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The shifting sands of the Arab Gulf may turn rock-solid in an alliance across the region with Iran. This new alliance is in defiance of the old divide and conquer policy used by the US State Department.
The rapprochement between The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could transform the region, after being brokered by China on March 10, ending seven years of tensions. The nations are aware that there is safety in numbers, and strength in unity instead of standing alone.
Iran had decided to improve relations with its Arab neighbors instead of waiting for the US to decide to renew the nuclear agreement. Saudi Arabia had made its own strategic decision to not depend on the US for security. These two strategies brought Iran and Saudi Arabia together, with China demonstrating its ability to circumvent the US, when it is the US standing in the way of stability in the Middle East.
“The recent successful dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Beijing helped improve bilateral relations between the two countries, which will strengthen regional solidarity and ease the tensions in the region. China will further support the process,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) by phone on March 28.
The deal involves Saudi Arabia supporting the return of Iran to the nuclear deal with the west, plans to end the war in Yemen, cooperation to stabilize Syria, and strengthening their joint ties in OPEC.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian announced on March 26 that the two countries had agreed to hold a meeting between their top diplomats, with the location to be announced, during the month of Ramadan, the Holy month of fasting, which ends the third week of April.
Both countries share the same religion, which is a common thread in their relationship but had been a point of division used by the US to divide the two. Iran is Shite, and Saudi Arabia is Sunni. When the US invaded and destroyed Iraq beginning in 2003, they used the Sunni-Shite divide to create chaos which served the US interests to conquer and subjugate the Iraqi people in the US project of regime change, which affected the whole region and created sectarian divisions.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi received an invitation from Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to visit the kingdom by letter, announced on March 19, which invited him to Riyadh.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are expected to open embassies in each other’s capitals from now to May 10. They will both resume security and economic agreements signed more than 20 years ago.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait recently restored ties with Iran. Amir-Abdollahian said Iran also hoped steps would be made to normalize its ties with Bahrain as well.
Iran’s top security official Ali Shamkhani held talks with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi on March 23, in yet another sign of the networking in the region.
In June 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for a “New Middle East”. In true American hubris, she and President George W. Bush thought Israel attacking Lebanon, bombing from the north to the south, and killing hundreds of civilians, was necessary to remove the resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Rice and Bush lost their war, both in Iraq and in Lebanon. The resistance to occupation is as strong as ever, and now we have the UN recognizing that Israel is an apartheid state.
President Obama, supported by former Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Bandar, and aligned with former Crown Prince Nayaf, also tried their hand at wiping out the resistance in Syria through regime change, but they all failed.
The New Middle East has emerged, finally, but it is not exactly what Rice and Bush were asking for. Iran and Saudi Arabia are together, and both asking for the liberation of Palestine.
On March 24, Israel announced plans to build over 1,000 new units on illegally occupied Palestinian land, just days after agreeing in a meeting in Egypt to suspend settlement construction.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry condemned the Israeli plans, and called on the international community “to assume its responsibilities to end the Israeli occupation and to stop its provocative practices, which would obstruct the paths of political solutions based on the Arab Peace Initiative, and undermine international peace efforts.”
The Arab Peace Initiative was a Saudi proposal in 2002 that called for normalizing relations with Israel in return for withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.
The March surprise deal was a shock to the Biden administration, but the earlier October 2022 surprise was even harder to take in the Oval Office. Biden had gone to MBS personally to ask for an increase in the oil output to bring down the price of gasoline in the US. MBS flatly turned him down.
The Aramco attack in 2019 occurred when drones hit the Abqaiq oil facility while protected by US-made air defense batteries; however, none were effective or took down even one drone. 19 individual strikes occurred, with 14 that punctured storage tanks, and three that disabled oil processing trains.
The facilities were knocked out of commission and the world’s largest petroleum producer was cut by half, representing about five percent of global oil production.
This was the beginning of Saudi Arabia formulating a strategy for security that does not depend on the US but rather looks to neighborly alliances independently.
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As if in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the dastardly deed in March, 2003, the US. – except for those Senators who opposed its repeal. Twenty years ago, in response to the 911 attack, the US illegally invaded Iraq in a ‘shock and awe’ campaign that devastated the people of Iraq and was initiated under the false weapons of mass destruction pretense.
That original Resolution to “authorize the use of US Armed Forcesagainst those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the US” was specific to 911 and approved within days of the September 11th attack. With the intent to threaten US military action, the Senate approved that Resolution 98 – 0 which has remained in effect for the last twenty years. The AUMF was also liberally utilized over the years to justify other questionable foreign interventions.
It was however HJ Res. 114 “The AUMF Against Iraq Resolution of 2002” that a willing Senate voted to approve an intentionally fabricated war which never discovered weapons of mass destruction as were alleged to exist by the US Secretary of State in front of the UN’s world community. On a 77 – 23 vote, the US went to war for a total cost of $3 trillion with 4,500 American deaths and 32,000 wounded. By December, 2011, 39,000 Americans troops were withdrawn leaving a custodial force in place.
During his “Beyond Vietnam” speech in 1967 from the pulpit at Riverside Church, New York City, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. described it concisely: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: My own Government.”
Twenty years later, “S 316, A Bill to Repeal Authorizations for Use of Military Force Against Iraq” was introduced and debated in the Senate with a series of Republican amendments, all of which were defeated with most in opposition to repeal.
Sen. Rand Paul’s (SC) amendment to repeal AUMF failed on a spectacular vote of 89 – 6 and was followed by Sen. Mike Lee’s (Utah) amendment to terminate AUMF after two years unless Congress voted to continue also failed 76 – 19. In addition, Sen. Josh Hawley’s (Mo.) amendment to appoint an Inspector General to investigate $113 Billion sent to Ukraine failed 68 – 26 with no Democrats in support. Sen. Rick Scott (Fl.) offered an amendment to conduct a full investigation of the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan which also failed 62 – 33 also with no Democrats in favor. Sen. Tim Kaine, Democratic floor manager for S 316, determined that the Hawley Scott amendments were not germane and called on Democrats to vote No.
After almost two weeks of casual debate which began on March 16th, final passage was adopted on a 66 – 30 vote which surpassed the necessary sixty vote filibuster requirement. The Aye votes included eighteen Republican Senators while the thirty Nay votes were all Republicans. Those Republican Ayes were Sens. Braun (Ind.), Budd (NC), Cassidy (La.), Collins (Me.), Cramer (ND), Daines (Mt.), Grassley (Iowa), Hawley (Mo.), Hoeven (ND), Lee (Utah), Lummis (Wyo.), Marshall (Ks.), Moran (Ks.), Murkowski (Alas.), Paul (Ky.), Schmitt (Mo.), Vance (Ohio), Young (Ind.)
The question remains why thirty Republican Senators cast Nay votes against the repeal of the AUMF. There were suggestions that an existing AUMF would protect American troops still located in Iraq or Syria. If that is a legitimate concern the simple answer is to bring all American troops home. Why exactly are there still Americans in Syria or Iraq and who benefits from an AUMF in place – the military industrial complex or perhaps Israel; certainly not American enlisted sons and daughters.
There was also the suggestion that a new AUMF be adopted to replace that being repealed which leads to speculation that there is some future miliary engagement lurking in the background.
In any case, it is fair to speculate a direct correlation between the AUMF, as the invasion of Iraq in 2003 set the stage for decades of unconstitutional armed interventions spreading death and destruction, chaos and loathing amongst countries unable to defend themselves yet rich in natural resources. Syrian oil, Libyan gold, and Afghan Bank funds among other appropriated commodities were all irresistible targets.
As the US magnified its simulation as a decadent Roman Empire into an international bully in pursuit of political power, geographic territory and valuable resources that belonged to others, including its own fiscal malfeasance, the American Empire has been on an irreversible path of self-destruction as a Constitutional exemplar for the world – all of which comes as a direct result of US meddling and instigation of economic and military pathological disasters never heeding the implications of their narcissistic imperialist agenda on the rest of the planet.
It is not surprising that the White House or the State Department response to the announcement of the Russia-China alliance comes as the US political establishment and its European allies continue to fan the flames of dissension; assuming a golden opportunity to take Putin down, destroy Russia and carve up its riches. The exact opposite has occurred. The US foreign policy establishment which prefers to function within its own narrow framework of reality, like any group of sociopaths, with no understanding of how US behavior is interpreted by those who dare question its motives, remains in a stupor, oblivious to the long term repercussions of their deeds – and those chickens are coming home to roost.
What they call the multi-party alliance has grown since September 2006 into BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as a global geopolitical force encompassing over 3 billion people, 41% of the world’s population and 25% GDP. It is expected to add Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina, Algeria, Turkey and others to its membership at their next meeting.
The Xi-Putin Agreement included strengthening the multipolar economic order by reducing dependence on the petro-dollar while embracing the yuan as currency in Asia, Africa and Latin America. While the dollar as world reserve currency provides the US with its superior status, it is a role they themselves have damaged as decline of the Dollar will nullify US sanctions (aka agents of regime change) routinely applied to some of the planet’s most vulnerable nations. Xi also suggested a peace plan for de-escalation followed by a ceasefire leading to negotiations as well as resistance to NATO’s initiatives into the Asia-Pacific region.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told an interviewer that Moscow was “working actively” to move away from the U.S. dollar and encouraged others like Iran which raises a logical question:
With US antagonism towards Iran, why should that country continue to trade in the Dollar? That same question may be asked to those thirty countries which are now living under US sanctions. The answer is clear.
President Joe Biden claimed the alliance was ‘vastly exaggerated’ with assurance that western countries have ‘expanded their alliances.’ However, exhibiting a failure to grasp the meaning of inclusivity, the US uninvited two NATO partners to its upcoming Summit for Democracy based on unrelated policy disagreements. Proving that hypocrisy is no stranger to US foreign policy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken cavalierly refused a ceasefire and cited ‘sovereignty’ as a number one goal suggesting ‘this war could end tomorrow’ with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan lecturing about “respecting the sovereignty of all nations.”
Immediately after their rendezvous, Xi was hosting Brazilian President Lula, Putin was touring African nations while Biden was traveling to Canada to convince Trudeau about the wisdom of a Haiti invasion.
It is worth noting that the aggressive language of the AUMF granted the US President authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11 attacks. It has been some months since the Russians announced that they would hold the ‘decision maker nations’ responsible; those nations who were in the background supplying weapons to Ukraine and fomenting the war would be considered answerable for their behavior.
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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.
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Our thanks to the National Post which brought this article to our attention. Selected excerpts below
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Canada’s auditor general says a “minimum” of $27.4 billion in suspicious COVID-19 benefit payments need to be investigated because the government did not manage the aid programs efficiently, and it will likely fail to recover “significant” amounts in overpayments.
That’s in addition to $4.6 billion in confirmed government overpayments solely in double-dipping applications for the various COVID-19 aid programs launched within the first months of the pandemic, according to a new report by Auditor General Karen Hogan published Tuesday.
The 92-page report highlights the government’s success in setting up six aid programs that doled out a total of $210 billion to individuals and companies quickly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns.
But it’s extremely critical of the government’s management of the programs and ensuing efforts to find and claw back overpayments.
“The Canada Revenue Agency and Employment and Social Development Canada did not manage the selected COVID‑19 programs efficiently given the significant amount paid to ineligible recipients, the limited adjustments as programs were extended, and the slow progress on post‑payment verifications,” the report concludes.
But National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier argued Tuesday that some of Hogan’s numbers are “exaggerated”, namely regarding Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) payments that should be investigated further.
“The agency does not agree with the auditor general’s calculation regarding ineligible recipients of the wage subsidy. The agency’s real verifications indicate that compliance with the subsidy was high, and that the auditor general’s figures were exaggerated,” she said in response to opposition questions Tuesday.
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Featured image: COVID-19 benefit cheques. Scotiabank says the generous benefits likely fuelled excess demand in the economy. PHOTO BY PETER J. THOMPSON/NATIONAL POST
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Discontent with President Emmanuel Macron is mounting in the aftermath of his executive enactment of a controversial pension reform bill that would make substantial changes to the retirement system for millions of workers.
To prevent more harm, the COVID-19 vaccines must be pulled off the market. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) led a roundtable discussion Dec 7, 2022, COVID-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work, and Possible Causes of Injuries, to shed light on the current state of knowledge surrounding the vaccine and the path forward.
The EU’s reversal allows “the sales of new cars with combustion engines that run on synthetic fuels,” which sounds very environmentally friendly. But synthetic fuels are similar to gasoline or diesel, so the decision allows internal combustion cars to continue being produced. While electric cars will still be produced and incentivized, there is no longer a 100% mandate by 2035.
Any Palestinian following the developments in the Israeli protest movement against “the judicial coup” will require nerves of steel to withstand the hypocrisy on display. The protests are estimated to be 100,000 people strong, politicians are jumping over tables in the Knesset, and former army Chief of Staff Yair Golan is calling for a state of “civil disobedience.”
During the World Government Summit 2023, which was held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on February 13-15, the chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, proclaimed that whoever controls the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution will be the master of the world.
In an interview with the German state media outlet ZDF on March 12, 2023, health minister Karl Lauterbach was confronted with cases of people who suffered injuries from the COVID shots, including a 17-year-old gymnast who was hospitalized and nearly died after receiving the BioNTech COVID injection.
It’s no secret that globalist institutions are obsessed with Artificial Intelligence as some kind of technological prophecy. They treat it as if it is almost supernatural in its potential and often argue that every meaningful industrial and social innovation in the near future will owe its existence to AI.
On March 13th, the Pentagon rolled out its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The results were — or at least should have been — stunning, even by the standards of a department that’s used to getting what it wants when it wants it.
There is no sustainable development without what we call “democracy”- or without people’s, beneficiaries’ active participation. This applies to large political systems intending evolving, seeking the betterment of their populations – as well as for “smaller-scale” development projects, seeking to eradicate poverty and improve the wellbeing of the people.
We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry. This is mind-control in its most sinister form.
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Discontent with President Emmanuel Macron is mounting in the aftermath of his executive enactment of a controversial pension reform bill that would make substantial changes to the retirement system for millions of workers.
On March 22, Macron sat down for an interview with a French television station where he attempted to justify his actions which by-passed a vote within the National Assembly.
Macron maintained that it was necessary to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 while requiring 43 years of service to qualify for full pension benefits. He continued the same argument that without these reforms the retirement system would become insolvent in a matter of a few years.
Such statements by the president further enflamed the public prompting even larger and more militant demonstrations between March 23-26. Hundreds of people were reportedly arrested and complaints of police brutality against demonstrators have gained international attention.
Various human rights organizations have accused the police of utilizing preemptive arrests of activists as well as excessive physical force against demonstrators.
The newly crowned King Charles III of the United Kingdom had been invited to make a state visit to France beginning on March 26. However, the general strike and subsequent rebellions in several cities including the capital of Paris made it impossible for the monarch to enter the country.
It was announced by the French government that Charles III would postpone his visit until the summer months. The inability to host a head-of-state was a further blow to the stature of Macron among other imperialist states. Several political parties commented that this diplomatic embarrassment highlighted the political weakness of Macron. Recent opinion polls show the president as having less than a 30 percent approval rating among the electorate. 70 percent of respondents indicated that the government was responsible for the strikes and violent unrest and that the situation could worsen in the coming days and weeks. (See this)
In an effort to appear unphased by the unrest in France, Macron attended a European Union (EU) Summit in Brussels, Belgium on March 24 where he reiterated his position on the pension reforms. Before the legislation is fully implemented, it must be reviewed by the Constitutional Council, the highest legal authority in France.
On March 25, unions estimated that 3.5 million workers and youth took to the streets demanding the withdrawal of the legislation by Macron. As police attempted to control the crowds in Paris and other cities, clashes erupted resulting in broken windows and arson attacks.
“First an epic tussle with the unions, then a bitter standoff in parliament, and now a full-blown crisis in the streets. France’s festering pension dispute took a turn for the worse this week, with protests against Macron’s deeply unpopular plans hardening and escalating amid scenes of chaos in Paris and other cities. The unrest – which began last Thursday after Macron used special executive powers to ram his pension reform through parliament – has seen security forces fight running battles with protesters late into the night even as firefighters race to extinguish hundreds of blazes.”
In addition to the escalating tensions between the government and the unions, yet another conflict erupted over environmental and economic concerns stemming from the construction of a reservoir in the western rural district of Sainte-Soline. Opponents to the plan say that it is designed to benefit large-scale agricultural corporations while disempowering smaller farmers.
A scheduled demonstration in Sainte-Soline on March 25 attracted thousands of activists. In response to the large protests which are prohibited in the area, police initiated violent attacks against those opposing the reservoir.
“Several people have been injured after clashes between French police and protesters opposed to a large water reservoir for farm irrigation, despite a ban on gatherings in the area. Police fired teargas to repel some protesters who threw fireworks and other projectiles as they crossed fields to approach the construction area in the western rural district of Sainte-Soline. At least three police vehicles were set alight, television footage showed. Two protesters were seriously hurt, including one who is in a critical condition after suffering a head injury, as well as 16 police officers, the local prefecture said. One officer was evacuated by helicopter. Thousands of protesters had converged on the site of the planned reservoir, where a similar protest last October also turned violent.”
Another day of strikes and protests occurred on March 28 as the unions estimated participation at over 2 million. People continued their demonstrations against the Macron pension reforms and what they perceived as the dictatorial posture of the government. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne offered on the same day to hold talks during the first full week of April with the eight major unions behind the mass demonstrations and strikes. Pledging to maintain their strike actions, there was an announcement of an 11th day of protest on April 6.
“Black-clad groups set fire to garbage cans and threw projectiles at police in Paris, who charged at them and threw teargas in confrontations on the fringes of a march against President Emmanuel Macron and his deeply unpopular pension bill. Clashes also erupted on Tuesday (March 28) at similar rallies in other cities including Rennes, Bordeaux and Toulouse, with a bank branch and cars set ablaze in Nantes. However, while public frustration has evolved into broader anti-Macron sentiment, there was less violence than last week, and rallies were otherwise largely peaceful.”
One major announcement came on March 29 when the sanitation union suspended their work stoppage. Thousands of tons of garbage remained piled up in the streets of Paris prompting an infestation of rats.
“In a decision that sent waves of relief among many Paris residents, the powerful CGT union representing sanitation workers announced that the three-week-long strike would be ‘suspended’ as of Wednesday (March 29). Crews will join others who were legally requisitioned over the last week to help with the daunting clean-up process. A statement by the CGT claimed that requisitions of trucks, incinerators and personnel, ordered by the Paris police prefect, had bled the movement, leading to its suspension. But added that ‘the combat isn’t over.’ ‘It’s good that the trash is collected. It’s very unsanitary, and some residents already have trouble with rats and mice. It can be dangerous if it’s left too long,’ said artist Gil Franco, 73.”
Struggles Involving Workers Not Confined to France
The outcome of these industrial actions will ultimately depend upon the consistency and strength of the unions and their allies among the youth. These attacks on pensions are part and parcel of the austerity measures being enacted by capitalist governments in Europe and North America.
In Germany on March 27, transport unions staged a one-day strike which shutdown most rail lines, buses and airplanes. A payment dispute involving two unions and their employers has resulted in the most widespread industrial action in the country in recent years.
The EVG union reported to the media that in excess of 30,000 railway workers participated in the strike. Transport of cargo on the rail networks and at the German ports were also impacted as dock workers joined those on strike.
Meanwhile in Britain, unions continued their battles against austerity and the failure of the Conservative government to address the declining standards of living due to inflation. Workers in the education, healthcare, transport, passport and railway sectors have participated in strikes for months.
In the education sector, the National Union of Head Teachers (NUHT), among other unions, have held periodic strikes over the last several months demanding higher pay and improved conditions of employment. Recently the government has made an offer to the education, healthcare and other unions aimed at ending the strikes, yet no decisions have been made.
According to the National Education Union (NEU), real wages for experienced teachers have declined by 20 percent since 2010. Many within the profession are leaving to seek higher pay in other sectors. The unions are demanding salary increases commensurate with the rate of inflation.
Unions have announced that on April 28, 133,00 workers will strike in various public sectors in Britain. The Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pursued a draconian policy of wage cuts despite the inability of the government to curb inflation.
These developments portend much for the future of the capitalist states amid a rash of bank failures in the United States and Switzerland. Central banks in the U.S. and Europe are continuing to raise interest rates while the cost of living increases for working families.
Silvergate, Silicon Valley, Signature and Credit Suisse financial institutions have been the focus of multi-billion dollar bailouts by central banks and larger firms which agreed to provide the necessary liquidity to prevent further economic instability. However, these rescue operations will become more difficult if there are additional bank failures reminiscent of the Great Recession of 2007-2008.
Trade unions, Left parties and mass organizations within capitalist countries must begin to think beyond the acquisition of wage increases and improved working conditions. A different system of ownership and wealth distribution could very well be the only real solution to the overall malaise plaguing the working class and oppressed around the globe.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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To prevent more harm, the COVID-19 vaccines must be pulled off the market. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) led a roundtable discussion Dec 7, 2022, COVID-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work, and Possible Causes of Injuries, to shed light on the current state of knowledge surrounding the vaccine and the path forward. Medical experts and doctors who specialize in COVID-19 vaccine research and treatment joined Sen. Johnson at the roundtable.
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Featured image is a screenshot from the video
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
In this video interview, Michel Chossudovsky reviews the war crimes committed by US-NATO against numerous countries in the wake of World War II, as well as the “fake intelligence” and media propaganda used to justify the invasion of sovereign countries.
“The American public probably is not aware of these numbers and knows even less about the proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible. In the latter wars there were between 9 and 14 million deaths in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan”
“Fake Intelligence” Used to Justify the March 2003 Invasion of Iraq
Colin Powell’s “intelligence report” presented to the UN Security Council in early February 2003 was FABRICATED.It was copied and pasted from the internet by members of Tony Blair’s staff.
“Fake intelligence” was presented to the UN Security Council by Secretary of State Colin Powell on February 5, 2003.
Damning evidence refuting Colin Powell’s official intelligence report was revealed by Dr. Glen Rangwala, Newham College, Cambridge (image right) on Britain’s Channel 4 TV on February 6, 2003, on the day following Secretary of State Colin Powell’s historic Iraq WMD presentation to the UN Security Council:
“I would call my colleagues’ attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed . . . which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.” (Colin Powell, UN Security Council, February 5, 2003)
Powell was referring to “Iraq Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation”, published on January 30, 2003.
According to Rangwala, the British intelligence document was fake. It had not been prepared by British intelligence. It was copied and pasted from the internet by members of Tony Blair’s staff
Video: Interview with Michel Chossudovsky
Caroline Mailloux of Lux Media, Montreal Interviews Michel Chossudovsky
Below is the text presented by Dr. Rangwala to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs
It was presented in June 2003, in the wake of the invasion and occupation of Iraq
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A cargo ship called the Felicity Ace, carrying 4,000 luxury cars collectively worth around $438million, caught fire last month. Thankfully, the crew members were not harmed and managed to quickly abandon ship. The fire, however, burned for a week. This was because the lithium-ion batteries inside the electric vehicles (EVs) in the consignment kept the fire alive. The fire only died once the supply of combustible material on board was exhausted.
Something similar happened in July last year. In Victoria, Australia, a 13-tonne Tesla ‘Megapack’ facility – which uses a vast array of lithium-ion batteries to store energy generated by intermittent renewables – caught fire. This fire eventually burned itself out after three days. In that time, it created numerous ecological hazards, including toxic smoke, which engulfed local residents. But firefighters could do little more than monitor the environmental damage – they had to wait for the fire to put itself out.
‘The most significant danger of a lithium-ion battery is that [fires] are almost impossible to put out once they are ignited’, notes engineer Robin Mitchell. ‘No matter how many safety systems are put in place’, he says, ‘a fire started by a lithium-ion battery is far too challenging to manage’. Such technology, Mitchell concludes, ‘may only be suitable for small-scale systems such as smartphones and EVs’. Even so, the fire risks posed by EV batteries are not insignificant.
Most of us carry a lithium-ion battery in our smartphone without thinking about it, and these are relatively safe. The danger of using larger lithium-ion batteries in larger configurations has been recognised by authorities since their commercial introduction in 1991. For instance, US airlines do not permit laptops with integrated batteries larger than 100 watt hours on board. The likelihood of the battery catching fire is relatively low. But in the event of a fire, to extinguish it, you can’t use water. The fire risks are even greater for an EV, which is a bit like a tightly packed sandwich of hundreds of laptop batteries.
So, what are our environmental campaigners doing to draw our attention to this great new hazard? You may have noticed a curious absence of Change.org petitions, hashtags or alarming reports from the likes of BBC News.
This is even more surprising when you consider the ecological damage and exploitation that goes into producing the batteries. Lithium extraction is filthy and it uses huge amounts of groundwater. In Chile, mining activities in the Salar de Atacama region consume 65 per cent of the area’s water. Toxic chemicals from the mining process have been known to leak into water supplies. Researchers in Nevada found that fish as far as 150 miles downstream were being impacted by mining operations.
Lithium-ion batteries also need a lot of cobalt – typically around 14kg per car battery. Extracting this is dirty and dangerous. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s largest supplier, children as young as seven wash and sort ores as ‘artisanal miners’, according to an Amnesty report from 2016.
This, then, is an environmental story that has failed to make the usual species leap from academic researcher to NGO media campaigner to TV news producer. This is odd, given that the precautionary principle has been a staple of environmentalist campaigning for five decades now. For instance, shale-gas exploration cannot proceed, green activists argue, because fracking risks causing ‘earthquakes’, even though these tend to be largely imperceptible. Yet when it comes to EVs and lithium-ion batteries, the precautionary principle seems to have been laid to rest for a while.
The dangers of lithium-ion batteries are evident in the number of high-profile product recalls. Dell recalled four million batteries in 2006. HP recalled more than 100,000 laptops in 2019 because of battery-fire risks. After causing fires on flights, Samsung’s Note 7 smartphone was recalled – twice – and then sidelined completely.
The costs and risks only increase with larger products. Fires originating in the battery in Chevrolet Bolt vehicles are estimated to have cost General Motors around $2 billion. Audi had to recall its E-Tron SUV for the same reason. Parked Teslas keep bursting into flames – and the company has been castigated for not recalling the vehicles.
Instead of exposing this great environmental danger, the BBC can be found promoting the batteries. ‘There’s no doubt that batteries are central to a low-carbon future’, a recent film in its ‘Ideas’ series explained. ‘Lithium-ion batteries can store clean energy for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, sending it out on grey days with the strength and reliability that rivals fossil fuels.’ Hurray!
Even more curious is that the green priesthood has blessed lithium-powered EVs as an ‘environmentally friendly’ successor to vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine (ICE). The argument is that since EVs do not use an ICE, which is powered by an oil derivative (petrol or diesel), driving them results in lower CO2 emissions.
Yet last week, Britain’s most popular car YouTuber, Tim Burton (more widely known as Shmee), announced that he was replacing his electric Porsche with a petrol-powered Ferrari V12 – because it’s greener and cleaner. His reason may surprise many who believe that EVs are either ‘low’ or ‘zero’ CO2-emission vehicles.
Burton cited a study that Volvo released during the COP26 climate summit. This study, led by Andrea Egeskog of the Sustainability Center at Volvo, received remarkably little attention at the time. Volvo is unusual in being able to make direct comparisons between two versions of the same car model, the XC40 SUV. One is electric, the other has an ICE. Volvo calculated the CO2 emissions over the full lifecycle of the two products: from mining the minerals, like lithium and cobalt, to the end of their lives, including disposal.
Out of the factory gate, the electric car begins its life on the wrong side of the tracks – having generated far more CO2 than the petrol-guzzling version. That’s because of lithium and the other rare-earth minerals required to manufacture the ‘planet-saving’ EV. The emissions from the materials and the production of the ICE version of Volvo’s XC40 are roughly 40 per cent lower than for the EV.
Of course, the ICE model continues to consume fossil fuels for as long as it’s in use. But for the electric version to ‘break even’, so to speak, it has to do a lot of miles on the clock. Its eco-friendliness also depends enormously on how the electricity used to charge the batteries is generated. Volvo advises that, based on a typical global energy mix, if you drive under 93,000 miles you will cause greater emissions by choosing an electric vehicle over the petrol version. In the EU, which uses a higher proportion of renewables, the break-even point is still 52,000 miles. Hence Burton’s decision to return his EV. A high-performance Ferrari or Porsche car will never achieve such mileage. Nor will a normal car like mine. If I replace my 19-year-old car tomorrow, and take the ‘green option’ instead of the petrol option, I will be poorer, because the EV equivalent is so much more expensive, and it will only finally start to achieve CO2-emissions savings over the petrol rival some time in the late 2040s. But it won’t ever reach that point, as the battery will be depleted long before then.
Despite all this, the major car manufacturers have ploughed billions into the development of EVs. EVs have also been heavily subsidised by governments as a means to achieve their climate goals. ‘What if those billions of dollars had been put into the internal combustion engine, how much better would they have got?’, Burton muses.
Many of the EVs sold today are ‘urban runabouts’ – that is, vehicles that will never reach the CO2 ‘break even’ point, and will therefore emit more CO2 than a petrol equivalent. Since the practical value of an EV today in reducing CO2 emissions is zero, its value is merely to signal moral superiority, showing others that you care and they don’t. It is a status good. It makes the owner feel better.
The curious moral of the story is that, even by their own standards, environmentalists aren’t terribly good at practising what they preach. If, as climate change campaigners insist, our cars are ‘killing the planet’, then it’s the virtuous among us who are killing the planet faster. That such hypocrisy from the green elites has gone unchallenged for so long is remarkable. It surely can’t last.
*
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Andrew Orlowski is founder of the research network Think of X and a columnist at the Telegraph.
Lo slogan “Sostegno all’Ucraina” continua a prosperare. Coloro che lo promuovono sanno che gli ucraini sono stati il popolo più martirizzato in Europa PRIMA della guerra? Proprio a causa di colui che l’Occidente ama… il presidente Zelensky. In sintesi, ecco ciò che i nostri media ci nascondono e che dovrebbe farci riflettere sul nostro sincero e amichevole sostegno al popolo ucraino.
Il paese senza bambini
Nel 2021, il numero di decessi supera il numero di nascite di 442.279 unità,[1] una cifra sconcertante per circa 41 milioni di persone: significa che più dell’1% della popolazione è letteralmente scomparsa in quell’anno, senza contare gli effetti dell’emigrazione.
Nel gennaio 2022, l’ultimo mese prima dell’Operazione Speciale, la situazione peggiora ulteriormente: ci sono circa 57.000 morti, ma solo 18.000 nascite, un multiplo di oltre tre.
Sebbene il divario sia stato minore negli anni precedenti, era ancora in un surplus negativo a sei cifre dalla rivoluzione Maya del 2014 e prima. Di questo passo, il popolo ucraino sparirà nel giro di una o due generazioni, soprattutto perché gran parte dei rifugiati e degli emigranti non tornerà, qualunque sia la forma che l’Ucraina assumerà alla fine della guerra.
A questo si aggiunge il disastro in corso, in cui più di 200.000 uomini falciati nel fiore degli anni non avranno più figli. E il massacro continua: ora sono gli adolescenti a essere mandati al fronte. Chi può immaginare le conseguenze a medio e lungo termine per l’esistenza stessa del popolo ucraino?
Il paese dei laboratori bellici statunitensi
Secondo i dati dell’OMS e delle autorità locali, tra cui l’Ordine dei Medici, i tassi di infezione per HIV/AIDS, tubercolosi, epatite B e C rimangono tra i più alti d’Europa e del mondo. La tubercolosi si è addirittura diffusa in una forma unica, altamente resistente ai farmaci.[2]
Il paese è inoltre colpito da violente epidemie di morbillo, nonostante l’alto tasso di vaccinazione, ma anche di influenza suina, botulismo, leptospirosi, difterite, ecc.[3]
Le analisi mediche effettuate dai russi su migliaia di prigionieri di guerra ucraini mostrano che un terzo di loro è stato infettato dall’epatite A, più del 4% ha una sindrome renale e il 20% ha la febbre del Nilo occidentale [4]. La conclusione è che sono stati sottoposti ad anni di esperimenti biologici da parte degli americani. Propaganda russa?
No, poiché il 9 giugno 2022 il Dipartimento della Difesa statunitense ha riconosciuto di aver stabilito “collaborazioni” con 46 laboratori ucraini, ovviamente per scopi pacifici.[5] In realtà, il Pentagono non “collaborava”, ma gestiva direttamente laboratori di guerra biologica in Ucraina dal 2014, in violazione della Convenzione sulle armi biologiche del 1972. Questo è stato documentato fin dal Maidan del 2014, compreso, ad esempio, un rapporto di un ex agente dell’SBU, il servizio di sicurezza ucraino che rivela che “la morte dei soggetti della sperimentazione è stata autorizzata come parte del processo di sperimentazione”.[6] In questo caso, i “soggetti della sperimentazione” sono ucraini, non cavie da laboratorio.
Si scopre inoltre che questa ricerca estremamente pericolosa era finalizzata a migliorare le proprietà patogene di peste, antrace, tularemia, colera e altre malattie mortali.[7] Le priorità individuate comprendono anche lo studio degli agenti patogeni batterici e virali che possono essere trasmessi dai pipistrelli all’uomo, come la peste, la leptospirosi, la brucellosi ed i coronavirus… Coronavirus dei pipistrelli? Vi suona familiare? Inoltre, un programma militare chiamato “Covid-19” è stato finanziato nel novembre 2019, cioè tre mesi prima che l’OMS desse questo nome a una pandemia globale che non ha finito di fare notizia.[8] È solo una coincidenza?
In ogni caso, non c’è dubbio che la popolazione civile e i soldati ucraini siano stati usati come cavie per anni dall’esercito statunitense, con la complicità di Kiev. Inoltre, queste armi biologiche rappresentano una minaccia diretta per noi, perché chi può garantire che questi virus mortali si fermino ai nostri confini? Cosa stanno facendo la Commissione europea e i nostri governi per proteggerci da questa minaccia?
Il paese dei neonazisti
La stampa Reuters stima che ci siano più di 100.000 di quelli che alcuni chiamano “nazionalisti tradizionali” o neonazisti. Che si chiamino Azov, Aidar, C14, ecc. dal 2014 stanno avvelenando la vita degli ucraini e non solo delle minoranze russofone, magiare, ebraiche, rom, LGBT …[9] In particolare, hanno partecipato all’uccisione di migliaia di persone nel Donbass, una situazione che ha le caratteristiche del genocidio ai sensi della Convenzione sulla prevenzione e la repressione del crimine di genocidio del 9 dicembre 1948. Alcune testimonianze rivelano inoltre che questi battaglioni della morte venivano pagati fino a 10.000 dollari per l’uccisione o la cattura di qualsiasi separatista.[10] Un buon affare in un Paese i cui valori democratici e progressisti ci vengono costantemente venduti.
Non esitano nemmeno a entrare nei tribunali con le armi per minacciare i giudici e le amministrazioni per costringere sindaci e governatori. Obbligano persino alcuni comuni a pagarli come soldati per garantire la… sicurezza dei cittadini. Poiché l’Ucraina è anche il Paese senza giustizia, come vedremo più avanti, hanno tutti i diritti, compresi omicidio, stupro, tortura, rapina, racket, ecc. Naturalmente, con la complicità della polizia.
E quando il battaglione Aidar è stato sciolto dalle autorità nel 2016, i suoi membri hanno bloccato un’arteria di Kiev e hanno tentato di assaltare il Ministero dell’Interno.[11] Dopo un atto del genere, si immagina che le pene detentive siano state severe… Non è così! L’ordine di scioglimento è stato annullato e sono stati integrati nelle forze armate ucraine, come gli altri battaglioni neonazisti dopo gli accordi di Minsk e inviati a commettere i loro crimini nel Donbass.
