Biden. and Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz. This announcement was tantamount to an Act of War by the United States against its  European Allies. 

Interview with Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, economist, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa and editor of the renowned anti-globalist Global Research website.

According to Michel Chossudovsky:

“The Nord Stream gas pipelines that were the subject of the attack are located in the (maritime) territorial jurisdiction of four member states of the European Union.

In international law, the intentional destruction of the aforementioned “property” within the country’s territorial waters by or on behalf of a foreign state actor constitutes an act of war,” 

“It’s NATO against NATO”. This raises a precedent: A NATO member state is at war against a collective of European NATO member states, “allies” of America”  

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Dragan Vujicic (DV): You say that there was nothing secret about that Nord Stream operation?

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky (PMC): We should remember the press conference at the White House on February 7, 2022 at which the US president and Germany’s chancellor publicly expressed their intention to blow up the Nord Stream. Chancellor Scholz who was on an official visit to the United States, fully endorsed President Biden’s stated intent to blow up the Nordstream gas pipeline, “if Russian tanks enter Ukraine”.

Olaf Scholz was fully aware that this act of sabotage of the Nord Stream had been planned well in advance by the US Administration, to the detriment of more than 400 million Europeans.

DV: Do you have unequivocal evidence that Chancellor Scholz was involved?

PMC: I will read the transcript of that Press Conference on 7 February 2022. The questions were addressed to both President Biden and Chancellor Scholz: 

Andrea (Reuters) Q    Thank you, Mr.  President.  And thank you, Chancellor Scholz.  Mr.  President, I have wanted to ask you about this Nord Stream project that you’ve long opposed.  You didn’t mention it just now by name, nor did Chancellor Scholz.  Did you receive assurances from Chancellor Scholz today that Germany will, in fact, pull the plug on this project if Russia invades Ukraine?  And did you discuss what the definition of “invasion” could be?

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  The first question first.  If Germany — if Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the — the border of Ukraine again — then there will no be no longer a Nord Stream 2.  We will bring an end to it. 

Q    But how will you — how will you do that exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control?

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it. 

Andreas (Reuters) Q  [to Chancellor Scholz]  And will you commit today — will you commit today to turning off and pulling the plug on Nord Stream 2?  You didn’t mention it, and you haven’t mentioned it.

CHANCELLOR SCHOLZ:  As I’ve already said, we are acting together, we are absolutely united, and we will not be taking different steps.  We will do the same steps, and they will be very, very hard to Russia, and they should understand.   (White House Press Conference emphasis added)

Video Below: Reuters Journalist: 10’15”

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PMC: Scholz’s answer is unequivocal. He endorsed Biden’s decision to bomb Nord Stream, while avoiding to address the substance of the Reuter’s journalist question: i.e “within the control of Germany” of which he is the head of government.

DV: So from these words of the German chancellor you conclude that Germany knew? 

PMC: Of course he knew, which does not mean that people in Germany and the EU knew.

His statement is unequivocal. He supported Biden’s decision to bomb Nord Stream. Scholz’s statement at the press conference confirms that this was a joint decision. In fact it was an “Act of Treason”, by the German Chancellor, which had also been endorsed by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. 

DV: Do you think that this kind of evidence would be sufficient reason for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to deal with this matter.

PMC: International law is explicit in this regard. The Nord Stream pipelines which were the object of the attack are located within the (maritime) territorial jurisdiction of four member states of the European Union. In international law, “Territorial Integrity” extends to “properties” located within the territorial waters of the Nation State. The deliberate destruction of said “properties” within a country’s territorial waters by or on behalf of a foreign state actor constitutes an act of war. 

Based on International Law, the International Criminal Court (ICC) –not to mention the European Court of Justice (ECJ)– should have been able to confirm that it was an act of war.   But the ICC is corrupt. In Washington, Biden made it public when he said: “We will do it and we have a plan to do it”. And there was nothing secret about Biden’s public declaration.

