With foresight, this timely article was written by Peter Koenig almost six years ago in July 2017.
“Electronic Money” is currently on the One World Order agenda (OWO)
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Electronic money,a cashless society, is perhaps the ultimate and most direct means of the New World Order (NWO), also called One World Order (OWO), to control us all via its financial system. A system that the NWO would like to maintain as the world’s financial system, albeit, it has already been reduced to the western world’s financial system.
Why reduced to the Occident? – Because the Orient, China, Russia and the other countries belonging to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and to the Eurasia Economic Union (EEU) have already largely delinked themselves from the western dollar-based system of fraud. They are saved from slavehood.
This reminds of one of the oldest and world’s worst criminal agent against humanity – still alive and kicking – Henry Kissinger:
“Who controls food, controls the people; who controls energy controls entire continents; and who controls money controls the world.”
He is, of course, right on all fronts, and has given us this clue already more than 40 years ago. But nobody has really seriously taken it to heart and acted upon these edicts.
Many, including me, have written about freeing the world from the NWO money control.
Deglobalizing would be a first step towards freeing us all from the bloody claws of the Washington implemented, and Dark State directed NWO.
Critics often talk of an overhaul and reform of the system. This monetary system cannot be reformed. It is privately owned and rotten to the core. None of the private owners, the Rothschild, Rockefeller clans et al, would allow interfering with their wealth, usurped of the back of the world’s workers and populace at large. Former attempts (e.g. under JFK) to bring the FED (Federal Reserve) under national reign, have resulted in failure.
Compare the dollar-based monetary system to the European Union – which cannot be reformed either. Any ‘reform’ is just fiddling at the margins – as is inherent in the term ‘reform’. And that’s not good enough. As we know by now, the EU was not the construct of Europeans, per se, but an idea behind the ‘deep state’, already at the onset of Phase II of the Great Hundred Year War (WWII – September 1939 to September 1945). Phase I (WWI – 1914 – 1918), as well as Phase II were induced to weaken Europe, to make her ready for full domination.
Imagine a ‘Picador’ of a Spanish bullfight, whose job it is to weaken the bull to the point where the torero and matador have a relatively easy task subduing and killing the bull. Well, Europe is the bull. They don’t want to kill Europe altogether, good old Lady Europe, because they need her as a stepping stone for subjugating the rest of the world, for vital trade that helps justifying and generating the unlimited dollar machine – and, as a cushion to the East, where massive military troops and weapons can be stationed in the name of NATO, to eventually launch, what they would like to think, is the final blow on the East, starting with Russia.
For all this the European (non)-Union was created, her Brussels hub, dominated by the non-elected European Commission (EC) which also dictates most of the rules imposed on her 28-member states – and which are all not-so-coincidentally run by neoliberal, some close to neofascist governments. Of course, by adhering to the Brussels dictate, they have become devoid of national sovereignty. That is a must. A sovereign country would not submit to the horrors of police state and militarization that are in the coming. The euro with the Wall Street (Goldman Sachs – GS) run European Central Bank (ECB) is just a logical add-on to the fake EU. By now, many serious scholars have concluded that neither the EU nor the euro are sustainable, but are doomed to collapse sooner or later.
The EU and the euro are a complex construct, largely manipulated and carried forward by the Dark State’s main secret services, CIA, NSA, Mossad, MI6 with close collaboration of Europe’s national secret services. Hence, the creation of a complete political and monetary vassal, the European Union and her currency, equally fraudulent as its master currency, the US-dollar.
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It is not by chance that today’s western US-dollar based monetary system, with its center, the Federal Reserve (FED), has been created just at the onset of Phase I of the Hundred Year war, i.e. WWI. In 1910, Rhode Island Senator, Nelson Aldrich, with his heart close to the world of bankers, organized a ”hunting trip” for five top Wall Street (WS) bankers to travel in disguise by train to Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia, where they concocted in a few days the concept of the modern FED – which was to become the ‘mother’ of the new dollar-based world monetary system, now reduced to the western monetary system. The Federal Reserve Act was signed into law in December 1913 by President Woodrow Wilson.
On his death bed, in 1924 Wilson apparently declared,
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
The FED, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS – also called the central bank of all central banks, manipulating gold prices and currency exchanges), as well as the related dollar-machine are totally privately owned. On top of the owner pyramid are the Rothschild and Rockefeller clans, et al. Henceforth, all international monetary transactions had to transit through a WS bank, be it in New York or London. This is the only reason why the US government, i.e. Washington and its dark handlers, are able to hand out economic and financial ‘sanctions’ as they please, to control those, who do not want to bend to their dictate.
‘Sanctions’ in terms of blocking trade with a Washington-destined country and punishing everyone who does not observe the sanctions, plus, confiscating a country’s foreign assets – are totally illegal before any international court. But there is no international court that is not bought by this sham monetary system. By the same token, this same deceitful banking-monetary scheme induced the last artificial economic ‘crisis’ 2007 / 2008 – and counting, allowing WS to launch a worldwide globalization of banking which de facto, puts worldwide private banking under the oppressive wings of the FED and WS. This, all the more as the World Trade Organization (WTO) a few years earlier made banking deregulation mandatory for any new WTO wannabe member.
How to get out of this slavery before we are totally locked into a system from where to escape may be nearly impossible? The solution sounds simple enough in theory, but of course is much more complex, as it confronts politics, which is controlled by the ‘dark deep state’ of the NWO, or the One World Order which more appropriately describes what we are faced with.
Nations and societies that want to get out of the killer-claws of those who control the NWO, have to start thinking out of the matrix – ‘deglobalizing and de-dollarizing’.
The first step is thinking in a new paradigm. Greece would have had an excellent opportunity to show the world how to become free of those abusive financial vultures, and regain her sovereignty. Hélas, Geece didn’t. She may have not been ‘allowed’ to do so. A huge dark killer sledgehammer was and still is hanging over the country.
“Local production, for local markets, with local money, and local public banking for the promotion of the local economy” is the name of the ‘simple game’.
Beyond this approach, trading between regional friends, culturally similar countries, ‘think-alike’ peoples’ nations, respecting each other’s comparative advantages, would be a normal next step. Trading would become again what the original meaning of the word says: An exchange of goods among equals, where, contrary to the current system, each trading partner is a winner. A good example, still in its infant steps, but progressing, is ALBA (Spanish acronym for Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America; “alba” also means appropriately “dawn” in Spanish). This alliance was launched by Venezuela and Cuba and today comprises some 11 Latin American countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and a number of small Caribbean nations.
The concept of ALBA could be replicated in many parts of the world. ALBA in many ways is a modern barter system which uses a virtual currency, the Sucre. The currency’s value is the weighted average of each member country’s economic output – plus the US-dollar. – Why the US dollar? I was told by one of the member country’s Minister of Finance that keeping the dollar in, would help avoid a massive boycott of the nascent system by Washington. We can only hope he is right. ALBA needs to gain more strength and new members.
Only half a century ago, this type of trading “within neighbors” was common, and it was OK. It was certainly more equal than today’s WTO-led and globalized trading system, where the ‘small’ – i.e. developing countries, always lose out, for the benefit of the domineering west. The US-creation of the expression “win-win situation” is certainly correct for any trade between a western industrialized country and a developing country following the rules of WTO. The “win-winner“ is always the west. And yet, most developing countries are eager to join the ‘club’, lest, they fear, they may become isolated trade-wise. Well, I am not sure. There are alternatives à la ALBA. Unfortunately, many of their ‘leaders’(sic), are buyable.
Stepping forward into the old system, may be unthinkable for today’s generation, as they have not known – and have been brainwashed to think that “Globalization is the best”.
With GREXT, local money and a new public banking system – detached from Wall Street and European BCE-linked banks, Greece would be already on a fast-track to recovery, regaining their strength as a sovereign proud economy, whose philosophers have, after all, offered the world the concept of ‘democracy’ some 2,500 years ago.
Local public banking is key. Just look at the Bank of North Dakota, a state owned public banking institutions which had kept North Dakota out of the 2007 / 2008 crisis. Except for Ellen Brown, President of the American Public Banking Institute, hardly anybody talks about this success story.
Why? – Because it runs counter to what the FED-WS dominated private banking system is doing. This private banking system is NOT working for the people, or for a country’s economy. It is working for private banking profit – and for the wealth of a few – and for eventually dominating the world’s financial system, so as to enslave the population, by totally controlling their financial resources, their livelihood. Case in point is that Germany’s private banks have made a profit of 1.34 billion euros on the Greek misery, just recently admitted by the German Minister of Finance.
That’s the deadlock we have to break. – How? With an ever more propaganda and lie-infested media that ever more controls the populace? – Imagine, the blood-dripping fangs that keep us hostage are not going to loosen their grip, come hell or high water. We, the People, have to break loose, peacefully, non-violently, by thoughtful actions. The deglobalization concept is akin to the concept of “Resistance Economy”.
We have to promote the concept of Resistance Economy by all means we have available; talking and writing about it to as wide an audience as possible; by having alternative media, like RT, Sputnik, TeleSur and others, promoting the idea; and by strongly and firmly always-always thinking that a drastic change is possible, that darkness doesn’t rule the world – that light can and will shine, if we, The People want it – we eventually may make a difference. What We, the People, are still missing is organization and solidarity. Against the dark state’s constant effort to divide to rule, an initiative in solidarity may move mountains, by steering the vessel from the shade into the sun. All is possible. Never give up.
And Light is Peace.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization
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First published on February 24, 2023
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According to Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum, ongoing global warming threatens to destroy humanity. Methane, coming from the belches and farts of cows, is a greenhouse gas (GHG). So, cows are a problem!
Fortunately, Bill Gates has a solution for us, explained in this video. We need to stop growing cattle and switch to lab-grown synthetic beef.
Bill Gates made sizable investments in “synthetic meat” manufacturers, expecting to turn a nice profit.
The CNBC article explains that “lab-grown meat,” that is, cell cultures grown in giant stainless vats, is not the same as “fake meat” made of soy or pea protein:
Vegetarians have long touted the ethical and environmental problems with meat production and consumption. Start-ups such as MosaMeat, JUST and Memphis Meats are tissue-engineering meat in a lab to allow people to enjoy being a carnivore without any of the environmental or ethical hang-ups.
Dubbed clean meat, the efforts are distinct from “fake meat,” like the soy protein “chicken” you can find in your grocery store today. Unlike Morningstar or Boca Burgers, clean meat really is meat; it just grows in a lab instead of being part of an animal.
Okay, but what kinds of cells is that lab meat grown from?
Lab-Grown “Meat” is Made of “Immortalized” Cancer Cells
This excellent Bloomberg article (paywall-free link) clarifies that all lab meat is grown as immortalized tumor cells. As the article explains, these same cells are used to produce traditional vaccines.