Di conseguenza, sono diventati nostri… alleati, dato che l’Occidente si è alleato con l’Ucraina per la vita e la morte (soprattutto quella degli ucraini, almeno all’inizio…).
Il paese della corruzione
Questo punto richiederebbe un intero capitolo, dato che la corruzione è così diffusa in Ucraina. Nel 2015, la CNN ha riferito che è costata al bilancio statale circa 10 miliardi di dollari.[12] Nessuna istituzione internazionale si lascia ingannare da questa realtà. Ad esempio, la Corte dei conti europea ha rilevato in un rapporto del 2016 di non essere a conoscenza dell’utilizzo degli ultimi 11 miliardi di euro inviati all’Ucraina.[13] D’altra parte, afferma che “i rischi posti dai vecchi e nuovi oligarchi rimangono elevati”. Come ammettere meglio la corruzione senza usare la parola? Ciononostante, i miliardi continuano ad affluire, dall’UE, dagli USA, dal FMI, ecc. Strano, vero?
Per non interrompere il flusso di questi fondi smisuratamente generosi, la questione della corruzione è stata definitivamente risolta dalla Corte Costituzionale dell’Ucraina (CCU) con la sua spettacolare decisione del 27 ottobre 2020: ha assolto il governo, gli alti funzionari e i giudici da qualsiasi responsabilità per false dichiarazioni patrimoniali.[14]
Di conseguenza, un giudice che avrebbe dichiarato di possedere solo una modesta casa a Kiev è ora protetto dalla legge se si scopre che possiede anche una sontuosa villa in Costa Azzurra. Almeno le decisioni dei tribunali saranno prese più rapidamente: dipenderanno solo dallo spessore delle buste paga. Lo stesso vale per i politici e i funzionari pubblici. Il Paese della corruzione è diventato anche il Paese senza giustizia.
Da allora, ovviamente, i miliardi continuano ad affluire in Ucraina. In realtà, siamo sicuri che i leader ucraini siano gli unici a “incassare”? Nessuna di queste enormi quantità di denaro viene condivisa alla luce del sole con l’Occidente, che le invia nel barile delle Danaidi che è diventato il paese di Zelensky?
Comunque sia, è certo che queste decine di miliardi, a cui noi contribuiamo, non hanno portato alcun beneficio al popolo ucraino o alla pace.
Il paese senza diritto del lavoro
Allo scoppio della guerra, i partiti di opposizione e i media che non seguivano la linea ufficiale furono rapidamente banditi. Senza dubbio una dimostrazione di valori democratici per compiacere la Commissione europea… Altrettanto preoccupante è la decisione delle autorità, con la legge 5371, ratificata il 17 agosto 2022 dal presidente Zelensky, di abolire il codice del lavoro nelle aziende con meno di 250 dipendenti, ossia per più di due terzi della popolazione.[15] D’ora in poi ci saranno solo contratti “liberamente” negoziati con il datore di lavoro, che potrà imporre, ad esempio, settimane di 50 o 60 ore e oltre. I lavoratori non hanno più alcuna tutela legale e i sindacati non hanno alcuno strumento di azione. L’Ucraina è diventata legalmente un paradiso per i padroni disonesti.
Certo, un lavoratore può rifiutare un contratto del genere, ma è sicuro di trovare un altro lavoro che non imponga gli stessi vincoli, visto che tutte le aziende, a parte le multinazionali, beneficiano di questo regime eccezionale?
Vale la pena notare che è stato aggiunto all’ultimo minuto che questa legge rimarrà in vigore finché durerà la legge marziale. Chi può garantire che non sarà in vigore anche dopo, se non altro per “fluidificare” il mercato del lavoro? Chi può garantire che, con l’imminente crisi dell’Unione Europea, non venga imposto lo stesso tipo di legge, ovviamente per il bene dei lavoratori?
Il paese della tratta di esseri umani
Quanto detto sopra conduce tranquillamente a questo, ma c’è di peggio: numerosi rapporti dimostrano che l’Ucraina è il Paese dei bambini in vendita, ma non solo. Ad esempio, il Rapporto 2021 sulla tratta di persone pubblicato dal Dipartimento di Stato americano, quindi difficilmente sospettabile di essere di parte contro l’Ucraina, riporta quanto segue:
PROFILO DELLA TRATTA[16]
Come è stato riferito negli ultimi cinque anni, i trafficanti di esseri umani sfruttano le vittime nazionali e straniere in Ucraina e i trafficanti sfruttano le vittime ucraine all’estero. Le vittime ucraine sono sfruttate nella tratta sessuale e nel lavoro forzato in Ucraina, così come in Russia, Polonia, Germania e altre parti d’Europa, in Cina, Kazakistan e Medio Oriente. Le vittime ucraine sono sempre più sfruttate negli Stati membri dell’UE.[17]
Ci si chiede cosa stia facendo la Commissione europea, così rapida nel vantarsi dei suoi valori in materia di diritti umani, per combattere questo flagello… Il rapporto prosegue dicendo:
I circa 104.000 bambini negli orfanotrofi statali sono particolarmente a rischio di tratta. I funzionari di diversi istituti di assistenza e orfanotrofi statali sarebbero complici o deliberatamente negligenti nel traffico sessuale e nel lavoro delle ragazze e dei ragazzi affidati alle loro cure.
Anche se la parola non è scritta, si tratta di pedocriminalità. “Un bambino su dieci tra le vittime della tratta nel mondo proviene dall’Ucraina”. In questo filmato trasmesso su Arte,[18] apprendiamo anche che “una quarantina di adolescenti sono stati venduti a politici locali per scopi sessuali”. La stampa e il pubblico in generale sono stati tenuti lontani dal processo. Naturalmente non se ne fece nulla e chi può credere che da allora la virtù sia calata sulle élite ucraine?
Eppure, chi ha mai ascoltato Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel, Josep Borrell, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Boris Johnson… denunciare queste inaccettabili violazioni dei diritti umani?
Allora, chi vuole ancora sostenere il Paese dei sogni del presidente Zelensky e della Nato che i media occidentali propagandano giorno e notte? La loro Ucraina merita il nostro sostegno e persino i nostri sacrifici?
Per aiutare il popolo ucraino ed evitare la catastrofe che sta già avendo effetti sulla nostra società, c’è solo un’opzione: la pace. È quindi urgente smettere di inviare armi e denaro alla guerra: essa deve cessare per mancanza di armi, non per mancanza di combattenti. Inoltre, corriamo il rischio di finirci anche noi se non fermiamo la follia dei nostri leader.
Patrick Pasin
Articolo successivo: Guerra in Ucraina: il diritto internazionale è dalla parte della Russia
Notas :
1 Si tratta di 714.263 morti contro 271.964 nascite. Fonte: Servizio statistico nazionale dell’Ucraina.
2. Hacker group says US biological labs active in Ukraine, Tass, 25 agosto 2017.
3. EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden Bio Firm Partnered With Ukrainian Researchers ‘Isolating Deadly Pathogens’ Using Funds From Obama’s Defense Department,Natalie Winters et Raheem J. Kassam, The National Pulse, 24 marzo 2022.
4. Bioterrorisme américain : Le Pentagone n’a pas eu le temps de détruire les preuves à Severodonetsk, Alexandre Rostovtsev, Polit Navigator, traduction Réseau International, 20 luglio 2022.
5. Fact Sheet on WMD Threat Reduction Efforts with Ukraine, Russia and Other Former Soviet Union Countries, U.S. Department of Defense, 9 giugno 2022.
6. Arme dans un tube à essai – Comment les États-Unis ont fait de l’Ukraine un terrain d’expérimentation biologique, Christelle Néant, Donbass Insider, 8 dicembre 2020.
7. Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC briefing on biological laboratories in Ukraine, 11 marzo 2022.
8. U.S. Department of Defense awarded a contract for ‘COVID-19 Research’ in Ukraine 3 months before Covid was known to even exist, The Exposé, 13 aprile 2022.
9. Joint Letter to Ukraine’s Minister of Interior Affairs and Prosecutor General Concerning Radical Groups, Human Rights Watch, 14 giugno 2018.
11. La Gestapo ukrainienne… Le bataillon Aïdar fait peur même aux autorités ukrainiennes, Histoire et Société, 11 maggio 2022.
12. George Soros: I may invest $1 billion in Ukraine, CNN Business, 30 marzo 2015.
13. L’UE se demande où sont passées les aides à l’Ukraine, Georgi Gotev, Euractiv.com, 7 dicembre 2016 / Rapport spécial n° 32/2016 : L´aide de l´UE en faveur de l´Ukraine, Corte dei Conti Europea.
14. Constitutional Court of Ukraine has struck a blow to anti-corruption reform – NABU statement, National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (Nabu), 29 ottobre 2020.
15Ukraine’s anti-worker law comes into effect, Open Democracy, 25 agosto 2022.
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Any Palestinian following the developments in the Israeli protest movement against “the judicial coup” will require nerves of steel to withstand the hypocrisy on display.
The protests are estimated to be 100,000 people strong, politicians are jumping over tables in the Knesset, and former army Chief of Staff Yair Golan is calling for a state of “civil disobedience.”
Only yesterday, Netanyahu dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant after he voiced opposition to the judicial reforms, and angry protestors took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities and shut down highways.
The army has been going through its own crisis ever since military reservists, especially those in the Air Force, joined the protests. If that wasn’t enough, large sums of money are being transferred out of Israeli banks for fear of the effects that the judicial reforms might have on the Israeli economy and on the value of the Israeli Shekel. As for gall, that was hardly in short supply in Yuval Noah Harari’s op-ed telling Netanyahu to “stop your coup or we’ll stop the country.” It’s as if Harari has never heard of al-Issawiyya, which continues to be strangled by the Hebrew University where he teaches, or of oppression and occupation, which wasn’t reason enough to warrant speaking of halting the state.
The Israeli government is trying to use these judicial reforms to grant itself absolute power through the passing of two central laws.
The first law aims to establish control over the Israeli Judicial Selection Committee, hence appointing judges whose loyalties would lie with specific politicians rather than with the law;
and the second law is the “Override Clause,” which would allow the Knesset to override any decision of the Israeli High Court of Justice that passes by a majority of 61 Knesset members.
In other words, the government would seize complete control over the state without checks and balances, effectively becoming the sole governing authority in the country given that it also controls the Knesset by virtue of its majority within the parliamentary body.
All of this is taking place without a constitution. This means, for instance, that the government can decide to hold elections once every ten years instead of the standard four-year limit still in effect, and no one can override it; or it could pass laws granting the government total control over the media, or it could put LGBTQ people in jail. But the true crisis will emerge when the Israeli High Court of Justice repeals the judicial reforms and regards them as illegal — that is when the state will enter a constitutional crisis without a solution.
Who will the Israeli security apparatus obey: the government or the judiciary?
This isn’t merely a crisis of the state; it is far more profound, posing the question of what the state is in the first place. Former commander of the Israeli Air Force Eliezer Shkedi said as much in an interview with Channel 12: “I have never come across a situation where the commander of the Air Force, the chief of staff, the head of the Mossad, or the police commissioner has to decide whether he listens to an executive authority or to a court decision,” going on to say that if he were the head of the Air Force he would never disobey a court decision.
The fact that Israeli society has always echoed this hypocrisy is nothing new, and neither is it a novel discovery that “democracy” was never an honest description of a state that defines itself as a “state of the Jews.” But the protests this time are greater than at any previous point, and 35% of Israelis express fears of a “civil war,” a phrase that has made its way into daily use.
It’s precisely this level of hysteria, however, that makes it especially infuriating — because of the power and influence of the participants in the protests, because it’s the first time that the struggle is over the identity of the state, and because the roots of the crisis relate to profound political questions concerning the Zionist project, which are normally considered off-limits.
The possibilities arising from the protests are open to a number of potential outcomes. Most of them turn on an as yet unanswered question: is Netanyahu pushing for these changes to get out of facing corruption charges at the hands of the judiciary, or does he genuinely want to make such a major change to the state’s structure and identity?
In addition to the some 100,000 protestors shutting down roads in Tel Aviv, who are capable of obstructing the movement of the state in several important focal points, three main groups lead the protests and occupy central positions of influence. These groups are likely more influential than any closure of roads.
The reservists
Israeli society is different from many other societies in its degree of militarization. An Israeli soldier remains a soldier even after the end of their official service. This means that the relationship between a “citizen” and a “soldier” is not a natural one.
The same applies to the state in its entirety.
After the end of formal service, the soldier is released into the reserve army, serving sporadically and often volunteering at specific times throughout the year. While generally unknown to the public, the current crisis has revealed just how much the army relies on its reservists, especially in specific fighting units like the Air Force, which the protests have shown relies on a small number of active duty soldiers and a much larger number of ostensibly “normal” citizens. Many of them routinely lead airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere.
It appears that there is now an organized effort led by reserve soldiers in the air force and in cyber-intelligence units such as Unit 8200, which also relies heavily on reservists, to refuse training in protest at the judicial overhaul and to refuse service in the event that it passes. But what makes these protests so powerful is that the members of the ruling coalition government, except Netanyahu, have not served in the army for religious reasons.
Two things make these unprecedented protests from within the ranks of the military particularly notable:
first, the nature of the units engaging in the protest — the Air Force and the military cyber-intelligence units, which attract people from largely well-off and Ashkenazi backgrounds from within the army’s class divide —
and second, that the reservists occupying these positions within the military believe that the weakening of the judiciary will take Israel to the International Criminal Court and weaken its ties to the United States. This would place them under international scrutiny and open up accountability for war crimes that they carried out as members of the Air Force. The Israeli High Court of Justice has historically defended them, even when they bombed Ramallah during the Second Intifada.
These protests are, therefore, influential because of the central importance of the army within Israel, where any weakness in the army is regarded as an existential issue. They are also important because the difference between a soldier and a civilian is complex, meaning that they can’t be disciplined and censored as members of the military since they are also technically civilians. This is what led military analyst Nir Dvori to exclaim on Channel 12 that “in Iran, they know today that even if we decide to launch a strike, that is not possible.”
The high-tech companies
In recent decades, a new economic class has taken shape in Israel working in the high-tech sector, or “hi-tech.” These include large programming companies that have made billions in tandem with the development of the Israeli military industry.
For instance, anyone coming out of Unit 8200 would be able to then create a company, or perhaps sell intelligence and security services, or make a business in private surveillance. Some of the most successful examples of this are the Waze navigation app, bought by Google for 966 million dollars, and the Mobileye mobility app, bought by Intel for 15.3 billion dollars. Other examples include the rise of digital currencies, surveillance technologies, and other enterprises where shareholders control astronomic amounts of money. It has now become a common refrain that hi-tech carries the Israeli economy and is what increases the Israeli standard of living.
This sector is participating in the protests on two levels: first, by transferring funds outside of Israel and depositing them in foreign banks, which have reportedly reached hundreds of millions of dollars, and second, by funding and providing logistical support to the protests on the street, while also recruiting workers in the sector to join the protests. The main fear among this sector of Israeli society is the judicial reforms’ impact on the economy and foreign investment. And while these implications remain unknown, that uncertainty, coupled with what the weakening of the judiciary might mean for property rights, makes for a poor investment climate in Israel.
The influential figures
Another notable feature of these protests is the participation of prominent Israeli figures and personalities.
Those who can be seen giving speeches at rallies include former Military Chiefs of Staff, former Chiefs of intelligence, former Prime Ministers, and even a joint letter by all former Air Force Chiefs addressed to Netanyahu. The media is also completely mobilized in favor of the movement and takes part in putting out the word concerning protests, adopting terminology that casts the judicial moves as a “coup” and constantly covering actions. In academia, prominent figures like the former Governor of the Bank of Israel, Jacob Frenkel, have called for halting the judicial overhaul. And none of this is to mention the former High Court judges, the over 400 security figures, the presidents of Israel’s universities, or the international repudiation of the reforms most recently shown by former NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who warned that the Netanyahu government is “courting disaster.”
What is most notable about these personalities is that they are not calling for preventing these reforms. Instead, they are calling for the judicial reform process to be halted voluntarily by the government — which has been pursuing it at lightning speed — with the objective of taking a step back to fully understand the implications of these reforms for the state. This has been pushed for by Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, who proposed an alternative “people’s framework” for the reform process. In essence, this calls for a deeper investigation into a reform that stands to change the nature of the state.
What’s different this time
This isn’t the first time that Israel has witnessed vigorous protest. Many previous protests have been larger in terms of size — Tel Aviv’s “tent city” protests in 2011 certainly had a larger turnout for the reduction of property prices, focusing on the economy and cost of living, and even the settler protests against the Gaza disengagement in 2005 were larger and far more violent than today’s movement. But these protests are different for two reasons: the first and primary reason relates to the players moving the protests, and the second relates to the participating social strata.
This is the first time, for instance, that there has been such a fundamental struggle over the structure and identity of the state, specifically over the limits of “Jewish democracy,” as well as over the relationship of the state to Judaism as a religion, issues of personal freedom, and the kind of state that Jews want. This is very different from the kinds of protests that Israel has witnessed historically, from the “Black Panthers” representing the struggle of Mizrahi Jews to the social protests of 2011, all of which revolved around improving the social conditions of specific groups. The current protests, in contrast, get to the very heart of the state and its future.
The closest social protest in Israel has ever gotten to this was the settler protests in 2005 after the Gaza disengagement. This is why Netanyahu himself has likened today’s protests to that era. At that time, the question that arose was the same as today’s: what is the relationship with the state? Settlers in 2005 saw in the disengagement plan a betrayal by the state of the social contract. The protestors today likewise believe that the government is betraying the social contract by changing the rules of the game.
The difference, therefore, lies in the protestors’ identity and relationship to the state.
The settlers were far weaker in the face of the deep state, which is what pushed them to make the strategic decision of gaining control over the state’s main loci of power to prevent a repeat of the Gaza disengagement. Today, the elites leading the protests have all the power in their hands and are trying to hold onto that power, from the court judges to the ex-military chiefs to the media. Settlers have a religious and ideological connection to the land at a time when largely secular Ashkenazi Jews, who make up the majority of protestors, believe that personal and constitutional freedoms and the social contract are at the heart of the state. That is why religious settlers refuse to vacate “the Land of Israel” or step down from the state, while many secular Jews have started searching for foreign passports since the judicial overhaul was announced. That is why many of them have refused to serve in the military, especially since the economic and military burden of the state largely falls to them, while religious Jews do not serve in the army for religious reasons.
These groups have a genuine interest in preserving the current structure of the state and preventing the judicial changes that would transform Israel into a “non-liberal democracy.” It would have real implications for the lives of these liberal Israelis, including their relationship with the West, especially America and Western Europe, and all that it entails in terms of the exchange of weapons, aid, and knowledge. It would mean forgoing personal protections in international courts, retreating from the public sphere, and losing freedom of the press. And it would mean the challenging of social freedoms like LGBTQ rights and academic freedom. All this and more would be under attack by the demagoguery of the religious majority, who will no longer have any counterweights to their powers if the judicial reforms are passed. It bears mentioning the response of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to an interviewer’s question about what there is to guarantee that the rights of minorities are not violated. He answered: “me.” This, in short, is the essence of the judicial change, placing the rights of Jews in the hands of politicians, not the courts.
The founding generation
Polling has shown that the number of older protestors is significantly higher than young protestors, most of whom are at the “center-left” end of the Israeli political spectrum. This aligns with general trends in Israeli society, where young people are far more likely to hold right-wing views than their elders. In other words, the protestors, primarily made up of the center-left camp and the elderly, are the generation that founded the Zionist state, the same generation that enjoys economic, military, and cultural dominance. This explains the level of influence and social and economic capital backing the protests, and this is what makes the struggle over the state so fierce. Those who hold the power are fighting tooth and nail to hold onto it, while the younger Israel, the new and more religious and more extremist Israel, is also seeking to prevail. The conflict between the founding Israel and the new Israel has now reached its peak, threatening the state’s very nature.
Shkedi, as the former commander of the Air Force, said that the current reservists refusing service would nevertheless return in the event of a war. That’s why relying on these protests to dismantle Israel from within is an exaggeration, more wishful thinking than realistic. The moment Israeli society faces an external (or Palestinian) threat, it immediately comes together. But what is important is the implication of these protests for Israel’s internal crisis in the long term, first at the level of preparedness and second at the level of cohesion in Israeli society and the military. These have long-term implications for the type of compromise that may be reached in the future.
What is for sure is that the true struggle moving forward, if we are to grant that Israel is a “democracy for Jews,” is over the nature of “Jewish democracy,” and over the kind of Israel that Jewish Israelis want. Will it be an Israel that manages its oppression rationally or a new Israel that is guided by bloodlust and the desire for vengeance: the Israel of the Second Intifada and the High Court, or the Israel of Huwwara and settlers?
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Razi Nabulse is a writer and researcher at the Institute for Palestine Studies.
Featured image: Demonstration against the judicial reforms in Kfar Saba, 16 March 2023 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
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During the World Government Summit 2023, which was held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on February 13-15, the chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, proclaimed that whoever controls the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution will be the master of the world.
Schwab was introduced by the chairman of the meeting, Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Gergawi. It was obvious who was higher in rank. Even in the recently released commemorative film for the tenth anniversary of the World Government Summit, Schwab is the opening speaker.[1]
World Government Summit was founded in 2013 as ”Government Summit” by the absolute monarch of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum (he is also the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates). According to Schwab, the meeting was functioning like a “little brother” to the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos.
In 2016, the Government Summit was upgraded to become an organisation, and the name changed to the “World Government Summit” to reflect its ambitions to play a greater role on the international arena and strengthen its cooperation with global institutions and organisations such as the UN, WEF and the World Bank.[2] To underline this, the SDGs in Action initiative was started in the same year.[3]
The purpose of the forum was to form a knowledge platform at the “intersection between government, futurism, technology and innovation.”
Besides Gergawi, the leadership consists of the two UAE ministers Ohood Bint Khalfan Al Roumi and Omar Sultan Al Olama. All three are closely associated with the World Economic Forum. Gergawi is a member of the WEF Leadership Council while Ohood and Omar are Young Global Leaders (class of 2012 and 2022, respectively).
World Economic Forum is both a co-founder and a close strategic partner. Today, the World Government Summit is very much their branch in the Middle East, while the Sultanate of Dubai in turn serves as a laboratory where the futuristic concepts and technologies that Schwab propagates in his books can be tested. It is a futuristic model country and constitutes the futurists’ own Mecca. This year, for example, the United Arab Emirates announced its intention to launch a digital central bank currency.[4] The country also created a space program in 2006 which led to a space probe being sent to the planet Mars in 2021.
But the United Nations has also participated as a strategic partner since the beginning. Since then, a number of subsidiary bodies such as UNESCO, UNICEF, ILO and WHO have joined.
This also shows that the WEF and the UN have been working closely for several years before their partnership became official in June 2019.
Börge Brende & Klaus Schwab (WEF) and António Guterres & Amina Mohammed (UN)
The UN also has a close relationship with the United Arab Emirates (through a strategic partnership) since the country gained independence from the United Kingdom over 50 years ago. The country is today the UN’s logistics hub in the Middle East and a large number of UN agencies are represented in the country.
This year, the UN climate meeting COP28 will also be arranged in Dubai.[5] Given that the country houses the world’s sixth largest oil reserves and seventeenth largest natural gas reserves, it will undeniably be a bit difficult to take their concern for the climate seriously. The entire country’s wealth and the futuristic metropolis of Dubai have been built with the help of the gigantic oil revenues. Rather, their commitment is about the technological transformation that the “climate crisis” motivates.
The United Arab Emirates is an autocratic monarchy without popular representation and has committed numerous human rights violations. The fact that Klaus Schwab sees no problems with the close collaboration is perhaps understandable. No opposition is allowed that can say no to the futuristic surveillance agenda. But the fact that the supposedly humanitarian UN is in close partnership with authoritarian and powerful leaders is all the more difficult to digest. But on the other hand, all of the world’s approximately 30 dictatorships are members of the UN.
In addition to Klaus Schwab, this year’s meeting was attended by a number of the faithful squires of the agenda such as World Trade Organization head Ngozi Iweala, IMF head Kristalina Georgieva, WHO head Tedros Ghebreyesus (Tedros was already there in 2018 and talked about creating “a world without pandemics”!!)[6], Henrietta Fore (UNICEF), Nick Clegg(Meta), and contradictory futurist Elon Musk (SpaceX, Neuralink och Starlink).
The summit also gathers a number of member companies with close ties to World Economic Forum like Google, Meta, Amazon, Visa, PWC, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and Accenture.
In his “State of the World address” [!], Klaus Schwab declared that we are at the beginning of an extensive technological transformation that will change everything in the coming decades.
Artificial Intelligence, but not only Artificial Intelligence, but also the Metaverse, new space technologies, and I could go on and on. Synthetic Biology. Our life in ten years from now will be completely different…
According to Klaus, it is important to take the lead in this development in order to ultimately stand as “the ruler of the world”.
…and who masters those technologies, in some way, will be the master of the world.
In order to emerge as a winner in the end, developing the necessary leadership skills is crucial.
What Klaus is referring to is that it is the compliant, adaptable, and resilient who will do best. That is to say, those who enter the futuristic path and the idea of the sustainable utopia that Klaus and the WEF represent. He also said that it is important to be prepared for unpleasant surprises!
Because there will be certainly what we call the black swans. The unpleasant surprises which will come in our way.
(A “black swan” is “an unlikely and unpredictable event that could potentially have serious consequences”.)
According to Klaus, the current global crises that have created a fragmented world should not really be seen as crises because they are in fact an expression of “deep systemic transformation processes”. Klaus also predicts that the upheaval processes we have seen in recent years will escalate. This largely follows the scenarios outlined by Rockefeller Foundation’sScenarios for the Future of Technology and Development and in the UN-backed Great Transition Initiative. It’s lead author, the futurist Paul Raskin, wrote in Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilisation (2016):
…various triggers could induce a general, system-wide crisis. To wit, abrupt climate change could generate food shortages, economic instability, mass migration, and conflict. A pandemic, spread by the mobile affluent and uprooted poor, could ripple far and wide, overwhelming healthcare institutions. The mayhem induced by a macro-terrorist attack could segue into a degenerative cycle of violence and disorder. Absolute shortage of vital resources, such as water, oil, and arable land, could generate a tsunami of chaos. A collapse of the global financial system could ignite a cascade of knock-on disruption.[7]
It is not a question of returning to the world as it existed before the crises hit. What is happening is that the old world is being smashed to pieces so that the new and “better” order can rise like a Phoenix. Schwab talks about “we” having to re-globalise the world. But this time with a new management that can effectively “sanitise carbon dioxide” and lead the world to zero emissions by 2050. Back to Raskin’s scenarios for the future:
The Planetary Phase, born of systemic crisis, urges a systemic response.
A Revitalised UN
This is where the United Nations enters the stage as a saviour. During the summit, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a speech from UN headquarters, said the World Government Summit has established a global platform that will help shape the governments of the future. Guterres spoke of the need to strengthen global governance to deal with the “climate disaster” as well as to meet the global sustainability goals:
We need everyone – across the private sector, civil society, and beyond – to work together for the common good. This is our common agenda.
Guterres believes he has the answer to the systemic crisis hitting the world after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The UN’s Our Common Agenda, which was introduced in 2021 and is expected to be adopted at the Summit of the Future, in September 2024 will offer a whole new set of tools for effectively managing world crises (and world population). More specifically, the planned Emergency Platform is intended to gather select representatives of the global community (UN bodies, corporations, and civil society) to address “emergencies” such as “climate crises”, “pandemics”, “black swan events” and ”major events in space” (read more about this in my article Emergency Platform).
This could have far-reaching consequences and echoes the authoritarian Fortress Worldscenario in Great Transition, where “an upgraded UN” is used as a coordinating platform to implement draconian measures using Big Data and surveillance technology in order to protect the interests and resources of the “new power elite”.
The World Government Summit provides a forum where all these ideas are given traction. They intend not only to try and predict future development, but also to help steer it in a desired direction. As Klaus Schwab said during The Great Narrative Meeting in Dubai in November 2021:
In order to shape the future. You have first to imagine the future. You have to design the future. And then you have to execute.[8]
Through the WGS interactive tool “Technology Radar” you can also get an insight into the future that the futurists desire and how far technological development has come in a number of different areas. More than 150 emerging technologies are identified here, mapped out, each positioned to indicate its stage of maturity. [9]The wheel reads like a map over every dystopian science fiction concept ever envisioned and has subheadings like Big Brother, Virtual Matrix and Post-Human Citizen. But this time, not to warn us about them but rather to celebrate the fact that they are finally available, or expected to be in the near future.
Here, we find descriptions of how a social credit system might work:
This technological development could either help citizens achieve optimal citizenship scores or lead to ostracism and, ultimately, exile.
Different surveillance systems could immediately flag citizens with low scores, following them more closely than citizens with high scores. Any misbehavior, no matter the severity, would be noted and immediately punished with the help of robot police audits.
Dubai Future Forum
Museum of the Future, Dubai
In October 2022, the Dubai Future Forum conference was organised for the first time in the Museum of the Future. Behind the initiative is the Dubai Future Foundation, which is led by Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (YGL 2008) and which also includes the leading Troika from the World Government Summit. In cooperation with World Economic Forum, the Dubai Future Foundation is also managing the localCenter for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in United Arab Emirates .[10]
The meeting gathered 45 international institutions and 400 experts with the aim of “designing the future”. Here, themes such as “the Future of our World”, “Mitigating Existential Risk through Foresight”, and the possibilities for human civilisation to become an “interplanetary civilisation” were discussed.[11] The agenda was clearly interwoven with the UN’s future agenda (To Think and act for Future Generations) through the participation of both UN Global Pulse and UN Future Forum. Among the speakers were Swedish transhumanist Anders Sandberg from the Future of Humanity Institute and Jerome Glenn from The Millennium Project.
During the meeting, the Global Future Society was also founded. An alliance of futurists set up to make the Museum of the Future in Dubai a home for the world’s futurists and visionaries.[12] This is like the modern equivalent of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II’s quest to gather all the leading alchemists in Prague in the 16th century. The Futurists are the 21st century alchemists.
In a conversation between Al Gergawi and fellow futurist Dr. Michio Kaku discussed the enormous technological changes expected in the next 50 years. Just like Schwab, Kaku envisions a transhumanist future that changes the very definition of what it means to be human. A total fusion between man and machine.
Computers will disappear and will be replaced by chips embedded in our brains. We will communicate telepathically – and we will be able to record our memories and emotions. Television will disappear, too, and the internet will be neurologically wired. We’ll be using quantum computers faster and more powerful than anything we’ve seen before.
Kaku also believes that the digitisation of the brain will lead to us becoming immortal.
For futurists, there seems to be no doubt whatsoever. They dream of making a digital ascension to become superhumans in the new millennium. Wanting to preserve our humanity and society as it is and foregoeing the offer to be “upgraded” with implants is classified as backward-looking and “bioconservative”. As Klaus Schwab stated in his speech:
You can not catch up with the new technologies. You have to be a front runner. Because otherwise you will be on the losing side.
We seem to have been taken over by an extreme and bizarre techno cult. The question is how can we save ourselves from these unrealistic utopians with delusions of grandeur and create a future that truly benefits our humanity?
Maybe it’s time for a “Major Outer Space Event” where this futurist cult is sent on a one-way trip to Mars? Elon Musk has declared his intention to take off with SpaceX in 2029. The question is, can we afford to wait that long?
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Jacob Nordangård, Ph.D. Technology and Social Change
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***
Germany’s health minister has admitted that the COVID-19 injections can cause permanent disabilities after previously claiming that the jabs are without side effects.
In an interview with the German state media outlet ZDF on March 12, 2023, health minister Karl Lauterbach was confronted with cases of people who suffered injuries from the COVID shots, including a 17-year-old gymnast who was hospitalized and nearly died after receiving the BioNTech COVID injection.
“These fates are absolutely dismaying, and every single fate is one too many,” Lauterbach said.
“These are severe disabilities, and some of them will be permanent, so it’s difficult,” he added.
Lauterbach called for “a faster process of recognizing vaccine injuries” and claimed that “serious vaccine injuries” occur in “fewer than 1 in 10,000 vaccinations, according to data from the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (PEI).”
News anchor Christian Sievers confronted Lauterbach with his previous statements regarding vaccine safety. In a tweet from August 2021, Lauterbach wrote:
True. And additionally, it’s about why a minority of society doesn’t want a side-effect-free vaccine, even though it’s free and can save their lives and the lives of many others. Therefore, I am pessimistic about voluntary sacrifices for climate protection. “[emphasis added]
Stimmt. Und zusätzlich geht es darum, weshalb eine Minderheit der Gesellschaft eine nebenwirkungsfreie Impfung nicht will, obwohl sie gratis ist und ihr Leben und das vieler anderer retten kann. Daher bin ich pessimistisch was freiwillige Opfer für den Klimaschutz betrifft https://t.co/ZP7W07PD4B
“Well, that was an exaggeration that I made once in a botched tweet. But it wasn’t fundamentally my attitude,” the German health minister said.
Sievers pushed back against Lauterbach, saying that the health minister had “always given the impression that the issue of [vaccine] side effects is not really an issue at all.”
“No, that’s not right,” Lauterbach replied.
“I just told you, I’ve always known the numbers. They have also remained relatively stable. These vaccines are used worldwide. 1 in 10,000. So you can say it’s a lot or you can say it’s not so much.”
“It is, in fact, a vaccination that protects against very severe disease and, by the way, very often lowers ‘Long COVID’ risk,” he continued.
“The benefits outweigh the risks, but it’s right, 1 in 10,000, that’s the incidence of severe side effects.”
Executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, Steve Kirsch, disagreed with Lauterbach’s risk assessment.
This is the German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach admitting that the COVID vaccine causes serious injury in 1 in 10,000 doses. But the actual rate for serious injury is ~100X more than that; closer to 1 in 100 doses. For death, it is ~1 in 1,000 doses. But this is progress! https://t.co/x828coBMg6
There is ample evidence that severe side effects, including death, from the COVID injections, occur much more frequently than Lauterbach claims. A recent survey carried out by a polling institute in Germany found that 23% of participants said that they experienced “severe adverse effects” after receiving COVID-19 injections. Furthermore, Germany led Western nations in excess deaths since the rollout of the COVID shots, with a 44 percent increase recorded in January 2023.
Another concerning fact is the significant decline in live births nine months after the COVID jab rollout. The German Federal Institute for Population Research carried out a study that showed “strong associations between the onset of vaccination programs and the fertility decline nine months after this onset.”
Big Pharma excluded from liability
In their contracts with the European Union (EU), pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech were exempted from liability, making it almost impossible for victims of their mRNA injections to successfully sue these corporations for damages.
In his interview with Lauterbach, Sievers mentioned that due to the EU contracts exempting the pharma giants from liability, the German state is therefore liable and has to deal with claims for damages of people injured by the mRNA shots.
The German health minister said that since the pharmaceutical companies generated “exorbitant profits” he expects them to make “voluntary contributions” to pay for the medical costs incurred by people with vaccine injuries.
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Featured image: German health minister Karl Lauterbach (Source: Ted Talk / YouTube video)
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
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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***
Continuing my “greatest COVID hits” articles. To read my introduction to this ongoing series, go here. To support my work and get value for value, order My Matrix Collections here and subscribe to my substack here.
March 19, 2020 [America in ‘lockdown’: Day 7.]