I recall the act of aggression against the Former Republic of  Yugoslavia (FRY), in 1999. Your country was the object of a NATO act of war, and it was an illegal and criminal act based on fabricated evidence, allegedly with a view to coming to the rescue of Kosovo’s Albanian population. From a legal standpoint, extensive crimes were committed by NATO acting collectively against a sovereign country.  

Here we have a different situation. An Act of War against the E.U., which points to crimes against humanity. It also triggers a deep-seated crisis within the Atlantic Alliance, which I might describe as follows: A NATO country, namely the United States of America — through an illegal act of sabotage has (from a legal standpoint) attacked its European allies most of which are NATO member states. 

It is ironic, that following the attack on Nord Stream in September 2022, none of the EU-NATO member states raised the issue that this was an attack by a NATO Member State against all EU-NATO member states.

We might recall the issue of Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance’ Washington Treaty, which was used in October 2001 as a pretext to justify the invasion of Afghanistan, namely an attack by a foreign power against one or more NATO member states is an attack against all member states of the Atlantic Alliance under the doctrine of collective security.

The whole thing was a big lie. There was no evidence that Afghanistan had attacked America on September 11, 2001. 

In regards to the U.S bombing of Nord Stream, Article 5 obviously does not apply because the “foreign power”, namely  the U.S. is a NATO member state. What we are dealing with is a U.S. sponsored Act of War against the EU, bearing in mind that most EU countries are member states of NATO.

“It’s NATO against NATO”. This raises a precedent: A NATO member state is at war against a collective of European NATO member states. 

The question that should be raised is whether NATO still exists as an “alliance” when the U.S  exerting its sovereign rule over the European Union, declares an act of war against the EU-NATO member states which are “allies of America”.

DV: How do you view the European economy today? 

PMC. We are also dealing with an act of economic warfare against the EU.

The EU economy which has relied on cheap energy from Russia is in a shambles, marked by disruptions in the entire fabric of industrial production (manufacturing), transportation and commodity trade. 

A string of corporate bankruptcies resulting in lay-offs and unemployment is unfolding across the European Union. Small and medium sized enterprises are slated to be wiped off the economic landscape.

DV: American natural gas in Europe is now seven times more expensive and suppliers from the USA are asking the Europeans for 20 annual contracts to guarantee regularity of supply in return? 

PMC: In the long run, it won’t work. In a global economy, if you want to buy gas, you will look for the best price. You can purchase Russian gas via a third country. e.g. India. 

I should mention that the Euro is a dollarized  currency. The member states are financially dependent on the European Central Bank (ECB), presided by Christine Lagarde, a former head of the IMF.

The ECB is controlled by powerful banking institutions including Wall Street and the U.S. Federal Reserve. 

This social and economic devastation of both Europe and Worldwide has been ongoing since the outset of the corona crisis in early 2020, which targeted more than 190 countries.  The March 11 2020 Lockdown consisted in confining the labour force and freezing the workplace, resulting in bankruptcies and poverty. Supply chains of the real economy were broken.

 

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I always knew he was one of us, closeted though he was by Fox News HR, like a world-class racing horse kept in the stable, like Picasso with his fingers taped together.

Tucker is getting too close to the truth! pic.twitter.com/H97SuNBnGK

— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) April 30, 2023

“If you say, like, ‘What actually happened with building 7? Like that is weird, right? It doesn’t—like, what is that?’… If you were to say something like that on television, they’d flip out. They would flip out. So you’d, like, lose your job over that.

It’s an attack on my country. Can I ask? I don’t really understand. Do buildings actually collapse? No, they—maybe they do. I don’t know. But, like, why can’t I ask questions about that?”

Click here to view the video.

What this proves is not that Carlson is particularly insightful – it doesn’t take an engineering genius to figure out that buildings don’t typically collapse at freefall speed neatly into their own footprints – but it does show that he’s brave, and now he doesn’t give a flying f**k about respectability politics.

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This article was originally published on Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Tucker Carlson speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)