Thank the biotech revolution. Under the right conditions, animal cells can be grown in a petri dish, or even at scale in factories full of stainless-steel drums. For decades, companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnsonhave cultured large volumes of cells to produce vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and other biotherapeutics. Now the idea is that we might as well eat these cells, too.
What are these cells?
The big honking asterisk is that normal meat cells don’t just keep dividing forever. To get the cell cultures to grow at rates big enough to power a business, several companies, including the Big Three, are quietly using what are called immortalized cells, something most people have never eaten intentionally. Immortalized cells are a staple of medical research, but they are, technically speaking, precancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous.
The article puts a “human face” on some of these cell lines, for example, the “HeLa line” made from the cervical cancer of Henrietta Lacks:
That’s where immortalized cells come in. They’ve been used in medical research since the early 1950s, when the first and most famous immortal cell line—derived from the cervical cancer cells of a woman named Henrietta Lacks—was successfully grown in a lab.
The distinction between pre-cancerous and cancerous cells is relatively minor: cancerous cells, by definition, can float away from the tumor site, travel through the blood or lymph, and start a new tumor (metastases) in another location in the body.
The distinction is important for the clinical outcome of a patient with a newly discovered tumor but involves only a minor bio-cellular distinction.
Don’t worry: Prominent cancer researchers tell Bloomberg Businessweekthat because the cells aren’t human, it’s essentially impossible for people who eat them to get cancer from them, or for the precancerous or cancerous cells to replicate inside people at all. … And cow tumors sometimes wind up in store-bought ground chuck, too. [not true – tumors are NEVER allowed by USDA inspectors – see below – I.C] Of course, the facts might not matter much if ranchers or other players in the traditional meat industry felt threatened enough to declare a public-relations war. It’s all too easy to imagine misleading Fox News chyrons about chicken tumors and cancer burgers.
Not so misleading! The main problem of growing an endless “lab meat” supply is that normal tissue cells cannot endlessly replicate (see above). There is a limit on how many times they will divide.
Vaccine manufacturers already use such immortalized tumor cells to make some Covid vaccines and other vaccines:
Thus, “lab meat” and “cell line” suppliers grow meat from tumor cells that are “immortalized”; in other words, their cells can endlessly replicate. This is why cancers never stop growing, after all!
Eat Just Inc. declined to comment for this story. Believer Meats Chief Scientific Officer Yaakov Nahmias says that his company uses immortalized cells in its cultured chicken and that his team has somehow, by means he says even they don’t understand, created immortalized cells that don’t share any genetic signatures with cancer cells.
Are you skeptical of the above? I am. Even Bloomberg author Joe Fassler, to his credit, doubted the above explanation and asked independent biologists who also did not believe Yaakov Nahmias’s BS:
(Two cell biologists I shared his comments with expressed skepticism.)
We can see that so far, all lab meat is made using endlessly-dividing tumor cells.
Our bodies’ immune systems are designed to kill off and fight such abnormal and cancerous cells. Thus, cancers only take hold when immune systems weaken or the cancer cells learn to avoid immune reactions.
Cells become immortal in human bodies all the time, by mutating to bypass senescence—and mutating some more to evade the immune system, which generally tries to kill off such mutants.
The lab meat companies plan to sell those kinds of solid tumor cells to us to eat.
Bon appetit!
USDA Inspectors Screen Out Cancers and Tumors in Animal Carcasses
The above story applies to “lab-grown meat”: products made from immortalized animal tumor cells growing in vats.
The “plant substitute” meat replacements, such as Beyond Meat, are based on pea or soy protein. As such, they are NOT related to these lab-grown cancer cell projects. Those plant products are not “meat” in any sense.
In addition, fake news websites are screaming that lab-grown meat (made of tumor cells) will give us cancer. There is no evidence that lab-grown meat will facilitate cancers. There is also no evidence that lab-grown meat will NOT cause cancers. It is simply an unknown. The USDA has a reason to reject tumor-containing carcasses, however. It is best not to make unwarranted claims, and my substack is not about making up sensationalized stuff.
Now They Want to Sell Us Solid Tumor “Steaks”
The Bloomberg article explains that all “lab meat” is made of tumor cells.
At the same time, USDA regulations forbid tumors in meat supplyfor humans.
I am sure that one way or another, Bill Gates and the WEF will lobby for a change in rules so that they can sell us solid tumors as “lab-grown meat.”
At this point, I am torn: would I rather eat “ze bugz”, or “lab-grown tumor meat.” Or go vegetarian? A tough decision!
What would YOU choose?
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Our thoughts today are with the people of Iraq, whose country was invaded twenty years on March 20, 2003. The destruction and loss of life are beyond description.
The architects of this illegal invasion are “war criminals”. Amply documented the war on Iraq was justified using fake intelligence. Prime Minister Tony Blair played a key role in claiming that Iraq had Weapon’s of Mass Destruction (WMD).
The article first published in February 2007 focusses on the assassination of Whistleblower Dr. David Kelly, who had worked in Iraq as weapon’s inspector under the auspices of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). “It was Dr Kelly who exposed claims by President George Bush, Tony Blair and Colin Powell that mobile biological warfare units had been found in Iraq as false.” (Independent, 25 July 2003)
“The basis for this war had been laid out in two dossiers (Section 3), published in the preceding months, to which Kelly had contributed. However, when he began to raise concerns about the integrity of these documents, he would find himself caught in a political storm. Four months later, Kelly was dead. The official verdict was suicide; a decision that many believe is flawed.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 5 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council referred to the U.K. intelligence dossier entitled “Iraq Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation”, published on January 30, 2003. This document pointed without evidence to Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
This report had been read by Dr. David Kelly who expressed his doubts prior to its release.
Dr. Rangwala’s report was aired on Channel IV, it was then submitted to the House of Commons which released it on June 30, 2003, more than 3 months after the invasion. It was not an object of parliamentary debate.
Michel Chossudovsky, March 18, 2023
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The British media has become embroiled in yet another set of distortions regarding the death of British government weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly in July 2003. Kelly died in mysterious circumstances in the woods near his home in Oxfordshire.
Kelly was Britain’s foremost expert on biological weapons, with direct access to WMD intelligence on Iraq. In the months leading up to his death, he had become increasingly skeptical regarding Iraq’s alleged WMDs.
According to the Hutton inquiry report:
“Dr Kelly took his own life… [T]he principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body”. (emphasis added)
Suicide was seemingly assumed from the outset by Lord Hutton, and the Hutton Inquiry descended into establishing who, between the BBC and the Government, was to blame for the suicide (rather than the murder) of Dr Kelly.
The inquiry led by Lord Hutton pointed to “suicide” as the cause of death, in contradiction with the results of the autopsy. “Suicide was never proved, either by the Coroner or Lord Hutton, as required by law”. (See Dr. Stephen Frost, et al, Global Research, 28 November 2006)
The inquiry purported to obviate the need for an inquest as well as exonerate the Government of Tony Blair and the Secret Service “of all significant charges”. It was an obvious camouflage. (See the analysis of Rowena Thursby, Global Research, Oct 2006, see also dr-david-kelly.blogspot.com)
On November 3, 2006, The London Times published a letter by Lord Hutton, in which he attempted to defend his report on Dr. David Kelly’s death. In the letter, Lord Hutton dwells on the issue of the allegedly “sexed up” intelligence, ignoring the arguably much larger issue of his failure to establish exactly how Dr. David Kelly died.
A response to Lord Hutton’s letter to The Times was submitted by three distinguished doctors ( Drs. C. Stephen Frost, David Halpin and Searle Sennett) The Times, refused to publish the response, which was subsequently published as an article by Global Research. Drs. Frost et al contributed to breaking the mainstream media silence on the possibility that Dr David Kelly did not commit suicide.
What was dismissed by the mainstream British media was that Lord Hutton, who seemingly assumed suicide from the outset, had undermined due process, and therefore laid himself open to charges of cover-up, by himself “sexing up” his own findings on the cause of Dr David Kelly’s death. But, a cover-up of what? (See Drs. C. Stephen Frost, et al, op cit).
New British Media consensus
In its “Conspiracy Files” documentary (25 February 2007), the BBC questioned the official version that Kelly had committed suicide, as outlined in the Hutton inquiry report. In this BBC programme, the findings of the Hutton inquiry are refuted through carefully documented research and analysis. It was not suicide, it was murder.
The media consensus regarding the cause of Dr. Kelly’s death seems to have been reversed. Or has it? While the BBC and the British media have acknowledged that Dr. Kelly might have have been murdered, they have failed to address two crucial questions:
1. If it wasn’t suicide, who ordered the assassination of David Kelly?
2. Who ordered the cover-up of a criminal act?
Contradicting their own assessment of the evidence, the BBC is suggesting that the government of Tony Blair could not possibly have been involved.
John Morrison, former deputy chief of British defence intelligence, who was interviewed by the BBC’s “Conspiracy Files” programme, states emphatically that there was “no British secret service plot to kill Dr Kelly.”
Morrison rejected suggestions that Dr Kelly could have been the victim of British agents licensed to kill: “It is indeed complete fantasy that there are agents that are licensed to kill”. According to Morrisson:
“There are intelligence agencies around the world who do engage in assassinations, there’s no doubt about that. Some of them not very nice people at all….. But we [ in Britain] have never had a policy of assassination to my knowledge in the history of the UK intelligence agencies, and certainly not in the last few decades”. (Source BBC website)
If the U.K government was not involved because The British Secret Service “does not have a policy of assassination”, who then could possibly be behind the murder of David Kelly?
Criminal Investigation
If it was murder rather than suicide, one would expect a full fledged police investigation leading up to trial court proceedings.
One would also expect –as in a bona fide criminal investigation– that one or more “suspects” would be identified, and that “methods”, “motives” and “intent” would be examined. Moreover, one would also expect that the issue of alleged government involvement be either confirmed or dismissed in a court of law.
Will a criminal investigation –which could potentially bring down the government– be allowed to proceed?
Or will there be another cover-up, “to cover-up the cover-up”?
BBC Fake News: Saddam did It
Meanwhile, in the interest of “balanced reporting”, the BBC documentary also included an authoritative statement by Richard Spertzel, a former US weapons inspector who worked with Dr Kelly in Iraq. Spertzel believes that “the Iraqis assassinated him” implying that Kelly might have been murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein and that the defunct Baathist regime’s intelligence apparatus was behind the assassination.
“It has always been obvious that his death washighly convenient for the UK intelligence services but one of Kelly’s former colleagues, Richard Spertzel, an American biological weapons inspector, says that the Iraqi intelligence service may have been pursuing a vendetta against him. Spertzel says both he and Kelly were known to be on an Iraqi hit list.”(emphasis added. Irish independent, 26 Feb 2007)
Contradictory statement: “Convenient for UK intelligence” but it was, according to Spertzel, more likely that the Iraqi Intelligence service was behind the murder.
Qui Buono? Who benefits? Did the murder of Dr. Kelly serve the interests of Iraq. Was it “convenient” for the defunct Baathist regime?