A very brief update. Read this carefully. Many people who were diagnosed as “coronavirus cases” in Italy, and then died, were almost certainly put on antiviral drugs. As you’ll see, below, a significant percentage of these people had prior heart conditions or high blood pressure. But at least one of the antiviral drugs, called ribavirin, carries this VERY RELEVANT warning, from cardiosmart.org: “Ribavirin may decrease the number of red blood cells in your body. This is called anemia and it can be life-threatening in people who have heart disease or circulation problems.” High blood pressure is a circulatory problem. Understand? Get it? LIFE-THREATENING. So how many coronavirus patients have been killed by the administering of ribavirin?
And with THAT, let’s jump in…because there’s more. Much more.
For those people who have any belief in the coronavirus…
Here’s the basic situation: the Italian health agencies are reporting escalating COVID deaths—big fear-story out front…
But in the background, other Italian government researchers are combing through patient records, to take a much closer look…to see whether people are dying from the virus or other more obvious causes.
Are people dying coincidentally WITH the virus, or BECAUSE OF the virus? Is the virus a mere harmless passenger in the body, or is it the driving force?
The Italian results are astonishing, to understate it by a mile.
Bloomberg News has the story: 3/18, “99 percent of those whose died from virus had other illness, Italy says”:
“More than 99% [!] of Italy’s coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study by the country’s national health authority.”
“The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities [so far, because it’s slow work], finding that just three victims [!!], or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology [disease]. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions.”
“More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease.”
“The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5 [!!!]. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions.”
BANG.
Average age of those who’ve died: 79.5. Are you kidding? Lots of prior medical conditions, weakened immune systems, and what this emerging study isn’t saying: all these people had obviously been treated for those prior conditions with toxic medical drugs. Furthermore, once they’d been diagnosed with coronavirus, chances are many of them were put on highly toxic antiviral drugs. Thus delivering the final blow.
Imagining the coronavirus was the CAUSE of death would be a ridiculous fantasy. But these people are counted as “coronavirus deaths” by the other Italian reporting agencies, who are jacking up the numbers.
Does this remind you of any other reports I’ve been detailing? The elderly people with obvious prior diseases who died in Australia; and the elderly people who were diagnosed as coronavirus cases in the state of Washington—all living in a long-term-care nursing home?
Getting the picture? This death-numbers con—aside from covering up the real causes of death, including MEDICAL—is the forward spear being used to justify locking down and wrecking economies all over the world right now, and that means attacking the people in any way connected to those economies who have to work to make a living.
There are statistical vampires at work, using the elderly and sick and dying to feed numbers to health agencies around the planet. Those agencies tap their press contacts, and horror reports emerge, and the unsuspecting public, in economic lockdowns, sit in front of the tube and watch these reports, and inhale the cooked-up fear.
Turn your mind to the highest setting, because nothing is riding on this whole deal except the immediate future of humanity.
And again, cardiosmart.org: “Ribavirin may decrease the number of red blood cells in your body. This is called anemia and it can be life-threatening in people who have heart disease or circulation problems.”
*
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The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Featured image: A woman wearing a face mask is seen in the subway in Milan, Italy, March 2, 2020.(Photo by Daniele Mascolo/Xinhua)
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
Has France become a Police State. March 23, 2023.
The Arrogance and Criminality of the Macron Regime, which is controlled by the financial establishment.
The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris on the afternoon of July 14, 1789. The Bastille was a medieval armory, fortress, and political prison. It was the symbol of Royal Authority under the reign of King Louis XVI.
The French monarchy was obliged to accept the authority of the newly proclaimed National Assembly as well as endorse the fundamental rights contained in the “Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen” (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen), formulated in early August 1789.
More than 230 years later, these fundamental rights (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité) are now being contravened by corrupt governments in France under Macron and around the world on behalf of a totalitarian and illusive financial establishment.
The Creation of a Mass Movement
What is at stake is the creation of a mass movement (nationally and worldwide) which questions the legitimacy and authority of the architects of this insidious project which broadly speaking emanates from Big Money, Big Pharma, the Information Technology Conglomerates, the Security Apparatus, Intelligence, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Energy, and the Corporate Media.
Ironically, the architects of the COVID-19 “pandemic” are now actively involved in formulating the “solution”. The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset consists in installing a worldwide totalitarian regime. What is contemplated is a system of “Global Governance” predicated on depopulation (see Chapters XII and XIII).
Approximately 193 UN member states are slated to be weakened and undermined. They are under the grip of the most serious debt crisis in world history. Under the Great Reset, the institutions of parliamentary democracy and the welfare state are to be replaced by an unelected “public- private partnership” dominated by the upper echelons of the financial establishment.
Michel Chossudovsky
Excerpt from Chapter XV of the Worldwide Corona Crisis, Engineered Coup d’Etat against Humanity
To download the pdf version of the book see details below or click here
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Bastille 2.0 In France?
With regard to France, that mass movement –Bastille.2.0– will require “regime change” and the unseating of Emmanuel Macron as Head of State.
The protest movement cannot be limited to pensions and wages, it must question the legitimacy of corrupt political leaders in high office who have betrayed the French people.
Emmanuel Macron is a former “investment banker” and obedient servant of LCF Rothschild. He does not represent the citizens of the French Republic.
Screenshot, February 2016
Emmanuel Macron is not only a protégé of The Rothschilds, he is also a WEF “Graduate” and disciple of Klaus Schwab.
Macron’s political legitimacy must be questioned.
Restoring Real Democracy
We will seek all avenues through peaceful means to disable and undermine this totalitarian project including dialogue with and within public and private institutions (students, teachers, law enforcement officials, members of the military and the judiciary, etc.)
What is required is to break down the structures of corruption, hierarchy and abusive authority, namely to pursue what might be described as:
“the democratization of decision-making within our institutions”.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
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Canadian protesters rallied outside the US embassy in Ottawa to demonstrate against the visit of President Joe Biden and condemn the West’s supply of weapons to Ukraine.
Chanting slogans, holding placards, and waving flags, protesters said the US is a belligerent country that is undermining peace and stability in the world, calling on Washington to stop spreading war.
“NATO’s actions in Ukraine have been to expand the weapon arsenals of Ukraine, send more and more guns, bombs, missiles to Ukraine. And what this results in is just more and more deaths,” Luca, a protester, told Reuters, according to the Press TV website.
“There’s no world in which sending more and more weapons into a conflict zone will decrease the conflicts and stop it.”
On this day, 20 years ago, #US forces started to bomb #Iraq signaling the launch of their invasion of the country. Millions of Iraqis suffered from the ruthless violence of US forces, notably in the infamous #AbuGhreib prison. pic.twitter.com/UA4MWduXpp
“In more than 200 years of its existence, they have always been at war. So, the United States is warmongering. When the head of US imperialism comes to Canada, we want to show that he is absolutely not welcome, and he should not be coming here,” said Larry Worthlon, another protester.
A third protester, Emily, believes that Canada’s foreign policy should be independent of that of the US as the Canadian people want peace.
Biden landed in Ottawa on Thursday for his first visit as president of the United States to Canada. Biden has visited Ottawa in 2016 when he was Vice President.
Canada has provided Ukraine with $1 billion in military assistance since February 2022 and pledged to give more.
Canada supplied Kiev with National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), armored combat and support vehicles, anti-tank weapons, M777 Howitzers, small arms, and high-resolution drone cameras.
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On March 13th, the Pentagon rolled out its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The results were — or at least should have been — stunning, even by the standards of a department that’s used to getting what it wants when it wants it.
The new Pentagon budget would come in at $842 billion. That’s the highest level requested since World War II, except for the peak moment of the Afghan and Iraq wars, when the United States had nearly 200,000 troops deployed in those two countries.
$1 Trillion for the Pentagon?
It’s important to note that the $842 billion proposed price tag for the Pentagon next year will only be the beginning of what taxpayers will be asked to shell out in the name of “defense.” If you add in nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy and small amounts of military spending spread across other agencies, you’re already at a total military budget of $886 billion. And if last year is any guide, Congress will add tens of billions of dollars extra to that sum, while yet more billions will go for emergency aid to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s brutal invasion. In short, we’re talking about possible total spending of well over $950 billion on war and preparations for more of it — within striking distance, in other words, of the $1 trillion mark that hawkish officials and pundits could only dream about a few short years ago.
The ultimate driver of that enormous spending spree is a seldom-commented-upon strategy of global military overreach, including 750 U.S. military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, 170,000 troops stationed overseas, and counterterror operations in at least 85 — no, that is not a typo — countries (a count offered by Brown University’s Costs of War Project). Worse yet, the Biden administration only seems to be preparing for more of the same. Its National Defense Strategy, released late last year, manages to find the potential for conflict virtually everywhere on the planet and calls for preparations to win a war with Russia and/or China, fight Iran and North Korea, and continue to wage a global war on terror, which, in recent times, has been redubbed “countering violent extremism.” Think of such a strategic view of the world as the exact opposite of the “diplomacy first” approach touted by President Joe Biden and his team during his early months in office. Worse yet, it’s more likely to serve as a recipe for conflict than a blueprint for peace and security.
In an ideal world, Congress would carefully scrutinize that Pentagon budget request and rein in the department’s overly ambitious, counterproductive plans. But the past two years suggest that, at least in the short term, exactly the opposite approach lies ahead. After all, lawmakers added $25 billion and $45 billion, respectively, to the Pentagon’s budget requests for 2022 and 2023, mostly for special-interest projects based in the states or districts of key members of Congress. And count on it, hawks on Capitol Hill will push for similar increases this year, too.
How the Arms Industry Captures Congress
The $45 billion by which Congress increased the Pentagon’s budget request last year was among the highest levels on record. Add-ons included five extra F-35 jet fighters and a $4.7 billion boost to the shipbuilding budget. Other congressional additions included 10 HH-60W helicopters, four EC-37 aircraft, and 16 additional C-130J aircraft (at a cost of $1.7 billion). There were also provisions that prevented the Pentagon from retiring a wide array of older aircraft and ships — including B-1 bombers, F-22 and F-15 combat aircraft, aerial refueling planes, C-130 and C-40 transport aircraft, E-3 electronic warfare planes, HH-60W helicopters, and the relatively new but disastrous Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), referred to by detractors as “little crappy ships.”
The lobbying effort to prevent the Navy from retiring those problem-plagued ships is a case study of all that’s wrong with the Pentagon budget process as it works its way through Congress. As the New York Times noted in a detailed analysis of the checkered history of the LCS, it was originally imagined as a multi-mission vessel capable of detecting submarines, destroying anti-ship mines, and doing battle with the kinds of small craft used by countries like Iran. Once produced, however, it proved inept at every one of those tasks, while experiencing repeated engine problems that made it hard even to deploy. Add to that the Navy’s view that the LCS would be useless in a potential naval clash with China and it was decided to retire nine of them, even though some had only served four to six years of a potential 25-year lifetime.
Contractors and public officials with a stake in the LCS, however, quickly mobilized to block the Navy from shelving the ships and ultimately saved five of the nine slated for retirement. Major players included a trade association representing companies that had received contracts worth $3 billion to repair and maintain those vessels at a shipyard in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as other sites in the U.S. and overseas.
The key congressional players in saving the ship were Representative John Rutherford (R-FL), whose district includes that Jacksonville shipyard, and Representative Rob Wittman (R-VA), whose district includes a major naval facility at Hampton Roads where maintenance and repair work on the LCS is also done. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that, in 2022, Wittman received hundreds of thousands of dollars in arms-industry campaign contributions, including substantial donations from companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics with a role in the LCS program. When asked if the lobbying campaign for the LCS influenced his actions, he said bluntly enough, “I can’t tell you it was the predominant factor… but I can tell you it was a factor.”
Former Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA), who tried to make the decision to retire the ships stick, had a harsh view of the campaign to save them:
“If the LCS was a car sold in America today, they would be deemed lemons, and the automakers would be sued into oblivion… The only winners have been the contractors on which the Navy relies for sustaining these ships.”
Not all members of Congress are wedded to the idea of endlessly increasing Pentagon spending. On the progressive side, Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) have introduced a bill that would cut $100 billion a year from the department’s budget. That figure aligns with a 2021 Congressional Budget Office report outlining three paths toward Pentagon budget reductions that would leave the U.S. with a significantly more than adequate defense system.
Meanwhile, members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus and their allies have promised to push for a freeze on federal discretionary spending at Fiscal Year 2022 levels. If implemented across the board, that would mean a $75 to $100 billion cut in Pentagon spending. But proponents of the freeze have been unclear about the degree to which such cuts (if any) would affect the Department of Defense.
A number of Republican House members, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have indeed said that the Pentagon will be “on the table” in any discussion of future budget cuts, but the only specific items mentioned have involved curbing the Pentagon’s “woke agenda” — that is, defunding things like alternative fuel research — along with initiatives aimed at closing unnecessary military bases or reducing the size of the officer corps. Such moves could indeed save a few billion dollars, while leaving the vast bulk of the Pentagon’s budget intact. No matter where they stand on the political spectrum, proponents of trimming the military budget will have to face a congressional majority of Pentagon boosters and the arms industry’s daunting influence machine.
Greasing the Wheels: Lobbying, Campaign Contributions, and the Job Card
As with the LCS, major arms contractors have routinely greased the wheels of access and influence in Congress with campaign contributions to the tune of $83 millionover the past two election cycles. Such donations go mainly to the members with the most power to help the major weapons producers. And the arms industry is fast on the draw. Typically, for instance, those corporations have already expanded their collaboration with the Republicans who, since the 2022 election, now head the House Armed Services Committee and the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.
The latest figures from OpenSecrets, an organization that closely tracks campaign and lobbying expenditures, show that new House Armed Services Committee chief Mike Rogers (R-AL) received more than $511,000 from weapons makers in the most recent election cycle, while Ken Calvert (R-CA), the new head of the defense appropriations subcommittee, followed close behind at $445,000. Rogers has been one of the most aggressive members of Congress when it comes to pushing for higher Pentagon spending. He’s a longstanding booster of the Department of Defense and has more than ample incentives to advocate for its agenda, given not just his own beliefs but the presence of major defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin in his state.
Contractors and members of Congress with arms plants or military bases in their jurisdictions routinely use the jobs argument as a tool of last resort in pushing the funding of relevant facilities and weapons systems. It matters little that the actual economic impact of Pentagon spending has been greatly exaggerated and more efficient sources of job creation could, with the right funding, be developed.
At the national level, direct employment in the weapons sector has dropped dramatically in the past four decades, from 3.2 million Americans in the mid-1980s to one million today, according to figures compiled by the National Defense Industrial Association, the arms industry’s largest trade group. And those one million jobs in the defense sector represent just six-tenths of one percent of the U.S. civilian labor force of more than 160 million people. In short, weapons spending is a distinct niche sector in the larger economy rather than an essential driver of overall economic activity.
Arms-related employment will certainly rise as Pentagon budgets do and as ongoing expenditures aimed at arming Ukraine continue to do so as well. Still, total employment in the defense sector will remain at modest levels relative to those during the Cold War, even though the current military budget is far higher than spending in the peak years of that era.
Reductions in defense-related employment are masked by the tendency of major contractors like Lockheed Martin to exaggerate the number of jobs associated with their most significant weapons-making programs. For example, Lockheed Martin claims that the F-35 program creates 298,000 jobs in 48 states, though the real figure is closer to half that number (based on average annual expenditures on the program and estimates by the Costs of War Project that military spending creates about 11,200 jobs per billion dollars spent).
It’s true, however, that the jobs that do exist generate considerable political clout because they tend to be in the states and districts of the members of Congress with the most sway over spending on weapons research, development, and production. Addressing that problem would require a new investment strategy aimed at easing the transition of defense-dependent communities and workers to other jobs (as outlined in Miriam Pemberton’s new bookSix Stops on the National Security Tour: Rethinking Warfare Economies).
Unfortunately, the major contractors are ever better positioned to shape future debates on Pentagon spending and strategy. For example, a newly formed congressional commission charged with evaluating the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy mostly consists of experts and ex-government officials with close ties to those weapons makers. They are either executives, consultants, board members, or staffers at think tanks with substantial industry funding.
And sadly, this should shock no one. The last time Congress created a commission on strategy, its membership was also heavily slanted towards individuals with defense-industry ties and it recommended a 3% to 5% annual increase in Pentagon spending, adjusted for inflation, for years to come. That was well more than what the department was then projected to spend. The figure that the commission recommended immediately became a rallying cry for Pentagon boosters like Mike Rogers and former ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee James Inhofe (R-OK) in their efforts to push spending even higher. Inhofe typically treated that document as gospel, at one point waving a copy of it at a congressional hearing on the Pentagon budget.
“An Alert and Knowledgeable Citizenry”
The power and influence of the arms industry are daunting obstacles to a change in national priorities. But there is historical precedent for a different approach. After all, given enough public pressure, Pentagon spending did drop in the wake of the Vietnam War, again at the end of the Cold War, and even during the deficit reduction debates of the early 2010s. It could happen again.
As President Dwight D. Eisenhower noted in his famous farewell address in 1961, the only counterbalance to the power of the military-industrial complex is an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry.” Fortunately, a number of individuals and groups are working hard to sound the alarm and mobilize opposition to massive overspending on war and preparations for more of it. Coalitions like People Over Pentagon and organizations like the Poor People’s Campaign continue to educate the public and work to increase the number of congressional representatives in favor of reining in the Pentagon’s bloated budget and shifting funds to areas of urgent national need.
As of now, the Pentagon consumes more than half of the federal government’s discretionary budget. That, in turn, means the funds needed to prevent pandemics, address climate change, and reduce poverty and inequality have taken a back seat. Those problems aren’t going away and are likely to pose greater threats to American lives and livelihoods than traditional military challenges. As that reality becomes clearer to ever more Americans, the Pentagon’s days of virtually unlimited funding may indeed come to an end. It’s not the work of a day or a year, but it certainly is essential to the safety and security of this country and the world.
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The Global Network monthly space video this time reviews how space satellites are used by the US-NATO to target Russian-ethnic regions of the Donbass in eastern Ukraine and Russian military forces.
Elon Musk’s Space X company is deploying tens of thousands of Starlink satellites in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). The parking lots in LEO are getting dangerously crowded. Scientists fear cascading collisions as a result.
The Pentagon is using Musk’s Starlink satellites to provide surveillance and targeting information to the Ukrainian army.
Whichever nation(s) control LEO enables them to have considerable advantage on the battlefield.
China is responding by announcing it will launch 13,000 satellites into LEO [Low Earth Orbit] in order to prevent the US-NATO from totally filling up the scarce orbital parking spaces.
Danger exists as major powers compete for access and/or domination in space.
A new United Nations space weapons ban treaty is needed now more than ever.
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Everyday Dr. McCullough and I speak to people who have been injured—or have a family member who has been killed—by one of the COVID-19 vaccines. Almost every day, Dr. McCullough examines one or more vaccine injuries in his clinical practice. Because he has become a go-to doctor for people who are suffering from these injuries, his view of the problem is not statistical, but at the individual human level.
The United States has a census counted population of 332 million. Thus, if even a small percentage of these people are injured or killed from COVID-19 vaccines, it’s still a frightful number.
Consider that 58,000 men were killed in ten years of fighting in Vietnam. This was just a tiny percentage of the 100 million American men counted in the 1968 census, but it was still a huge number of men to die in their early twenties.
Yesterday, former BlackRock portfolio manager Ed Dowd and his analysts at the research firm, Phinance Technologies, published a report on the cost of the COVID-19 vaccine program in the United States for the year 2022.
I know from multiple, probing conversations with Mr. Dowd that he is a conservative analyst. A serious and sober-minded man, he is ruthless in eliminating biases and wild assumptions. He and his team have focused their research on the 148 million Americans (between the ages of 18-64) who are employed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles much data on this cohort, as does the life insurance industry, because many employed people receive policies as part of their compensation packages.
Mr. Dowd’s report is grim. As he encapsulated the results in a tweet:
As a true crime author, I always focus on the human cost. I know that the death of a single young person can devastate a family and even an entire community. 26.6 million injuries; 1.36 million disabilities; 300,000 excess deaths. Note that this death count in one year is 5.2 times the number of men killed in ten years of combat in Vietnam.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this state of affairs is that most Americans don’t know it’s happening. Every day, young people are dying from heart attacks, strokes, and seizures caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Most of their families and friends are led to believe that they just died—suddenly and unexpectedly—of acute conditions that were extremely rare in young people prior to 2021.
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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
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There’s very little doubt that warfare has changed dramatically in recent decades, with the tactical gap between leading militaries and those of local powers (or even the usually overlooked small countries) narrowing as the proliferation of unmanned systems continues unabated. With the advent of the information era, the abundance of war footage has essentially eliminated the once-assured readiness of tens of millions to go to war, leaving militaries around the globe struggling to meet their recruitment quotas. Losing even a hundred drones is certainly preferable to having ten soldiers (or even one) killed and/or wounded in action, particularly for politicians and their respective parties seeking reelection. As a result, drones, robots and other unmanned vehicles have become increasingly important.
The combination of these factors created the “perfect storm” for the dramatic rise and adoption of unmanned systems by most militaries around the world. Perhaps the best proof of this has been the mass usage of drones by both sides of the Ukrainian conflict. Ranging from commercial quadcopters to HALE (high-altitude, long-endurance) military drones, these weapons are changing the face of warfare in a manner no less revolutionary than airplanes and tanks did during the First World War. Interestingly, as both the Russian military and the Kiev regime forces deploy advanced long-range air defenses (particularly the former), the role of larger drones has subsided, leaving smaller platforms as the more cost-effective alternative, while also providing significant tactical advantages.
Aside from circumventing advanced SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, miniature drones offer an important upper hand in terms of first-strike capabilities and forward reconnaissance. Apart from Russia and the Kiev regime, the US-led political West is also taking this into account, especially when considering the fact that NATO’s massive ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities have been used to observe virtually every inch of the vast Ukrainian battlefields. Precisely this is pushing the belligerent alliance to equip the Neo-Nazi junta forces with the latest unmanned technologies, both as a way of providing its favorite puppet regime with weapons to counter the Russian military, as well as battle-testing the said drones against an advanced state adversary.
And while the Kiev regime’s pompous announcements of an upcoming offensive may be dismissed as routine propaganda stunts, Russian intelligence found solid evidence that such weapons are being supplied to the Neo-Nazi junta. Needless to say, the political West sending advanced weapons to Kiev is hardly breaking news, but what’s unusual is the participation of Taiwan. Apparently, China’s breakaway island province is working directly with the US on developing and manufacturing the new unmanned systems. Another novelty in this particular case is the ostensible ability of these drones to autonomously coordinate their attacks and act as a swarm, or more precisely, “swarms-of-swarms”, as the program’s name clearly indicates.
The project, named AMASS (Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms), is directly supervised by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Pentagon’s top advanced weapons programs agency. In order to accomplish the task of controlling hundreds of drones simultaneously, the use of advanced artificial intelligence (AAI) is a given in this case. Considering that AAI is one of DARPA’s main fields of study, its involvement in the project is effectively guaranteed. Military experts estimate that several hundred kamikaze drones can function within one network, further connected to a much larger system that includes thousands of drones. DARPA’s share in the project is by far the largest, although Taiwan seems to be providing key manufacturing facilities.
Back in early February, several media reports emerged that the AMASS project was fast-tracked by DARPAdue to Pentagon’s plans to create a “swarms-of-swarms” system that would “simultaneously counter multiple adversarial assets and enable warfighters to operate within the A2/AD [anti-access/area denial] environment”. With Russia and China being the only countries with such capabilities, it’s essentially guaranteed they are the primary targets. This is further reinforced by the involvement of the government in Taipei, which clearly aims to counter China’s A2/AD “bubbles”. These still represent an insurmountable obstacle against which the Taiwanese military is effectively powerless, both in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities.
However, before the possible deployment of AMASS in Taiwan, the system needs to be battle-tested in Ukraine. If it were to be proven effective, Washington DC and Taipei would certainly mass-produce it. Thus, it’s extremely likely that the project was discussed by Russian and Chinese military delegates during President Xi Jinping’s latest visit to Moscow, as it’s in the interest of both to see the program fail. Otherwise, if it proves successful in Ukraine, the Chinese military itself would most certainly face it in Taiwan, endangering the success of a possible amphibious operation in case of a US-orchestrated escalation. And while China has advanced systems capable of countering such weapons (including its own drone swarms), the best possible defense is preventing their deployment altogether.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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This is my presentation prepared for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) “Democracy” Forum, that too place from 21-23 March in Beijing.
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There is no sustainable development without what we call “democracy”- or without people’s, beneficiaries’ active participation. This applies to large political systems intending evolving, seeking the betterment of their populations – as well as for “smaller-scale” development projects, seeking to eradicate poverty and improve the wellbeing of the people.
What is “Democracy”?
Ancient Greece is considered the birthplace of Democracy.
The word ‘democracy’ has its origins in the Greek language, combining two words ‘demos‘ meaning people and ‘kratos‘ meaning power or rule.
Today, we would call it “People’s Rule”.
Democracy was first applied in the City of Athens.
Historically, democracy was born some 2,500 years ago.
The inventor of “democracy” was the Athenian leader Cleisthenes. In the year 507 B.C., he introduced a system of political reforms that he called demokratia, or “rule by the people”. It was the first known democracy in the world.
However, it was never a rule by the people. It was a rule of a select group of educated men. Women were not part of this “select group”
Yet, on the positive side, Ancient Greece has given us the notion of a more egalitarian governance, namely through the participation of the people. Not perfect, but a beginning that has ‘rubbed-off” on our western society, at least notionally, but to be improved.
Today’s so-called western democracies are governed by one or two chamber parliaments. Representatives are often heavily influenced by lobby- or interest groups, way beyond the purpose for which they were supposedly “elected”.
Is China going to be a shining light for “real democracy” where people’s opinions, views and active participation are sought?
This is what happened on Friday 10 March 2023, when China’s President Xi Jinping was reelected for a third term, a first in modern Chinese history:
Xi Jinping was re-elected as the President of China on Friday, securing an unprecedented third five-year term in power. Last year, President Xi was also re-confirmed in the key position of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader.
His candidacy was endorsed by a unanimous vote from the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislature and supreme authority. Apart from being kept as the nation’s president, Xi was also retained as chairman of the Central Military Commission, which is in charge of the overall administration of the country’s armed forces.
Is the NPC representing the 1.4 billion Chinese?
The NPC – China’s Parliament – consists of about 3,000 delegates, making it the largest parliamentary body in the world. Delegates to the NPC are elected for five-year terms via a multi-tiered representative electoral system.
This process speaks for one of few systems of “direct democracies” in the world. It is hardly ever recognized as such by the Occident.
Speaking in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, President Xi Jinping, his hand on the Constitution, took an oath, vowing to “build a prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious and great modern socialist country.”
This noble objective is clearly based on democratic principles.
At the outset and for a foreign observer, it is clear, President Xi is a popular leader. His achievements speak for themselves. One of the most brilliant concepts by Xi is the 2013 inaugurated Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), based on the ancient Silk Road of some 2,100 years ago.
Recently, President Xi – supported by his cabinet – brokered a new diplomatic overture, reestablishing diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It was a democratic method as all three parties agreed on a process.
Hopefully a fourth party, Yemen, may become a key beneficiary of these newly established relations between two hitherto foes. And that, if the atrocious war waged by the Saudis and fueled, mainly by the US and UK against one of the world’s most impoverished nations, Yemen, will stop and bring about lasting peace – as well as fast and sustainable physical reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure and social healing, societal reconstruction of Yemeni values, of balance and harmony.
Yemen could become a case study for sustainable development for China’s modern Silk Road, or BRI. It could become a blueprint for applied democracy in reconstruction and socioeconomic development with the people and for the people.
The Ancient Silk Road was a trade route connecting China with people and societies, dispersed as well as in towns, over hills and mountains and flat grasslands.
Copyright OrexCA.com
The Silk Road began in north-central China in Xi’an (in modern Shaanxi province). A caravan track stretched west along the Great Wall of China, across the Pamirs, through Afghanistan and into the Levant and Anatolia. Its length was more than 6,400 km.
Eventually the one track became many. Then, like today, the old and new Silk Road alias the BRI embraces several routes (see map; origin OrexCA).
These ancient trading routes may have been among the first depicting “applied democracy”; trade as a democratic tool for development. It touched people, consulted and cooperated with people’s participation, in view of improving their well-being through trade.
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Democracy projects the idea that citizens of a country should take an active role in their own development. Government is there to manage and execute people’s choices.
Democracy also supports the idea that people can replace their government through peaceful transfers of power, for example, by elections or referenda, rather than violent uprising or revolution. Democracy supports the concept of “evolution” rather than “revolution”. Therefore, a key feature of democracy and development is the voice of the people.
Decision-making, be it political, economic, or for developmental projects for industry, infrastructure, research, enhancement of culture – the involvement and consultation of people in whatever form is most suitable, is crucial for the decision-making process and for making projects sustainable.
Example
If I may, I would like to share a little example of my own experience in development economics while with the World Bank. My work being in water resources, as well as drinking water supply and sanitation, I was working, among many places, also in West Africa.
On a mission to Burkina Faso, just north of the Ivory Coast, we were visiting villages evaluating their need for water supply systems as they had no access to drinking water. They had to get their water from small creeks, dirty wells, and other sources, often far away and not clean for drinking, causing many intestinal diseases, preventing kids from going to school, and also, gradually lowering their immune defenses.
As we were visiting different villages, we came across a series of brand new pumps to be operated by foot. They were unused. We wondered why and asked around. Until somebody told us – hesitantly – that these pumps were foot pumps and they considered water so precious not to be treated with their feet.
They wanted hand pumps.
This was quite a lesson in people’s participation. Whoever financed and built these foot pumps did for sure not consult with the people. So, the investment was wasted and to some extent also the trust by the people.
People’s participation is extremely important in all aspects of development, including and especially in the development of a population’s well-being.
In addition to the Belt and Road outreach to countries and people for economic cooperation, aiming at development for the betterment of life and societal well-being, China has a myriad of technical, advisory services and diplomacy to offer. All aiming at enhancing harmony, cooperation, and peace in the world.
One of such a recent case was China’s 12-point Peace Proposal in the war between Ukraine and Russia. It was a cleverly thought-out plan, considering history of the two countries, appeasing the current hostilities, transiting through a ceasefire on to the negotiation table; mediated by Chinese diplomacy.
The west, US-NATO mainly, rejected the initiative under the pretext it was not neutral, referring to the close relations between China and Russia.
Nevertheless, President Xi Jinping plans to travel to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin, possibly before the end of March. These plans may be advanced, as China has been offering to broker peace in Ukraine. Despite western skepticism, Beijing doesn’t give up its approach and search for a diplomatic solution. This is an effort for democracy, for regional peace and cooperation.
China is adamant in promoting peace not only in her Asian neighborhood, but around the globe. And one of the instruments is, indeed, the Belt and Road. But never coercion, always participation by free will.
Shortly after launching BRI, in early 2014, President Xi went to visit Madame Merkel, the then-German Chancellor, to invite her, her country, to be part of what Xi called the connection between Vladivostok and Hamburg. Angela Merkel, under the spell of Washington, showed the Chinese President the cold shoulder.
President Xi left Germany, leaving the door – the invitation – open to join any time. In the meantime, last year – 2022 – Chancellor Scholz and a German delegation of business people went to visit Beijing, returning with some US$ 1.8 billion equivalent in contracts for Germany and the wider EU.
It is the power of “open door”, of non-aggression, of democracy.
The long-term goal of both Presidents, Xi and Putin, is to reestablish democratically a natural Eurasian market, connecting a contiguous landmass of some 55 million km2, covering more than a third of the earth’s total land area, containing well over 5 billion people, about 70% of the world population.
It will eventually happen, democratically, peacefully and to the benefit of all the people living on this space and in the world.
Democracy is not just voting; it is taking into account the concerns and preoccupations of the people. Reaching the objective may, at times, be slow, but when the plan materializes, it is sustainable and durable.
This is China’s approach to Democracy.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
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“American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations.”
“The concept of the United States as an exceptional society has a long history, sometimes traced back to French writer Alexis de Tocqueville”
The concept today is being used impose American hegemonic values
Watch the video below. Judge Napolitano Interviews Ray McGovern
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“This country has been having a nationwide nervous breakdown since 9/11. A nation of people suddenly broke, the market economy goes to shit, and they’re threatened on every side by an unknown, sinister enemy. But I don’t think fear is a very effective way of dealing with things—of responding to reality. Fear is just another word for ignorance.”—Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist
We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.
This is mind-control in its most sinister form.
With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a spate of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.
Take this latest shooting in Nashville, Tenn.
The 28-year-old shooter (a clearly troubled transgender individual in possession of several military-style weapons) opened fire in a Christian elementary school, killing three children and three adults.
Already, fingers are being pointed and battle lines are being drawn.
Those who want safety at all costs are clamoring for more gun control measures (if not at an outright ban on assault weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more CCTV cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.
This is all part of the Deep State’s master plan.
Ask yourselves: why are we being bombarded with crises, distractions, fake news and reality TV politics? We’re being conditioned like lab mice to subsist on a steady diet of bread-and-circus politics and an endless spate of crises.
Caught up in this “crisis of the now,” the average person has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork in order to keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality.
As investigative journalist Mike Adams points out:
“This psychological bombardment is waged primarily via the mainstream media which assaults the viewer by the hour with images of violence, war, emotions and conflict. Because the human nervous system is hard wired to focus on immediate threats accompanied by depictions of violence, mainstream media viewers have their attention and mental resources funneled into the never-ending ‘crisis of the NOW’ from which they can never have the mental breathing room to apply logic, reason or historical context.”
Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.
All the while, the government continues to amass more power and authority over the citizenry.
When we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this.
Yet as John Lennon reminds us, “nothing is real,” especially not in the world of politics.
In other words, it’s all fake, i.e., manufactured, i.e., manipulated to distort reality.
Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.
This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.
As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer’s seat, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.
The more that is beamed at us, the more inclined we are to settle back in our comfy recliners and become passive viewers rather than active participants as unsettling, frightening events unfold.
Reality and fiction merge as everything around us becomes entertainment fodder.
We don’t even have to change the channel when the subject matter becomes too monotonous. That’s taken care of for us by the programmers (the corporate media).
“Living is easy with eyes closed,” says Lennon, and that’s exactly what reality TV that masquerades as American politics programs the citizenry to do: navigate the world with their eyes shut.
As long as we’re viewers, we’ll never be doers.
Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.
This doesn’t bode well for a citizenry able to sift through masterfully-produced propaganda in order to think critically about the issues of the day, whether it’s fake news peddled by government agencies or foreign entities.
Those who watch reality shows tend to view what they see as the “norm.” Thus, those who watch shows characterized by lying, aggression and meanness not only come to see such behavior as acceptable and entertaining but also mimic the medium.
This holds true whether the reality programming is about the antics of celebrities in the White House, in the board room, or in the bedroom.
A term coined by media scholars Brad Waite and Sara Booker, “humilitainment” refers to the tendency for viewers to take pleasure in someone else’s humiliation, suffering and pain.
“Humilitainment” largely explains not only why American TV watchers are so fixated on reality TV programming but how American citizens, largely insulated from what is really happening in the world around them by layers of technology, entertainment, and other distractions, are being programmed to accept the brutality, surveillance and dehumanizing treatment of the American police state as things happening to otherpeople.
The ramifications for the future of civic engagement, political discourse and self-government are incredibly depressing and demoralizing.
This is what happens when an entire nation—bombarded by reality TV programming, government propaganda and entertainment news—becomes systematically desensitized and acclimated to the trappings of a government that operates by fiat and speaks in a language of force.