And why the Hutton report cover-up?
If the murder had been ordered by Iraq, why did they need to cover it up? If indeed Iraqi agents had been behind it, this would have been front page news: the reports of the Iraqi sponsored vendetta and murder of a prominent British scientist would have been plastered on Britain’s tabloids. Just imagine the headlines.
Where is the motive? What interest would the post-Saddam Iraqi resistance have in murdering the man who was revealing the lies behind the Iraqi WMD allegations, which served as the main justification for waging war on Iraq. Remember: Dr David Kelly was the source for a BBC report claiming the government of Tony Blair had “sexed up” its dossier on Saddam’s alleged WMD arsenal. And ultimately, the “sexed up” WMD report was the casus belli, the pretext for waging war on Iraq, which was invoked by the US and its indefectible British ally.
Complicity of the State? “Set the hares running”
Liberal MP Norman Baker, who was interviewed in the BBC programme, outlines the results of his investigation. He states that it was not suicide, but murder.
“I’ve concluded in my mind, beyond reasonable doubt as it were, that it’s impossible for the suicide explanation to hold water. The medical evidence doesn’t support it in any way, the psychological evidence barely supports it either and as it wasn’t obviously natural causes or an accident, then you’re driven to the conclusion that it must have been some sort of murder.” (GMTV “The Sunday Programme”, 25 February 2007)
“Describing his approach as non-sensational and factual, he said he has tested various theories ‘to destruction’. One witness who contacted him recently claimed to “know” that Dr Kelly was murdered. Asked about “complicity of the State”, Mr Baker chose his words carefully, claiming this would ‘set the hares running’. He is pursuing a number of leads”
Norman Baker’s inquiry has reached the conclusion that Kelly was assassinated but he asserts categorically that the British government could not possibly have been involved:
“I don’t believe the Prime Minister, the politicians and the Government were responsible for what happened to David Kelly. I believe they treated him shamefully and I believe they treated him callously in that they deliberately leaked his name to the press and they were quite happy to offer him up as fodder in some sort of Soviet-style Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in order to discredit Andrew Gilligan and the BBC”.
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First published by Global Research on April 27, 2022
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The US has a long History of Confrontation with Russia
This goes way back to the time of Lenin’s revolution in 1917 to replace the Tsar with a communist government. Along with more than a dozen other countries, in 1918 the US sent 13,000 troops to fight Lenin’s Bolshevik forces. Although this was gross interference in another country’s affairs, more than 250,000 foreign troops took part in the war against the Russian forces. The Russian forces fought with patriotic zeal, and the foreign troops made little progress and were forced to withdraw in 1920.
US Troops in Vladivostok in 1918
The US finally established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1933 and an icy relationship has continued to the present. When Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in June of 1941, the US position was revealed by then U.S. Senator Harry Truman when he said:
“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.”
Primarily through the battles fought by Soviet forces, Nazi Germany was defeated, but instead of gratitude for this historical feat, the US government was persuaded by its embedded faction of Russia-hating officials to embark on a totally different course of action.
This began with the totally unnecessary and criminal decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed and injured at least 200,000 Japanese. Japan had been fully prepared to surrender and because of this, almost all high ranking military officals, including Eisenhower and McArthur, opposed the use of atomic bombs. However, Truman’s inner circle of advisors convinced him to do this. In actuality, this was not to end the war on Japan but to show the USSR that this could happen to them if they wouldn’t follow USA’s dictats.
These documents revealed, in stark tones, that the USA had planned a coordinated unprovoked nuclear attack with 204 atomic bombs to destroy 66 major urban areas in the Soviet Union.
This nuclear assault would have been a diabolical and criminal undertaking on human life. Genocide is an understatement. The main document referred to “the number of atomic bombings which should be available to insure our national security”. These documents are discussed further here.
With respect to “insure our national security,” a sane question would be why the US would be so afraid of a USSR devastated by its war with Nazi Germany that the US would still require a further massive nuclear devastation of Russia in order for the US “to be safe.” The real reason is undoubtedly the American desire to destroy the USSR’s socialist-communist system, which was also the same reason for Hitler’s attack on the USSR.
A further report on this issue states that: According to US generals’ estimates, the attack could have resulted in the death of about 285 to 425 million people. Some of the USSR’s European allies were meant to be completely “wiped out.”
How should history judge the USA’s morality in this regard . . . although not carrying out this onslaught, but just seriously even considering such a course of action?
The Soviets became aware of the USA’s plans and developed their own atomic bomb in 1949. This occurred before the US had their 204 bombs for their attack. And once the USSR had their own bombs, the US realized that if they launched their attack, American cities would be hit as well. The overall result was the ensuing Cold War and a nuclear arms race.
Ukraine History and World War II
With regard to Ukraine, unlike Russia with its more that a 1,000 year history, Ukraine, as a territorial unit, started about 1650 and has a complex historical background. To understand the current conflict, it is important to recall that Russians and Ukrainians once lived in relative harmony, when they were both part of the USSR. This was violently interrupted in 1941, when the Nazis invaded the USSR, by first taking over the territory of Ukraine.
It is important to point out that the vast majority of Ukrainians fought the Nazi invasion, just as the Russians did, and suffered a loss of more than 6 million people, military and civilians. However, it is a historical fact that a portion of the people in western Ukraine supported the Nazis and even formed several divisons of troops to fight the Soviet army. This was done under bizarre delusion that somehow after the war the Nazis would allow them to have an independent state, independent of Russia. Their most prominent leader was Stepan Bandera, a collaborator with Hitler who led the liquidation of thousands of Poles, Jews and other minorities. Ironically, Bandera is now considered a major hero by Zelensky’s government.
In the meantime, on the basis of Nazi racial policyall Slavic people, Jews, Roma and black people were considerd Untermenschen or “subhuman” and “inferior people” who, if at all possible, were to be exterminated in one way or another. Despite this open philosophy of the invading Nazi hordes, a portion of the Ukrainian people in the Galicia region of western Ukraine somehow felt that if they collaborated with the Nazis that after the defeat of the USSR they would somehow acquire an independent Ukrainian state. Total delusion, but a historical fact.
According to John-Paul Himka, a retired professor from the University of Alberta, a quarter of all victims of the Holocaust lived in Ukraine, and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists collaborated with the Nazis in carrying out their horrendous deeds.
As for the invading German Nazi forces, if there were Ukrainians who were prepared to collaborate with them, in a cynical manner, the Nazis accepted them. And in this manner, these Ukrainian Nazi allies proceeded to kill thousands of Polish people in the Lvov area and they participated in killing more then 30,000 Jews whose bodies were then thrown in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev.
At the end of World War II thousands of these Ukrainian Nazi collaborators managed to retreat to Germany and then somehow managed to get accepted as “refugees” in Canada and the USA. In Ukraine they were dealt with as Nazi collaborators and it’s not certain what happened to them. It’s now 77 years since the war ended, and you’d think the Nazi era is past history, but it seems that some descendants of these collaborators are are still on the scene as “neo-Nazis.” And unfortunately these neo-Nazis continue to promote hatred and white supremacy and attack racial and ethnic minorities, and in some cases are prepared to live in a fascist state.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
In the course of the turmoil in the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine officially declared itself an independent country on 24 August 1991. At the end of the year, on December 25, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the USA dominated the world, and it wasn’t until Vladimir Putin took over as President in 2000 that Russia once again began to have some world influence.
The 2014 EuroMaidan Coup and Its Aftermath
As for Ukraine, after its independence it struggled along, but it wasn’t until 2014 that a cataclysmic event occurred which totally changed the course of history in that country. The USA succeeded in staging a coup d’état which replaced a democratically elected president and installed a regime in which neo-Nazis proceeded to have a major role.
Following this, I had three major articles published on this debacle. One of them was immediately translated into French, German and Spanish. In that article I review the whole course of events that then occurred in Ukraine.
Immediately after the coup, Victoria Nuland gleefully bragged how the US spent five billion dollars to enable the coup to take place. She even had a hand in picking out who should be in the cabinet and who should be the new president…. and if the European union didn’t like it, “Fuck the EU”…. all this is on record.
After the coup, two basically fascist and neo-Nazi parties, Svoboda and Right Sector, held prominent positions in the new government–they formed a third of the cabinet. This is despite the fact that Svoboda had only 8 percent of the seats in the Rada and that the Right Sector didn’t have any elected members. Later the followers of these parties formed the Azov military force, which openly display Hitler’s military regalia.
While the new Ukrainian regime has been busy empowering fascists, they stripped communist parties of their right to participate in elections in 2015 and issued controversial ‘decommunisation’ laws.
These laws ban the display of Soviet symbols and change the status of the May 9 holiday which marked the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War 2. The laws will remove all mentions of ‘the Great Patriotic War’ (a Soviet term for World War 2). Tens of thousands of streets have since been renamed, along with nearly one thousand cities and villages. Over two thousand statues and monuments have also been removed in this anti-communist cultural project. Despite widespread criticism, the current government has refused to revoke the laws.
Given what has happened, it is hardly surprising that Ukraine was the only country, along with the United States, which voted against the UN General Assembly’s draft resolution “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”
The day after the coup government was formed its very first action was to pass a bill to ban the use of Russian in any official capacity and to ban all Russian media in Ukraine. This was done even though one-fifth of Ukraine’s population are ethnic Russians and that about 40% of the population speak Russian. In fact, the eastern part of Ukraine and Crimea are almost totally ethnic Russians, with a Russian history that goes back more than a thousand years. And suddenly their language was banned!
To put this issue in perspectivefor Canadians, just imagine if a newly installed government in Ottawa would suddenly ban the use of French as an official language in Canada. How long would it take for Quebec to call for a referendum and then proceed to secede from Canada? In actuality, this is exactly what happened in Crimea, where the bulk of the people speak Russian. They conducted a referendum on March 16, 2014 and with a turnout of 83 percent, there was a 97 percent vote to secede from Ukraine. Since ethnic Russians formed only 58 percent of the population, it means that the bulk of Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea also voted to secede from Ukraine. Crimea then appealed to Russia to be accepted into the Russian Federation, and Russia proceeded to do this.
Despite the referendum in Crimea to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, Russia is constantly accused of annexing Crimea, i.e., conducting a forcible acquisition of part of Ukraine’s territory, which is a blatant lie. To add to this lie, no one in the West ever refers to Crimea’s referendum, which was monitored by a team of Western observers. In the meantime, with no referendum, Kosovo was detached from Serbia…. with the full approval of the USA. In fact, the US engineered this.
As for Russia’s decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine, the government and the people still vividly remember that the USSR lost 27 million people fighting the Nazis in the 1940s. It was President Kennedy in his memorable speech on June 10, 1963 at American University who stated:
And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland–a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.
To make his point vividly clear to the US public, he compared the devastation in the USSR to the USA: a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.
So now with neo-Nazis basically in control of Ukraine, as well as having it in their constitution to join NATO and with its president talking of acquiring nuclear weapons, it should be no mystery how Russia feels about this. With nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it would take less than 10 minutes to destroy Moscow …. with no possibility of blocking such an attack. Russia and its people are not prepared to undergo another World War II. That is the long and the short of it.
How did it come to this? After the 2014 coup and the law to ban the Russian language in all legal affairs, the new Kiev regime sent a group of their administrators to take over the government offices in the Russian speaking Lugansk and Donetsk regions.
These administrators were promptly sent back to Kiev and these areas continued with their own people in office. The Kiev regime’s response? ….. a military attack was launched on the Donbass area. A vicious war took place for almost a year. These two areas had their own armed forces and there were no Russian troops involved, as acknowledged by Ukraine’s military commander. After a significant defeat of Ukraine’s army in a major battle in 2015, open warfare ceased.
It was at this point that Ukraine agreed to negotiations arranged by Germany, France and Russia in Belarus at the city of Minsk. They signed a 14-point Minsk Accord, later approved by the UN, for the purpose of resolving the Lugansk and Donetsk issue. Ukraine was to negotiate an agreement with these two areas which would give them a degree of autonomy, similar to that of Canadian provinces or US states.
Although Ukraine signed this document, and although Lugansk and Donetsk were fully prepared to negotiate an agreement, Ukraine refused to negotiate with them….in violation of the UN approved agreement they had signed. Instead, the Ukraine military, headed by the neo-Nazi Azov forces (complete with Hitler regalia) proceeded for the next 7 years to regularly shell the civilian areas of Luhansk and Donetsk causing substantial infrastructure damage . . . hospitals, schools, residential areas . . . and killing more than 14,000 people.
Fast forward to the present . . . People are rightly concerned about civilians being killed in Ukraine, but where were they these past 8 years when Ukrainian forces killed more than 14,000 people in eastern Ukraine? And during America’s wars on Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia, Libya, Syria and many other places where millions of people were killed, did any of these currently outraged people ever compare any of the American presidents to Hitler? So what is going on at the present time??
It amazes me that Russia did not intervene sooner to prevent this awful senseless carnage in the Donbass. It seems Russia was hoping that eventually Ukraine would come to its senses and institute the Minsk agreement, which would keep these areas in Ukraine, but with a degree of autonomy. It also appears that this wasn’t done because the USA never approved of the Minsk proposal. Also this agreement was totally opposed by the Azov-Nazis, and they threatened to kill anyone who would attempt to enact it. As such it appears that President Zelensky was so intimidated that it seems he didn’t dare do this.
As an indication of Azov’s strengths and influence in Ukraine, Azov members proved it about a month ago. Right after the first negotiation meeting that Ukraine had with Russia in Belarus, Azov members killed the Ukrainian negotiator who seriously considered a Russian proposal. When the neo-Nazis found out about this, they abducted him from his Kiev home, tortured him and then shot him and left his body on the street in front of Ukraine’s legislative Rada building. A clear warning to Zelensky.
For the record, it should be noted that Zelensky won the presidential election in April of 2019 against the incumbent Poroshenko with 73% of the vote. His election platform was based on establishing good relations with Russia and promising to enact the Minsk agreement with Donetsk and Lugansk. Obviously, this is what the bulk of the Ukrainian population wanted. However, Zelensky totally backed off from these electoral promises, seemingly because of threats to his life by the Azov-Nazis. So this shows the power of these reactionary forces.
It should be noted that Wikipedia has stated that Azov’s founding member Andriy Biletsky, leader of the far right Social-National Assembly (SNA), had stated in 2010 that:
“the historic mission of our nation” was to lead the “white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival […] a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen“, Numerous fighters bear SS tattoos, including swastikas.[104] In 2014, the German ZDF television network showed images of Azov fighters wearing helmets with swastika symbols and “the SS runes of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps”.
Despite this, American and Canadian military instructors have conducted lengthy training sessions of Azov military personnel. When confronted with this, they have tried weasel themselves out of this, but the facts remain.
What brought Russia to finally intervene militarily in Ukraine is information leaked to them by someone in the Ukraine military, and later confirmed by official documents, that in mid-March of this year, about 100,000 Ukraine troops were scheduled to attack Donetsk and Lugansk in a Blitzkrieg manner. The plan was to overrun these two areas in a matter of days, which would have involved killing thousands of these Russian-speaking people. The Russian government and President Putin decided that the only way to prevent this from happening is for Russia to take military action.
Russia first recognized Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as separate states and then two days later, on February 24, Russia launched its “special military operation” to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.” That day Russia notified the UN Secretary-General that the military action was “taken in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter in the exercise of the right of self-defence,” actually citing the provision of “anticipatory self-defence” or the right of “interceptive self-defence” in light of Ukraine’s planned attack on Lugansk and Donetsk.
In effect, Russia was acting to stop “neo-Nazis and militias” from killing civilians and to prevent a “genocide” of Russians in Eastern Ukraine.
In their military operation, Russian troops were instructed to do the least possible damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure and civilian population. As such there has been no bombing of any Ukrainian cities, totally unlike the US “Shock and Awe” campaigns such as in Iraq where within a few days they killed tens of thousands of people….and eventually killed more than 1,000,000 Iraqis. Russian attacks were directed at military facilities, fuel and munition depots, and military communications. Also, within a few days, they somehow wiped out practically all of Ukraine’s military aircraft and aircraft bases. They surrounded Kiev, not to attack it, but to maintain Ukrainian troops there. In phase 2, their main objective will be to deal with large number of Ukrainian troops in the Donbass area.
The Azov neo-Nazis had their main base in Mariupol and the Russian forces have now finally captured this centre. Unlike other areas, much of this city has been destroyed through artillery fire, but it seems the Azovs may fight to the last neo-Nazi, often using civilians as human shields.
As for the overall war, now approaching two months, the UN has estimated that there have been “4,450 civilian casualties in the country: 1,892 killed and 2,558 injured.”
When it comes to military casualties, this is totally different. On April 16, Russia updated the number of Ukrainian military fatalities to 23,367, which includes the Ukrainian army, Azov forces and foreign mercenaries. As for Russian losses, they reported that 1,351 soldiers were killed and 3,825 wounded. In the meantime, with no evidence to support his claim, Zelensky is boasting that 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, compared to only 2,500 Ukrainian troops.
Russia has also reported that more than 400,000 Ukrainian civilians had been evacuated to Russia from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
As for the West’s current “Great Hero” Zelensky, he has recently outlawed all left-wing or progressive political parties and openly approves of violent reprisals against the members of these parties. Journalist Max Blumenthal has documented the current political situation in Ukraine.
A few excerpts from Blumenthal’s account are apropos:
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that “there would be consequences for collaborators” indicates that these atrocities have been sanctioned by the highest levels of government.
Western media has looked the other way, however, as Zelensky and top officials in his administration have sanctioned a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of local Ukrainian lawmakers accused of collaborating with Russia. Several mayors and other Ukrainian officials have been killed since the outbreak of war, many reportedly by Ukrainian state agents after engaging in de-escalation talks with Russia.
Zelensky has further exploited the atmosphere of war to outlaw an array of opposition parties and order the arrest of his leading rivals. His authoritarian decrees have triggered the disappearance, torture and even murder of an array of human rights activists, communist and leftist organizers, journalists and government officials accused of “pro-Russian” sympathies.
At this stage, Russia has withdrawn most of its forces from Kiev and other places and has concentrated them in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas to confront the bulk of the Ukrainian forces. This will be phase 2 in their campaign, and the single most important battle is to take place shortly.
In my concluding comments, I would like to refer to a speech made by Vladimir Putin a while ago in which he went back in history to the time when the USSR was enticed to reunite East and West Germany and to loosen its control over the east European countries that were attached to the USSR following World War II.
During crucial negotiations in 1990 President Gorbachev was assured repeatedly by the US and other NATO leaders that if he agreed to all these reforms, NATO would not move from its boundaries “by one inch,” With such an assurance, Gorbachev allowed the reunification of Germany, and the USSR then relinquished all controls and alliances with the multitude of countries along its western border. Instead of honouring its promise to not advance “by one inch” towards Russia, NATO, led by the USA, absorbed all these countries and then tried to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia into its fold. So the West’s promises at that time were nothing more than lies.
Then on February 28, in discussing the sanctions imposed on Russia as a result of its intervention in Ukraine, Putin referred to the West as the Empire of Lies. And for good historical reasons, this is how Russia may now view the West. Interestingly, since Putin made this comment, this is how the USA is being referred by a number of commentators.
Since this war started in Ukraine, there has been an amazing amount of censorship in our “freedom loving” West, with not only all Russian media being censored but also anyone in the West who is critical of the USA’s or the West’s portrayal of events in Ukraine. We are indeed living in interesting times.
Much more remains to be said, but this is where I will leave it for now.
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John Ryan, Ph.D., Retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar, University of Winnipeg.
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The peace movement did a great many things right in the first decade of this millennium, some of which we’ve forgotten. It also fell short in many ways. I want to highlight the lessons I think we’ve most failed to learn and suggest how we might benefit from them today.
We formed uncomfortably large coalitions. We brought together war abolitionists with people who simply adored every war in human history but one. We probably didn’t hold a single event at which there wasn’t somebody pushing a theory about 9-11 that required some level of lunacy just to understand. We didn’t put most of our effort into distinguishing ourselves from other peace advocates or seeking to get people canceled; we put most of our effort into trying to end a war.
It all began to fall apart in 2007, after Democrats had been elected to end the war and escalated it instead. People had a choice in that moment to stand on principle and demand peace, or to kneel before a political party and peace be damned. Millions made the wrong choice, and have never understood it. Political parties, especially when combined with legalized bribery and a subservient communications system, are deadly to movements. The war was ended by a movement compelling George W. Bush to sign an agreement to end it, not by electing Obama, who only ended it when that agreement made him do so. The point is not the idiotic strawman that one should ignore elections or pretend that political parties don’t exist. The point is to put elections second. You don’t even have to put them millionth, only second. But put policy first. Be for peace first, and make public servants serve you, not the other way around.
A “war based on lies” is simply a longwinded way of saying “a war.” There is no such thing as a war not based on lies. What distinguished Iraq 2003 was the ineptness of the lying. “We are going to find vast stockpiles of weapons” is a really, really stupid lie to tell about a place where you are very shortly going to fail to find any such thing. And, yes, they knew that was the case. In contrast, “Russia is going to invade Ukraine tomorrow” is a really smart lie to tell if Russia is about to invade Ukraine sometime in the next week, because nobody is going to care that you got the day wrong, and statistically practically nobody is going to have the resources to understand that what you’ve really said is “Now that we’ve broken promises, torn up treaties, militarized the region, threatened Russia, lied about Russia, facilitated a coup, opposed a peaceful resolution, supported attacks on Donbas, and escalated those attacks in recent days, while mocking utterly reasonable peace proposals from Russia, we can count on Russia invading, just as we’ve strategized to make happen including in published RAND reports, and when that happens, we are going to load the whole zone up with more weapons than we ever pretended Saddam Hussein had, and we’re going to block any peace negotiations in order to keep the war going as hundreds of thousands die, which we don’t think you’ll object to even if it risks nuclear apocalypse, because we’ve pre-conditioned you with five years of ludicrous lies about Putin owning Trump.”