Ultimately, the reality shows, the entertainment news, the surveillance society, the militarized police, and the political spectacles have one common objective: to keep us divided, distracted, imprisoned, and incapable of taking an active role in the business of self-government.
Look behind the political spectacles, the reality TV theatrics, the sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions, and the stomach-churning, nail-biting drama, and you will find there is a method to the madness.
How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.
In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used.
In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination, infantilism, the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.
Labelling something as “fake news” is a masterful way of dismissing truth that may run counter to the ruling power’s own narrative.
As George Orwell recognized, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Orwell understood only too well the power of language to manipulate the masses. In Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”
In this dystopian vision of the future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation), the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda). The mottos of Oceania: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Orwell’s Big Brother relied on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.
Where we stand now is at the juncture of Oldspeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted).
Truth is often lost when we fail to distinguish between opinion and fact, and that is the danger we now face as a society. Anyone who relies exclusively on television/cable news hosts and political commentators for actual knowledge of the world is making a serious mistake.
Unfortunately, since Americans have by and large become non-readers, television has become their prime source of so-called “news.” This reliance on TV news has given rise to such popular news personalities who draw in vast audiences that virtually hang on their every word.
In our media age, these are the new powers-that-be.
Yet while these personalities often dispense the news like preachers used to dispense religion, with power and certainty, they are little more than conduits for propaganda and advertisements delivered in the guise of entertainment and news.
Given the preponderance of news-as-entertainment programming, it’s no wonder that viewers have largely lost the ability to think critically and analytically and differentiate between truth and propaganda, especially when delivered by way of fake news criers and politicians.
The bottom line is simply this: Americans should beware of letting others—whether they be television news hosts, political commentators or media corporations—do their thinking for them.
A populace that cannot think for themselves is a populace with its backs to the walls: mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all.
If not, if we continue to sit back and lose ourselves in political programming, we will remain a captive audience to a farce that grows more absurd by the minute.
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As the war in Ukraine drags on into its second year, protest demonstrations have been taking place in major European cities. They express the growing sentiment that the people are tired of the protracted conflict and fearful of what could come should the war continue even longer. Memories of the catastrophic world wars that ravaged Europe in the first half of the last century and the terrible threat of nuclear annihilation that divided the continent in the second half of the century form the traumatic foundation from which Europeans are voicing their aversion to this conflict, which has the potential to spiral out of control and bring a major war to Europe and the world again.
Broad Opposition to War
There have been protest demonstrations occurring in Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, Great Britain, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Albania, Moldova, and others. European protests surrounding the anniversary of the start of the conflict notably span the Left-Right spectrum in opposing US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) imperialism as well as the economic hardships that have befallen ordinary Europeans against the backdrop of sanctions on Russia and the funding of Ukraine.
Italian port workers aligned with the Left protested in Genoa specifically to resist the use of Italian ports to supply arms deliveries to Ukraine. Meanwhile in France, demonstrations organized by the right-wing Les Patriotes party in various locations across the country called for France’s withdrawal from both NATO and the European Union.
In all cases, the people on the streets at these events identify involvement in the war as harmful to general economic well-being and have been expressing frustration with their countries’ acquiescence to these intergovernmental and supranational organizations in fueling the violence while simultaneously discouraging dialogue. Feelings of skepticism toward NATO, the European Union, and the United States have become increasingly vocal in Europe due to the way that western countries are handling the war. In the minds of many Europeans, their governments are recklessly following the will of Washington, which could lead them into a serious escalation to a wider war.
German Memory
Germany suffered tremendously during the two World Wars and continued to endure the pressures of division and foreign occupation during the Cold War. A century of pain and turmoil brought about by militarism and intervention still informs the collective consciousness of the country. As part of the anniversary protests, thousands of people gathered around the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin for an event called the “Uprising for Peace,” organized by prominent Left party member Sahra Wagenknecht and the feminist journalist Alice Schwarzer. The rally was a show of support for a “manifesto for peace,” which had already received well over half a million signatures by the time of the rally. It calls for the end of military exports to Ukraine and for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow. Demonstrations have also taken place in Nuremberg (in response to the German government’s plan to send tanks to Ukraine), in Munich (during the Munich Security Conference), and outside of the prominent US air base in Ramstein where important matters regarding the Ukraine conflict are discussed among Western leaders.
At the rally in Nuremberg, one demonstrator recalled the historical record, explaining that if Germany gets involved in another war with Russia, then “based on history, it is the worst sign that we can send.” He emphasized that “no war must go through Germany, neither with arms deliveries nor anything else, because otherwise, Germany will be in the middle of it again.”
The last time war broke out in Europe between the two countries, it was one of the most catastrophic events in human history. This view echoes the glimmer of hope from just a few months before the start of Russia’s invasion that the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline could have strengthened ties and prevented conflict in Europe, especially with regard to Russia and Germany. Of course, the mysterious destruction of Nord Stream a year later and the report by Seymour Hersh identifying US and allied hands in the sabotage mission completely turned that hope on its head. Those who strive for peace and an end to the bloodshed are understandably disheartened, yet they are motivated to vocally speak out to European leaders to push for peace.
Across the Atlantic and Beyond
These gatherings have run parallel to the Rage Against the War Machine rally in Washington, DC, where Americans protested against the US’s funding and arming of Ukraine as well as the diplomatic negligence in preventing the negotiation of an end to the fighting. Those speaking and demonstrating against US involvement in Ukraine have parallel grievances toward their government and echo those in Europe.
Voices spanning the political spectrum from socialists to libertarians have found common ground in opposing the many rounds of weapons packages and financial aid to Ukraine, as well as the lack of diplomatic responsibility on the part of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in communicating with his counterpart, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. Since the rally, President Joe Biden has included $6 billion in Ukraine and NATO funding as part of his $842 billion defense-budget request for 2024. Meanwhile, Blinken met briefly with Lavrov on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in New Delhi with no tangible progress on the subject of ending hostilities in Ukraine. While hopes from the American side remain dim, perhaps the protests in Europe may influence decisions at the levels of leadership in their respective countries.
The West’s commitment to Ukraine has also struck opposition from other regions. At this year’s Munich Security Conference, leaders from non-Western countries expressed the necessity of finding peaceful solutions. Brazil’s foreign minister Mauro Viera called upon the world to “build the possibility of a solution,” while Colombia’s vice president Francia Marquez said, “We don’t want to go on discussing who will be the winner or the loser of a war. We are all losers, and, in the end, it is humankind that loses everything.”
Namibia’s prime minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila stressed the waste of money and resources in the name of hostility which “could be better utilized to promote development in Ukraine, in Africa, in Asia, in other places, in Europe itself, where many people are experiencing hardships.” China went so far as to outline a political settlement to the Ukraine crisis on the anniversary of the invasion.
These statements and efforts show their acknowledgment of the much poorer state of affairs the world finds itself in as the war drags on. The Russian war in Ukraine must come to an end one day, and more people around the world are demanding a solution now.
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Weimin Chen is a research assistant and contributor at the Austrian Economics Center. His work has also been featured at the Mises Institute, Antiwar.com, and the Scott Horton Show.
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In an era where the world has become more Orwellian than Orwell himself could have ever imagined, it should come as no surprise that the US government is once again attempting to expand its stranglehold on individual liberty. Enter Senate Bill 686, also known as the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act (RESTRICT Act). Far from being the limited TikTok ban it purports to be, the RESTRICT Act represents an unprecedented expansion of government power and surveillance, reaching into nearly every aspect of our digital lives.
Make no mistake, this piece of legislation is the “Patriot Act on steroids.” The RESTRICT Act would seemingly grant the US government total control over all devices connected to the internet, including cars, Ring cameras, refrigerators, Alexa devices, and your phone. It goes beyond the pale, with the end goal being nothing short of a complete invasion of your privacy.
Under the guise of national security, the RESTRICT Act targets not only TikTok but all hardware, software, and mobile apps used by more than one million people. This means that anything from your Google Home device to your smartphone could be subject to government monitoring and control.
Should you dare to defy the RESTRICT Act, you’ll face devastating consequences. Violators can be slapped with a 20-year prison sentence, civil forfeiture, and denied freedom of information requests. All this, mind you, for simply trying to maintain some semblance of privacy in your own home.
The RESTRICT Act, S.686 – 118th Congress (2023-2024), being pushed through congress against TIKTOK will give the US government total control of all things connected to the internet. Cars, Ring cams, refrigerators, Alexa devices, your phone, etc. A sentence of 20 years in prison,… pic.twitter.com/KTntOxOF0f
The insidious nature of the RESTRICT Act doesn’t stop there. As reported by @underthedesknews, the bill’s proponents are also seeking to undermine Section 230 and limit free speech. The implications are clear: this legislation is not about protecting Americans but rather about stripping away our rights and liberties.
The list of supporters for this draconian bill reads like a who’s who of Big Government cheerleaders and like all attacks on freedom, it has bipartisan support. Among them are Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Sen. John Thune, R-N.D., National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and nine Democratic co-sponsors such as Hillary Clinton’s former VP pick, Tim Kaine, and U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.
It’s time to call this bill what it truly is: an all-out assault on individual freedom and privacy. The RESTRICT Act would usher in an era of unparalleled state control over our digital lives, a nightmare scenario that even George Orwell would have struggled to imagine.
We must stand united against this abomination of a bill, lest we allow our government to transform the internet into a dystopian surveillance state. The RESTRICT Act represents the antithesis of the free and open web we have come to cherish, and it must be stopped before it’s too late.
In the past, it was outraged citizens who rose to the challenge and struck down this huge step toward the police state. And we can do it again.
Share this article with your friends and family and ask them to call their representative now, and tell them to oppose this Orwellian legislation.
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The UN Security Council voted Monday against a Russian effort to get an independent investigation into the bombings of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that connect Russia to Germany.
The only members of the Council that voted in favor of the resolution were Russia, China, and Brazil. The remaining 12 members abstained from the vote, including the US, the likely culprit of the attacks.
The resolution had little chance of passing since it needed at least nine votes in favor and no veto from any of the five permanent members of the Security Council: the US, China, Russia, Britain, and France.
Russia has been pushing for an international inquiry into the Nord Stream sabotage since investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report in February that alleged President Biden ordered the bombings.
Hersh’s report said US Navy divers planted explosives on the pipelines in June 2022 under the cover of NATO exercises in the Baltic Sea. The operation was carried out with Norway, and a Norwegian spy plane dropped a sonar buoy on September 26, 2022, that detonated the explosives.
The US has denied responsibility for the bombing, and The New York Timesrecently published a story that claimed US officials believe a “pro-Ukrainian group” might be responsible for the sabotage. But according to Hersh, the new narrative was planted by the CIA after members of the spy agency were ordered to concoct a cover story to point responsibility away from the US following a meeting between President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
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The idea of forming a Serbia-Hungary Strategic Council was announced by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić after his meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Belgrade on March 25. Specifically, Vučić announced that the strategic council between the two countries would be established in May. As Serbia is a non-EU/NATO member, unlike Hungary, it is guaranteed that Brussels and Washington are not happy about the strengthening ties between the two neighbouring countries.
Accordingly, the council would deal with the issue of security, the fight against terrorism, and opens the possibility of cooperation between their armies and police in the military-technical sense. It is for this reason, despite the benefits that this strategic cooperation brings for both countries, Brussels and Washington are not happy with this emergence.
The issue of security is very important and is back at the forefront due to the crisis in Ukraine. More than ever, the spotlight has not just been placed on security in the traditional sense, but also in regards to energy. Serbia and Hungary are connected not only by good mutual relations, but also by their tense relationship with the European Union. Although Hungary is an EU member, it has a number of open issues with the bloc, such as the handling of the war in Ukraine. Fundamentally, Serbia’s and Hungary’s current interests are opposed to that of the EU, and it is also this factor which unites them.
Serbia has excellent economic relations with Russia and China, and Orbán as a Hungarian nationalist, broke from EU consensus and concluded that his country should not have confrontational ties with Moscow. Serbia and Hungary are looking towards a Eurasian future rather than an Atlanticist one, something which binds their commonalities and necessitates the need for a common strategic council.
In addition, Hungary is surrounded by countries with which it has a rather difficult historical (and sometimes current) relations with, regardless of mutual NATO and EU membership, namely Romania and Slovakia. However, Hungary also never had great relations with Ukraine or Yugoslavia. With Serbia though, the successor of Yugoslavia, this has massively changed.
Both Belgrade and Budapest have invested a lot of energy into thawing relations in the last ten years. This developing relationship was epitomised with the Serbian Parliament in December ratifying the agreement on strategic cooperation between Serbia and Hungary.
Hungary is the only country neighbouring Serbia that Belgrade has concluded a strategic cooperation with, and it relates to more than twenty areas. This includes infrastructure and the economy, where Hungary is already among the first foreign trade partners of Serbia. This also extends to other sectors too, which is why Hungary is rapidly becoming one of Serbia’s closest partners.
When the future strategic council of Serbia and Hungary is viewed objectively, it is seen purely political in nature and an effort to thrive under new global circumstances. That is why the council is essential. The current events in Ukraine, where there is a large Hungarian minority, and the remaining question over Kosovo, means that Serbia and Hungary will need to support each other more than ever as most of Europe is in favour of backing the Kiev regime and separatists in Kosovo.
Hungary has openly and repeatedly said that it does not want to be part of any adventure and war. Serbia also maintains a neutral position politically, although the majority of people are pro-Russian because of their own experience with NATO and the entire historical experience preceding and following it.
The fact that Budapest has good relations with not only Belgrade, but also the Republika Srpska (the Serbian entity of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Federation), is also important as it demonstrates again that Orbán’s Hungary is not only working based on values and principles, but also on the need for an ally in the region. Practically, with an interesting turn of historical circumstances, the Hungarians realised that their most reliable ally would be the Serbs, both in Serbia and Republika Srpska.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó commented on the meeting in a video on his Facebook page. He stressed that the strategic partnership and friendship between Belgrade and Budapest will greatly contribute to Hungary’s ability to better address the challenges it faces – primarily economic, security, and energy supply.
Szijjártó also recalled that under the long-term agreement with the Russian state-owned Gazprom, “natural gas for Hungary’s supply comes via Serbia, and Hungary stores hundreds of millions of cubic metres of gas for Serbia.”
European countries have destroyed their economies for sanctioning Russia and cutting gas supplies, something Budapest has done its best to avoid. For this reason, it is increasingly finding itself with more common interests with Belgrade and will not be hindered from jointly pursuing them just because Serbia is not an EU or NATO member.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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***
Is climate change happening? Of course, climate change has always been happening, long before the industrial revolution. Earth has gone through multiple cycles of extreme climate change and so have other planets, like Mars, for example.
But the question today is, how much does human activity influence modern day climate change? The general public has been primed to believe that climate change is predominantly the result of human activity, and that we are headed towards a complete climate catastrophe within the next couple of decades.
The public has also been told that approximately 97 percent of scientists agree with the catastrophe narrative, but is this really true? Where did this number come from?
The truth is, there is quite a large group of climate scientists and academics in the field that disagree with the oversimplified view of climate change that is constantly being spouted, but the public is not told this.
The whole system revolves around the idea that the majority can be made to believe anything, so long as it is repeated loudly and often. And it works. — NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden
It’s similar to what we saw with COVID-19, where a large minority, or perhaps majority of doctors, scientists, vaccine developers and renowned infectious disease experts opposed lockdowns, mask, and vaccine mandates. Many of them were censored and referred to as “conspiracy theorists.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the mainstream can make the minority feel like the majority, and the majority feel like the minority. Perhaps this is something we’ve seen with this “97%” figure?
The History of Climate Science & The Origins of Doomsday Scenarios
In the 1980s, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund became the sole authority of the global warming agenda. The fund boasts of being one of the first major global activists by citing its strong advocacy for both the 1988 formation of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 1992 creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This is when most of the messaging regarding climate ‘alarmism’ began, with consistent articles in the mainstream predicting doom-like armageddon scenarios.
For example, on June 29, 1989, the Associated Press (AP) ran a story containing an interview with Noel Brown, the director of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Program at the time. In it he stated:
“Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”
This of course did not happen, yet it resembles the same type of predictions we see happening today. It begs the question, what is driving these 10 year predictions, and are they accurate? Do most scientists agree with them?
When Did The “97 Percent Consensus” Number Enter Mainstream Consciousness?
It appears that an article by Naomi Oreskes, a Professor of Science History and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, got the ball rolling.
Oreskes’ 2004 article included an analysis of 928 papers containing the keywords “global climate change.” It stated, “none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position” of man made global warming. She claimed that any remaining professional dissent is exceedingly minor.
Furthermore, in 2010 academic William R. Love Anderegg found that 97% to 98% of the 200 “most prolific” writers on climate change believed that man made greenhouse gases have been responsible for most of the warming we are experiencing. This received a lot of attention, despite the fact that 200 researchers and “writers” out of the thousands who had contributed to the climate science debate is nowhere close to a consensus.
A 2013 paper by Cook, et al., seemed to be the most significant publication to popularize the 97% figure. The authors used methodology similar to Oreskes but based their analysis on abstracts rather than full content or a real examination of the science.
The paper looked at 12,000 papers published between 1991 and 2011 that contained the words “global warming” or “global climate change.” It claimed that 97% of climate scientists agreed with the idea that ‘humans are changing the climate.’ It went on to become one of the most popular papers of all time, reaching well over 1 million downloads.
Is There Really A Consensus?
According to Roy Spencera, a meteorologist and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who served as senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and Joseph Bast, a Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute,
The assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.” — Roy Spencera and Joseph Bast, The Wall Street Journal
There is available evidence showing that many experts in the field do not agree that humans are solely responsible for an ‘armageddon level’ climate change type of scenario, and that there are a myriad of factors that are not being considered when it comes to other factors that influence our climate. It appears many scientists who are not actually climate scientists have simply jumped on the bandwagon.
A 2012 survey, for example, found strong skepticism among members of the American Meteorological Society. A petition signed by 31,000 scientists states that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of […] carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” They key word there is “catastrophic.”
“Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch – most recently published in Environmental Science and Policy in 2010 – have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.
Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.”
— Roy Spencera & Joseph Bast
One of the methods used to assert the claim that there is an overwhelming consensus seems to be by asking or polling scientists as to whether they agree that C02 levels in the atmosphere have increased, that the Earth has been warming (albeit only a little) and that man has played some part.
The problem with that is this is something almost all climate scientists can agree on. What’s not agreed upon is the fact that this has no obvious implication of danger, yet that narrative is and has been constantly portrayed as support for catastrophism and alarmism.
“Our crop plants evolved about 400 million years ago, when CO2 in the atmosphere was about 5000 parts per million! Our evergreen trees and shrubs evolved about 360 million years ago, with CO2 levels at about 4,000 ppm. When our deciduous trees evolved about 160 million years ago, the CO2 level was about 2,200 ppm – still five times the current level.
— Dennis T. Avery, agricultural and environmental economist, senior fellow for the Center for Global Food Issues in Virginia, and formerly a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State
The Politicization of Climate Science
As a result of alarmism, political policy and major decisions regarding how we live are put into motion, all which seem to further take away our privacy, freedom, and increase the already strong surveillance state which eventually puts more wealth and control into the hands of the already wealthy “one percent.” Some are even concerned that climate lockdowns may be implemented one day in the future.
President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry were two of many who repeatedly used the 97 percent tagline. Kerry went so far as to say that “97 percent of peer-reviewed climate studies confirm that climate change is happening and that human activity is largely responsible.” This is still the messaging we get today from big politics.
Furthermore, an important consideration in this discussion is that we are attempting to define a single number to represent a range of opinions which have many nuances.
As Oreskes says in her article, “Often it is challenging to determine exactly what the authors of the paper[s] do think about global climate change.”
Doomsday scenarios may generate clicks and sell advertisements, but they truly fail to convey that science is nuanced. Apocalyptic predictions are not at all evidence based, they simply contribute to unnecessary panic and fear offering false narratives that can overwhelm readers, leading to inaction and hopelessness, especially among today’s youth.
Where have we seen this politicization before? Several researchers from various academic institutions in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada published a paper in February 2022 titled, “The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: Why Mandates, Passports, and Segregated Lockdowns may cause more Harm than Good.” In it, they explain,
“Public and political discourse quickly normalized stigma against people who remain unvaccinated, often woven into the tone and framing of media articles; for example, a popular news outlet compiled a list of “notable anti-vaxxers who have died from COVID-19” (Savulescu and Giubilini, 2021). Political leaders have singled out the unvaccinated, blaming them for: the continuation of the pandemic; stress on hospital capacity; the emergence of new variants; driving transmission to vaccinated individuals; and the necessity of ongoing lockdowns, masks, school closures and other restrictive measures.
Political rhetoric has descended into moralizing, scapegoating, blaming and condescending language using pejorative terms and actively promoting stigma and discrimination as tools to increase vaccination.”
There are many examples that can be found to illustrate how politics dominates climate reports. For example, if we go back to the 1995 2nd Assessment Report of the UN IPCC, we can see how much the agenda overshadowed and muted the actual science. The scientists included these three statements in the draft:
“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed (climate) changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
“No study to date has positively attributed all or part (of observed climate change) to anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) causes.”
“Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”
Yet, the “summary” and conclusion statement of the IPCC report was written by politicians, not scientists. On many occasions, multiple climate scientists have explained that the rules force the scientists to change their reports to match the politicians’ final ‘summary. Those three statements by scientists above were replaced with this:
“The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”
The New York Times briefly covered the fact that many “skeptics” were making these accusations, that the report was overplaying and inaccurately connecting human activity to the potential for catastrophic climate change, with no science to back that assertion.
Dr. Richard Lindzen, lead author of Chapter 7, “Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,” of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report on climate change, and retired Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology expresses his concern,
“How did we get to this point where the science ceased to be interested in the fascinating question of accounting for the remarkable history of the Earth’s climate for an understanding of how climate actually works and instead devoted itself to a component of political correctness. Perhaps one should take a broader view of what’s going on.”
There are basically three groups of people dealing with the issue of climate change. Groups 1 and 2 are scientists, and group three consists of politicians, environmental groups and media.
In the video below, Lindzen does a great job of breaking down of where scientists are really at.
Final Thoughts
It’s always seemed odd to me that major environmental disasters, like the recent chemical spill/train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and catastrophic human activity that has led to massive deforestation and the extreme pollution of our fresh water lakes, air, soils, and oceans, continue to be ignored and not presented as urgent. There’s no doubt about it, we are destroying our mother. We have to ask ourselves, do governments really care about the well being of Earth, or are they simply using climate change for selfish purposes and ulterior motives, like big business?
It’s frustrating to watch, because humans have the potential to create a world and an environment where all life can thrive.
Furthermore, ground breaking technologies that are 100 percent environmentally friendly continue to be ignored. You can see a few examples we’ve covered here, and here.
The complex science behind the CO2 narrative specifically is a topic for another article. The correlation between C02 and temperature has many holes in it.
“Now here is the currently popular narrative concerning this system. The climate, a complex multifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable – carbon dioxide – among many variables of comparable importance. This is an extraordinary pair of claims based on reasoning that borders on magical thinking. It is, however, the narrative that has been widely accepted, even among many sceptics. This acceptance is a strong indicator of the problem Snow identified. Many politicians and learned societies go even further: They endorse carbon dioxide as the controlling variable, and although mankind’s CO2 contributions are small compared to the much larger but uncertain natural exchanges with both the oceans and the biosphere, they are confident that they know precisely what policies to implement in order to control.”
Lindzen mentions that believing in the CO2 narrative is pretty close to believe in “magic.” How could such an expert in the field, and thousands of others, come to this conclusion? And why is there such a polarizing viewpoint from big media and politicians?
Perhaps he and many others are wrong, but the point is that there is never a discussion or presentation of opposing viewpoints within the mainstream. Instead, scientists who speak out against the status quo viewpoint are constantly demonized, ridiculed, character assassinated and censored.
During a World Economic Forum (WEF) anti-disinformation panel in September last year, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming, announced that they “own the science.” She was specifically referencing their new climate change agenda, and their efforts to censor “misinformation.”
From my perspective, all I see is dogma due to political actors and others seeking to exploit the opportunities that abound in the multi-trillion dollar energy sector, and leaders that hide behind the guise of actually caring about our planet. But perhaps I am wrong.
I’ve been a big advocate for clean energy technologies and the preservation of our planet for many years. It’s the main drive behind my work. I am all for clean green initiatives, but the consciousness and intention behind these initiatives is what concerns me.
What type of world will we create if we can’t discuss basic ideas? What type of world will we create when we choose to run, hide and censor as opposed to having important conversations? How can we stop identifying so deeply with positions, so that we can be more free to shift ideas when new information helps us understand things better?
Regenerate, Beyond The C02 Narrative
I’d like to point you to our documentary, Regenerate, Beyond The C02 Narrative. One of the most important aspects of Regenerate is that we are looking at our environment from such a limited point of view that we can’t identify the real issues we face, and that our level of thinking, or consciousness, is completely disconnected from the solutions required to truly shift our relationship with our planet. Thus, we are creating solutions that don’t truly address making the environment cleaner or better long term.
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***
President Macron is not a king but a pawn of global finance
The current tenant of the Elysee Palace has been called by NUPES, the left coalition opposition in France, a President-King. To do so is to give him a bigger role and more power than what he has. In reality, Macron is just one of the numerous figure heads of the billionaire class that meets in Davos once a year. The power resides there, concentrated, often anonymous and always brutal in a masquerade of do-gooders. In Davos, the financial Masters of the Universe, posturing as philanthropists, have been in reality jealously protecting the complex Gordian Knot that is global capitalism. Perhaps France’s radical protesters, in their quasi insurrection form, are trying to emulate Alexander the Great by putting this giant Gordian Knot to the sword!
Macronie’s authoritarian fascist traits
To suppress and repress strikes and protests, Macron’s government has adopted a strategy of brutal repression, exercised by his Robocop Praetorian Guards, which are mainly composed of riot police from the CRS and the BRAV-M. Of course, Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne’s government justifies the alarming crescendo in police violence against retirement reform protesters and more recently against Green radical activists in Deux Sevres by saying that the State violence protect people and property from dangerous rioters.
This is the Law & Order above all motto: common grounds, with various degrees of brutality, to all authoritarian and fascist regimes. By following this dangerous strategy, Macron’s associates and sponsors have surely made the calculation that sooner of later they should be able to flip the proverbial silent majority in France, and by doing so reduce the current support for the protests, which is at around 63 percent of the overall population, and at an astronomical 90 percent of the active workers.
This strategy of “chose our Republican order” instead of the chaos from the populace, is unlikely to work. Further, it is a very dangerous political game. In fact, the chaos comes from the inability of the government to get a pulse of France’s public opinion. Besides, violence is a vicious circle, and the extreme violence exercised by units like the BRAV-M or the CRS on protesters, in the name of the Republic, is fueling violent reactions from the more radical elements of the protests.
Under the former Rothschild banker’s administration, In this Orwellian construct where war is peace and lies are truth, French police forces, who are supposed to be agents for public peace (Guardiens de la Paix) and for order (Force de l’Ordre) are now, de facto, vectors of chaos, sternly criticized and even condemned by worldwide public opinion.
On his deathbed, George Orwell gave a TV interview to the BBC. What is said was chilling, and it applies to France’s turmoil: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stumping on a human face forever. The moral to be drawn from this nightmare situation is a simple one: Don’t let it happen! It depends on you!”
The Prince’s Consigliere
Every prince has his Machiavelli. In the case of Macron his name is Alexis Kohler. Like all Consiglieres, Kohler is Macron’s number one adviser. He is also the palace gatekeeper, and ultimately the only one who controls access to the president. According to several political insiders, Kohler was the one absolutely adamant about the imperative of the unpopular retirement reform. Kholer, the man in the shadow running the Macronie, apparently picked Elizabeth Borne as prime minister. According to a former Macron adviser who made this statement anonymously: ” Emmanuel Macron has never governed so isolated. The core of his actions has always been elaborated with Alexis Kohler. But they are few people left to balance the duo, bring other points of view, and even less contradiction.”
Kohler just like Macron is an elitist who has contempt for ordinary French people and even elected officials. Both are technocrats and share a sort of arrogant petulance, an aspiration to modernity, which no longer charms French people. Jupiter-want-to-be has also a knack for provocation, a special talent to pour gasoline on an open flame. One of the little statements that got protesters even more enraged is what he said a few days ago: “La foule, quelle qu’elle soit, n’a pas de legitimite face au peuple qui s’exprime souverain a travers ses elus.” (The populace, whomever they are, have no legitimacy compared to the people who express their sovereignty through their elected officials). One can easily imagine Alexis Kohler Consiglieri /Machiavelli whisper to his Prince some awful Machiavelli advice such as: “Power is the pivot on which everything hinges. He who has the power is always right. The weaker is always wrong.”
Unfortunately for Kohler and Macron, and fortunately for France, the advices of Machiavelli in “The Prince” do not apply in a country with a rich history of serious revolutions. No, France cannot be run like a start up company or be managed like a large hedge fund. No, seeking advice from the CEO of Black Rock or the consulting firm McKinsey should have been absolutely out of the question. One cannot behave like a banker and have at the same time aspirations to be considered a statesman. The interests of the French do not meet with those of the CAC 40, Wall Street or Goldman Sacks. Emmanuel Macron is perceived as the president of the rich, and that is precisely what he is. It is utterly obscene that France’s top five billionaires have more wealth than 27 million French citizens! No wonder people who can barely make ends meet are mad! This wealth concentration is likely higher than the one in France circa 1789. At some point, something will have to give. It happened before. This time, it could be now!
Potential solutions for France’s political turmoil
The government of Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne has in reality very few ways out of the current turmoil. The easy way out for the administration would be, of course, to withdraw the law or at least postpone it, but France’s Jupiter, drunk with power, has dug his heels deep like a capricious and ill tempered child. He has stubbornly refused to pull out his retirement reform law despite the massive protests. It would be wise to reconsider, but he won’t as he would lose face in the battle of the will he has engaged in with a majority of French citizens.
At the moment, if the retirement law is implemented, governing the country will be basically an impossible task. The best options to calm things down are drastic. Firstly, it could be a dissolution of the National Assembly to organize new parliamentary elections. Gains would likely be made by the NUPES & Marine Le Pen‘s RN. In such a case there would be two options for prime minister, either Jean-Luc Melenchon or Marine Le Pen. After all, this type of power sharing wouldn’t be the first time during the Fifth Republic. Francois Mitterrand lost a parliamentary election while president, he had to pick Jacques Chirac, from the opposition, as his prime minister. Then it was Chirac’s turn to lose an election and he picked socialist Lionel Jospin. Secondly, as an alternative to calling for new elections, the French government could organize a referendum without much delay.
Many factors play in favor of the retirement reform strikers and protesters. This has become completely beyond the unpopular reform, as it is only the tip of the iceberg of France social turmoil. It is now a perfect storm for capitalism and the billionaire class that Macron represents. A lot of factors play in favor of radical French protesters who might want to pursue a toppling of the Macron government.
Other potential tipping points are: double digit inflation on food items; the fact that 10 million people in France have to rely on food banks to eat; a remarkable growth in the awareness of climate collapse; the worldwide banking crisis, which started at Silicon Valley Bank and then spread to Credit Suisse and more recently hit Deutsche Bank. This will not help Macron and his little financial wizard friends to sell the French people on the notion of how smart they are and that “banks and financial markets are on solid ground.”
COVID, war in Ukraine and all that jazz
As matter of fact, all of it, everywhere is on shaky ground. It should obviously make citizens in the West wonder about the validity of bleeding public finances to buy weapons for Ukraine in a war that Ukrainians cannot possibly win. With the COVID crisis and now Ukraine, governments in the EU and US thought that they had beaten their respective populations’ will into submission through the manipulation of fear, respectively of a virus and of autocrat Vladimir Putin. If COVID was a golden goose for the biotech industry, the war in Ukraine is a money tree, more like a forest, for the merchants of death of the global military-industrial complex either in the US, the EU, Russia, Iran and even China. All of them manufacturing weapons, all of them to blame for this infinite mayhem, waste of resources, and, of course, human lives.
The radical French protesters, and united trade union workers alike are moving heaven and Earth to break the mold fabricated to suit global capitalism’s perverse imperatives! With nothing to lose, they are standing strong! All the stress factors on global capitalism such as inflation, debt, banking meltdown and climate crisis events work in their favor as catalysts to shore up and fuel the protests, and this could mark the beginning of the end for a capitalist system in tatters!
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***
“In my seventy-plus years from 1946 to now, the chorus of fear-mongering bullshit has never ceased – only grown louder. The joke is on us. Ha Ha Ha.” – Oliver Stone, Chasing the Light
Perhaps silence is the best response to the endless cavalcade of official lies that is United States history. The Internet and digital technology have allowed those lies to increase exponentially in number and frequency with the result that people’s minds have become like 7-Eleven stores, open 24/7 for snack-crap “news.”
But once you become conscious that it’s lies night and day, it sets your head aswirl and plunges your soul into depths of despair. You are tempted to retreat from such knowledge and talk of trees and trivia. But you are ashamed of your country. It’s hard to laugh. You feel you are drowning. You flounder and gasp for air. You look around and wonder why most people are able to go their merry ways believing the lies and whistling in the dark. Junk news nation, indeed.
Yes, there are alternative voices who tell the truth, but their audiences and monetary support are very small or non-existent compared to the corporate mainstream media and those who shout and scream across the Internet as they take in a lot of money from naive followers.
The recent revelations about Alex Jones’s wealth probably don’t bother his diehard fans, but they should. Likewise, the funding sources for websites and writers of various persuasions are important to know, for they reveal possible biases in their work. Snake oil salesmen are commonplace, and there are many naive customers lining up for their wares.
Wealth and power are the main drivers of the media chicanery that has captured so many minds. Writers, of course, should be fairly paid for their work, but in this Internet age, most are not. As with the movies and book publishing, the income gap between the big names – the celebrity stars – and less well-known writers, even if their work is excellent, is huge.
Some sites and writers make a lot of money, but who they are is a guessing game. No one’s talking. Some regularly tell their readers that if they don’t receive enough contributions, they will be unable to continue to write or publish, even when the sites do not pay their contributors. Whether this is good marketing or income-by-threat is up for grabs. Whichever it is, it seems to work, as far as I can tell, for these writers and websites don’t disappear.
Money is the dirty secret of all news and commentary. To paraphrase someone: It is very difficult to get truth from writers whose income is dependent on pleasing those who fund them.
You may have noticed how many former military officers, CIA agents, mainstream journalists, pharmaceutical company executives, and sundry other government and corporate bigwigs appear in the mainstream and alternative media to support or oppose government policies. The mainstream ones doing the propaganda they always did, while the alternative ones appear as converts to the dissident faith. No one ever explains how and by whom these people are financed or how their lucrative pensions affect their consciences. “Former” is a funny word. Ha Ha Ha.
Confidence “men” come in all shapes and sizes with no one talking money.
So let me fess up. I received about $200 in support last year for edwardcurtin.com, my website. Nothing before that and not a cent over the last 5-6 years for many hundreds of articles that have appeared very widely across the Internet. Before the Internet, publications paid for work, mine and others. Not now, at least for me. How much money writers are receiving, and who is supporting their sites, is a taboo subject.
So I am thinking about selling mugs at my site with my name and mug shot on them and a line of supplements that will increase one’s testosterone and estrogen in equal measure to make sure no one takes offense in this era of delicate feelings. Ha Ha Ha. Yes, the joke is on us. I identify as a man since I am one. Don’t be offended.