We never said one word about the evil of the Iraqi side of the war on Iraq. Even though you may know, or suspect — pre-Erica Chenoweth — that nonviolence is more effective than violence, you aren’t permitted to utter one word against Iraqi violence or you’re accused of blaming the victims or asking them to lie down and be killed or some other stupidity. To simply state that Iraqis might be better off using exclusively organized nonviolent activism, even while you are working day and night to get the U.S. government to end the war, is to become an arrogant imperialist telling one’s victims what to do and somehow magically forbidding them to “fight back.” And so there is silence. One side of the war is evil and the other good. You can’t cheer for that other side without becoming an ostracized traitor. But you must believe, exactly as the Pentagon believes but with the sides switched, that one side is pure and holy and the other evil incarnate. This hardly constitutes ideal preparation of the mind for a war in Ukraine where, not only is the other side (the Russian side) clearly engaged in reprehensible horrors, but those horrors are the primary topic of corporate media. Opposing both sides of the war in Ukraine and demanding peace is denounced by each side as somehow constituting support for the other side, because the concept of more than one party being flawed has been erased from the collective brain through thousands of fairy tales and other content of cable news. The peace movement did nothing to counter this during the war on Iraq.
We never made people understand that the lies were not only typical of all wars, but also, as with all wars, irrelevant and off-topic. Every lie about Iraq could have been perfectly true and there would have been no case for attacking Iraq. The U.S. openly acknowledged having every weapon it pretended Iraq had, without creating any case for attacking the United States. Having weapons is not an excuse for war. It makes no difference whether it’s true or false. The same can be said of economic policies of China or anyone else. This week I watched a video of a former prime minister of Australia ridiculing a bunch of journalists for not being able to distinguish China’s trade policies from an imaginary and ludicrous fantasy of a Chinese threat to invade Australia. But is there a member of the U.S. Congress who can make that distinction? Or a follower of either U.S. political party who will be able to much longer? The war in Ukraine has been named by the U.S. government/media the “Unprovoked War” — quite obviously precisely because it was so clearly provoked. But this is the wrong question. You don’t get to wage a war if it was provoked. And you don’t get to wage a war if the other side was unprovoked. I mean, not legally, not morally, not as part of a strategy for preserving life on Earth. The question is not whether Russia was provoked, and not merely because the obvious answer is yes, but also because the question is whether peace can be negotiated and established justly and sustainably, and whether the U.S. government has been impeding that development while pretending that only Ukrainians want the war to continue, not Lockheed-Martin stock holders.
We didn’t follow through. There were no consequences. The architects of the murder of a million people went golfing and got rehabilitated by the very same media criminals who had pushed their lies. “Looking forward” replaced the rule of law or a “rules based order.” Open profiteering, murder, and torture became policy choices, not crimes. Impeachment was stripped from the Constitution for any bipartisan offenses. There was no truth and reconciliation process. Now the U.S. works to prevent the reporting of even Russian crimes to the International Criminal Court, because preventing any sort of rules is the top priority of the Rules Based Order, and it hardly makes news. Presidents have been given all war powers, and darn near everybody has failed to grasp that the monstrous powers given to that office are drastically more important than which flavor of monster occupies the office. A bipartisan consensus opposes ever using the War Powers Resolution. While Johnson and Nixon had to clear out of town and opposition to war lasted long enough to label it a sickness, the Vietnam Syndrome, in this case the Iraq Syndrome lasted long enough to keep Kerry and Clinton out of the White House, but not Biden. And nobody has drawn the lesson that these syndromes are fits of wellness, not illness — certainly not the corporate media which has investigated itself and — after a quick apology or two — found everything in order.
We still talk about the media as having been an accomplice to the Bush-Cheney gang. We look back condescendingly at the age in which journalists claimed that one could not report that a president had lied. We now have media outlets in which you cannot report that anyone at all has lied if they are a member of one criminal cartel or the other, the elephants or the donkeys. It’s time we recognize how much the media outlets wanted the war on Iraq for their own profit and ideological reasons, and that the media has played the leading role in building up hostility with Russia and China, Iran and North Korea. If anyone is playing supporting actor in this drama, it is government officials. At some point we’ll have to learn to appreciate whistleblowers and independent reporters and to recognize that corporate media as a mass is the problem, not just one part of the corporate meda.
We never did even really try to teach the public that the wars are one-sided slaughters. U.S. polling for years found majorities believing the sick and ridiculous ideas that U.S. casualties were somewhere near equivalent to Iraqi casualties and that the U.S. had suffered more than Iraq, as well as that Iraqis were grateful, or that Iraqis were inexcusably ungrateful. The fact that well over 90% of the deaths were Iraqis never got through, nor the fact that they were disproportionately the very old and young, nor even the fact that wars are fought in people’s towns and not on 19th century battlefields. Even if people come to believe that such things happen, if they are told tens of thousands of times that they only happen if Russia does them, nothing useful will have been learned. The U.S. peace movement made the conscious choice over and over and over again for years and years to focus on the damage the war was doing to U.S. troops, and the financial cost to taxpayers, and not to make ending a one-sided slaughter a moral question, as if people don’t empty their pockets for faraway victims when they learn that they exist. This was the boomerang result of the spitting lies and other wild tales and exaggerations of mistakes of blaming the rank-and-file troops who destroyed Vietnam. A smart peace movement, its elders believed, would stress sympathizing with troops to the point of not telling anyone what the basic nature of the war was. Here’s hoping that if a peace movement grows again it deems itself capable of walking while chewing gum.
The United Nations got it right. It said no to the war. It did so because people around the world got it right and applied pressure to governments. Whistleblowers exposed U.S. spying and threats and bribes. Representatives represented. They voted no. Global democracy, for all its flaws, succeeded. The rogue U.S. outlaw failed. Not only did U.S. media/society fail to begin listening to the millions of us who didn’t lie or get everything wrong — allowing the warmongering clowns to go on failing upward, but it never became acceptable to learn the basic lesson. We need the world in charge. We do not need the world’s leading holdout on basic treaties and structures of law in charge of law enforcement. Much of the world has learned this lesson. The U.S. public needs to. Foregoing one war for democracy and democratizing the United Nations instead would work wonders.
There are always options available. Bush could have given Saddam Hussein $1 billion to clear out, a reprehensible idea but far superior to giving Halliburton hundreds of billions in a campaign to ruin the lives of tens of millions of people, permanently poison vast swaths of territory, predictably generate terrorism and instability, and fuel war after war after war. Ukraine could have complied with Minsk 2, a better and more democratic and stable deal than it is likely to ever see again. The options always get worse, but always remain far better than continuing war. At this point, after openly admitting that Minsk was a pretense, the West would need actions rather than words merely to be believed, but good actions are readily available. Pull a missile base out of Poland or Romania, join a treaty or three, constrain or abolish NATO, or support international law for all. The options are not hard to think of; you’re just not supposed to think them.
The underlying, WWII-based mythology that teaches people that a war can be good is rotten to the core. With Afghanistan and Iraq it took a year-and-a-half each to get good U.S. majorities in polls saying the wars never should have been started. The war in Ukraine appears to be on the same trajectory. Of course, those who believed the wars shouldn’t have been started did not, for the most part, believe they should be ended. The wars had to be continued for the sake of the troops, even if the actual troops were telling pollsters they wanted the wars ended. This troopism was very effective propaganda, and the peace movement did not effectively counter it. To this very day, the blowback is minimized as so many believe it would be inappropriate to mention that U.S. mass shooters are disproportionately veterans. Slandering all veterans in the hollow minds of those who cannot grasp that 99.9% of people are not mass shooters at all is deemed a greater danger than creating more veterans. The hope is that U.S. opposition to the war in Ukraine may grow in the absence of the troopist propaganda, as U.S. troops are not involved in large numbers and not supposed to be involved at all. But the U.S. media is pushing heroic stories of Ukrainian troops, and if no U.S. troops are involved, and if the nuclear apocalypse will stay within a magic European bubble, then why end the war at all? Money? Will that be enough, when everyone knows that money is simply invented if a bank or a corporation needs it, whereas reducing money spent on weapons will not increase money spent on any enterprise that isn’t set up to recycle chunks of it into election campaigns?
The wars ended, mostly. But the money didn’t. The lesson was neither taught nor learned that the more you spend on preparing for wars, the more war you’re likely to get. The war on Iraq, which generated hatred and violence around the globe, is now credited with keeping the United States safe. The same tired old bullshit about fighting them over there or over here is regularly heard on the floor of Congress in 2023. U.S. generals involved in the war on Iraq are presented in the U.S. media in 2023 as experts on victories, because they had something to do with a “surge,” even though no surge ever produced any victory. Russia and China and Iran are held up as threatening evils. The need for empire is openly admitted in keeping troops in Syria. The centrality of oil is discussed without shame, even if pipelines are blown up with a wink. And so, the money keeps flowing, at a greater pace now than during the war on Iraq, at a greater pace now than at any time since WWII. And the Halliburtonization continues, the privatization, the profiteering, and the pseudo-rebuilding services. The absence of consequences has consequences. Not a single serious pro-peace Congress Member remains. As long as we continue to oppose only particular wars for particular reasons, we’ll lack the necessary movement to put a plug in the sewer drain that sucks down over half of our income taxes.
Thinking longer term while trying to prevent or end a particular war would impact our strategies in many ways, not by cartoonishly reversing them, but by significantly adjusting them, and not just in terms of how we talk about troops. A little long-term strategic thought is enough, for example, to create serious concerns about pushing patriotism and religion as part of advocating for peace. You don’t see environmental advocates pushing love for ExxonMobil. But you do see them shying away from taking on the U.S. military and war celebrations. They learn that from the peace movement. If the peace movement won’t demand the global cooperation in place of war that’s needed to avoid nuclear disaster, how can the environmental movement be expected to demand the peaceful cooperation necessary to slow and mitigate the collapse of our climate and ecosystems?
We were too late and too small. The biggest global march in history was not big enough. It came with record speed but was not early enough. And not repeated enough. In particular it was not big enough where it mattered: in the United States. It’s wonderful to have had such massive turnout in Rome and London, but the lesson mislearned in the United States was that public demonstrations do not work. This was the wrong lesson. We overwhelmed and won over the United Nations. We constrained the size of the war and prevented a number of additional wars. We generated movements that led into the Arab Spring and Occupy. We blocked the massive bombing of Syria and created a deal with Iran, as the “Iraq Syndrome” lingered. What if we had begun years earlier? It’s not as if the war wasn’t advertised ahead. George W. Bush campaigned on it. What if we had mobilized en masse for peace in Ukraine 8 years ago? What if we were to protest the predictable steps toward war with China now, while they are being taken, rather than after the war starts and it becomes our national duty to pretend they never occurred? There is such a thing as being too late. You can blame me for this message of gloom and doom or thank me for this motivation to get into the streets in solidarity with your brothers and sisters across the globe who want life to continue.
The biggest lie is the lie of powerlessness. The reason the government spies on and disrupts and constrains activism is not that its pretense of paying no attention to activism is real, just the opposite. Governments pay very close attention. They know damn well that they cannot continue if we withhold our consent. The constant media push to sit still or cry or shop or wait for an election is there for a reason. The reason is that people have far more power than the individually powerful would like them to know. Reject the biggest lie and the others will fall like the imperialists’ mythical dominoes.
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Outstanding analysis first published in 2004 by author and antiwar activist Richard Sanders. Of relevance to recent developments in Ukraine.
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John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937), the world’s first billionaire, was America’s most generous philanthropist
Although Rockefeller’s wealth was based largely on a near global control of oil refining, he also had large interests in other monoplies. As Anthony Sutton notes, Rockefeller
“controlled the copper trust, the smelters trust and the gigantic tobacco trust, in addition to having influence in some Morgan properties such as the U.S. Steel Corporation as well as in hundreds of smaller industrial trusts, public service operations, railroads and banking institutions. National City Bank was the largest of the banks influenced by Standard Oil-Rockefeller, but financial control extended to the U.S. Trust Co. and Hanover National Bank [and] major life insurance companies – Equitable Life and Mutual of New York” (Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, 1981).
His incredible rags-to-riches success story owes much to what he learned from his father’s attitudes towards business and respect for the public good. Descended from hardworking German immigrants, his father William Avery Rockefeller was a travelling, snake oil salesman. “Big Bill” excelled as a quack doctor, or pitch man, conning the sick and desperate into buying expensive remedies that were either useless or downright dangerous.
“He would be gone for months and come back with a great roll of money…. He would go to small towns and put up handbills advertising himself as ‘The Celebrated Dr. Levingston.’ He advertised to cure anything, but made a specialty of cancer and kidney troubles” (MacDonald, “Double Life,” New York World, February 2, 1908).
But these were not “Doc’s” only crimes. He was indicted for rape, but was not arrested or tried. He fled the area with family and escaped neighbours who accused him of horse thieving, burglary, arson and counterfeiting. He had two wives, simultaneously, and was a bigamist for 34 years. He met his second wife in Norwich, Ontario, where he sold lumber in 1853, calling himself William Levingston.
William’s example provided ample life lessons to his sons about the business values of duplicity, deceit, and a blatant disregard for public health.
John dropped out of high school in 1855 to take a business course. He worked as a bookkeeper and then teamed up with a friend to start a grain commission business.
In 1863, the Civil War propelled him into the oil business. That year, he – like J.P. Morgan and other rising stars – paid $300 to avoid conscription. It was a small price for them, but unattainable for the thousands who would die.
At first, he sold whiskey at inflated rates to Federal soldiers. Then, he invested his profits in oil refineries. The South had been supplying turpentine to the North for camphene-fueled lights. When the war cut off the North’s access to this fuel, kerosene from Pennsylvania oil quickly took over as the lamp fuel of choice and stimulated his oil business.
In 1865, Rockefeller bought out his partners in the kerosene business for $72,500.
In 1870, he and a few others, organized The Standard Oil Company, with capital of $1 million. He built his company by buying out competitors, price cutting and controlling secondary businesses related to pipelines, trains, oil terminals and barrel making.
By 1880, his monopoly controlled the refining of 95% of America’s oil. In 1885, 70% of Standard Oil’s sales were overseas, largely to northern Europe and Russia. All of its properties were merged into the Standard Oil Trust with an initial capitalization of $70 million, and by 1900 Rockefeller controlled about two-thirds of the entire world’s oil supply. He was also a director of the U.S. Steel Corp when it formed in 1901.
In the 1880s, an oil boom was brewing in Tsarist Russia, around the Caspian Sea town of Baku.
Robert Nobel, the son of Alfred Nobel (originator of Sweden’s peace prize and the inventor of dynamite), was soon competing with the Parisian Rothschilds for control of Central Asia oil treasure.
Their exports threatened Rockefeller’s near global oil monopoly, especially when Marcus Samuel, future founder of Shell Oil, developed tankers to carry the Rothchild’s oil to Europe and Asia.
In 1903, Rockefeller made a deal with the Tsarist government to lease and then buy the Baku oil fields. Besides selling vast quantities of American oil to pre-Soviet Russia, Rockefeller also had millions invested there. Thereafter, seeing an inevitable revolution looming on the horizon, Rockefeller also invested in anti-Tzarist forces to protect this branch of his empire. The Soviets did expropriate the Caspian oil fields from the Nobels and Rothschilds. Rockefeller’s National City Bank also lost assets, thanks to the revolution. Its lawyer, Joseph Proskauer, fought a legal battle to get Rockefeller’s money back. In 1926, Walter Teagle, the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, successfully negotiated oil concessions in the Soviet Union.
By that time though, Standard Oil’s near global monopoly had been broken up. In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was violating anti-trust laws and dissolved it into about three dozen companies. Many of these are now household names like Chevron (Standard Oil California), Amoco (Standard Oil Indiana), Mobil (Standard Oil New Jersey) and Exxon, previously called Esso (Standard Oil New Jersey).
When the U.S. was debating whether to join WWI, a group of so-called “War Hawks,” calling themselves the National Security League, knew that this war would be a major boon to profits.
This League of bankers and industrialists, including Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Coleman du Pont and H.H. Rodgers of Standard Oil, promoted increases in arms production and universal military training.
By 1917, they had helped build war hysteria to a fever pitch. But not all Americans were on their side. The Woman’s Peace Party, many suffragists and others, strongly opposed America’s entry into WWI. However, the League was successful and the War Hawks’ profits skyrocketed.
Soon after WWI and the Russian revolution, many among America’s wealthy elite felt threatened by rising radicalism, particularly among unions. In April 1919, letter bombs, destined for John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and others, were supposedly discovered in the U.S. postal system.
The media quickly stirred up a massive Red Scare by blaming unions, communists, anarchists and foreign agitators. John Spivak says: “Trade unions were openly disbelieving and denounced with anger the so-called discoveries as a deliberate frame-up to provide excuses for more raids against organized labour” (A Man in His Time, 1967). This incident and others were used as pretexts for the Palmer Raids, during which the government rounded up more than ten thousand activists across the country.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, while the persecution of leftists continued, corporate leaders on the extreme right, continued their criminal rampages in pursuit of profit. Although Rockefeller’s many links to Nazism are too numerous to list here, a few examples are worth noting. In the 1920s, Exxon entered into partnerships with Germany’s top chemical cartel members, BASF and I.G. Farben.
The Bank for International Settlements, which helped fund the Nazis before and during WWII, was created in 1930 by the world’s central banks, including the Federal Reserve Bank of NY. Its creation was inspired by the Nazi government and its bankers. Its first president was Gates McGarrah, a Rockefeller banker formerly of Chase National Bank and the “Fed.”
In 1932, Chevron struck oil in Bahrain and was soon operating in Saudi Arabia.
In 1933, when Hitler seized power, Standard Oil New Jersey supplied Germany with the patents it required for tetraethyl lead aviation fuel. In 1936, the company Schroder, Rockefeller Investment Bankers, included board directors linked to the Gestapo and several European, Nazi-linked banks. It’s lawyers were John Foster Dulles and Allan Dulles, leading Wall Street fascists who drummed up American investments in Germany and elsewhere.
The Dulles law firm represented I.G. Farben and Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen was Hitler’s biggest German financier. The Dulles brothers later became Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively.
In 1937, John D. Rockefeller died, but his legacy of using oil money to grease the wheels of fascism continued.
That year, as the Spanish Civil War raged, Texas Co. (later called Texaco) fueled Franco’s fascists. (In 1936, Texas Co. and Standard Oil California formed California Texas Oil (later Caltex) to combine Texas Co’s marketing network in the Middle East with Standard’s operations there.) Texas Co. also continued shipping oil to Germany during WWII.
In 1938, Brown Brothers, Harriman, the Wall Street investment firm (with senior partners Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker) was involved in funding the supply of leaded gas for the Nazi Luftwaffe.
Chevron and Texas Co. created Aramco in 1939, to pump Saudi oil for the Nazi war machine. In 1940, Texaco provided an office, in their Chrysler Building, for a Nazi intelligence officer, Dr. Gerhardt Westrick. Executives of Standard Oil’s German subsidiary were “Prominent figures of Himmler’s Circle of Friends of the Gestapo – its chief financiers – and close friends and colleagues of the Baron von Schroder” a leading Gesatpo officer and financier (Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy). Just before WWII, the Rockefeller’s Chase Bank collaborated with the Nazi’s Schroder Bank to raise $25 million for Germany’s war economy. They also supplied the German government with names and background information on 10,000 fascist sympathizers in America. Throughout WWII, Rockefeller’s Chase Bank stayed open in Nazi-occupied Paris, providing services for Germany’s embassy and its businesses.
In 1943, Roosevelt’s government took control of Rockefeller’s Aramco. It also seized assets of the Union Banking Corp., which Harriman, Bush and Walker had built up by collaborating with Nazi companies that used slave labour. This money was later returned and it launched the Bushes in oil and politics.
In 1953, after an elected upstart named Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil business, a UK/U.S.-backed coup returned the Shah to power. CIA Director Allan Dulles and his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, were instrumental in this coup. Previously, Iran’s oil had been controlled by the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (i.e., British Petroleum, BP) but after the U.S. role in this coup, U.S. companies got a 40% share and the top beneficiary was Standard Oil of New Jersey.
The next year, the Dulles boys were at it again orchestrating a coup in Guatemala. This one ushered in decades of fascist military governments that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents. But, it brought great profits for Rockefeller’s United Fruit Co., in which the Dulles were invested. Allen had also been on its Board of Trustees.
John D. Rockefeller would be happy to see the re-merging of his great monopoly. In 1988, Standard Oil merged with British Petroleum. Since then, other mergers have reunited many of his original oil companies. Exxon and Mobil reunited in 1999, to become the world’s top oil business. They made profits of $17.7 billion the next year. BP, merging with Amoco and Standard Oil Ohio, was number two that year and made profits of $12 billion.
J.D. Rockefeller’s philanthropy has been much lauded. Even as a student, he reportedly gave donations to his Baptist church and to foreign Sunday schools. By 1900, he offered to buy a whole church for Baptist preacher Thomas Dixon, a former, southern politician who was then flogging his white supremacist gospel in New York. But from the pulpit, Dixon’s fiery tirades against “creeping negroidism” didn’t reach enough people, so he took up writing respectable, romantic novels about the KKK. He churned out two dozen books. The Clansman, his race-baiting best seller, extolled the Klan’s role in redeeming the South. In 1915, it was made into a movie, called The Birth of a Nation. Endorsed by President Wilson, the film helped revive this dreaded terrorist organization.