Jokes aside, as Leonard Cohen sang:
“Oh, like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free”
If you are stubborn enough and have the good fortune to find inspiration from those brave dissidents who have gone before us and those who continue to lead us on, you realize silence is betrayal and that you must speak, even if all seems hopeless at times. Even when no one is paying you, or maybe more accurately, because no one is paying you. Even though it is hopeless, even though it isn’t. This is another secret. There are many.
It’s been twenty years since the U.S. brutally invaded Iraq. When George W. Bush, at a staged pseudo-event in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, as he set Americans up for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, said, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” no one laughed him out of the house. His claim was simply an evil joke that was reported as truth. It was all predictable, blatant deception. And the media played along with such an absurdity, which is their job and what they always do. I pointed it out at the time in a newspaper column, but who listened to a hick writer in a regional newspaper.
Iraq obviously had no nuclear weapons or the slightest capability to deliver even a firecracker on the U.S. But the mainstream media, Senator Joe Biden, politicians galore, celebrities like Oprah Winfrey with her guest, the eventually disgraced Judith Miller of the New York Times, the despicable Tony Blair, et al., all supported Bush’s blatant lies. Soon Colin Powell, the “hero” of George H. W. Bush’s 1991 made-for-TV Gulf War of aggression against Iraq, would do his Pinocchio act at the United Nations and the U.S. military was off to get Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden’s evil twin, both the latest Hitlers until Vladimir Putin replaced them. I guess I skipped some others such as Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar Al-Assad. New Hitlers proliferate so fast it’s hard to keep track of them. Ha Ha Ha. The joke is on us.
As everyone knows, or should, more than a million Iraqis died because of George W. Bush, but how many cared? How many cared when once Bush was gone, Barack Obama, aided and abetted by the cackling Hilary Clinton, destroyed Libya and ignited the war against Syria? You want examples? There are too many to name here. But let it be said these lies span all American administrations, whether it’s Bill Clinton continuously bombing Iraq and Serbia through Trump bombing Syria and Somalia, up to the present day with Biden attacking Russia via Ukraine, etc. All these presidents are liars, but their followers treat them otherwise. Biden says Jimmy Carter asked him to deliver his eulogy. What does that tell you? Shall we laugh? Sing?
On the clear understanding
That this kind of thing can happen
Shall we laugh?
Shall we laugh?
Shall we laugh?
Shall we laugh harder if I mention the Covid-19 propaganda and all those writers who have failed to even address it, as they have failed to question 9/11 and other obvious official lies? Is it not evident that if they did so, their money flows might dry up? Here and no further is a widespread rule, for they must adhere to the boundaries imposed by “responsible thought” and the “no go” zones with which they tie their own hands in order to keep their wallets full.
If you are lucky, as I was, when you are young you discover how fearful of free thought and how corrupt our institutional authorities are. You don’t spend decades feasting off the spoils of those institutions only to “wake up” once you have made your name and secured your fortune, which seems to be the way of so many wise luminaries of the Internet Age who are either trying to ease their consciences as they get ready to kick the bucket or are perhaps putting us on.
When I was twenty-four years-old, I accepted my first teaching job at a small Catholic college where I taught theology. I had been trained in the latest and best scholarly work of the most renown international theologians. Rather than indoctrinating my students with rote learning, I taught them to read widely and think deeply in the tradition of a liberal arts education. To seek out the best scholarship.
But doing so became quickly apparent to the college and Church authorities who were stuck in the inquisitorial age of obedience or else and no thinking allowed. Although my students loved my courses and felt freed up for the first time to think about their spiritual lives, I was hounded to correct my heretical teaching, which of course I refused to do.
At one point when I was at lunch in the cafeteria, a nun who was a professor, stole my brief case with my notes and left the cafeteria. One of my students saw her do this and chased her into the ladies’ room where the nun hid in a stall. The nun kept flushing the toilet to scare the student away, but the student wouldn’t let her out until she returned the briefcase. Ha Ha Ha. It sounds funny to recount but was an example of my experience at this college. Someone vandalized my office door and ripped down anti-war posters that were on it. I was gone from that college soon thereafter. It taught me a lot. Obey or else.
Heresy: The Latin word is from Greek hairesis, a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice.
At another teaching job a year or so later, I had a more chilling experience. I was known as an anti-war activist, a conscientious objector from the Marines, etc., and one day, a late Friday afternoon when few were around, an administrator asked to meet me on a deserted stairwell where he proceeded in hushed tones to try to convince me to join him in Army Intelligence to spy on others. He said I would be perfect for the job since I was known as an anti-war dissident. I told him to fuck off, but I was shocked by his double life and his request.
I have since learned that this guy the spy was not an anomaly, for government confidence men are widespread.
I’ve had many other such early experiences for which I am very grateful, even though when I was fired from jobs and lost income it was traumatic at the time. By my thirtieth year, I knew the system was corrupt to its core and subsequent experience has only ratified that conclusion. I got the joke.
I recount these incidents not because my experiences are singular and I’m special, for others have suffered the same youthful fate. But such good fortune can fortify you for life or break your spirit. If the former, you don’t wait to retire to push back against all the lies or regret your past. You find that it’s all good and life has set you on the heretic’s path of freedom and choice. You realize that what you went through is absolutely nothing compared to people around the world who have and continue to suffer at the hands of the U.S. military industrial complex. You realize your experiences are trivial in the larger scope of things and that your government’s conduct is beyond condemnation. It is an abomination. You feel ashamed to live in a land where killing is a game.
The sociologist Peter Berger puts it well in his little classic, Invitation to Sociology, when he discusses experiences that lead to seeing through the play-acting nature of social life:
Experiences such as these may lead to a sudden reversal in one’s view of society – from an awe-inspiring vision of an edifice made of massive granite to the picture of a toy-house precariously put together with papier mâché. While such metamorphosis may be disturbing to people who have hitherto had great confidence in the stability and rightness of society, it can also have a very liberating effect on those more inclined to look upon the latter as a giant sitting on top of them, and not necessarily a friendly giant at that. It is reassuring to discover that the giant is afflicted with a nervous tick.
Notice the giant George W. Bush’s clicking eyes as he delivers his “facing clear evidence of peril” lies for the invasion of Iraq. He and his presidential good friends are cardboard cartoon characters whose eyes reveal their evil intentions. “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be,” but it would all fall to pieces if it weren’t for you and me failing to see through all the bad actors, not just presidents but the whole cast of characters that populate the Spectacle of news and opinion.
The Russians are coming! Ha Ha Ha. Yes, Oliver, the joke’s on us.
But it’s not really funny, except in the most sardonic and dark way, for we now do really face clear evidence of peril as a result of Biden and his crazy predecessors who have run U.S. foreign policy for so long. They have brought us to the edge of nuclear war with Russia by surrounding Russia with NATO bases and nuclear weapons, while doing the same to China.
Bertolt Brecht was right in his poem “To Those Born After”:
Truly I live in dark times!
Frank speech is naïve. A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs
Has simply not yet heard
The terrible news.
What kind of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
When the man over there calmly crossing the street
Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends
Who are in need?
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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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A TAROM Boeing 737-800, registration YR-BGK performing flight RO-7673 from Timisoara (Romania) to Hurghada (Egypt) with 184 passengers on board, was enroute at FL370 about 150nm south of Bucharest in Bulgarian Airspace when the first officer reported the captain had become incapacitated and they needed to turn around and divert to Bucharest. The aircraft landed safely on Bucharest’s runway 26R about 80 minutes after departure. (click here)
The aircraft remained on the ground for about 90 minutes, then departed again.
The airline reported the “medical emergency of one of the members of the command crew” prompted the crew to divert to Bucharest.
According to media reports in Bulgaria the captain (30 years of age) complained about chest pain and increased heart rate, then fell unconscious. The captain is on his way to recovery.
On Mar 27th 2023 Romania’s AIAS announced: “On 25.03.2023, around 17:21 local time, AIAS was notified about the occurrence of a civil aviation event at Henri Coandă Airport, Otopeni, in which the Boeing B738 aircraft, registered YR-BGK, was involved, which carried out an emergency landing. There are no victims. The event is being investigated by AIAS.”
Seventh pilot incident this month
March 25, 2023 – TAROM Flight RO-7673 TSR-HRG diverted to Bucharest as 30 yo pilot had chest pain, then collapsed
March 22, 2023 – Southwest Flight WN6013 LAS-CMH diverted as pilot collapsed shortly after take-off, replaced by non-Southwest pilot (click here)
March 18, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS739 FDF-YUL first officer was incapacitated about 200NM south of Montreal (click here)
March 13, 2023 – Emirates Flight EK205 MXP-JFK diverted due to pilot illness hour and a half after take-off (click here)
March 11, 2023 – United Airlines Flight UA2007 GUA-ORD diverted due to “incapacitated pilot” who had chest pains (click here)
March 11, 2023? – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot collapsed in Cairo hotel and died, was scheduled to fly Airbus A321 from Cairo to London (click here)
March, 3, 2023 – Virgin Australia Flight VA-717ADL-PER Adelaide to Perth flight was forced to make an emergency landing after First Officer suffered heart attack 30 min after departure. (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.
Featured image is licensed under GFDL 1.2
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
If mass psychosis entails a detachment from reality, then Westerners in particular are suffering from mass-psychosis on myriad issues. Now more than ever. In terms of government policies this manufactured illness is well-planned and deliberate. The media, in lockstep with the government, is owned and controlled by media cartels.
On episode 27 of the show we are joined by Vladimir Zakharov, a specialist in Chinese language and literature, diplomat and orientalist. For many years he worked at the embassy of the USSR, and then of the Russian Federation in Beijing. Former Deputy Secretary General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and senior lecturer of the Faculty of World Economy and World Politics, Higher School of Economics.
Massive anti-regime protests, unprecedented in their size and scope erupted on March 26- 27 in cities and towns across the state of Israel. The political crisis in Israel brought a surprising admission from the highest level of the U.S. government regarding its real relationship with the country.
Being the scapegoat of tribal lore cast out with the heavy weight of sins remains a popular political motif. Supposedly noble soldiers, by way of example, are punished for not adhering to the rules of war. In breaching the codes of killing and the protocols of acceptable murder, they are banished from a realm supposedly wrapped in law.
In an 8-1 vote, the Detroit City Council signed off on awarding two billionaires a tax incentive valued at $800 million despite broad independent opposition to the scheme. Known as “District Detroit”, the plan advanced by the owners of Illitch Holdings and Stephen Ross and Related Companies, would ostensibly result in the construction of and repurposing of several buildings near the downtown area.
The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy.
On March 17th 2023, Member of Parliament (MP) Andrew Bridgen made an important speech in the U.K. Parliament asking ministers to critically consider the risks as well as the benefits for the Covid vaccines. Bridgen is one of the only MPs to highlight vaccine safety concerns and has been suspended from the Conservative Party on supposedly unconnected but obviously spurious grounds.
Contrasts? What do you mean? Simple. The astonishing divergence between what the carefully-controlled U.S. media depict as normal in Iran and the reality of the situation in the country. I know more than the average American journalist because, with some others, I’ve just returned from a week in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Diana is currently bleeding gastrointestinal and needing blood transfusions about every 2-3 weeks to sustain a normal level. She is unable to work and functions at a slow pace and is on a strict low sodium diet.
During the World Government Summit 2023, which was held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on February 13-15, the chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, proclaimed that whoever controls the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution will be the master of the world.
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Massive anti-regime protests, unprecedented in their size and scope erupted on March 26- 27 in cities and towns across the state of Israel. The political crisis in Israel brought a surprising admission from the highest level of the U.S. government regarding its real relationship with the country.
Demonstrations which had been taking place every Saturday night since mid-January exploded in numbers on Sunday, March 26, when huge protests followed the firing of the “Defense” Minister, Yoav Gallant earlier the same day. Gallant was dismissed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for speaking out against a plan for “judicial reform” that if adopted would constitute a legislative coup. The “reform” would be a crucial first step opening the door for a wide-ranging series of reactionary measures by the coalition of extreme religious fundamentalists and unabashed fascists who dominate the present government.
On March 26, hundreds of thousands took to the streets and much of the country was shut down by a general strike the following day. This came after thousands of military reservists announced that they would not report for duty in protest of the plan. On March 27, Netanyahu announced that a final vote would be postponed for three weeks, obviously hoping that the interlude would diminish opposition energy.
The glaring omission
The glaring omission in the demonstrations has been any mention of those who are the primary targets of the new regime – the Palestinian people. Even participation by Palestinians living inside the 1948 borders of Israel with the Palestinian flag has been discouraged or, in some cases, prevented. Instead, the protests have been seas of blue and white Israeli flags.
The fascist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Givr announced that anyone carrying a Palestinian flag in the Jerusalem protests would be arrested and jailed. He was saved the trouble of carrying out his threat by the protest organizers who made it clear that they didn’t want to “confuse” the message that this is a family dispute among Israel-loyal Zionists. Video of attacks on the tiny handful who dared to unfurl Palestinian flags by protest participants as well as security forces have been widely circulated.
In exchange for tolerating the pause in voting on the judicial reform, Ben-Givr was promised by Netanyahu that he would be able to set up a “national guard” under his direct command. Such a new military formation is expected to be composed of thousands of volunteers from the most fascistic elements of Israeli society and carry out horrible atrocities against Palestinians.
Leaders of the Israeli protests say that they are fighting for democracy. But it is not possible to speak of democracy in any real sense inside an apartheid system. Under the defunct South African apartheid system, whites could vote, go to court, print newspaper, etc. But no one could credibly call apartheid South Africa a “democracy,” and no one today can credibly claim that Israel does not have an apartheid. system. Apartheid is an international crime.
The day before taking office in late December 2022, Netanyahu issued a statement declaring that the new government’s top priority is to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev Desert, the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria [West Bank].” The Negev and Galilee are areas inside the 1948 borders of the Israeli state that have large Palestinian populations.
Netanyahu’s statement was nothing less than an announcement of his intention to carry out ethnic cleansing, the most extreme undemocratic policy imaginable. But this blatant threat is ignored – or condoned – by the opposition political leaders and protest organizers.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army and its fascist settler partners continue their rampage of terror across the occupied West Bank. There, especially in the northern West Bank cities and refugee camps, the occupiers are facing growing armed resistance.
The Israeli Supreme Court – Myth & Reality
The characterization by the present government and its supporters of Israel’s Supreme Court as a bastion of “leftism” and support for Palestinian human rights has no basis in reality. While the court has made rulings supporting democratic rights in Israel, it continues to validate nearly all attacks on Palestinian rights. It has upheld or ignored countless blatant violations of international law in regard to the occupation.
Among the most egregious violations upheld by the court are the massive building of settlements on occupied land, and the dual criminal justice systems for Palestinians and Israel settlers living in the West Bank. Palestinians endure life under military law and emergency decrees copied from the British colonizers’ regulations. The conviction rate for Palestinians is 99.4%. The settlers live under Israeli civilian rule.
In a February 14 opinion piece for the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Nathaniel Berman wrote of the court at times ruling that the government was not proceeding quickly enough in its illegal actions against Palestinians. Berman cited a recent ruling regarding the expulsion of hundreds of residents of the Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar in violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The decision was written by Justice Noam Sohlberg, himself a West Bank settler. Even on the few occasions where the court has ruled in favor of the Palestinians, the decisions have often been ignored by the military or the government.
The Khan Al-Ahmar ethnic cleansing case, like all violations of Palestinian rights, is not on the radar of the Israeli protest organizers.
Why, then, is the regime so determined to permanently weaken the court system? The answer is that Netanyahu and his coalition partners are driven by a determination to remove all obstacles to their expansionist and regressive vision of the future. At the same time, Netanyahu, facing long-standing corruption charges, would very much like to choose his own judge if ever forced back into court.
Out of crisis comes a surprising admission
Given the $3.8 billion in military aid and the invaluable diplomatic/political protection provided by the U.S. to Israel, Washington’s view is of the utmost importance to any Israeli government. The inclusion of undisguised fascists and other extraordinarily regressive ministers doesn’t comport well with the time-worn notion of Israel as ”the only democracy in the Middle East.”
For a while, U.S. leaders have tried to play down the crisis, with President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and others making repeated bland statements about “shared values,” etc.
But the firing of Gallant, an ally and a proven practitioner of war and occupation, sent a shock wave through the White House and the Pentagon as reflected in a statement from the U.S. National Security Council: “We are deeply concerned by the ongoing developments in Israel, including the potential impact on military readiness raised by Minister Gallant, which further underscores the urgent need for compromise.”
So, there it is. All the talk about “shared values” and “friendship” is just that, talk. The real concern in Washington is about Israel’s readiness to play its assigned military role in the U.S. empire, the role for which it is so lavishly rewarded.
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Being the scapegoat of tribal lore cast out with the heavy weight of sins remains a popular political motif. Supposedly noble soldiers, by way of example, are punished for not adhering to the rules of war. In breaching the codes of killing and the protocols of acceptable murder, they are banished from a realm supposedly wrapped in law. In doing so, commanding officers, policy makers and politicians are left, purified, their dirt shed.
In the context of war crimes, the subordinate and the minion often take centre stage, heaped upon with sins like a tribal scapegoat and sent out into the metaphorical, prison wild. For the moment, such a figure is Australian Special Air Service trooper Oliver Jordan Schulz. That he is the sole figure so far is not going to impress the fair minded, though there may be others to follow.
In a joint statement between the Office of the Special Investigator and the Australian Federal Police, Schulz is alleged to have murdered an Afghan man during the course of his deployment in Afghanistan with the Australian Defence Force. He is being charged with one count of War Crime, specifically murder under the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth). The ABC reports that the victim was Dad Mohammad, slain in May 2012 in central Uruzgan province as he lay helpless in a wheat field.
Speaking in the Downing Centre local court on March 28, magistrate Jennifer Atkinson made a number of remarks. The executed man “was quiet and not resisting.” Schulz “turns towards the Afghan man and shoots towards him three times. The man appears to go limp after the first shot.”
Mohammad, according to the allegations against the defendant, “was not taking an active part in the hostilities”. The defendant “knew, or was reckless as to the factual circumstances establishing that the person was not taking an active part in the hostilities”.
The OSI was established to pursue the findings of the 2020 Brereton Report, also known by its lengthier title as the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force’s Afghanistan Inquiry Report. Sharing joint responsibility with the AFP, the office is charged with investigating “allegations of criminal offences under Australian law, arising from or related to any breaches of the Laws of Armed Conflict, by members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in Afghanistan from 2005 and 2016.”
The prosecution of Schulz is clearly designed to prevent the prying eyes from personnel based at the International Criminal Court. As a few legal authorities have written, “It seems certain that Australia would not want ICC scrutiny of its conduct in Afghanistan nor the embarrassment of the ICC stepping in to prosecute Australian military personnel.”
The prosecution is already attracting international attention. According to Human Rights Watch, it provides “an important opportunity for authorities to uphold the rule of law by ensuring respect for the fair trial rights of the accused, including the presumption of innocence of any individual charged with criminal offense, and ensuring accountability for war crimes.” It also sows the seeds of concern among the soldiers of other military forces deployed to Afghanistan during that same period.
The nagging worry here is that the military and political higher-ups are going to be given a convenient, well-oiled exoneration. Exonerated, the politicos and deskbound army wonks, who made critical decisions thousands of miles away, will be exempt, professing ignorance about the activities of a few bad apples in the Special Forces. Never mind why those apples were there in the first place.
The law will not necessarily be of much help here, beyond targeting the lower elements of foot soldiery. Doctrines of command responsibility require an adequate formulation of the “guilty mind”, otherwise known as mens rea. The pressing point in such a context is assessing what standard of knowledge is relevant: strict liability, constructive knowledge (that the commanders ought to have known about the crimes), or actual knowledge?
As Douglas Guilfoyle has observed, both the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Australian law tend to exclude strict liability and actual knowledge, yet “contain different formulations of what falls between.” In a co-authored piece, Guilfoyle also notes that international law generally attaches “liability to commanders who, given the circumstances, should have known crimes were being or had been committed.”
The Brereton Report has done a remarkable disservice in shielding the chain of command in terms of operational awareness, and makes no mention of the political process that led to the deployment of such soldiers in Afghanistan in the first place. As the report improbably asserts, there was “no evidence that there was knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of war crimes, on the part of commanders at troop/platoon, squadron/company or Task Group Headquarters level, let alone at higher levels such as … Joint Operations Command, or Australian Defence Command.” Nor was “there any failure at any of those levels to take reasonable and practical steps that would have prevented or detected the commission of war crimes.”
The practice of frequently rotating commanders above the patrol level in the Afghanistan theatre, and the nature of how information was compartmentalised, have served to ignore culpability for practices in the field of battle.
This is not to say that a number of senior officers are not concerned by what Schulz’s trial promises. As The Australianreports, citing a military source, “Individuals who were commanding the soldier, right up the chain of command for as high as the defence team can justify, should reasonably expect to be called into court.” The defence team could then point to various “chain-of-command deficiencies”, among them the practice of repeatedly redeploying special service soldiers despite concerns about their state of mind.
Exposing such practices, and their source, would not only be fitting but just. We are otherwise faced with that convenient and all too regular spectacle: that of a soldier punished in isolation from the war machine that emboldened him to kill in the first 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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In an 8-1 vote, the Detroit City Council signed off on awarding two billionaires a tax incentive valued at $800 million despite broad independent opposition to the scheme.
Known as “District Detroit”, the plan advanced by the owners of Illitch Holdings and Stephen Ross and Related Companies, would ostensibly result in the construction of and repurposing of several buildings near the downtown area.
What was so egregious about this proposal is that in 2014 a similar project was approved by the-then City Council. The District Detroit iteration of nearly a decade ago came during the concluding months of the contrived bankruptcy trial which further ensnared the majority African American municipality in an institutionalized subservience to the white-dominated financial institutions and corporations.
In 2014, the City Council gave away $400 million in tax incentives to the Illitch family. Just three years later, the cost overruns had doubled the expenses associated with this project which only resulted in the building of Little Caesars Arena (LCA). This venue houses the Detroit Pistons and Red Wings. There are periodic concerts where during the summer of 2022, a homecoming show featuring Anita Baker, tickets sold for as much as $1100. These prices are way above the affordability of most people living in the city. (See this)
However, as pointed out even by several corporate media outlets which dominate the narrative within the city limits and nationally, the Illitch Holdings firms did not fulfill their previous promises of building apartments, restaurants, bars and other businesses in the same area which was formerly known as the Cass Corridor. This raises the question as to why the City Council would approve yet another financial gift to those same corporations that have done nothing to curtail poverty, underdevelopment and economic injustice in the city? (See this)
Cass Corridor had become known as one of the most underdeveloped districts in Detroit where people had yearned for some type of economic investment that would improve their living standards. However, what came was the forced removal of thousands due to foreclosures, evictions under the guise of fostering “development”.
In an article published by the Detroit Metro Times in regard to the renewed tax giveaways: “Detroit City Council on Tuesday (March 28) approved more than $615 million in tax incentives for two white billionaire developers — the Ilitch family and Stephen Ross — to build new residential units, hotel rooms, and office space in areas that should have already been transformed. Following more than two hours of public comment, the council voted 8 to 1 in favor of the transformational brownfield tax incentives for the $1.5 billion District Detroit proposal. In all, the tax incentive package is worth nearly $800 million. The total cost of the project is roughly $1.5 billion.” (See this)
Development and Underdevelopment in Detroit
A concerted propaganda and psychological warfare campaign by the local ruling class interests framed the District Detroit project in the same fashion as it was articulated nearly a decade ago, that the awarding of tax-captured funds from city residents would provide thousands of jobs for the majority Black and growing Brown population groups. Millions are already taken from the tax coffers of the poor and working class in Detroit to provide funding for the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC). These funds taken through tax captures drain resources from public libraries, schools, transportation and other services.
Nonetheless, the city of Detroit remains the most underdeveloped and oppressed municipality in the United States. A poverty rate of 42% makes the city the poorest in the U.S.
Although the official rate of impoverishment is 42%, there are census tracts within the city where the rate of poverty exceeds 80%. These figures have not substantially improved since the imposition of the illegally imposed regime of emergency management and bankruptcy during 2013-2014. People have continued to leave the city while the incentives provided to corporations which are owned by whites have done nothing to enhance the overall status of African Americans and people of Latin American descent. (See this)
In 1950, Detroit had a population of 1.2 million people, the fourth largest in the U.S. Over the last 73 years, half of the people have either abandoned or been forced out of the city, leaving 610,00 residents. During the census period of 2000-2010, approximately 25% of the people left Detroit largely due to systematic disinvestment along with the targeting of its majority African American community in regard to predatory bank lending.
Tens of thousands of homes were foreclosed leaving entire neighborhoods desolate and underdeveloped. Jobs fled the state of Michigan in their millions while the state and municipal governments refused to impose moratoriums on plant closings, home foreclosures and evictions. This failure to confront the banks and corporations has rendered the governance structures administratively dysfunctional.
This dysfunctionality continues as the decades-long course of granting tax incentives to the wealthiest interests operating in the state has not resulted in the restoring of the levels of population, homeownership and household income.
Prior to the Great Recession beginning in 2007-2008, Detroit was a majority homeownership city, a fact which distinguished the majority African American and working class population from other municipalities such as New York City. Over the previous decade-and-a-half, the homeownership levels have been reversed making Detroit a majority renter city. Rents are increasing at an annual rate forcing African Americans, working class people and the impoverished out of the city as many have moved to other states seeking economic opportunities and social amenities.
Over the last decade there have been many development proposals advanced in the Downtown, Midtown and New Center areas of Detroit. Most of these announced projects have not materialized. The Hudson site location on Woodward downtown has been scaled back and remains uncompleted. The Hudson site is being led by billionaire Dan Gilbert who received millions in tax breaks as an incentive to initiate and complete the building.
Scores of longtime and start-up businesses and championed development projects in Detroit have collapsed. Hotels, restaurants, office spaces and other facilities are abandoned recreating blight which the corporate mayoral and city council functionaries have falsely claimed are a phenomenon of past decades.
In late 2022, the City Council, despite widespread opposition, authorized an additional $60 million in tax breaks for Dan Gilbert for the incomplete Hudson project. In addition to the tax incentives given to Gilbert, assessed municipal and state revenues generated by the employees of this incomplete deal would not go back to the public governing structures. The taxes would go right into the corporate coffers of the Gilbert corporations.
A Failed Urban Development Model Made Obsolete by the Burgeoning Financial Crisis
Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent economic impact has prompted major changes in the labor market. Hundreds of thousands of small-to-medium-sized businesses throughout the U.S. have been shuttered leaving millions displaced.
Since the declarations by the administration of President Joe Biden and the Supreme Court saying in essence that the pandemic is over, the economic development models in force prior to 2020, have been seriously destabilized. Many corporations are having their employees work from home curtailing the need for office space in municipal settings. This downsizing of physical office buildings will make many of the projects which purportedly served as the ideological basis for Tax Incremental Financing (TIF), such as capturing the revenue of the workers and poor to build skyscrapers and entertainment districts, will become even more unsustainable.
According to a report published in January 2023 related to the increasing loan default by commercial property owners:
“As borrowing expenses surge and downtown offices remain deserted, even major corporations are realizing their miscalculations. The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed a ‘seismic shift’ in commercial real estate, enabled by technology, as millions of people were compelled to work remotely for the first time. Seven trophy buildings, including a San Francisco tower leased to Elon Musk’s Twitter, were subject to approximately $1.7 billion worth of mortgage defaults by Columbia Property Trust. However, this company was not the only one to default; Brookfield Corp., one of the world’s largest property owners, also defaulted on two Los Angeles skyscrapers, with one of them being named after accounting firm Deloitte. Recent loan defaults are part of a strategy to extend payment periods or negotiate improved loan terms. However, in some instances, building owners are surrendering their properties to lenders, indicating that they have given up on ownership.” (See this)
Therefore, these tax giveaways by the corporate-controlled municipal governance structures such as the Detroit City Council will only result in further economic distress where the working and impoverished are coerced into providing financial guarantees for the unprofitable so-called development projects of the ruling class. The dystopian illusions of the politicians are facilitated by the billionaires while the masses fall deeper into impoverishment.
This system of urban underdevelopment and displacement must be overthrown by the people through their organized efforts utilizing general strikes and insurrection. The working class and nationally oppressed can only win their rightful place within the cities by a political transition to socialism.
Under socialism the wealth generated by the workers will be shared equitably by people irrespective of national origin and class status. As the cities continue in their inevitable decline, the potential for revolutionary movements to arise aimed at defeating capitalism will provide the opportunities for genuine liberation and social emancipation of the majority.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Elena Herrada speaks to local media against $800 million tax giveaway to the rich controlling Detroit (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
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According to UNICEF Afghanistan’s Twitter account, this number means an average of two children every day.
“Last week, 8 children lost their lives due to unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan,” UNICEF Afghanistan said. “They lost their lives playing with unexploded ordnance and collecting metal scraps to sell.”
No details were provided in the tweets about the recent deaths.
The Directorate of Mine Action Coordination said that it has cleared more than 100,000 square meters of land in Afghanistan.
“We have more than 60 awareness teams in Afghanistan. The video clips about public awareness have been made and the teams are going to the rural areas and villages to increase people’s awareness,” said Qari Nooruddin Rustam Khail, head of the directorate.
Residents of Kabul expressed concerns, saying that children collect metals to sell because of poverty.
The residents said their lack of awareness about ordnance caused them harm.
“Due to poverty and unemployment, they (children) are forced to go to the mountains, collect sticks or coal for food. They are being martyred in these mines that are planted from the previous years,” said Rokai, a resident of Kabul.
“The unexploded mines are more in provinces than in cities. The awareness of the people is less in rural areas compared to the city,” said Shoib, a resident of Kabul.
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Although Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong initially backed the West’s position on Ukraine, even going against every other member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by imposing US-led sanctions on Russia, he is retracting on his initial position now. He recently said: “We are not hostile to Russia, for us Russia is not an enemy.”
At the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Singapore followed the US and announced the imposition of sanctions against Moscow.
Explaining his motives, Lee Hsien Loong said: “We go on principles rather than sides, so we have to follow the principle and be consistent and stand by it.” He even cited how Singapore took a similar stance when the US invaded Grenada, sidelining the fact that the two conflicts are completely unrelatable and incomparable.
More than a year has passed since the beginning of the special military operation and there have been many changes in the perception of Asian politicians about the conflict. Speaking recently at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore’s flagship public research and education think tank, Singapore’s Minister of Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam noted the behaviour of the US and Western countries.
“The West and NATO, in my view, were not uninvolved bystanders who had no role to play in the current situation,” he said. The minister added: “Whatever the case, Ukraine is the unfortunate victim, and its people are paying a terrible price.”
The minister also highlighted that the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe was contrary to the promises made by Washington to Moscow during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that it poses a threat to Russia’s security. Shanmugan also recalled the hypocrisy of former European leaders, such as French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is recalled that the latter even admitted that the Minsk agreement was never with the intention of peacefully resolving the conflict but to instead to buy time for Ukraine to increase its military capabilities.
The truth is that ordinary citizens of Southeast Asia do not care much about what is going on in Europe. Singapore was the only exception in Southeast Asia, and in fact most of the non-Western world, in the sense that it took a clear position on the situation in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Russia.
In a survey conducted in February, it was clear that the majority of Southeast Asian residents felt that “Ukraine’s problems are not our business and we will not interfere”. This accounted for 60% of Thai residents surveyed, 54% of Malaysian residents, 48% of Indonesian residents and 44% of Singaporean residents. In Laos, only 14% of respondents stated that they were concerned about the war in Ukraine.
Former Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo expressed this sentiment:
“No one in Southeast Asia wants to get involved in the war, it’s far away and not of strategic importance to us.”
Although Singapore has imposed sanctions on Russia, the island country has not completely terminated its cooperation with the Eurasian Giant. The sanctions concern sectors like the export of military-technical products to Russia and banking services.
As is the case with other countries, Singapore-Russia cooperation is flourishing in other sectors, such as petrochemicals. In 2022, the amount of Russian oil that Singaporean ports received was more than the previous year. According to local media data, this received oil is processed and then re-exported to other countries, such as Vietnam.
This is effectively in line with ASEAN’s policy towards Russia – business as usual. Some other ASEAN state leaders may have made damning statements, such as Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was quick to call Russia’s military operation an “act of aggression” and an “invasion.” However, during the recent ASEAN Summit hosted by Cambodia in November 2023, he offered to mediate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
Even if Hun Sen was personally outraged by the special military operation, state-to-state relations continued as normal, as did economic relations. In fact, the Cambodian foreign affairs ministry said in a statement that it “categorically dismissed” Cambodia’s designation as a “military supporter of Ukraine” on a list that had been published by a Telegram channel, with Russia then offering to provide weapons to the country.
Although Singapore is unlikely to remove the sanctions anytime soon, there is a clear regret that it acted rashly and out of line with all of its neighbours. None-the-less, economic relations are continuing as normal with the exception of sanctioned sectors. As Loong said in a recent interview, and perhaps with greater clarity since 2022, Singapore is a “small” country and “does not play a role in determining the world’s political destiny,” which is why the country’s leadership seemingly regrets acting out of ASEAN norms.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy.
American national power is measured as much by American military capability as by economic potential and performance. The growing realization that American and European military-industrial capacity cannot keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment is an ominous signal to send during a proxy war that Washington insists its Ukrainian surrogate is winning.
Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources. While Russia’s implementation of attrition warfare worked brilliantly, Russia mobilized its reserves of men and equipment to field a force that is several magnitudes larger and significantly more lethal than it was a year ago.
Russia’s massive arsenal of artillery systems including rockets, missiles, and drones linked to overhead surveillance platforms converted Ukrainian soldiers fighting to retain the northern edge of the Donbas into pop-up targets. How many Ukrainian soldiers have died is unknown, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while another estimates about 250,000.
Given the glaring weakness of NATO members’ ground, air, and air defense forces, an unwanted war with Russia could easily bring hundreds of thousands of Russian Troops to the Polish border, NATO’s Eastern Frontier. This is not an outcome Washington promised its European allies, but it’s now a real possibility.
In contrast to the Soviet Union’s hamfisted and ideologically driven foreign policymaking and execution, contemporary Russia has skillfully cultivated support for its cause in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The fact that the West’s economic sanctions damaged the U.S. and European economies while turning the Russian ruble into one of the international system’s strongest currencies has hardly enhanced Washington’s global standing.
Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America. The global economic implications for the emerging Russo-Chinese axis and their planned industrial revolution for some 3.9 billion people in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are profound.
In sum, Washington’s military strategy to weaken, isolate, or even destroy Russia is a colossal failure and the failure puts Washington’s proxy war with Russia on a truly dangerous path. To press on, undeterred in the face of Ukraine’s descent into oblivion, ignores three metastasizing threats: 1. Persistently high inflation and rising interest rates that signal economic weakness. (The first American bank failure since 2020 is a reminder of U.S. financial fragility.) 2. The threat to stability and prosperity inside European societies already reeling from several waves of unwanted refugees/migrants. 3. The threat of a wider European war.
Inside presidential administrations, there are always competing factions urging the president to adopt a particular course of action. Observers on the outside seldom know with certainty which faction exerts the most influence, but there are figures in the Biden administration seeking an off-ramp from involvement in Ukraine. Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a rabid supporter of the proxy war with Moscow, recognizes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s demand that the West help him recapture Crimea is a red line for Putin that might lead to a dramatic escalation from Moscow.