Rockefeller’s great generosity was aimed largely at medical education, perhaps because of his father’s career and its peculiar contributions to medicine.
J.D.Rockefeller, being a high school dropout, was not well-suited to his new role as godfather of the country’s centres for higher learning. His philanthropy was permeated with extremely racist views. In 1901, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was created. In 1902, the General Education Board (GEB) began four decades of tremendously controversial influence over American schools and universities.
That same year, J.D. Rockefeller and Averell Harriman, a business partner of Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker in Brown Brothers Harriman, gave $11 million to create the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Built on Manhattan property owned by the Dulles brothers, it spawned America’s ground-breaking “eugenics” research and the world’s first “racial hygiene” laws.
By 1907, Rockefeller funding was heavily influencing America’s medical institutions. The Rockefeller Institute created the first genetics lab in 1909. The following year, the Eugenics Research Association and the Eugenics Records Office were founded near Cold Spring Harbor, New York, on land donated by the widow of Averell Harriman. In 1911, John Foster Dulles summed up eugenics, saying that by eliminating “the weakest members of the population” a purer race could be created.
In 1928, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Eugenics, Anthropology and Human Heredity was created.
Run by Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s foremost “racial hygienist,” the institute’s main financing came from Rockefeller.
Ironically, by 1936 an early psychiatrist at that institute, the half Jewish Dr. Franz Kallmann, had fled Nazism to America. According to Anton Chaitkin, Kallman’s experiments on 1,000 schizophrenics, published by the Freemasons, was used in 1939 to justify the Nazi’s mass murder of
“mental patients and various ‘defective’ people.”
Meanwhile, other Nazi doctors conducted incredibly cruel and vicious experiments on live, captive human subjects. Their body parts “were delivered to [Josef] Mengele, [Otmar] Verschuer and the other Rockefeller-linked contingent at the Wilhelm Institute.”
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Philip Mattera, “The Return of Windfall Profits: An Overview of the Oil Industry,” Corporate Research E-Letter, Mar. 2001. http://www.corp-research.org/mar01.htm
Yagmur Kochumov, “Issues of International Law and Politics in the Caspian in the Context of the Turkrnenistan-Azerbaijan Discussion and Fuel Transport,” Caspian Crossroads, Winter 1999. ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/usazerb/422.htm
“Wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or get pinched.” That pretty much sums up the Irish-American “curriculum” that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.
Sadly, today’s high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.
Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom. In my own high school social studies classes, I begin with Sinead O’Connor’s haunting rendition of “Skibbereen,” which includes the verse:
… Oh it’s well I do remember, that bleak
December day,
The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive
Us all away
They set my roof on fire, with their cursed
English spleen
And that’s another reason why I left old
Skibbereen.
By contrast, Holt McDougal’s U.S. history textbook The Americans, devotes a flat two sentences to “The Great Potato Famine.” Prentice Hall’s America: Pathways to the Present fails to offer a single quote from the time. The text calls the famine a “horrible disaster,” as if it were a natural calamity like an earthquake. And in an awful single paragraph, Houghton Mifflin’s The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People blames the “ravages of famine” simply on “a blight,” and the only contemporaneous quote comes, inappropriately, from a landlord, who describes the surviving tenants as “famished and ghastly skeletons.” Uniformly, social studies textbooks fail to allow the Irish to speak for themselves, to narrate their own horror.
These timid slivers of knowledge not only deprive students of rich lessons in Irish-American history, they exemplify much of what is wrong with today’s curricular reliance on corporate-produced textbooks.
To support the famine relief effort, British tax policy required landlords to pay the local taxes of their poorest tenant farmers, leading many landlords to forcibly evict struggling farmers and destroy their cottages in order to save money. From Hunger on Trial Teaching Activity.
First, does anyone really think that students will remember anything from the books’ dull and lifeless paragraphs? Today’s textbooks contain no stories of actual people. We meet no one, learn nothing of anyone’s life, encounter no injustice, no resistance. This is a curriculum bound for boredom. As someone who spent almost 30 years teaching high school social studies, I can testify that students will be unlikely to seek to learn more about events so emptied of drama, emotion, and humanity.
Nor do these texts raise any critical questions for students to consider. For example, it’s important for students to learn that the crop failure in Ireland affected only the potato—during the worst famine years, other food production was robust. Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire, “Ireland’s was surely the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly.” But if only this one variety of potato, the Lumper, failed, and other crops thrived, why did people starve?
Thomas Gallagher points out in Paddy’s Lament, that during the first winter of famine, 1846-47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultry—food that could have prevented those deaths. Throughout the famine, as Gallagher notes, there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.
The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.
More than a century and a half after the “Great Famine,” we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions. Raj Patel opens his book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System: “Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.”
Patel’s book sets out to account for “the rot at the core of the modern food system.” This is a curricular journey that our students should also be on — reflecting on patterns of poverty, power, and inequality that stretch from 19th century Ireland to 21st century Africa, India, Appalachia, and Oakland; that explore what happens when food and land are regarded purely as commodities in a global system of profit.
But today’s corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about this inequality than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants. Take Pearson, the global publishing giant. At its website, the corporation announces (redundantly) that “we measure our progress against three key measures: earnings, cash and return on invested capital.” The Pearson empire had 2011 worldwide sales of more than $9 billion—that’s nine thousand million dollars, as I might tell my students. Multinationals like Pearson have no interest in promoting critical thinking about an economic system whose profit-first premises they embrace with gusto.
As mentioned, there is no absence of teaching materials on the Irish famine that can touch head and heart. In a role play, “Hunger on Trial,” that I wrote and taught to my own students in Portland, Oregon—included at the Zinn Education Project website— students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? A system of distribution, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?
These are rich and troubling ethical questions. They are exactly the kind of issues that fire students to life and allow them to see that history is not simply a chronology of dead facts stretching through time.
So go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains. But let’s honor the Irish with our curiosity. Let’s make sure that our schools show some respect, by studying the social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irish—and that are starving and uprooting people today.
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Featured image: The Irish Famine, 1850 by George Frederic Watt. (Source: Zinn Education Project) All other images in this article are from Zinn Education Project.
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The protest movement directed against Netanyahu’s ultranationalist coalition does not take a stance on the rights of Palestinians.
There were no Palestinian flags in the protest movement against Netanyahu.
Palestinians are the victims of both the Netanyahu government as well Israel’s Judicial system which Netanyahu wants to dispel, transforming Israel into what the protest movement describes as a “theocratic dictatorship”.
“In a letter addressed to German and UK envoys, some 1,000 prominent Israeli figures say that Israel is in the midst of the most severe crisis in its history, and that Netanyahu is trying to turn the country into a ‘theocratic dictatorship’
Israel is already a “theocratic dictatorship”.
The current Netanyahu ultra-nationalist coalition government remains committed to the “Greater Israel” project and the “Promised Land”, namely the biblical homeland of the Jews.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been pressing ahead to formalize “Israel’s colonial project”, namely the appropriation of all Palestinian Lands.
The Netanyahu coalition is committed to total appropriation as well as outright exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homeland:
“These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlements in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.” (Netanyahu January 2022)
Under Netanyahu, Israel is currently proceeding with the plan to annex large chunks of Palestinian territory “while keeping the Palestinian inhabitants in conditions of severe deprivation and isolation.”
Israel is a de facto member of NATO following the signing in November 2004 of bilateral protocol agreement. The “Greater Israel” project including the appropriation of Palestinian lands has been endorsed by US-NATO.
Creating conditions of extreme poverty and economic collapse constitute the unspoken means for triggering the expulsion and exodus of Palestinians from their homeland. It is part of the process of annexation:
“If the manoeuvre is successful, Israel will end up with all of the territories it conquered during the 1967 war, including all of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and most of the Palestinian Territories, including the best sources of water and agricultural land.
The West Bank will find itself in the same situation as the Gaza strip, cut off from the outside world and surrounded by hostile Israeli military forces and Israeli settlements.” (South Front)
“Palestine Is Gone! Gone! راحت فلسطين . The Palestinian plight is savagely painful and the pain is compounded by the bafflingly off-hand dismissal and erasure by Western powers of that pain, Rima Najjar, Global Research, June, 7, 2020
We call upon the leaders of Israel’s protest movement to take a firm stance on the Rights of Palestinians.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 17, 2023
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Below are excerpts from the Ynetnews report.
Our thanks to Ynetnews.
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Hundreds of Israeli writers, artists, and intellectuals on Tuesday called on Germany and Britain to cancel upcoming visits by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying his plan to overhaul Israel’s judicial system has put the country on a destructive course.
Netanyahu’s coalition, a collection of ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties, has barreled ahead with legislation that aims to weaken Israel’s Supreme Court and give them control over the appointment of the nation’s judges.
They say the plan is a long-overdue measure to curb what they see as an outsize influence by unelected judges. But critics say the plan will destroy Israel’s fragile system of checks and balances by concentrating power in the hands of Netanyahu and his parliamentary majority. They also say it is an attempt by Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, to escape justice.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets over the past two months to protest the sweeping overhaul. Protests last week were so large that Netanyahu was forced to take a helicopter to the airport in order to catch a flight for an official visit to Italy.
Israeli demonstrations in recent months have escalated as reform legislation proceeds (Photo: Tal Shahar)
High-tech leaders, Nobel-winning economists, and prominent security officials have spoken out against it, military reservists have threatened to stop reporting for duty and even some of Israel’s closest allies, including the U.S., have urged Netanyahu to slow down. Repeated efforts by Israel’s figurehead president, Isaac Herzog, to broker a compromise have not yielded fruit.
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Featured image: Netanyahu celebrates the bill passing the first of three votes (Photo: The Knesset Channel)
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So-called World public opinion probably sees my country, Poland, as one of the most involved warmongers, always on the front line of an aggressive imperialist policy steered from Washington and London.
It seems to be confirmed also by the present leaks about at least indirect Polish involvement in the terrorist attack on Nord Stream on 6th September 2022.
As we already know, one of known versions widely discussed in the Western media points to an ‘independent group of friends of Ukraine’ as the perpetrators who, carrying out the act of sabotage, were supposed to travel on a yacht rented from a Ukrainian company registered in Poland.
The story about freelancers and volunteers does not sound particularly credible, neither explaining how they so freely transported tons of explosives needed to initiate the explosion, nor the sources of the rest of the highly specialised equipment necessary for the entire operation. However, this is also a preliminary admission of guilt on the part of the pro-Kiev forces, a confirmation that Russia did not blow up the Nord Stream, but on the contrary, that it was an action clearly in the interest of the current Ukrainian government and the policy implemented through them.