Backing down from the Biden administration’s malignant and asinine demands for a humiliating Russian withdrawal from eastern Ukraine before peace talks can convene is a step Washington refuses to take. Yet it must be taken. The higher interest rates rise, and the more Washington spends at home and abroad to prosecute the war in Ukraine, the closer American society moves toward internal political and social turmoil. These are dangerous conditions for any republic.
From all the wreckage and confusion of the last two years, there emerges one undeniable truth. Most Americans are right to be distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. President Biden comes across as a cardboard cut-out, a stand-in for ideological fanatics in his administration, people that see executive power as the means to silence political opposition and retain permanent control of the federal government.
Americans are not fools. They know that members of Congress flagrantly trade stocks based on inside information, creating conflicts of interest that would land most citizens in jail. They also know that since 1965 Washington led them into a series of failed military interventions that severely weakened American political, economic, and military power.
Far too many Americans believe they have had no real national leadership since January 21, 2021. It is high time the Biden administration found an off-ramp designed to extricate Washington, D.C., from its proxy Ukrainian war against Russia. It will not be easy. Liberal internationalism or, in its modern guise, “moralizing globalism,” makes prudent diplomacy arduous, but now is the time. In Eastern Europe, the spring rains present both Russian and Ukrainian ground forces with a sea of mud that severely impedes movement. But the Russian High Command is preparing to ensure that when the ground dries and Russian ground forces attack, the operations will achieve an unambiguous decision, making it clear that Washington and its supporters have no chance to rescue the dying regime in Kiev. From then on, negotiations will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
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Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books.
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***
(This report was orignally posted on December 23, 2023)
“I am greatly saddened to hear of Stephen’s passing, an extremely generous and courageous man. His valid criticisms of the vicious USA empire were unrelenting. He also took the time to ferociously defend others who came under attack, including me, in Ottawa, Canada. It was a pleasure to be interviewed on his radio show and to chat with him on occasion. I don’t believe he was afraid of anything. HE would call them what they are, in the clearest possible language, to their faces. He had a remarkable ability to distill truth down to essential elements.”
– Denis Rancourt [1]
“The only way to change the system, which I think is vital if humanity is going to survive, is we need to get rid of this predatory capitalist system!”
After an incredible number of articles on national and world issues starting back in the summer of 2005, his output suddenly came to an abrupt halt on April 30, 2023.
A few days later, the figure behind the gigantic output came in touch with the one force that could actually shut him down. [3]
Stephen Lendman after enduring health illness for years finally passed away on the 9th of May, 2023. [4]
Stephen Lendman, the print and radio show host, informed the public of where he stood on all the key issues of our time and did so with a strong emotional bond to the people he was talking about, and the readers and listeners in his audience.
Stephen Lendman put out more articles on Global Research than practically anyone.
Stephen Lendman, as a voice for independent public radio stood out on the airwaves. Even at a time when the internet is exploding with multiple practitioners getting involved in podcasts and radio, there is simply no host as distinct in voice, tone, and a sincere commitment to the issues at hand as this elderly individual who was already in his 70s when he started!
Stephen Lendman won honours and awards for his work and secured regular spots on multiple media networks, that is, those which typically highlight the exception to the mainstream media rule.
Stephen Lendman’s work encompasses dissident thinking on a number of subjects from 9/11 as an “inside job” to opposition to every major military act prosecuted by the U.S. in the last few decades, to challenging both sides of the Two Party paradigm within his own country, to lamenting the banking system and its ravaging of the economic system of America and the world to pillaging the Zionist principles annihilating the Palestinian people to benefit Israel, to directing venom toward American forces who overthrew the government in Ukraine and shifted the blame to Russia, to even questioning the narratives supporting the lockdowns around the COVID-19 “pandemic.”
Stephen Lendman was a pillar of support for Global Research. And he was also incidentally a fine guest whenever he appeared on the Global Research News Hour. He was also a good friend of this writer!
This week’s program is dedicated to his work and to everything he meant to us professionally and personally.
We will be playing him in multiple clips and hear testimonies from some of the people who knew him and worked closely with him. These voices include Ellen Brown, Peter Phillips, Rick Rozoff, Diana G. Collier, and Michel Chossudovsky
Listeners should also consult the vast works of Stephen Lendman’s writings consisting of more than 3000 articles
Stephen Lendman lived in Chicago. He was a Harvard Graduate and received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Following a devoted career as a market research analyst for his family owned business, he started writing on major national and international issues in 2005 and soon started hosting the first incarnation of the Global Research News Hour in 2007.
Ellen Brown is the founder of the Public Banking Institute and a former civil litigation attorney. She has authored hundreds of articles and a dozen books, including the 2007 best-seller Web Of Debt and its 2013 sequel The Public Bank Solution, Ellen Brown lives in Los Angeles.
Prof. Peter Phillips is a Political Sociologist and Professor emeritus at Sonoma State University; author Giants: The Global Power Elite, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018); past director of Project Censored; co-author/editor of fourteen Censored yearbooks, 1997 to 2011; co-author of Impeach the President, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007); and winner of the Dallas Smythe Award from the Union for Democratic Communications. Peter Phillips is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.
CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.
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On March 17th 2023, Member of Parliament (MP) Andrew Bridgen made an important speech in the U.K. Parliament asking ministers to critically consider the risks as well as the benefits for the Covid vaccines. Bridgen is one of the only MPs to highlight vaccine safety concerns and has been suspended from the Conservative Party on supposedly unconnected but obviously spurious grounds.
Unfortunately, there was almost nobody in the chamber to listen to his speech and it seems the Conservative Party or the Government ensured that not only the vast majority of Conservative but also Labour, Liberal, SNP and other MPs deserted the chamber as soon as he took the floor. Following protocol, the Government minister responsible for drug regulation, Will Quince MP, was present to respond; in this he stated (without challenging any of Bridgen’s detailed claims) the standard mantra that the vaccine was effective and safe and had saved “tens of thousands of lives” in the U.K.
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Inevitably, instead of focusing on the details of the speech – most of which was based on either official data from U.K. Government agencies or from 2020 vaccine clinical trial data – the on-narrative media universally criticised Bridgen as a “conspiracy theorist” (see here, here and here) or spreading “dangerous misinformation” (see here, here and here). YouTube even removed the video of the speech that Bridgen had put up on his channel (although it did eventually reinstate it, perhaps after realising that censoring a speech that had been made in Parliament and could be read on Hansard was pretty futile).
You can see excerpts of and commentary on Mr. Bridgen’s speech (here) and what appears to be collusion between opposing party members in the U.K. Parliament to ‘empty the house’ on Dr. John Campbell’s YouTube channel.
The attacks against Bridgen continued and on March 23rd the BBC dedicated an entire one-hour radio show AntiSocial hosted by Adam Fleming on Radio 4 to attacking his speech. His guests were:
David Grimes – who had already declared that Bridgen was “spreading fiction“.
Marianna Spring (the BBC’s “Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent”) who has spent the last three years self-promoting her adopted role as a ‘debunker’ of information from Covid sceptics, much of which was subsequently proven to be true, while simultaneously proclaiming her victimhood at the hands of what she calls ‘conspiracy theorists’.
Brendan O’Neill, present as the token free speech advocate and not there to defend what Bridgen said but rather his right to say it. Indeed, O’Neill said (without any attempt to be specific) that some of what Mr. Bridgen said was “strongly misinformation”.
Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, who has been a fierce defender of the ‘official’ Covid narrative and criticised the claims made by Bridgen; this formed the majority of the substantial content of the BBC radio show.
Appalling that @ABridgen spreads these fictions in the houses of parliament – COVID vaccines saved about 14.4 millions lives worldwide between 2020 and 2021 alone, and are safe and effective. Maybe have a public enquiry to try and locate Bridgen's sense of shame instead.. pic.twitter.com/DkmgZZJjl5
The one person who should have been present to defend himself, but was curiously denied the opportunity, was Andrew Bridgen himself, who tweeted: “I was contacted by BBC Radio 4’s AntiSocial for a programme going out right now. They declined my offer to come on, even though, or perhaps because, they were talking about me. I sent them this statement instead.”
Given most of the AntiSocial radio show focused on Prof. Spiegelhalter’s criticisms of Bridgen’s data, these deserve close analysis and rebuttal, for the simple reason that on hearing Spiegelhalter’s one-sided commentary members of the public may be left with the impression that the attacks on Bridgen were wholly warranted, when they were not.
First of all, although Spiegelhalter half-praised Bridgen for highlighting the need to look at the overall risk-benefit of the vaccines, he did not comment at all on any of the Government data (including the enormous economic costs of the vaccines) that Bridgen quoted in his speech. Similarly, and right from the start, the BBC and Spiegelhalter demonstrated bias by totally ignoring these and other important indisputable facts presented in Bridgen’s speech. Not only did the entire episode completely avoid any discussion of the Government’s own data, the existence of which appears to have been deliberately overlooked or censored across the entire mainstream media in spite of being of obvious interest to the public.
Despite a long monologue, Spiegelhalter presented very little explicit criticism of Bridgen’s data and with regard to the comments he did make, it is a simple matter to show that it is Spiegelhalter, not Bridgen, who was actually misleading the public.
One specific piece of data formed the thrust of Spiegelhalter’s challenge. This was Bridgen’s claim that there was one serious adverse event (SAE) for every 800 people vaccinated. Spiegelhalter said this figure was from a paper “that had been the subject of a lot of criticism” suggesting to the audience that the paper was flawed, without really stating what the flaws were.
In academia, every major paper is (quite properly) subject to criticism. That’s what peer review is for. However, Bridgen was quoting the 1 in 800 figure from Fraiman et al., a peer-reviewed paper whose senior author is BMJ Senior Editor Dr. Peter Doshi and was published in the prestigious journal Vaccine (which we can only surmise probably knows something about vaccines). The paper showed that the vaccinated participants reported more SAEs than the placebo participants – on average 12.5 SAEs more per 10,000 participants, equating to the 1 in 800 figure. So, the figure wasn’t dreamt up by some fly-by-night author or ‘dodgy’ journal spreading disinformation. And the data used in the paper were those from the Pfizer and Moderna placebo-controlled, Phase 3 randomised clinical trials.
We strongly suspect the ‘criticisms’ that Spiegelhalter refers to stem largely from one unreliable source, rather than the many separate sources suggested by his use of the phrase “lot of criticism”. This source is Dr. Susan Oliver, whose supposed take-down of Fraiman et al. we have previously refuted in detail here.
Spiegelhalter’s criticism of the 1 in 800 claim is extremely weak. He said the figure was misleading because it counted “the total number of events rather than the number of people experiencing at least one event”, with some people reporting multiple events. His criticism is unfounded because the authors had already accounted for this in the paper, wherein they describe (bold added):
Third, without individual participant data, we could only compare the number of individuals hospitalised for COVID-19 against the number of serious AESI events, not the number of participants experiencing any serious AESI. Some individuals experienced multiple SAEs whereas hospitalised COVID-19 participants were likely only hospitalised once, biassing the analysis towards exhibiting net harm. To gauge the extent of this bias, we considered that there were 20% (Pfizer) and 34% (Moderna) more SAEs than participants experiencing any SAE.
As we can see, Fraiman et al. had already factored in the possibility of some people reporting multiple events by assuming, for the Pfizer vaccine, that there were 20% more SAEs reported than people reporting, and they assumed 34% more for Moderna. So, Spiegelhalter’s first criticism doesn’t hold water.
There are other reasons to contest Spiegelhalter’s claim that the 1 in 800 figure is exaggerated. The Fraiman paper only examined data which covered the primary two doses of each vaccine. If there is a 1 in 800 chance that a person with two doses will suffer at least one SAE, then it is reasonable to conclude that there is approximately a 1 in 400 chance that a person who has had four doses will suffer at least one SAE. The risk increases with each additional dose. In fact, the Government’s own data show that the adverse event rates worsen with the boosters, making the situation potentially worse than simply multiplying by the number of doses. Bridgen’s speech was about the risk of additional boosters; many of the people targeted for these will have had four doses already. Spiegelhalter failed to consider this in his claim that the 1 in 800 figure was exaggerated.
It is also important to note that the data in the Fraiman paper is from the 2020 Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials which were conducted on a young and generally healthy population, not those actually at significant risk of severe illness from SARS-CoV-2 (the aged and infirm, having been judged ineligible to participate). It is generally accepted that the frequency and range of adverse drug events is always greater in the elderly and frail. So, given these high rates of SAE in the young and healthy then it is reasonable to infer that the SAE rate in the older and more infirm, who are eligible for boosters, will be significantly higher. So, again, this points to an even greater current risk than 1 in 800.
Spiegelhalter also sought to dismiss the number of reported SAEs in the vaccine arm of the Pfizer study as not being significantly different to the number reported in the placebo arm. This is because the total number of SAEs in the trial was quite small meaning that some of the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) had lower bounds less than one, as the authors clearly reported:
In the Pfizer trial, 52 serious AESI (27.7 per 10,000) were reported in the vaccine group and 33 (17.6 per 10,000) in the placebo group. This difference corresponds to a 57 % higher risk of serious AESI (RR 1.57 95% CI 0.98 to 2.54) and a risk difference of 10.1 serious AESI per 10,000 vaccinated participants (95% CI −0.4 to 20.6). In the Moderna trial, 87 serious AESI (57.3 per 10,000) were reported in the vaccine group and 64 (42.2 per 10,000) in the placebo group. This difference corresponds to a 36% higher risk of serious AESI (RR 1.36 95% CI 0.93 to 1.99) and a risk difference of 15.1 serious AESI per 10,000 vaccinated participants (95% CI −3.6 to 33.8). Combining the trials, there was a 43% higher risk of serious AESI (RR 1.43; 95% CI 1.07 to 1.92) and a risk difference of 12.5 serious AESI per 10,000 vaccinated participants (95% CI 2.1 to 22.9).
In our own (Bayesian) analysis of these data we showed that there was a 96% probability that the SAE rate for the combined Covid vaccines was higher than the SAE rate for those with the placebo and a 99.7% chance that serious adverse events of special interest were higher in the combined covid vaccines. There is a 90% probability the difference is greater than 1 in 2,500.
In summary, and contrary to what Spiegelhalter claims, the figure of 1 in 800 for the risk of serious adverse reaction to those people being targetted for the booster is, if anything, more than likely an underestimate.
Spiegelhalter’s concern about the 1 in 800 figure was also the basis for his criticism of the claim Bridgen made about the number needed to vaccinate (NNV). However, the NNV figures quoted by Bridgen were based entirely on the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) presentation to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on October 25th 2022, published January 25th 2023. For example, Bridgen stated:
The Government’s own data show that, in healthy adults aged 50 to 59, it was necessary to give 256,400 booster jabs to prevent just one severe hospitalisation… For healthy 40 to 49-year-olds, that number increases to 932,500 who needed to be boosted to keep one Covid patient out of an intensive therapy unit… And for healthy 30 to 39-year-olds, no one knows the answer to the number needed to be boosted to prevent a serious hospitalisation because the Government’s own data say that there has never been such a case of this age group being put into intensive care due to the current variant of COVID-19.
The host of the radio show, Adam Fleming, suggested to Spiegelhalter that Bridgen’s use of the NNV numbers was “a crime against statistics” without explaining the basis for this comment. Ignoring the Government NNV figures that Bridgen correctly stated, Spiegelhalter instead implied that this figure was flawed because Bridgen had also used the 1 in 800 SAE estimate from the Fraiman paper to compare the number of people who would be hospitalised from the vaccine to the number saved from hospitalisation by the vaccine. This is indeed what Bridgen did, but this was an appropriate, not flawed, approach. For example, he said (bold added):
The Government’s own data show that, in healthy adults aged 50 to 59, it was necessary to give 256,400 booster jabs to prevent just one severe hospitalisation, putting 321 people into hospital with a serious side-effect from the booster, which includes, obviously, risk of death.
The 256,400 is the Government’s own figure for the number of ‘not at risk’ 50-59 year-olds who would need to be vaccinated to prevent one severe hospitalisation. To obtain the figure of 321 all Bridgen has done is divide 256,400 by 800 (the severe adverse event rate)! An entirely rational calculation, since it is reasonable to equate a serious adverse reaction with a hospitalisation.
Given that we have already established the 1 in 800 figure was reasonable (or even an underestimate), Spiegelhalter’s criticism here is nothing more than an attempt to divert attention away from the Government’s own alarming NNV figure. It should also be noted that the figure 321 is so large that even if the severe adverse event rate was overstated 100-fold the risks would still far outweigh the purported benefits in this age group (and bear in mind we are ignoring unknown longer-term effects in this analysis).
It seems that Spiegelhalter was aware he was on shaky grounds here because he followed up with a different (but extremely weak) attempt to downplay the NNV figure. He claimed that they were only high because they were based on a time when Covid was no longer prevalent – implying that the reason for this is because the vaccines had already done their job. Hence the data were then simply confirming that the vaccines were no longer needed for those age groups. But if that is the case, it merely supports the view that boosters are simply unnecessary and more likely to be net harmful.
The only other substantive criticism Spiegelhalter made was of Bridgen’s claim that the 63,000 excess deaths could have been caused by the vaccine. Spiegelhalter simply said that this was “dangerous misinformation” and that “there was absolutely no evidence of any link to the vaccines”. But the only ‘evidence’ Spiegelhalter provided that the excess was not due to the vaccines was to state the (incorrect) mantra that: “we know that ‘all cause mortality’ when age-adjusted is ‘lower in the vaccinated’”.
This claim is based on the flawed ONS data that has been thoroughly exposed here.
Indeed, as was noted in our article, the Statistics Regulator agreed with us that the ONS data cannot be used to make comparisons between the mortality rate of the vaccinated against the unvaccinated. What makes it especially curious is that Spiegelhalter made this error, and spread misinformation, despite the fact that since 2020 he has been on the Board of the Statistics Authority!
His logic is difficult to understand. If the vaccines have done their job then that implies they have vastly reduced Covid mortality. But he also claims that all-cause mortality is lower in the vaccinated thus giving an immortality benefit. But given the very high vaccination rates in the elderly, who contribute nearly all deaths, how can this statement be true whilst all-cause mortality is in excess? Basically, nothing adds up.
Despite the presence of Brendan O’Neill, whose written views especially with respect of lockdowns would appear to be directly at odds to those of Prof. Sir David Spiegelhalter, at no point did any member of the panel present a dissenting view to the position that Mr. Bridgen’s speech was misinformation. The entire episode of AntiSocial was essentially the empanelment of a single mind or opinion.
During the show it was laughably notable that in response to a comment about a tweet by Greta Thunberg the host, Adam Fleming, cut off the conversation by saying it is inappropriate to opine about her tweets because she wasn’t present to explain her comments. It is therefore extremely ironic that Fleming set aside his entire one-hour program to proceed with one-sided dissection and discussion of the speech made by a sitting MP Andrew Bridgen whilst denying him the opportunity to be present to defend himself.
The absence of impartiality in Fleming’s radio show is obviously a clear breach of the BBC charter. Perhaps BBC licence-fee-payers will be so appalled at this that they might consider complaining against this latest abuse of their licence fee.
Stop Press: Some not unrelated eye-opening details of Prof Spiegelhalter’s background are presented in the Law, Health and Technology newsletter, which is worth a read.
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Until he retired in January, Norman Fenton was Professor in Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London.
Dr. Clare Craig is a diagnostic pathologist and Co-Chair of the HART group with Dr. Jonathan Engler.
Martin Neil is Professor in Computer Science and Statistics at Queen Mary University of London.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
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Protests across Germany against weapons supplies to the Kiev regime reveal an important and strategically significant point that should not sidelined by those who continue to hold Russia solely responsible. Scenes of close to 13,000 anti-war protestors gathering at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin as well as across Germany also symbolize an acute understanding that exists in the German public that only dialogue and diplomacy, instead of camp politics and hegemony can resolve the Ukraine war. There is definitely a need to change course on Kiev.
These protests unfolded as the impasse in Ukraine is becoming unbearable. The war continues to fester in the absence of de-escalation calls and is further solidified as countries such as Germany sign off on € 8.9 million in arms exports in 2022, with a quarter of that amount heading straight to the Zelensky regime. The transnational nature of the conflict and various actors stepping in to prolong it, has resulted in the United States approving sales to countries such as Poland worth $10 Bn for interoperability. These hard facts continue to alarm pacifists and those vouching for negotiations with the Kremlin. Such state-sponsored war machineries remain unacceptable and the fact that this is coming from Berlin, which has historically adopted a nuanced foreign policy, is a cause for concern.
The protests are being spearheaded by figureheads such as Sahra Wagenknecht and veteran feminist campaigner, Alice Schwarzer, who are sending a clear signal that peace, amity, absence of hostilities and eschewing Cold War mentalities needs to take hold for a stable continent and world order. In a speech at the protest, Wagenknecht stated that a citizen’s initiative was the need of the hour as well as a new, strong and impactful peace movement across Germany. She also pointed out how demonstrators were united over grievances such as isolation and lack of representation by the Olaf Scholz administration. On the foreign policy front, the German public is also disillusioned by Foreign Minister Anna Baerbock’s doctrine of providing unfettered access to weapons.
The truth is that if Germany wants to ensure that its social contract with the people is not eroded, but kept intact, the flawed policy-making of its government cannot bypass public sentiment which is geared against confrontation and cooperation. One should note that the messaging from the protestors indicates that there is a clear aversion to the entire orientation towards Ukraine by German policymakers. Messages such as ‘Diplomats instead of Grenades’, ‘Stop the Killing’, ‘Not My War, Not My Government’, and ‘Helmets Today, Tanks Tomorrow, The Day After Tomorrow Your Sons’ reveal a clear disconnect between the official and societal stances to war. It is clear that taking sides in a conflict that has been the worst the world has seen since World War II is not the right strategy.
Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly, the powers which are perpetuating this conflict have also been castigated by the German protestors. According to Nobert, a former soldier of the German Army, ‘the real enemy sits in the city of London and New York’ which is a direct reference to two global financial centers in the United States and the United Kingdom which have remained at the forefront of perpetuating the conflict. Nobert further states that, Germany had no right to participate in another conflict and that too, after the Second World War. Such castigation from public spearheads in Germany comes amid the promotion of figures such as John Lennon and Mahatma Gandhi as symbols of peace.
The protests also underline public discontent over the possibility of a nuclear conflict in the post-Cold War/ World War II era. This becomes more likely with the Ukraine regime’s adamancy in accessing weapons ranging from HIMARS to Leopard Tanks from Germany and Poland which threatens to upend the nuclear threshold. Deterrence stability which has been the hallmark of Europe in the post-World War scenario now remains increasingly vulnerable where the decision by either side to seek battlefield advantages that could involve nuclear weapons could result in catastrophic consequences for both the globe and the entire continent. For a continent and a country that has already borne the brunt of fascism, providing arms to Ukraine lacks wisdom and hints at strategic implosion.
To offset the crisis, Wagenknecht further said that the solution lies in offering Russia table talks where a never-ending war of attrition with the latest weaponry offers nothing but prolonged humanitarian suffering. The German public’s commitment to the humanitarian cause is reflected in the publication of ‘Manifest for Peace’ by Wagenknecht and Schwarzer, which urges Chancellor Olaf Scholz to change course on Kiev and prevent an escalation in weapons deliveries. 650,000 Germans including intellectuals and political figures signed the publication which is another example of the public’s rejection of war. It also shows that Russia is a sovereign state should be considered a party to peace talks which goes against Kiev’s vitriolic propaganda against Moscow.
The protests in Germany are a reminder that the Scholz administration must work towards peace instead of resorting to confrontation. As a great power in Europe with significant clout in international affairs, translating domestic sentiment into foreign policy will work well for Germany and aid the peacemaking process. It is high time to shelve nefarious policies, strategies and tactics for good.
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Hamzah Rifaat is a broadcast journalist, analyst, and visiting fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington D.C., 2016.
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Have you heard of the “International Rules Based Order?” Russia, according to Washington and NATO, is violating those rules (China too) and must be punished. We can’t have “rule breakers” mucking up global tranquility can we?
Since 1945, the United States has pursued its global interests by building and maintaining various alliances, economic institutions, security organizations, political and liberal norms, and other tools — often collectively referred to as the international order. . . .
Building an international order has been a formal program of U.S. foreign policy since at least the 1940s and an aspirational goal since the nation’s founding. According to its post–World War II architects, the international order protects U.S. values by maintaining an environment in which the ideals of a free and democratic society — like that of the United States — can flourish. The United States has used both power and idealistic notions of shared interests to underwrite the rules-based order. In this sense, it employed both hard and soft power to construct the order. See this.
Got it? The so-called international order basically is a system of rules that the United States sets and arbitrarily decides whether or not a foreign country is complying or disobeying. The bottom line? These “rules” are designed to promote U.S. interests at the expense of others.
Let’s take basketball (appropriate in light of March Madness currently underway in the United States) and look at how genuine rules are supposed to work in a competitive environment. There is a set amount of time for a college game — 40 minutes, two 20 minute halves. You, as a rules official, cannot arbitrarily give one team that you like more time to play in hopes that they score more points and finally prevail. Any player who makes a basket outside the 3 point line is awarded 3 points for his team. Any player who possesses the ball and takes more than two steps without dribbling is guilty of traveling and the ball is turned over to the other team.
When we look at the so-called international rules to promote global order a very different picture emerges. We are essentially talking about an international casino and the United States traditionally has behaved like a crooked dealer who makes sure that friends of the casino win. Here is one example. If protestors take to the streets and try to overthrow a government the United States likes, that is bad and those protestors must be punished. However, if the government has fallen out of favor with the United States then the protestors are sanctified beings carrying out God’s will and must be supported.
Iran is a case in point. Last October, Washington cheered on protests in Iran and punished Iranian authorities for trying to quell the activity:
The United States on Wednesday imposed a slew of new sanctions against Iranian officials involved in the ongoing crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran – the latest US response to Tehran’s efforts to quash outrage after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
“It has been 40 days since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s so-called ‘Morality Police,’ and we join her family and the Iranian people for a day of mourning and reflection,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
“The United States is committed to supporting the Iranian people and ensuring that those responsible for the brutal crackdown on the ongoing nationwide protests in Iran are held accountable,” Blinken said. “Today, we are announcing a joint action between the State and Treasury Departments designating 14 individuals and three entities using five different authorities, demonstrating our commitment to use all appropriate tools to hold all levels of the Iranian government to account.” See this.
Ditto for Georgia (the country not the state). When the legislature in Tbilisi passed a law intended to limit foreign interference in Georgia, protestors took to the streets and battled police in early March:
Police in the Georgian capital Tbilisi used tear gas, water cannon and stun grenades late on Wednesday as they moved to break up the second straight day of protests against a “foreign agents” law which critics say would limit press freedom and undercut the country’s efforts to become a candidate for EU membership. See this.
And Washington’s response to that “violent insurrection?”
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price voiced solidarity with the protestors.
“We urge the government of Georgia to respect the freedom of peaceful assembly and peaceful protests,” Price said. “We are standing with the people of Georgia and the aspirations that they have.”
If you watched any of the videos of the Georgia protests, they were not peaceful.
Quite a contrast to what took place in the United States on January 6, 2021, when Donald Trump supporters surrounded the U.S. Capitol.
The Trump supporters are condemned, prosecuted and imprisoned as insurrectionists bent on sedition.
The evidence from that day indicates that agents of the U.S. Government (as well as a few Ukrainian members of AZOV) were in the crowd trying to stir them to violence. Once those protestors entered the Capitol, very few participated in acts of violence. But, because they opposed Joe Biden, they are treated as despicable criminals.
Tucker punches back against the Biden Administration propaganda meme.
Iran, who was widely condemned in Europe for its response to protestors, is having great fun with French President Macron’s response to French citizens angry over raising the retirement age without a vote by the French legislature:
Iranian authorities commented on the mass protests and strikes in France. According to Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani, official Paris should listen to the French people and abandon the “barbaric methods of violence against people defending their democratic rights”. See this.
Rules about protests are small potatoes compared to the Big rule about not carrying out military activities in a foreign country unless you have been invited to send your forces to provide assistance or you have been attacked. The United States and NATO insist that Russia is a major violator of this rule and must be punished. Russia, for its part, argues that it is acting to protect Russian speaking Ukrainians who have been shelled relentlessly by the Government of Ukraine since 2014 and to oppose NATO’s expansion to its borders.
Neither Russia nor China give any credence to complaints and outrage from the West because of America’s own sordid record of military campaigns in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Panama, the former country of Yugoslavia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
Here is the harsh truth about the Rules Based International Order. It is an anachronism created in the wake of World War II by the United States, it is unraveling and the Biden Administration continues to enact policies that will hasten its demise.
Keep your eye on Israel. It is being wracked with protests over a proposed law to strip its Supreme Court of power and consolidate that power with the Executive. The rifts within Israel are profound and widening by the day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired the Defense Minister today and Israel’s Consul General resigned in protest.
Why do I bring this up? Because there is no signal yet from the Biden Administration whether it will bless these protests as “following the international rules” or condemn Netanyahu as a violator of those rules.
Laments about the “International Based Rules of Order” exposes the fact that America no longer has the strength nor the ability to impose its will on others. China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India and South Africa, to mention a prominent few, are awake to this reality and are busy creating an alternative international order that will put the United States on the sidelines. I believe this is the most important consequence of the proxy war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine. The weak underbelly of America has been exposed and no amount of threats or sanctions from Washington will change that reality.
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***
Contrasts? What do you mean?
Simple. The astonishing divergence between what the carefully-controlled U.S. media depict as normal in Iran and the reality of the situation in the country. I know more than the average American journalist because, with some others, I’ve just returned from a week in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Let’s start with the concerted efforts to brainwash the American people without using soap. Several months ago, American television, radio, and newspapers were full of Iran’s mistreatment of women. They focused on problems experienced by a Kurd not wearing a hijab properly, i.e., a scarf covering all the hair. Arrested, she died in custody. Without evidence, the media asserted it was deliberately done by a brutal regime. Naturally, they omitted the close ties between the Kurds in the region, the CIA, and terrorist Israel’s external security service, the Mossad, as well as their efforts to effect another Iranian revolution, again returning a Western puppet to power. The American population got nothing in the way of news except that in Iran, women were not people, they could not hold gainful employment or obtain positions of power or trust. The “news” gleefully reported demonstrations, evidently stoked by the Foreign Hand, objecting to enforced head coverings that supposedly erupted all over the country.
Here’s an October 2022 excerpt from National Public Radio, which derives part of its budget from the U.S. government: “Protests in Iran following the killing of a young woman, Jina Amini, who also went by the first name of Mahsa, killed at the hands of the morality police last month. The protests center around the enforcement of the hijab…” About the same time, the New York Times, a paper close to the American government, opined “The protests since Ms. Amini’s death, led by women, have persisted for weeks and have brought Iranians in dozens of cities into the streets to reveal the depth of their anger. Iranians who are sick and tired of living under a tyrannical theocracy deserve the support of the United States and its allies…” Also in October, NBC News reported ““…The authorities are clearly nervous and shaken from the ongoing protests,” Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a professor in global thought and comparative philosophies at SOAS University of London, told NBC News on Thursday via email…”
Hijab Styles
The Reality. First, it’s easy to say that the “journalists” can’t read. In 2005, Azadeh Moaveni published Lipstick Jihad, an account of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran. In the book, she recounted how Iranian women cocked a snook at the hijab requirement by pushing their hijabs onto the backs of their heads.
Second, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, relaxed the rules on head coverings following the demonstrations. During my visit, I saw many women in their 20s and 30s without head coverings of any sort. They looked to me (and a contact confirmed this) more relaxed. Nearly all had cast aside the traditional black robe and head cloth, wearing instead more colorful jackets in light blue or medium green. One woman was clad in a bright pink sweater. Our interlocutor noted that he believed about 4 in 10 of younger women had cast aside the head covering–in contrast to large signs in English and Farsi (Iran’s native tongue) to “Adjust Your Hijab”.
Image: Woman Dress Designer & Musician at Tehran Trade Exhibition (Photo: J. Michael Springmann)
In Tehran, Shiraz, and Kerman in mid-February 2023, I saw no demonstrations or violence of any kind–other than that found in the usual traffic jams.
Moreover, Ensiyeh Khazali is Iran’s Vice President for Women’s and Family Affairs. Her predecessor was Masoumeh Ebtekar. About half the work force is female. In the hotel I stayed at, the Assistant Vice President was a woman. She’d held the post for four years and, prior to that, had been Marketing Manager for eight.
At Home. Family is very important and loving but wives are highly critical of their husbands who see and comment on other women’s makeup or hairstyle. One contact noted the recent difficulties he’d had with his wife. He had innocently commented that he had seen a neighbor woman with a new variety of eye shadow. And then asked what was for dinner. He said that his wife’s response was “go ask the woman with the eye shadow”.
Uncovered Women and Society. In talking further with contacts, I elicited the interesting comment, from a man, that he saw no difference in uncovered and covered women interacting with one another. They treated each other in simple conversation as if the clothing difference dd not exist. Moreover, he continued, saying that the uncovered exhibited no difference in piety from their completely covered sisters. They went to mosque when ordained, prayed when required, and comported themselves as if they were covered from head to foot in black.
Hijab Enforcement. One interlocutor, again a man, spoke out sharply against the concept of the religious police, mostly specially-uniformed women, enforcing the hijab requirement. In his view, the police were there to fight real crime, such as robbery or embezzlement, not to ensure that women’s heads were covered. He was grateful that the Supreme Leader had abolished such police.
To be sure, I attended part of the 44th Anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In the gigantic crowd (filling a six-lane street 13 kilometers/about eight miles long), I saw only one uncovered woman. But then, given the cold day, being covered from head to foot would have been a blessing.
Part of 44th Anniversary Celebration (Photo: J. Michael Springmann)
What People Do for Fun.I braced a married Iranian, conveying a question I had and that one of our group had posed. In a society that did not use alcohol or have night clubs, what did younger people do for enjoyment? How could they associate with the opposite sex? (Iran, unlike the U.S. and Western Europe, has only two genders.) His reply was simple and straightforward—private parties, just as set forth in Lipstick Jihad.
Public Displays of Affection. Several times I observed, in the hotel lobby, on the street, and in public buildings, members of the opposite sex holding hands or walking arm in arm. Surprised at this, given the conservative nature of Iranian society, I again began asking questions. (Like Rudyard Kipling’s “Elephant’s Child”, I am ‘satiably curious.) The answer was simple yet complicated. The people involved were not casually connected. They were serious about one another and the next step was likely a formal engagement to be married.
Noses. Flying from city to city, I noticed a number of young women with bandages on their noses at the various airports. Knowing that Iran was noted for re-working God’s nostril design, I, ever inquisitive, asked an Iranian man about the matter. I said that the people I had seen in the street or at the airport had beaks in proportion to their faces. There were no bulbous proboscises or hooked, cartoon-witch snouts. His response was that it was, essentially, vanity. Western media, with its image of perfect beauty, had found its way into the country. And women, seeing the perfect faces with the perfect noses in ads or in movies, wanted the same. No matter what. While the breathing apparatus was marginally improved, the concept and the process certainly put some rials into the plastic surgeon’s pockets.
Conclusion. The carefully-stoked tensions in Iran over the hijab and the morality police enforcing women’s dress did not have quite the effect the CIA, Israel, and hostile outsiders wanted. The country remained calm, women were still women and not wannabe men, as is regrettably common in the U.S. and Western Europe. Family is still intact, wives and husbands are devoted to but highly critical of one another, and the female of the species there wants to look as good as humanly possible—not unlike her sisters elsewhere in the world.
There appears to be some movement towards societal change, as happens in every country. However, the modifications are gradual and do not come with explosive force. Their precursors were apparent years ago. In 2018, on my earlier visit to the Islamic Republic, I noticed women in one of Tehran’s airports wearing almost nothing on their heads. One young, attractive female had a ponytail—bound with a large ribbon. This obviously sufficed as a kind of hijab. No one else noticed or said a word.
And, the changes I saw were not earthshaking nor turning society topsy-turvy. They were a logical continuation of accepted earlier alterations. Furthermore, Iran’s society might have picked up some Western influences but not to the extent that they will be permitted to poison the culture. Iran will continue to acquire good influences from abroad but reject the bad ones, a very wise view.
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J. Michael Springmann is an attorney, author, political commentator, and former diplomat, with postings to Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia. He previously authored, Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World: An Insider’s View, recounting how the U.S. created and used Islamic Terrorism. Additionally, he penned Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb, an analysis of the alien wave sweeping the Continent. He currently practices law in the Washington D.C. Area. He is a frequent commentator on Arab and Russian news programs.
He is also on the Ukraine’s “Enemies List”, having questioned, inter alia, the country’s refusal to honor the Minsk Accords and for stating that it’s government is Nazified.
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The first batch of British-made Challenger 2 tanks arrived in Ukraine on Monday as reports said Berlin also delivered 18 of its Leopard tanks to the country.
The UK will send a total of 14 Challenger 2 tanks that will be armed with depleted uranium ammunition, a controversial munition that is radioactive and linked to cancer and birth defects in Iraq, where US forces commonly used the rounds.
Britain’s deputy defense minister confirmed last week that the Challenger 2s would be armed with depleted uranium despite Russian warnings. Over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putinsaid Russia would deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus, a move he said was a response to the UK arming Ukraine with depleted uranium.
Germany initially pledged to put together 60 Leopard tanks for Ukraine but has fallen far short of that goal. The US has sped up plans to get 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine by refurbishing older models instead of building new ones, but they will still take eight to 10 months to deliver.
The number of Challengers, Leopards, and Abrams still falls short of what Ukraine has been asking for. Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, told The Economist in December that he needed 300 tanks to beat Russia.
The US and its allies want Ukraine to launch a counteroffensive this spring and hope the new tanks can help. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that the offensive can’t begin until Western countries send even more weapons.
The provision of Western-made tanks to Ukraine marks a significant escalation in NATO’s role in the war. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously ruled out the idea of arming Ukraine with Leopards because he said he was trying to avoid a direct clash between NATO and Russia to prevent a nuclear war.
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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
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***
March 2023 marks 20 years since the White House announced the beginning of a full scale invasion of Iraq – a decision which had broad reverberations not only across the Middle East but globally. While the invasion was for several reasons considered controversial at the time, primarily due to its lack of legal pretext, Western opinion on the assault against the oil rich Arab state grew considerably more negative in the aftermath, with a number of Western new outlets even apologising after the conflict for their blanket coverage and unequivocal support for plans to attack. To provide further insight into the American-led invasion, we at Military Watch sat down with prominent international security scholar A. B. Abrams to discuss in hindsight what the conflict signified regarding the direction of and trends in Western foreign policy.
Abrams has authored multiple books on international relations and defence, and 12 days ago published the highly rated study: ‘Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order.’ The book explores predominant trends in how false stories of atrocities and other misdeeds by Western adversaries have been widely propagated in the Western world not only to vilify them, but also as was the case in Iraq to provide pretexts for hostile policies ranging from economic warfare, to Western bombings of their territory, and even as in Iraq’s case full scale Western invasions. As noted by former British ambassador to Syria Peter Ford, Abrams’ book “has provided a signal service by taking ‘fake news’ about alleged atrocities out of the current affairs arena in which it is mainly discussed and into a much broader, deeper and in fact even more disturbing context,” and “perceptively traces the evolution of the use of fabricated atrocity narratives back to the first days of Western warfare and colonial expansion through to eleven more recent case studies.” The book’s sixth chapter focuses on fabrication of false narratives leading up to the Iraq War, while the fourth focused on the Gulf War 12 years prior where the foundations of a vilifying metanarrative surrounding the country were largely laid. The transcript of our interview with Abrams is below:
Military Watch: Which false Western narratives were most instrumental in facilitating the American-led invasion of Iraq?
Abrams: As is consistent across all major Western atrocity fabrication campaigns, multiple reinforcing and complementary narratives were perpetuated to shape domestic and international opinion towards the country with various levels of effectiveness. An invasion could thus be presented not as a response to any particular action of the Iraqi state, but as a measure justified by a whole host of rationales. The narratives which had the most significant impacts varied between countries. In the United States the campaign to build support for invasion escalated in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, which meant it was most effective to tie the rationale for an assault to a strongly implied link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. This was near unanimously acknowledged even in the U.S. itself to be totally ludicrous – but only after the invasion had begun and the narrative had served its purpose. In Britain claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction played a more central role in the justifying the war, in part because the public there had had no immediate experience of a terror attack. It was consistently implied that Iraq would, upon developing such weapons, almost immediately use them to attack Britain and its allies and thus that an invasion was needed to avert an imminent threat. The British campaign also focused heavily from an earlier stage on portraying extreme human rights abuses in Iraq. It thus depicted a Western assault to remove its government and install a westernised successor as something of a ‘civilising mission’ – a highly common theme in Western justifications for invasions of non Western countries over centuries.
Twin Towers on September 11, 2001
Although Iraq’s human rights situation since the rise of power of Saddam Hussein in 1979 was very far from exemplary, it was also far from outstanding worldwide and particularly by the standards of neighbouring countries – many of which were close Western allies. The claim that the West attacked Iraq for humanitarian reasons thus had little basis in reality. The history of humanitarian military intervention as a Western concept with a centuries long history, and how it has consistently been used to facilitate Western aggression and in many cases genocide and war crimes, is explored in detail in my recent book’s first chapter after the introduction. Non Western peoples could always be portrayed as having savage practices or conducts which in turn could be used to justify Western ‘civilising missions’ – from the European invasions of Americas and Australia to several cases such as Iraq’s in recent history. It is highly consistent with historical trends that the most extreme Western claims of Iraqi humanitarian abuses have consistently proven to be utterly false – from the story of ‘Saddam’s enemies’ being fed live into human shredders, to the claim 12 years prior that Iraqi soldiers were throwing premature babies out of incubators and leaving them to die on cold floors. Humanitarian and ideological justifications for the war played a growing role as it became clearer that narratives portraying Iraq as an international threat, such as claims of Al Qaeda ties or nuclear weapons programs, had no substance to them. The most extreme example was British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s claim that hundreds of thousands of political prisoners had been found buried in mass graves by Iraqi forces after the invasion – which was intended to retrospectively justify the aggression. It was later acknowledged that this had no basis in reality and was one of many totally fabricated stories.
British Headline Propagating Fabricated Claim of Iraqi ‘Human Shredder’ to Justify War
Military Watch: What Do You Think Are Some of the Most Common Misconceptions About the U.S.-Iraq War Today?
Abrams: Where to start? Most common notions about the war particularly in the Western world upon closer examination turn out to be false, for example portrayals of the Iraq War as a unique mistake or a product of the particularly poor leadership of the Bush administration. The invasion was in fact entirely consistent with U.S. and Western foreign policy trends. The country was one of many outside the Western sphere of influence to be targeted after the Cold War’s end when Soviet protection was lost – since the USSR had long shouldered the bulk of the burden of preventing the West from remaking the world in its image through force and asserting total dominance as it has before the Soviet rise in the 1930s. The U.S. would continue to lead assaults on countries which could no longer rely on Soviet protection, Syria and Libya being notable examples, after Iraqi was throughly neutralised as a potential source of resistance to Western hegemony.
U.S. Navy Cruise Missile Strikes on Iraq in 1996 (left) and 1998
Another common misconception was that the war marked the beginning of hostilities against Iraq. The country had in fact been under assault since 1990, first with major economic sanctions, then with very intensive Western bombardment of its industries and critical infrastructure from 1991 which left its population without basic services like electricity or clean water. The bombardment was seen to have set development back by well over half a century, and continued indefinite sanctions preventing postwar reconstruction were estimated by the mid 1990s to have killed an estimated half a million Iraqi children. Impositions of no fly zones by Western countries deep inside Iraqi airspace facilitated bombardment of infrastructure and air defence suppression efforts to ensure by 2003, after over a decade, the country was near defenceless and very throughly impoverished. These strikes were often conducted based on false claims that they were suppressing Iraqi forces which would otherwise be deployed to commit atrocities against minority groups domestically. Despite the ineptitude the Iraqi government and Saddam Hussein in particular often showed, the U.S. would have had a much time launching a full scale invasion in 1990 had it not throughly worn the country down for over a decade beforehand.
Also key to paving the way to the Western assault was the promising of sanctions relief if Iraq provided international inspectors with deep access to its weapons facilities. These teams, it has since been confirmed, were deeply infiltrated by U.S. and British intelligence and used to unsuccessfully attempt to engineer the overthrow of the Iraqi government from within and the assassination of President Saddam Hussein. More significantly, they ensured Iraq had no military secrets and no retaliatory capability whatsoever when Western armies began to roll across the border – including no ballistic missiles or chemical weapons. This paired with a total arms embargo from 1990 were key to ensuring an increasingly favourable miltiary balance for the U.S. and its allies as they modernised their forces while Iraqi capabilities only diminished.
Artwork of Iraqi Scud Missile Launchers – A Key Asset For Chemical Weapons Delivery Iraq Was Stripped of Before the Invasion
Military Watch: Which Parties in Hindsight Do You Consider to Have Been the Leading Beneficiaries of the Invasion?
Abrams: Iraq was already throughly ravaged by the time the war began, although the fallout from the invasion and deep social and political remaking of the country in line with Western interests have effectively guaranteed that the country cannot rise again likely in the lifetime of anyone alive there today. This was a major boon to the interests of Western dominance over the Middle East. The Iraqi people did and continue to suffer immeasurably, with travel within the country until today remaining highly unsafe, living standards remaining poor where the country formerly prospered, while the atrocities committed by Western forces against them remain too numerous to even begin to elaborate on here. One of the most notable was the mass use of depleted uranium weapons against civilian population centres, such as Fallujah, which is expected to cause immense suffering for generations to come due to the millions of years for which it will continue to contaminate the area and the local gene pools. Another was the extreme brutalisation of Iraqis in American custody, many of whom including children were serially raped and tortured to death at facilities such as Abu Ghraib after the population was left under the power of the occupation forces. Many of the details have not been made public but, as noted by American journalist Seymour Hersh who had fuller access to the records from Abu Ghraib:
Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib. . . . The women were passing messages out saying, ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomised with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has.
Although successful in neutralising Iraq, likely permanently, as any kind of presence in the world, the war was overall highly detrimental to the interests of the Western led order. The focus of Western attentions and military resources on the country for the remainder of the decade allowed other countries remaining outside the Western sphere of influence to strengthen their positions considerably. The most notable examples were China, which saw its economic, high tech, and military positions improve immeasurably while gaining relatively little Western attention, and North Korea which drastically accelerated its development of nuclear weapons after the decision in Washington had been taken to invade Iraq. Iran, its close ally the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and Russia, all very significantly strengthened their strategic positions with time that was bought by the focusing of Western attentions on neutralising Iraq.
Military Watch: What Role Did Ideology, and Particularly the Predominant Trends in U.S. and British Political Thought, Play in the War?
Abrams: As previously mentioned the rationales drew on centuries old aspects of the Western worldview which have been central to its foreign policy for centuries, including the idea of a ‘civilising mission’ which had strong consistencies going back to the colonial era. Although there is little dispute that invading a sovereign country and UN member state remains illegal, with the UN Security Council and a majority of its members refusing to support the assault, claiming that military action was taken in the interests of ‘liberating’ a non Western people and westernising their much vilified system of governance has consistently been used highly successfully to justify aggression. Shortly before the war began, the ideal of ‘democratising’ and ‘freeing’ Iraq by imposing a Western system political system there gained growing prominence in American rhetoric – an idea with a very strong roots in how the West sees its place the world and its right to reshape countries in its image using military force. Indeed, British Prime Minister Tony Blair just earlier this month claimed on the invasion’s 20th anniversary that it was partly justified on the bases that “At least you could say we were removing a despot and trying to introduce democracy.” The idea of introducing the Western style of governance was consistently cited by Blair and others to divert criticism away from the war effort even after it became known that the death count resulting from U.S.-led military action exceeded 1 million Iraqis. This serves as one of many indicators of the importance which spreading this governance model carries in the Western mind. It is consistent with longstanding trends in Western thought since the colonial era towards mass killings in the non Western world being justified by the cause of spreading Western values – previously civilising and Christianising which killed tens of millions across five continents, and today democratising.
While before the war it was widely stated that an Iraq remade in the Western image politically would serve as a model for the region and wider world, and thereby further spread the Western governance model, the opposite has in fact occurred. The sharp contrast between pre and post war Iraq’s performances across all metrics, and the quality of life and future prospects for its people, has raised growing questions regarding the viability of the Western model. This has complemented the effects of relative Western decline and the rise of China since then. While the Cold War’s led led to proclamations of an ‘end of history’ in the West and universalisation of the Western model, the Iraq War closely followed by the 2007 financial crisis marked the beginning of a series of consecutive developments which would see this trend reversed.
Military Watch: How are the lessons from the Western campaign in the information space against Iraq most relevant today?
Abrams: The Iraq War is one of 11 case studies explored in my latest book exploring consistent trends in how the Western world uses atrocity fabrication to vilify those countries outside its control which it intends to target, and the campaign to justify an invasion thus remains highly relevant to understanding similar vilification of all major Western adversaries across the world today. We see similar often ludicrous and throughly debunked claims being spread by Western sources against China, North Korea, Syria and others both to provide pretexts for economic sanctions and to move world opinion to align behind Western campaigns against these countries. Iraq also provides an example of how the false atrocities invented in the West and attributed to its targets, even if they had been true, pale in comparison to the very real atrocities committed by the Western powers which the fabricated narratives facilitated. The numbers successful atrocity fabrication has facilitated towards the killing of by Western hands in the last century number in the high millions, and orders of magnitude more if going back to the colonial era. Had false crimes not been attributed to Iraq to allow the U.S. and its Western allies to see through the policies they had desired, 500,000 Iraqi children killed under sanctions in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands more Iraqis that decade, and 1 million Iraqis who died as a result of the 2003 invasion, would all have lived on. The Iraq War is far from unique in this regard, but it provides an example in relatively recent memory of why atrocity fabrication, and the free hand it can often give Western powers to target those outside their control, remains extremely dangerous.
Abrams’ bookAtrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order was published on March 15 and is available to purchase from the publisher here, as well as on Amazon here. A recent video review from Hong Kong media was published here.
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Israel collapsed into virtual chaos over the weekend, after Defence Minister Yoav Gallantmade a dramatic televised address to the nation, calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend his government’s extremist political plan.
The government’s proposals call for the elimination of the Supreme Court’s right of review of Knesset legislation; the appointment of court justices by the political echelon, rather than by an independent body; the ending of the attorney general’s right to determine if a prime minister was fit for office (Netanyahu would be ruled unfit if convicted on any of the corruption counts he faces, which he denies, at trial); and the permitting of the government to ignore a ruling by the attorney general determining that legislation violates Israel’s basic laws.
These proposals were drafted by an extremist libertarian think tank, the Kohelet Policy Forum. It not only wrote the bills presented to the Knesset, it drafted speeches and op-eds by ministers and MKs advocating them.
Kohelet is funded by American Jewish billionaires Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass, the latter one of the biggest donors to the Republican Party in the US.
In his TV address, Gallant urged Netanyahu to suspend the plans and enter negotiations with the opposition to arrange for a political compromise. Within 24 hours, Netanyahu had acceded to the most virulent of his ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who tweeted that he should fire Gallant. He did so within hours of the speech.
Furious public reaction
The public reaction was almost immediate and furious. In previous demonstrations, protesters congregated on major public streets and squares, with Tel Aviv providing the largest crowds. A small number would migrate to the nearby Ayalon Highway, a major roadway that cuts through the city, where they would block traffic. Police would attempt to prevent such blockades, confining activists to the city streets.
On Sunday night, the gloves came off. Over 100,000 Israelis marched directly to the highway. They were met by mounted police who charged them and beat them with long poles. Some protesters charged the police on horseback, driving them back. Others in the crowd screamed: “Shame! Shame!”
Thousands more converged on Netanyahu’s government residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem, where they attempted to break down security barriers around the building. There were demonstrations at 150 locations throughout the country. Major highways outside of Tel Aviv were also blocked and protesters lit bonfires to express their rage. All universities announced they were on strike in protest.
One of the most damaging potential desertions was Netanyahu’s lawyer, representing him in one of the four corruption charges he faces, who warned that unless the legislation was stopped, he would stop representing him.
This hit the prime minister in one of his most vulnerable spots. The only thing he cares about is political survival. Losing his lawyer would put him in political jeopardy, since a conviction would almost certainly force him from office. Once he is no longer the country’s leader, he will be in no position to pass the legislation necessary to prevent his conviction. He must remain in power to protect himself from prison.
In a speech delivered to protesters, the leader of the country’s labour union, the Histadrut, warned that it was planning a nationwide general strike. “This is the country of the citizens, all its citizens. Not of the Kohelet Forum!,” chairman Arnon Bar-David declared in a dramatic speech.
“We will not allow the country’s descent into the abyss… If the legislation isn’t stopped, we are going from here to a general strike in Israel.”
Bowing to pressure
As a former general, and the current defence minister, Gallant knew the prevailing views of his officers. His own chief of staff told him that officers were in an almost open mutiny over the governing coalition’s agenda. Hundreds have signed public statements refusing reserve duty. Even active-duty officers have made such a commitment.
Gallant acted because he understood Israel must have a cohesive military. When there is dissension in the ranks, the country cannot protect its citizens – not to mention that the Israeli army is the most significant unifying institution in the country.
It defines Israeli identity and most citizens serve in it. For many Israelis, the army and the state are indistinguishable. For that reason, Gallant defined his allegiance to the state via the military. If the army is not with the government, then the latter cannot or should not function.
With his firing, the former minister has become a hero to the millions of Israelis opposing what they call the regime-change government. Netanyahu, normally a shrewd political tactician, not only created a rival, but offered him a huge platform and political visibility. Undoubtedly, Gallant will now become a key player in determining a way forward (if there is one).
The prime minister is known for being a cautious political player. He hardly ever tacks directly into the wind, preferring to zig and zag as he adjusts to the political currents. True to form, after firing Gallant, Netanyahu dropped another bombshell, with Haaretz reporting that he planned to announce a suspension of the far-right legislative programme on Monday.
After Gallant laid down the gauntlet, other senior Likud MKs expressed support. The former Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, perhaps the prime minister’s closest adviser and often called “Bibi’s Brain”, urged him to compromise.
In effect, he is bowing to the inevitable. With the nation in open rebellion, either his government falls or he has to fold and give in to the protesters’ demands.
Ironically, the government’s leading arsonist, Bezalel Smotrich, the settlements minister, urged Netanyahu to hold firm, warning that the nation would descend into “anarchy” and “violence”. Apparently, he’s not been watching television or walking the streets of any major Israeli city.
No time to celebrate
But it isn’t time yet for Israelis to celebrate. Netanyahu speaks glibly and promises with one hand and takes away with the other. It’s not yet clear precisely what is the nature of his strategic retreat.
Further, MK Yariv Levin, architect of the government’s legislative package, threatened to resign if it was jettisoned. The prime minister only has a four-seat majority. He cannot afford to lose a key figure like Levin, because others would likely support him and abandon the coalition.
The prime minister may have relented. But as a tactician, he knows that a strategic retreat could fool his opponents into believing that they have won a battle. By lulling them into a false sense of victory, Netanyahu retains the possibility of mounting a counter-attack.
While act one has ended, there will certainly be a lot more drama to follow before this story has concluded.
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Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog, devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. His work has appeared in Haaretz, the Forward, the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. He contributed to the essay collection devoted to the 2006 Lebanon war, A Time to Speak Out (Verso) and has another essay in the collection, Israel and Palestine: Alternate Perspectives on Statehood (Rowman & Littlefield) Photo of RS by: (Erika Schultz/Seattle Times)
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The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on Thursday that it will open an office in Ukraine, less than a week after issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over war crimes allegations.
“I firmly believe that the opening of the ICC country office in Ukraine marks the beginning of a new chapter in our close cooperation with the Court,” Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, who signed the agreement on behalf of his country, said in a statement.
“This is just a start, a strong start, and I’m convinced that we will not stop until all perpetrators of international crimes committed in Ukraine are brought to justice, independently of their political or military position,” Kostin added.
The announcement comes after the court issued an arrest warrant last Friday for Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, over the alleged deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
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Featured image is from Rick Bajornas/United Nations/Flickr
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In the original Star Trek series, Captain Kirk was toxically masculine in the vein of John Wayne. He kicked alien ass and ate replicated steak and “got the girl in the end”.
Star Trek is an interesting and worthy case study of how art can be used to shape narratives in the national mythology.
The most effective propaganda, after all, is propaganda the viewer takes at face value.
Click image to view the video.
The show evolved in its sensibilities.
In the sequel, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Kirk’s successor, the Frenchman Captain John-Luc Picard, is notably more sophisticated in his approach to space navigation – as is the diverse crew of the Star Trek Enterprise.
Click image to view the video.
Picard, a Frenchman, drinks tea, writes poetry, and waxes philosophical about the virtues of the Federation and its benevolent altruism within the universe.
And he spends way, way more time than his predecessor discussing the merits of the all-important Prime Directive, a non-interventionist doctrine that preaches a hands-off approach to managing other civilizations encountered in space (which serve as proxies for nation-states).
Click image to view the video.
“The [writing] approach expresses the ‘message’ basic to the series: we must learn to live together or most certainly we will soon all die together… unless [Star Trek] ‘said something’ and we challenged our viewers to react and think, then it wasn’t worth all we had put into the show.” -Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek creator
The Federation in Star Trek – the human-led interstellar space government – is noble because it is egalitarian and pacifistic. Its mission is explicitly anti-colonial and non-aggressive. It’s basically a celestial UN with spaceships. Its most prideful triumph is the introduction of the galactic version of human rights in the form of the Prime Directive.
“[The Prime Directive] embodies a kind of anti-colonialist ethos, a commitment to respecting a civilization’s own values, beliefs, and practices rather than imposing ‘better’ ones upon them.”
Whereas the adversaries of The Federation, like the Klingons and Romulans, are notoriously tribalistic, the Enterprise welcomes crew members from all backgrounds in a nod to diversity, all equal under the law and harmoniously unsegregated.
Everyone lives in harmony and health, with access to healthcare and even therapy under the care of the ship’s sexy counselor, Deanna Troi.
Most episodes present some sort of political or ethical (or both) message that challenges the moral judgments of the viewer, with the intended effect of reinforcing the classical liberal commitment to the God-given right of the individual to control one’s own destiny.
(Note: In the context of this article, “liberalism” is taken to mean the political science concept of the term: “a philosophy that starts from a premise that political authority and law must be justified.”)
For example, in Season 2 Episode 9, anthropomorphized android, Data, is put on trial to determine if his individual autonomy exists. More to the point, if it does, does his interest in staying alive outweigh the potential benefits to scientific advancement were he to be dismantled and reverse-engineered?
Click image to view the video.
Following some drama, the determination is made, in line with liberal dogma, that Data does enjoy such rights. He is permitted to continue living as he sees fit.
Season 1 Episode 8, “Justice” presents the case against the death penalty, as the young Wesley Crusher is condemned to death over an obscure law on a remote planet. The death penalty — sanctioned state violence — is anathema to the liberal ideals of every individual’s right to life and the importance of checking state power.
Click image to view the video.
The Star Trek protagonists even talk like liberals. Captain Picard, the ultra-paragon of liberal ideology who serves as the moral compass of the ongoing mission to seek out new life and new civilizations, frequently opines on the merits of interstellar liberalism:
“The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”
” With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.”
“We think we’ve come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, is all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly, it threatens to start all over again.”
“A matter of internal security: the age-old cry of the oppressor.”
Star Trek is the ultimate expression of liberal optimism, grounded in the secular belief that democratic rule of law and pluralistic tolerance is man’s salvation.
A similar example of liberal idealism may be seen in Star Wars, of course – set in a galaxy dominated by an oppressive, omnipotent empire in which the rebels on the side of “good” liberal values like democracy. The series, likewise, is an example of pop culture’s capacity to engineer the dominant political ideology.
The virtues espoused by these works of fiction, taken one by one, are not necessarily wrong in these works of fiction.
But because they are slyly presented in archetypal art, they have a way of being absorbed subconsciously without critical analysis. One reflexively – ask any millennial male – identifies with the rebels of Star Wars fighting the good fight against the enemies of human freedom.
Without critical analysis, then, it’s possible for the state to cloak its dangerous, anti-democratic, exploitative practices in the language of liberalism with none of the substance that justifies liberalism.
For instance, the justification of various corporate state products under the auspices of “defending democracy.”
One is forced to wonder: if and when China ascends to a position of global hegemony, and becomes a mass exporter of culture in the same way America has been since WWII, what values will it instill in its propaganda?
These, and others, are the pitfalls of art-as-propaganda, regardless of how well-intended any one creator may be.
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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.
Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose, Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. Please support his independent operations however you can. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
If mass psychosis entails a detachment from reality, then Westerners in particular are suffering from mass-psychosis on myriad issues. Now more than ever.
In terms of government policies this manufactured illness is well-planned and deliberate. The media, in lockstep with the government, is owned and controlled by media cartels (1). Acceptable political dissent remains framed, for the most part, within the parameters of Big Lies, the most recent, expansive and criminal being the COVID Lies. (2)
If the COVID measures and jabs are a domestic manifestation of the government’s war on its own people, and the excess death rates suggest that they are (3), then imperialism would be an external manifestation of war on other peoples. Governments fabricate support for these “wars” through massive psychosis-generating lies and deceptions.
All of the post-911 wars in particular serve as a template for understanding the war in Ukraine. How? Because all of them were sold to incredulous Western populations through the medium of Big Lies. None of the wars were or are about humanitarian pursuits, democracy, freedom, or fighting terrorism. Quite the opposite.
The truth has seeped out for “past” wars to the extent that many Westerners now accept that Iraq did not have WMD, that Libya (4) before the Western invasion was a far better place (as was Iraq), and that far from being a brutal dictator, Syria’s elected government led by President Assad is infinitely superior to the Western-supported terrorists of al Qaeda, ISIS. (5)
So why the seemingly blanket acceptance of official Ukraine narratives? Have Western populations learned nothing from previous wars and the fabricated lies that launched and sustained them?
The war lies about Ukraine are consistent with war lies about the aforementioned countries.
The war is not about democracy, freedom, or humanitarianism, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a “brutal dictator”. This should not be a surprise. To be succinct, it is a proxy war meant to bleed Russia even if it means Ukrainians fighting to the “last person”. (6)In terms of bleeding Russia, the goal is unlikely to succeed since Russia is arguably stronger now than ever, despite (or perhaps because of ) the economic sanctions and the war.
In terms of fighting “to the last (Ukrainian) person“, as expressed by Senator Lindsay Graham, this bleak outcome may manifest itself as long as countries like Canada continue to support and send weapons to what is essentially a western-installed nazi regime.
George Eliason describes the deeds and foundational ideology of the resurrected Banderites of Kiev. He describes how the last thing holocaust victims saw were the blue and yellow armbands of the SS Totenkopf.
Video: George Eliason. Ukraine Greatest Lie
Yet westerners supporting the blue and yellow flags representative of the current Kiev Regime, product of an on-going Washington coup, seem blissfully unaware of what they are really supporting.
Western imperial warmongering complexes couldn’t be happier, even as this fabricated “psychosis” prolongs the war, the devastation, and the mass slaughter of Ukrainians. Imperialists do not want peace.
When if not now will the Western masses free themselves from their fabricated delusions? When if not now is it time for truth, peace, and justice?
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.
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“My 22 yr old daughter Diana was diagnosed with liver disease in March 2022 three weeks after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. She was a vibrant healthy young lady in the Army National Guard until she fell severely ill.” (click here)
She has been hospitalized numerous times in Fargo, Sioux Falls, Watertown and Rochester MN. The medical team at Mayo clinic said medication is not helping and she ultimately needs a liver transplant. During her hospitalization in Mayo they also found she has right heart failure which also needs to be addressed.
Diana is currently bleeding gastrointestinal and needing blood transfusions about every 2-3 weeks to sustain a normal level. She is unable to work and functions at a slow pace and is on a strict low sodium diet.
Appointments begin April 3rd where she will see the cardiologist, pulmonologist and hepatologist to start tests to get cleared to be put on the transplant list.
I will be taking a leave of absence from work to be with her thru all these appointments as we were told it will be weeks of testing. I am the sole provider for her and I drive her to all her appointments and I am known as her “support person” with all her doctors.”
A Case of Hepatotoxicity After Receiving a COVID-19 Vaccine
“A 14-year-old female, not known to have any chronic illnesses, presented to the emergency department with epigastric pain, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting for the past four days. Three days prior to her current presentation, the patient received the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.” (click here)
There have been three reports of patients having hepatic failure, with one case being acute, after receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine in the United Kingdom between September 12, 2020 and September 4, 2021. Moreover, there have been 17 reported cases of liver injury
“the possible side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines on the liver are not limited to one type”
My Take…
I am doing a speaking tour right now with Dr.Paul Alexander, so I cannot comment extensively, but please read these stories carefully. These tragic stories are so important and brave parents must be supported when they come forward to tell us about their COVID-19 vaccine injured children.
Post COVID-19 vaccine autoimmune diseases are very common and they affect various organs including the liver, where the COVID-19 spike protein accumulates as well.
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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 the author
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
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Children watch pornography at school and then practice together, as part of “comprehensive sexuality education”, as instructed by the World Health Organization, and United Nations.
Below you find two screenshots from official documents published by the World Health Organization and United Nations. They instruct schools worldwide to teach toddlers masturbation and sexual techniques.
Below you see a poster sent to thousands of schools, as part of this “comprehensive sexuality education”. This is a Dutch poster from The Netherlands, which I translated in English for your convenience. It is published by Rutger, a government funded organization that is responsible for sexual education in schools. This poster literally tells children that boys should have sex with boys, and so should girls with girls.
This is full blown homosexuality being pushed into elementary schools, on unsuspecting kids.
Below you find photographs of children’s playgrounds. Just let it sink in that these were approved by the local governments, and schools…
I have received emails from parents testifying how their kids are indeed being molested at schools, in the USA. The stories are horrifying. Sexual abuse is happening under the guise of “comprehensive sexuality education”. One example of an email I received from a parent:
“Everything you are reporting happened to her. Using another girl to touch my daughter (masturbation), horrible bad words, pornography using her cellphone.”
Children’s books are distributed in schools, that teach little children how to lick each others genitals.
Another children’s book pushed into schools in Europe, contains the following quote:
“Examples of things you can do with sex are (tongue) kissing, caressing, petting (licking the vagina), piping (licking/sucking the penis), fingering, jerking off, dick-in-vagina sex (vaginal sex) and dick-in-anus sex (anal sex)”.
Sexuality classes are being organized where little children watch pornography, and engage into sexual activities with one another. The instructions of the teaching material reads:
“Make sure that nobody records or films this. We have to keep these classes safe”.
This doesn’t only happen in Europe, but worldwide, as part of the UN Agenda 2030 and the WHO directives for sexuality education.
As we can see this is promoted by UNICEF, WHO, and the United Nations. On page 71 this guide instructs schools worldwide to teach young children different sexual techniques, and masturbation.
The sexualization of children is even done on global corporate level, as we have seen with the mugs from MacDonalds, that – when turned properly – show children engaged in sexual acts.
Normalizing pedophilia
Why are children all over the world being sexualized? As we have revealed in our evidence report “Child abuse and murder by high level officials” pedophilia is widespread among government officials and the financial elites. Their agenda is to normalize their hidden practices of child abuse.
The publisher of school material for sexual education in The Netherlands, Europe, is Rutger, an organization that has been trying to get pedophilia legalized for many years. It is highly alarming that they are the ones who were selected by the government to create this material – an organization that is known to fight for the normalization of pedophilia.
The goal is clear: sexualize little children, so that pedophilia will become mainstream.
The horror this will unleash on humanity is unspeakable. Everyone who knows something, knows that this traumatizes children forever. Anyone who has personally experienced sexual abuse can confirm this.
Perverted sexuality devastates humanity
We all know that sexuality is a matter of love, intimacy, safety, and being faithful to one person, that you commit yourself to. Sexuality is a powerful force that can inflict unspeakable damage to humans when expressed wrongly. You don’t just engage in all kinds of sexual acts with just about anyone. Let alone teaching little children to do this with their friends and even in the classroom.
A perverted sexuality devastates humanity. People who are addicted to pornography for example, develop social, relational, emotional and spiritual problems.
Instead of love, respect, and intimacy… all they know is a selfish desire to satisfy their own lusts. Sexuality becomes totally disconnected from love, acceptance and intimacy. It leaves you with a deep sense of loneliness, as no love is involved whatsoever. It turns people into predators, as they develop an attitude of considering other people as lust objects, instead of valuable human beings that need to be cherished and protected.
Since the mass distribution of pornography domestic sexual child abuse has exploded, as adults have been terrorized with a perverse form of sexuality, that pushes them to satisfy their lusts by preying on their own children.
Fifty years ago pornography was considered evil, but in recent years it has gone mainstream. The same will happen with pedophilia if we don’t stand up against it.
Don’t fall for their magic tricks
The WHO and UN hire masterful word magicians who are able to make this horror sound like a wonderful thing. When you read their documents it all is explained in such a way that you get the feeling they are saints straight from heaven who mean so well, and want to help the world.
But it is extreme deception, as what is actually being said, and what is literally being done in the schools, is mass child abuse.
Please be sharp in your mind and learn to discern when reading the UN and WHO documents. Understand what these guidelines effectively imply. Remember these are the organizations who have unleashed the pandemic onto humanity, they are the ones who suppressed every working treatment for C0VID, they are the ones who censor millions of doctors and scientists worldwide, they are the ones who mandate the highly toxic injections that are killing millions, they are the ones who push for a one world government, and so on.
We are dealing with psychopaths of the worst kind, who have the skill to hide their most nefarious crimes under a layer of beautiful words that claim to help the world.
While aggressively destroying every and all human rights worldwide during pandemics, they claim to protect the “human right of teaching kids to masturbate at age 5”.
Normalizing pedophilia and child abuse is not part of “human rights”. Please see through their smokescreens and refined methods of hypnotizing humanity with magical word plays.
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Once again, American politicians are pushing for new escalations in the Ukrainian conflict. Now, lawmakers want the Biden government to supply cluster munitions to the Ukrainian armed forces. This type of measure would be seen as a serious provocation by Russia and would certainly have strong impacts on the battlefield and in the current diplomatic crisis.
Recently, some Republican senators formally asked the government to “not hesitate” to send cluster arms to Ukraine. James Risch and Roger Wickers, both from Mississippi, led the Congress campaign, and were also supported by Michael McCaul, from Texas, and Mike Rogers, from Alabama. According to them, Washington should ship such bombs as quickly as possible to Kiev, ignoring what they think to be “vague concerns about the reaction of allies and partners and unfounded fears of ‘escalation'”.
The pressure comes amid a context of “despair” on the part of the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev and the more pro-war groups of American domestic politics. Faced with the Ukrainian military failure and the imminent Russian victory, despite the systematic sending of weapons by NATO, the only solution seems to be to resort to the use of “non-conventional” arms. In this sense, the use of cluster bombs would be one of the “alternatives”, which is why Ukrainian politicians have asked US congressmen to increase the pressure for the government to allow the export of such equipment.
Cluster bombs are banned in at least 110 countries by a 2008 UN-brokered treaty. These arms are notorious for their fragmentation power. Cluster munitions include countless small projectiles inside. When launched, these bombs explode ejecting projectiles that injure a much greater number of victims than conventional weapons. The most dangerous thing is that many of these small projectiles do not detonate immediately after being ejected, and can remain inactive for a long time, which is why civilians can be mutilated or killed by bomblets that explode long after a conflict ends.
In addition to the absolutely anti-humanitarian aspect of these arms, it is necessary to emphasize that American law prohibits their export in any situation. For the US government to authorize the shipment of cluster munitions to Ukraine, it would be necessary to change national legislation – or simply act illegally. Also, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had already made it clear that there was no possibility of sending these arms to Kiev, stating that “according to our own policy, we have concerns about the use of those kinds of munitions”.
However, for warmongers, no limits should be respected. Failing to convince the US government directly, the Ukrainians appealed to parliamentarians, who then used their power of political mobilization to form pro-war coalitions and encourage the violation of the country’s laws. Parliamentary pressure is one of the most frequently used mechanisms by Western powers to promote institutional changes in other countries. Now, the US government itself is under pressure from Congress, which echoes the interests of pro-war elites.
On the part of Ukrainians, there is no interest in respecting any humanitarian limits. There are already several reports stating that the Ukrainian armed forces used Soviet-era cluster weapons in civilian residential areas in Donbass since 2014. In March last year, for example, a Tochka-U missile containing cluster munitions killed more than 20 people and injured dozens of civilians in Donetsk. Faced with the collapse of the Ukrainian arsenals, what interests the neo-Nazi regime now is to obtain cluster arms from American stockpiles.
It is important to emphasize that the pressure in Washington comes in parallel with the British decision to send depleted uranium radioactive weapons to Kiev. This reinforces that Western pro-war elites are interested in raising the level of aid to Kiev, openly promoting the shipment of illegal weapons banned by international treaties. The practical result of this will obviously be an unprecedented escalation.
Commenting on the case at a recent press conference, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Ryabkov, said that American lawmakers do not seem aware of the tragic consequences that sending such armaments would generate. According to him, the very security of NATO countries would be threatened if such a measure were taken – since international tensions would escalate to a point of no return. Ryabkov also warned that this would block any possibility of normalization of relations between Moscow and Washington.
Obviously, Moscow will not remain inert while citizens in the special military operation zone are exposed to attacks with illegal weapons with high destructive power. In order to defend the inhabitants of territories reintegrated into the Russian Federation, extraordinary military measures will certainly be taken, which will have high impacts on the battlefield.
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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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Abuse and weaponization of the United Nations system by the United States and its vassal governments to both mislead and intimidate the rest of the world have been a feature of international relations since the very founding of the United Nations and the time of the Korean War. In recent years, that reality has deteriorated to a point where aggressive demented false beliefs promoted by the US and its allies have made the UN system complicit in outright terrorism. Various UN institutions have been abused in this way.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has produced false reports masking the complicity of the US and its allies in extremist terrorism against Syria’s government and people. The International Atomic Energy Agency has covered up the Ukrainian army’s shelling of the Zaporozhe nuclear power station. Practically the entire UN human rights system is consistently abused to supply pretexts for economic and even military aggression against one country after another.
That system depends substantially on reporting by partisan Western government and corporate funded nongovernmental organizations, abusing their nonprofit status so as to serve as political opposition to their respective governments, often in support of opposition violence and terrorism. That has been the case in countries from Serbia to Haiti, from Venezuela to Thailand, from Bolivia to Iran and even of great powers like the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. This too is the context and pattern of the violent 2018 coup attempt aimed at overthrowing Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
Now, five years on, the UN Council for Human Rights has facilitated what is being designated as an expert group report, whitewashing the terrorist opposition campaign between April 18th and July 17th 2018 to overthrow Nicaragua’s elected government. The Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition has produced a systematic rebuttal of the UN report which exposes the bad faith methodology and incompetent research of the expert group and its secretariat. The Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition document explains that the UN report was produced by an anonymous secretariat of nine individuals, raising serious doubts about the integrity of the claim by the report’s ostensible authors to offer an expert account of the events they purport to cover.
The Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition rebuttal argues that the expert group failed to comply with its mandate to investigate exhaustively all human rights violations in Nicaragua after April 2018. For example, testimony was excluded from the innumerable victims of opposition terrorism and intimidation, and thus the group failed to gather and analyse essential information to be able to offer a true and fair view of what happened. Thus, the expert group’s claim is nonsense that their investigation used a victim centered approach.
Similarly, the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition material notes how the expert group deny that the opposition protests sought to overthrow the government, despite Nicaragua’s opposition leaders themselves stating this as their aim from the earliest days of the failed coup attempt. The report offers many readily refuted claims and assertions, in particular the plainly false claim that the 2018 protests in Nicaragua were overwhelmingly peaceful. The expert group also exceeds its ostensible mandate by calling in their report’s conclusion for more coercive measures against Nicaragua’s government.
The report shares with other institutions in the UN system, like the OPCW and the IAEA, what in effect amounts to a cancel culture regarding any information that contradicts their prejudices and presuppositions. By excluding sources which contradict them and expose their assumptions as incorrect, they lock their research and investigation into the kind of infinite disinformation loop sometimes referred to as false collateral. This renders the expert group’s report on Nicaragua not just categorically specious, but also irredeemably anti-democratic, denying world opinion readily available as well as highly relevant facts.
For example, as the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition material demonstrates, the UN report completely excludes the following local news sources despite the fact that they all published a large amount of highly relevant material and reports on specific incidents during the period in question: Juventud Presidente, Nueva Radio Ya, Canal TN8 news, Canal 6 news, Canal 2 news, Canal 13 Viva Nicaragua, Informe Pastrán, Radio La Primerísima and Tortilla con Sal. Likewise, the report makes no mention of the horrifying and very well documented cases of violence and abuse by Nicaragua’s opposition which indicate the scale and intensity of the Nicaraguan opposition’s overall terror offensive against the country’s population and authorities.
In particular, the Coalition rebuttal points out, there is no reporting of the following cases:
The expert group report does acknowledge opposition violence against police officers (22 killed and over 400 wounded by gunfire) but offers the wholly implausible explanation that this scale of violence was in self-defense. The report suppresses documented evidence of the extensive opposition damage to government infrastructure, vehicles and equipment. The Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition also notes that the expert group excludes hundreds of other relevant reports on the events it does cover, as well as documents readily available on-line. These include Nicaragua 2018 – Dismissing the Truth, Nicaragua 2018 – Uncensoring the Truth, and this “Open Letter to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.”
The UN expert group argue they were unable to visit Nicaragua and thus could not engage with the Nicaraguan government authorities. But the expert group themselves in their report dismiss as unreliable material from the Nicaraguan authorities, such as police press releases. Furthermore, as the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition explains, since April 2018 the Nicaraguan government has repeatedly submitted material to both the Organization of American States and to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which presumably was available to the UN expert group.
The UN report on Nicaragua is irremediably vitiated by this distinctly anti-government bias and repeats this pattern of bad faith reporting throughout. Its egregious prejudice is self-evident, given the complete exclusion of abundant documental and audiovisual material confirming the systematic opposition terrorist violence in 2018 and exposing the opposition leaders’ clear and stated objective of overthrowing Nicaragua’s elected government.
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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.
Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
A trillion dollars is a lot of money. If you stacked a billion dollar bills on top of one another, the pile would be 67.9 miles high, but if you stacked a trillion dollar bills on top of one another the pile would be 67,866 miles high. And if you lined up a trillion dollar bills end to end, the line of dollar bills would be a staggering 96,906,656 miles long. That is longer than the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
On March 18th, 2023, an Air Transat Airbus A321 was flying from Fort-de-France to Montreal when the aircraft’s first officer became incapacitated. The incident occurred as the aircraft was flying over the United States, 200NM south of Montreal. (click here)
The Washington Consensus in liaison with Wall Street and the Federal Reserve have imposed an IMF style neoliberal agenda (routinely imposed on Third World Countries) on all member states of the European Union. This process has been geared towards destroying the “European Project” as well eliminating the Welfare State.
Watching the Serbian TV evening programme on 24 March 2023, I was at first deeply shocked, although 24 years had already passed since the first war on European soil by the “North Atlantic Terrorist Organisation” (NATO) against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ). A short time later, a question came to me, the answer to which I already knew.
On March 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will start deploying its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Construction of designated storage facilities for the weapons is planned to be completed by July 1.
Carlson is correct that Nixon was an enemy of the Deep State, but the plot against Nixon originated prior to Nixon’s meeting with CIA Director Richard Helms.Nixon was removed because he was normalizing US relations with the Soviet Union and China.This was seen as taking away the needed enemies for the military/security complex’s budget and power.This was also the main reason the CIA murdered President Kennedy.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an ideological divide that has gripped the world, with one side (led by the G7) condemning the invasion and seeking to punish Russia economically, and the other (led by BRICS) taking a more nuanced stance by neither supporting the Russian action nor joining in on the sanctions. This has created a intellectual vacuum when it comes to assessing the true state of play in global economic affairs.
We all know that 95 percent of elite Pakistani politics is mentally challenged fairytales and gossip replete with murmurings that can be cooked up for a good story to sell to the public. The intrigues and power plays of Pakistan’s rulers seem to just drag the country further and further to the abyss.
Here are all the updated key facts and sources concerning the alleged “pandemic”, to help you get a grasp on what has happened to the world since January 2020, and assist in the enlightenment of any of your friends who might be still trapped in the New Normal fog.
If you are not confused, you should be, because creating confusion is a hallmark of every successful operation to control the masses, and the perfect biopsychosocial operation will create confusion in spades. It’s not a matter of covering tracks to make an investigation into the origins or other parts of an operation impossible – it’s a matter of deliberately creating many tracks, tracks that run in various directions and lead to questionable conclusions.
Comments Off on Selected Articles: You Will be Shocked by How Much Money Is Being Pulled Out of U.S. Banks, and Now the Biggest Bank in Germany Is in Trouble
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Einleitung
Als ich mir am 24. März 2023 das serbische TV-Abendprogramm ansah, war ich zunächst tief erschüttert, obwohl seit dem ersten Krieg auf europäischen Boden der „Nord-Atlantischen-Terror-Organisation“ (NATO) gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien (SRJ) bereits 24 Jahre vergangen sind.
Kurze Zeit später drängte sich mir eine Frage auf, deren Antwort ich bereits kannte.
Erschüttert war ich zunächst über die Hass-Reden krimineller westlicher Politiker gegen den damaligen jugoslawischen Staatspräsidenten und das serbische Volk. Erschüttert auch über die gnadenlosen Bombardements serbischer Infrastruktur sowie serbischer Zivilisten. Doch vor allem erschüttert über den Einsatz hochgiftiger, radioaktiver Uran-Geschosse.
Das Ausmaß dieses NATO-Kriegsverbrechens in Serbien wurde erst nach 1999 deutlich: Aggressive Krebserkrankungen unter Jung und Alt nahmen ein epidemisches Ausmaß an – jeden Tag erkrankte ein Kind an Krebs und das ganz Land ist verseucht worden. Durch die Schädigung des Erbgutes (DNA) kommen Generation um Generation missgebildete Kinder zur Welt. Ein Krieg, der nicht zu Ende geht (1).
Wissentlich und willentlich ist ein Völkermord (Genozid) begangen worden, der als „Verbrechen der Verbrechen“ („crime of crimes“) oder als „schlimmstes Verbrechen des Völkerstrafrechts“ bezeichnet wird (2).
Nach der ersten Erschütterung fragte ich mich: Wieso haben wir Bürger in der Welt diese politischen Verbrechen weitgehend widerspruchslos hingenommen und lassen sie wieder geschehen? Radioaktive Uran-Munition soll demnächst im Ukraine-Krieg von ukrainischen Soldaten eingesetzt werden – und die Welt schreit nicht auf. Haben wir in den letzten Jahrzehnten nichts hinzugelernt?
Die Antwort auf diese Frage kenne ich seit langem: Was auch immer mit den Menschen in der nächsten Umgebung oder weitab in irgendeinem Teil der Welt geschieht – es geht mich nichts an.
„Ja das geht mich nichts an“
In einem Fortbildungskurs für Jugendliche erzählte mein ehemaliger Psychologie-Lehrer aus einer psychotherapeutischen Berufsberatung folgendes:
„Ein 20jährer junger Mann kommt in die Berufsberatung und wird genau aufgeklärt: wie es ihm geht, welchem Beruf er sich widmen kann, wie es ihm in der Sexualität geht?
Herr Müller, haben Sie Schutzmittel, wenn Sie mit einem Mädchen verkehren?
Ja, die, die ich kenne, da habe ich Präservative.
Ja wie meinen Sie das: die Sie kennen?
Ja wenn ich mit einer Sexualität habe, die ich nicht kenne, dann verwende ich das Präservativ nicht.
Ja warum nicht?
Ja das geht mich nichts an.
Ja sagen Sie, Herr Müller, wenn das arme Kind, das Mädchen schwanger wird, das ist doch schrecklich, denken Sie!
Ja das geht mich nichts an.
Es nützt kein Reden. Der junge Mann wird noch einmal in die Praxis bestellt, aber es geht nicht. Er ist ein guter Christ, er gehört einer Kirche an und hat das Beten gelernt, und so weiter (…).
Das ist die Erziehung, so hat es der Mensch erlebt. Heute sprechen wir zum Beispiel vom Politiker, der den Krieg anzettelt und von demjenigen, der ihn nicht anzettelt. Und vom Pfarrer und der Kirche, die die Waffen des Krieges segnen, die die anderen jenseits der Grenze erschlagen, die auch Christen sind, Menschen wie wir. So schaut die Welt aus.
Wir werden versuchen, uns dem Problem „Mensch“ zu widmen. Wie er wird und was für Unterschiede wir machen sollen zwischen dem Pfarrer, den Theologen, dem Kriegsführer, dem Politiker und dem Burschen, der marschiert, wenn er gerufen wird.
Und wir, wie stehen wir da? Was machen wir?
Wir reden vom Krieg – von den vergangenen Kriegen. Was ist mit den kommenden Kriegen? (…). Noch nie wurden so viele Waffen geschmiedet wie heute, aber für andere Zwecke wie für Schulen, für den Unterricht, für kulturelle Zwecke haben wir kein Geld (…).“ (3)
Der Jugend eine lebenswerte Zukunft ermöglichen
Liebe Leser, ich hoffe, wir verstehen uns!
Sollten wir erwachsenen Bürger nicht darüber nachdenken, wie wir unseren Kindern und Kindeskindern – nach einem meist erfüllten persönlichen Leben – ebenfalls eine lebenswerte Zukunft ermöglichen können?
Wenn wir davon überzeugt sind, dass auch wir Bürgerinnen und Bürger die derzeitige Weltsituation bewusst oder unbewusst mitgeprägt haben, weil wir sehr ungünstige – und zum Teil absehbare – politische Entwicklungen im eigenen Land und in der Welt geschehen ließen und dabei „unsere Hände in Unschuld wuschen“, dann werden wir die richtigen Lehren aus unseren Versäumnissen ziehen.
Es sind eben nicht nur die anderen, die unsichtbaren „Herrscher der Finsternis“ und die ihnen hörigen Politiker, die für das irdische Elend verantwortlich sind. Wir Bürger haben uns durch die salbungsvollen, verlogenen Stellungnahmen vieler Politiker – meist im Namen irgendeiner Demokratie – beruhigen lassen und damit unser Nichtstun gerechtfertigt. Die uns über Jahre oder Monate über die Regierungsmedien eingehämmerten Feindbilder haben ihre Wirkung nicht verfehlt.
Als deutscher Bürger, der seit Jahren in Frieden und Freundschaft in diesem „verpönten“ Land Serbien lebt, bin ich der Meinung, dass es sich bei der versuchten Zerstörung und „Ermordung“ Serbiens um einen verborgenen politischen Plan, einen Auftrag von „ganz oben“ gehandelt hat und nicht um einen „missliebigen“ Präsidenten oder um ein Volk, das wegen seiner sozialistischen Gesinnung und Loyalität unbedingt bestrafen werden müsse.
Mit Serbinnen und Serben kann man wunderbar zusammenleben! Das trifft auch auf alle anderen Staaten und deren Bevölkerung zu, die von der US-NATO mit mörderischen Kriegen überzogen worden sind. Deshalb sollten wir Bürger im Westen alles daransetzen, unser Bewusstsein von individuellen und kollektiven Vorurteilen zu reinigen und uns von gewissen Politikern und ihren Regierungs-Medien nicht beeindrucken lassen.
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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler (Dr. paed.) und Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer (Professor) in der Erwachsenenbildung: unter anderem Leiter eines freien Schul-Modell-Versuchs und Fortbildner bayerischer Beratungslehrkräfte und Schulpsychologen. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. Bei einer Öffentlichen Anhörung zur Jugendkriminalität im Europa-Parlament war er Berichterstatter für Deutschland. 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.
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Three large banks failed in a single week in March 2023, and the ripple effect could easily take down the entire banking system. The cascading bank failures began March 8 with the shut down and liquidation of the crypto bank Silvergate Capital. It had invested deposits in Treasury bonds, which lost value as interest rates were hiked to stem inflation.
March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed. It too was invested in government bonds, which again became a problem when customers began making large fear-based withdrawals. This was the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, and the largest since the financial crisis in 2008.
Spooked by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank customers withdrew more than $10 billion in the days that followed, resulting in the shutdown of Signature Bank on March 12.
Government regulators have promised to make customers of the two banks “whole” by insuring all funds, not just the first $250,000. Only select “too big to fail” banks will be eligible for this kind of special treatment. Small local banks will not be eligible.
The most likely outcome of this bailout system is a consolidation of banks until we’re left with just a small number of mega-banks. This consolidation, in turn, will facilitate the rollout of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), as the banking industry will be a tight-knit monopoly.
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Three large banks failed in a single week in March 2023, and the ripple effect could easily take down the entire banking system, although government officials insist the banking sector “remains strong” and that the problems faced by these banks “do not appear to be widespread.”1
Cascading Domino of Bank Failures
The cascading bank failures began March 8 with the shut down and liquidation of the crypto bank Silvergate Capital.2 As reported by Government Executive:3
“During 2022, Silvergate’s deposit base grew dramatically, almost doubling its assets to $210 billion. But the bank did not have either the administrative capacity or market demand to lend out all of the money, as banks normally do.
So, it invested the excess deposits in Treasury bonds and mortgage investment products. But the bond purchases became a problem as the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates to address inflation.”
Two days later, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) — the 16th largest bank in the U.S.4 — failed. It too was invested in government bonds, which again became a problem when customers began making large fear-based withdrawals. This was the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, and the largest since the financial crisis in 2008.
Allegedly “spooked” by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank customers then withdrew more than $10 billion, resulting in the shutdown of Signature Bank on March 12, making it the third-largest bank failure in history.5,6
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) took control of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature, and government regulators have promised to make all customers “whole” by insuring all funds, not just the first $250,000. In other words, government is bailing out the banking system yet again, on the taxpayers’ dime.
Within a week, Signature was bought up by Flagstar Bank, a subsidiary of New York Community Bancorp (one of the largest banks in the U.S.).7 According to the FDIC, anyone who had deposits at Signature Bank will automatically become a client of Flagstar Bank, except for crypto banking clients, as Signature’s digital banking business was not included in Flagstar’s bid.8
The FDIC is also left holding $11 billion-worth of “toxic waste debt” in the form of commercial real estate loans for rent-regulated buildings, as this debt portfolio was also rejected by Flagstar.9 The FDIC is still looking for a buyer for Silicon Valley Bank.
Is the US Banking System Really Sound?
President Joe Biden’s comments shortly after the three bank failures was that “Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe” and that “Your deposits will be there when you need them.” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also insists the U.S. banking system “remains sound.”10
Should we believe them? Probably not. Within days of those statements, the contagion had already spread to Credit Suisse, the largest bank in Switzerland. After government initially stepped in to cover some of the losses, the Swiss banking giant was sold to the UBS Group.11 The acquisition was announced March 19.
It’s hard to believe the ripple effects of bank failures of this magnitude can really be stopped. The question is, should we even try? As reported by Government Executive,12 government has no obligation to step in and bail these banks out under current banking regulations.
What’s more, the biased bailout system now being put into place will virtually guarantee further bank consolidations and the widespread rollout of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). As reported by Newsweek March 16, 2023:13
“During a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Yellen was grilled by Oklahoma GOP Senator James Lankford over the Biden administration’s handling of the banking crisis, which saw the federal government offer a multibillion-dollar bailout to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) after a bank run left it without enough cash to back up hundreds of millions of dollars of its clients’ deposits. Most of those deposits were not insured.
To address the crisis, U.S. bank regulators announced a plan last weekend to fully insure all deposits at SVB as well as the crypto-friendly Signature Bank.
This would cover all deposits above the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s insured limit of $250,000. Federal officials said the plan would be paid for by a special fee levied on all FDIC institutions.
While all banks would be required to pay for the plan, Yellen said under questioning Thursday that it would not apply to every bank. She said the federal government would extend the privilege only to troubled banks whose failure would have a profound impact on the U.S. financial system.
Uninsured deposits, Yellen said, would be covered only if a ‘failure to protect uninsured depositors would create systemic risk and significant economic and financial consequences,’ which would be decided by a supermajority of the FDIC’s board members, Yellen, and the President …
In further questioning, Lankford asked Yellen whether that policy’s implication would be that small banks would become less appealing to depositors with accounts exceeding the FDIC’s $250,000 insurance threshold …
Amid the sharp increase in bank mergers over the past decade, Lankford expressed concern that the trend could only accelerate under current policy, causing the U.S. banking system to become less resilient.
“I’m concerned you’re … encouraging anyone who has a large deposit at a community bank to [hear], ‘We’re not going to make you whole, but if you go to one of our preferred banks, we will make you whole,'” Lankford told Yellen. Yellen replied, ‘That’s certainly not something that we’re encouraging.'”
And yet that’s exactly what this policy will be encouraging. Actions speak louder than words, and in this case, the outcome of this policy is quite clear, regardless of what Yellen is saying.
To recap, the FDIC will only insure deposits up to $250,000 if your money is in a small bank, but if your money is in a big bank, uninsured deposits over that amount will be covered as well, should the bank fail.
Why Bank Crashes Will Facilitate CBDC Rollout
Adding insult to injury, while the system is clearly biased and won’t protect everyone, all banks (and hence account holders) will be forced to pay this “special fee” to the FDIC that will, supposedly, insure all these uninsured deposits at preferred banks.
The most likely outcome of this bailout system is a consolidation of banks until we’re left with just a small number of mega-banks. We’re already starting to see the early phases of this, with “the big three” — Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — reporting14 a deposit spike in the wake of the SVB collapse and Yellen’s announcement that only certain preferred banks will be covered above FDIC insurance limits.
This consolidation, in turn, will facilitate the rollout of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), as the banking industry will be a very tight-knit monopoly. Let’s say there are only half a dozen banks in all of America. All they have to do is make the switch to CBDC as a group, and anyone with a bank account in America will be automatically trapped in the new system. As reported by News Punch:15
“What we are seeing is a push towards Global Government that is being camouflaged and cloaked in humanitarianism, multiculturalism, as well as manufactured threats such as global warming and pandemics in order to condition the population into accepting globalization and a One World Government.
In order for this to occur the elite are planning to create a global financial crisis the likes of which the world has never seen. Out of the ashes of this financial crisis will rise the phoenix of is a New International Economic Order. The public will be told that the new order is the only way to stabilize the world economy and save what little remains of their wealth …
People often ask why the globalist elite would collapse the world economy. Wouldn’t that mean they destroy their own wealth in the process? The answer is no. The elite have been consolidating their wealth in order to protect it for centuries … When the world financial system finally crashes the elite will be positioned to buy what’s left for pennies on the dollar.
Where does this leave the rest of the world financially? The answer is in bondage to a Techno-Communist World Governmental System led by the World Economic Forum in Davos and the hidden hands that control the public face of that cabal. If you pay attention now you can see that everything around you is being engineered towards this one goal …
The globalist elite are also forcing their vassal states to move towards centralizing currency in the form of a … CBDC, which by the way, is not currency at all – it is software designed as a tool of total social control … If they can cancel out your bank balance with a single keystroke, then you have no freedom, no autonomy. You are a slave …”
UCC Code Update Is Stealth Attempt to Steal Our Freedom
The fact that CBDCs are intended as financial shackles to control you within what amounts to an open-air prison is also noted by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem16 in the Fox News interview above.
She highlights a proposed Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) update that seeks to redefine “currency” to exclude decentralized crypto currencies, effectively putting the government on the path to a CBDC monopoly. Noem vetoed the bill and is urging other states to reject it as well.
The UCC Code is a set of laws that govern commercial transactions in the U.S. While not a federal law, it’s a set of laws that states agree to adopt in a uniform fashion to facilitate interstate business. So, it appears they intend to begin the financial takeover by rolling out the CBDC on the state level first, and legislators who believe in freedom must denounce all such plans.
Government Bonds Are Now the ‘Toxic Asset’
According to News Punch,17 the destruction of Silicon Valley Bank was intentional. While I cannot vouch for that, it’s interesting to note that SVB was in relatively good shape before it went kaput overnight.
As explained by the Sovereign Research and Advisory Group in an article titled “If SVB Is Insolvent, So Is Everyone Else,”18 the 2008 banking crash occurred because Lehman Brothers and other banks had used depositors’ money to buy extremely risky no-money-down mortgage bonds.
While the economy was good, banks earned hefty profits from these toxic assets, but as soon as the economy downshifted, these toxic securities plunged in value and wiped them out.
This time, however, the toxic asset is not mortgages obtained by people with no job, income or history of paying their bills. No, this time, it’s U.S. government bonds that are sinking banks, and these bonds are supposed to be the safest investment there is. Sovereign Research and Advisory Group writes:19
“Silicon Valley Bank was no Lehman Brothers. Whereas Lehman bet almost ALL of its balance sheet on those risky mortgage bonds, SVB actually had a surprisingly conservative balance sheet.
According to the bank’s annual financial statements from December 31 of last year, SVB had $173 billion in customer deposits, yet “only” $74 billion in loans. I know this sounds ridiculous, but banks typically loan out MOST of their depositors’ money.
Wells Fargo, for example, recently reported $1.38 trillion in deposits. $955 billion of that is loaned out. That means Wells Fargo has made loans with nearly 70% of its customer’s money, while SVB had a more conservative ‘loan-to-deposit ratio’ of roughly 42%.
Point is, SVB did not fail because they were making a bunch of high-risk NINJA loans. Far from it. SVB failed because they parked the majority of their depositors’ money ($119.9 billion) in US GOVERNMENT BONDS. This is the really extraordinary part of this drama.
US government bonds are supposed to be the safest, most ‘risk free’ asset in the world. But that’s totally untrue, because even government bonds can lose value. And that’s exactly what happened.
Most of SVB’s portfolio was in long-term government bonds, like 10-year Treasury notes. And these have been extremely volatile. In March 2020, for example, interest rates were so low that the Treasury Department sold some 10-year Treasury notes at yields as low as 0.08%.
But interest rates have increased so much since then; last week the 10-year Treasury yield was more than 4%. And this is an enormous difference.
If you’re not terribly familiar with the bond market, one of the most important things to understand is that bonds lose value as interest rates rise. And this is what happened to Silicon Valley Bank.
SVB loaded up on long-term government bonds when interest rates were much lower; the average weighted yield in their bond portfolio, in fact, was just 1.78%. But interest rates have been rising rapidly. The same bonds that SVB bought 2-3 years ago at 1.78% now yield between 3.5% and 5%, meaning that SVB was sitting on steep losses.”
All Banks, Including the Fed, Are Likely Insolvent
According to the SVB’s 2022 annual report published January 19, 2023, they had $16 billion in capital and $15 billion in unrealized losses on their government bonds. So, they were ripe for a wipeout.20
The problem is, if SVB, with its conservative loan-to-deposit ratio ended up insolvent due to government bonds tanking, then that likely means that everyone else is insolvent as well, including state and local governments, large corporations of all kinds, and the Federal Reserve. Anyone holding government bonds is sitting on huge losses as interest rates rise.
According to FDIC estimates, the unrealized losses of U.S. banks is approximately $650 billion and rising. Meanwhile, the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund (DIF), the fund that’s supposed to cover insured deposits (accounts up to $250,000), has a balance of just $128 billion.21 See the problem? What’s worse, the DIF money doesn’t just sit there. It too is invested — in U.S. government bonds! As noted by the Sovereign Research and Advisory Group:22
“So even the FDIC is suffering unrealized losses in its insurance fund, which is supposed to bail out banks that fail from their unrealized losses. You can’t make this stuff up, it’s ridiculous!”
And it’s only going to get worse if the Federal Reserve continues to increase interest rates. The problem is, interest rates need to be raised to curtail runaway inflation, but if they go up, more banks will sink due to their holdings in government bonds.23,24 There’s just no way out.
Add to this insurmountable problem the fact that President Biden’s 2024 budget will raise the federal debt to $50.7 trillion by the end of 2033. It’s currently $31.459 trillion.25 That’s a staggering amount of debt.
From a household perspective, you have no choice but to file for bankruptcy once your income cannot even cover the interest payment on your debt, and that’s basically where we are on a national level. As noted by The Balance:26
“Most creditors don’t worry about a nation’s debt, also known as ‘sovereign debt,’ until it’s more than 77% of gross domestic product (GDP). That’s the point at which added debt cuts into annual economic growth, according to the World Bank. At the end of the second quarter of 2021, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio was 125%. That’s much higher than the tipping point …”
Are You Prepared?
All of this is why it’s so important to prepare and become as independent as possible. The things we’ve taken for granted our entire lives may soon vanish, and what’s coming to replace them are not in your best interest unless you’re part of the globalist cabal that will exempt themselves from the slave system.
Becoming more resilient in the face of these changes could include moving cash into things that have a greater chance of withstanding inflation, such as precious metals (the actual metals, not the paper) and land, for example, and/or tradeable items. Shelf-stable foods may also be a wise investment, as could securing a private well or building a rain catchment system.
Also remember that artificial intelligence is the “beast” that drives the coming slave system. A formula created by the World Economic Forum’s philosophical guru, Yuval Noah Harari, describes the technocrats’ ever-growing ability to hack humans: B x C x D = AHH.27
B stands for biological knowledge, C is computing power, D is data and AHH is the level of ability to hack a human being. AI needs massive amounts of up-to-the-minute data for the control system to work, so “starving the beast” also needs to be on your list.
That means eliminating apps and devices that collect your personal data, Google and Facebook being two of the biggest data miners. It also means rejecting CBDCs, as it’s not really a currency but a tool for population control, and digital identity, which will track everything you do, both online and in the real world, and will strip you of basic rights and freedoms based on your social credit score.
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On March 18th, 2023, an Air Transat Airbus A321 was flying from Fort-de-France to Montreal when the aircraft’s first officer became incapacitated. The incident occurred as the aircraft was flying over the United States, 200NM south of Montreal. (click here)
According to The Aviation Herald, the March 18th incident took place aboard Air Transat flight TS739, an Airbus A321-200 service from Fort-de-France, capital of the French territory of Martinique to Montreal, Canada.
At FL360, about 200NM south of Montreal, the first officer reportedly became incapacitated. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board reported that a second officer was available onboard and was thus able to replace the incapacitated first officer. Unfortunately, no additional details on the first officer’s condition were made available.
Sixth pilot incident this month
March 22, 2023 – Southwest 613 LAS-CMH diverted as pilot collapsed shortly after take-off (click here)
March 13, 2023 – Emirates Flight EK205 MXP-JFK diverted due to pilot illness hour and a half after take-off (click here)
March 11, 2023 – United Airlines Flight 2007 GUA-ORD diverted due to “incapacitated pilot” who had chest pains (click here)
March 11, 2023? – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot collapsed in Cairo hotel and died, was scheduled to fly Airbus A321 from Cairo to London (click here)
March, 3, 2023 – Virgin Australia VA-717ADL-PER Adelaide to Perth flight was forced to make an emergency landing after First Officer suffered heart attack 30 min after departure. (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.
All images in this article are from the author
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
Comments Off on Air Transat Flight TS739 FDF-YUL Service from Fort-de-France to Montreal, Airbus A321-200: Pilot Incapacitated In-flight on March 18th, 2023, Sixth Incident This Month
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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The American Library Association (ALA) today released new data documenting[1] 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles the 729 challenges reported in 2021.
A record 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship, a 38% increase from the 1,858 unique titles targeted for censorship in 2021. Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color.
Of the reported book challenges, 58% targeted books and materials in school libraries, classroom libraries or school curricula; 41% of book challenges targeted materials in public libraries.
The prevalent use of lists of books compiled by organized censorship groups contributed significantly to the skyrocketing number of challenges and the frequency with which each title was challenged. Of the overall number of books challenged, 90% were part of attempts to censor multiple titles. Of the books challenged, 40% were in cases involving 100 or more books
Prior to 2021, the vast majority of challenges to library resources only sought to remove or restrict access to a single book.
“A book challenge is a demand to remove a book from a library’s collection so that no one else can read it. Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing these challenges come from organized censorship groups that target local library board meetings to demand removal of a long list of books they share on social media,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Their aim is to suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation’s conversations, such as people in the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color.
“Each attempt to ban a book by one of these groups represents a direct attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore,” said Caldwell-Stone. “The choice of what to read must be left to the reader or, in the case of children, to parents. That choice does not belong to self-appointed book police.”
ALA will unveil its highly anticipated list of the top 10 most challenged books in the U.S. on Monday, April 24 during National Library Week, along with its full State of America’s Libraries Report. The theme of National Library Week 2023, There’s More to the Story, focuses on the essential services and programming that libraries offer through and beyond books.
ALA President Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada said, “Every day professional librarians sit down with parents to thoughtfully determine what reading material is best suited for their child’s needs. Now, many library workers face threats to their employment, their personal safety, and in some cases, threats of prosecution for providing books to youth they and their parents want to read.
“ALA began documenting the book challenges reported to us over two decades ago because we want to shine a light on the threat of censorship facing readers and entire communities. Book challenges distract from the core mission of libraries: to provide access to information. That includes access to information and services for learners of all ages, homeschooling parents, job seekers, new computer users, budding readers, entrepreneurs, veterans, tax filers and amateur genealogists – just to name a few.
“While a vocal minority stokes the flames of controversy around books, the vast majority of people across the nation are using life-changing services that public and school libraries offer. Our nation cannot afford to lose the library workers who lift up their communities and safeguard our First Amendment freedom to read.”
Polling conducted by bipartisan research firms in 2022 showed that voters across the political spectrum oppose efforts to remove books from libraries and have confidence in libraries to make good decisions about their collections. To galvanize support for libraries and respond to the surge in book challenges and other efforts to suppress access to information, in 2022 ALA launched Unite Against Book Bans, a national initiative to empower readers everywhere to stand together in the fight against censorship. The coalition will mark its first anniversary during National Library Week.
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Note
[1] ALA compiles data on book challenges from reports filed with its Office for Intellectual Freedom by library professionals in the field and from news stories published throughout the United States. Because many book challenges are not reported to the ALA or covered by the press, the 2022 data compiled by ALA represents only a snapshot of book censorship throughout the year. A challenge to a book may be resolved in favor of retaining the book in the collection, or it can result in a book being restricted or withdrawn from the library.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
“Graduate” and disciple of Klaus Schwab. 