Poland’s energy defeats
One way or another, we are dealing with an attempt to involve Poland, as well as Germany (the mysterious sabotage yacht was supposed to operate from the port of Rostock), i.e. the two countries that were actually most affected by the undersea explosion in the Baltic Sea. And yet Poles are also, and perhaps above all, victims of this extremely dangerous correlation.
Being a peripheral country dependent on the West on all levels, we bear the severe costs of the current global crisis of capitalism, presented as voluntary and inevitable consequences of the energy transformation and alleged climate crisis. Therefore we have been forced to renounce our natural and hitherto basic energy resource, that means hard coal.
In turn, while participating in the anti-Russian coalition, we cut ourselves off from supplies of Russian natural gas, i.e. the basic transitional resource, thanks to which Europe was to survive the initial stage of transformation, planned for no less than couple decades. Unfortunately, first we have been subjected to the extremely restricted policy of the European Commission, known as the Fit for 55 strategy. Complementary we observed speculations on the natural gas options market, which led to a sharp increase in market prices already in autumn 2021. Finally Ukrainian conflict, combined with the energy blockade and economic war against Russia disturbed the very base of the Polish economy, strongly subsidiary to the Germany interests, including assumed success of the Energiewende, German way of the energy transformation with human face. This face, however, was slapped by the Anglo-Saxons.
Time is running out for Europe
Today we can be absolutely sure, that assumptions of the infamous 10-Point Plan to Reduce the European Union’s Reliance on Russian Natural Gas have been clearly propaganda humbug. From all of them the only one actually achieved was introducing harsh austerity policy forced by tough pricing policies, loosening of social covers and forcing ordinary citizens to use less energy. Others, like maximum usage of reserve capacity and rising storage levels, and further transformation towards renewables turned out to be economically unprofitable and technically impossible, at least in a short term. And even if, analytics as e.g. the think-tank Aurora Energy Research, associated with the University of Oxford, warned that all these visions more or less stick together only if the Ukrainian conflict and its consequences last no longer than 2 years. That means if Russian natural gas continues to flow through Ukraine and the NS2 delay will be no longer than until 2025. After that time, Europe would have to return to mutually beneficial economic cooperation with Russia. This is what the Anglo-Saxons had to prevent to.
We know that Americans did it…
From the Polish perspective the American terrorist attack against Nord Stream was undoubtedly the most tragic moment of the current conflict, and it is no coincidence that even mainstream Polish politicians, such as former Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, were among the first to reveal information about American responsibility for this act of energy sabotage in the Baltic Sea.
After all, one of the important goals of American aggressive politics was to increase the energy and thus economic dependence of Central Europe, including Poland, on American and Qatari LNG supplies, as well as gaining a market for American nuclear technologies. And we must remember that talking about the peaceful use of nuclear energy is a euphemism, because there is no doubt that we are dealing with a desire to quickly resume the nuclear arms race, thanks to the production of a significant amount of fissile material, also in the nuclear plants planned to be built in Poland.
This means that according to the Anglo-Saxons, Central Europe will lose its status of a nuclear-free zone together with relocation of the American and British nuclear weapons directly to the Russian border, what is only a matter of time, rather not long. And that is not all. Every day we can predict and even feel other long-term effects of US terrorism against Nord Stream, including wider energy exclusion; draconian increase in the cost of living in Poland and the already felt recession; deepened dependence on foreign energy supplies, and thus lower economic competitiveness of Polish companies. Above all, the threat of war is growing and the attack in the Baltic only fosters war psychosis, espionage hunting, new Red/Russian Scare and censorship, but not aimed at the real American perpetrators, but against all revealing the truth.
US aggression against Europe
Moreover, the Anglo-Saxons are doing everything to make the peace as difficult as possible also for the Russians too. This is the same kind of blackmail that was used before 24 February 2022, during almost official Ukrainian (Western) preparations for the invasion against Donbass and Crimea, with a provocative message towards Russia AND WHAT WILL YOU DO?! However, when it turned out, that Russians were able to DID at least something, sorry for the Ukrainians, the Anglo-Saxons has continued to play this game successfully, not only by supporting the Kiev resistance, but most significantly by blowing up the Nord Stream BECAUSE WHAT WILL YOU DO?! That flicking Russian open eyes has the same purpose as the tanks sent to Kiev: to keep the war going and provoke Russian reactions. Although we could reverse that reasoning and ask: how we, the Europeans should react?
For Poles, as for all Europeans, the undersea explosion carried out by American, Norwegian and British terrorists is therefore the first shot of America’s full-blown war against Europe. We have been attacked, so we must wage our own defence against terror and tyranny to protect our families, homes and workplaces. Since our real enemies did not hesitate to expose millions of people to death from hypothermia – they will stop at nothing.
This is not the end
What could be the target of the next attacks? For example, TurkStream, and especially the project of its expansion and extension into the entire system supplying southern Europe with Russian gas sent via the Turkish hub. The existing Anapa-Kıyıköy pipeline is already under sanctions, but since those on the example of Nord Stream turned out to be ineffective, there can be no more ‘independent yachts’ with random commandos with tons of explosives. We are clearly entering a period in which the transformation of capitalism, its transition into a phase of low-consumption and zero-growth hibernation will also be carried out with the use of military means and acts of terror.
While we know that the American hegemony, carrying out the tasks of the globalist finances, considers China as its main competitor, associated with the declining stage of industrial-consumer capitalism (the post-Fordist model), then it seems to be logical that the Suez Canal or the new Nicaraguan canal planned by Beijing (which would allow bypass US blockades in Panama) could become equally natural targets of attacks.
Let us recall what happened two years ago, in March 2021, after a seemingly minor failure of the Ever Green container ship sailing from the Malaysian port of Tanjung Pelepas to Rotterdam. At that time, the interruption in communication via Suez lasted only six days, and so it effectively disrupted the supply chain to Europe. Let’s imagine what if there was an explosion on the scale of Nord Stream and the fastest sea route between Asia and Europe was permanently shut down, just as the wars in Ukraine and Syria effectively block land connections.
Just as in particular Central Europe is deprived of energy, it is perfectly possible to imagine Western consumers being cut off from semiconductors, and thus, most of the hardware and software, electronic devices, cars, as well as other consumer goods, as garments and textiles, the oversupply of which we have become accustomed for successive decades of welfare capitalism. Decades that are coming to an end with three main turning points of the long Twentieth Century: the energy transformation, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The Anglo-Saxon attack against Nord Stream is only an episode for this breakthrough, but perhaps one with the dimension of Sarajevo and Pearl Harbor.
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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Last week, the Biden administration asked Congress to permit its agents to continue to spy on Americans without search warrants. The actual request was to re-authorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. FISA requires warrants from the FISA Court for all domestic spying. Section 702 is a 2008 amendment to FISA. It expressly authorizes warrantless spying of foreign persons.
The Supreme Court has characterized spying as surveillance and surveillance as a search under the Fourth Amendment. That amendment requires search warrants issued by judges and based upon probable cause of crime demonstrated to the judges under oath and specifically describing the place to be searched or thing to be seized for the surveillance to be lawful.
Since FISA Court warrants — issued by a secret court in Washington, D.C. — are not based on probable cause of crime, and since Section 702 does away altogether with the warrant requirement when foreign persons are even peripherally involved, both FISA and its Section 702 are unconstitutional.
Here is the backstory.
After the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 and the full extent of his use of the FBI and the CIA for domestic warrantless surveillance became known, Congress enacted FISA. It proclaims itself to have established the only lawful method for surveillance outside of the Fourth Amendment. This proclamation is a profound constitutional error — an oxymoron — as all surveillance in defiance of the Fourth Amendment is unconstitutional.
That amendment was written in the aftermath of British agents executing general warrants on the colonists. General warrants were not based on probable cause of crime, but rather governmental need. And they did not specifically describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.
Rather, general warrants — issued by a secret court in London — authorized the bearer in America to search wherever he wished and seize whatever he found. The agents ostensibly were looking for proof of tax payments. They were really engaged in spying. They were looking for subversive, revolutionary materials.
After the Revolutionary War was won and the Constitution was ratified, the Bill of Rights was ratified. The Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects all “people” from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government — both law enforcement and spies. The courts have interpreted “unreasonable” to mean “without a search warrant.”
The amendment’s drafters’ intentional employment of the word “people” makes it obvious that the amendment protects every person from every search and every seizure by anyone from the government without a warrant. It is not limited to Americans or adults or good people or people the government likes; rather, it protects all people.
In a linguistic effort to accommodate the warrant requirement and its probable cause pre-condition, the congressional drafters of FISA required that the FISA Court may issue warrants for surveillance based on probable cause, not of crime, but of being a foreign government agent. The FISA Court then, on its own, morphed foreign agency into foreign personhood, and then morphed that into communicating with a foreign person.
So, if you text or email or call your cousin in Geneva or an art dealer in Florence, you become a target for a FISA surveillance warrant — merely by communicating with a foreign person.
Even this loosening of Fourth Amendment protection by the Orwellian re-definition of probable cause was not enough to satisfy the rapacious appetite of the government to spy. Thus, President George W. Bush ordered the National Security Agency — the federal government’s 60,000-person strong cadre of domestic spies — to engage in warrantless spying, in defiance of FISA, and on a scale vastly greater than that which Nixon had ordered of the FBI and CIA in the 1970s.
When Congress learned of the warrantless spying, rather than defunding it, it enacted Section 702 as an exception to FISA, and thereby made warrantless spying on foreign persons in America legal. In a direct affront to the Fourth Amendment, Section 702 permits the NSA and its cousins in the 16 other federal spying agencies to spy without warrants on all communications involving foreign persons.
What happens when a foreign person communicates with an American? Section 702 permits warrantless surveillance of Americans who communicate with foreign persons, permits the NSA to maintain a database of all such American persons, permits the FBI to search those databases without a search warrant, and if the NSA learns of evidence of criminal behavior without a warrant, requires it to share that evidence with the FBI.
It gets worse.
Since Department of Justice lawyers have persuaded the FISA Court to issue warrants to spy on Americans who communicate with foreigners out to the sixth degree of communication, the NSA has contended that Section 702 also permits it to spy out to the sixth degree.
How many persons can be spied upon if the NSA’s interpretation of 702 is lawful? Call your cousin in Geneva and NSA can spy on everyone with whom you speak and everyone to whom they speak, and so on, out to the sixth level of communication.
The FBI reported that in 2021, it searched 3.4 million names in the NSA database of Americans who communicated with foreigners. If you take those 3.4 million out to the sixth degree of their American communications, the number grows exponentially. You will have reached 330 million Americans before completion of the process.
Stated differently, the Biden administration, the DOJ, the NSA and the FBI all claim the lawful authority to spy on all persons in America — American and foreign — without a search warrant, without probable cause, without articulable suspicion; and these deep state denizens want that lawful authority congressionally extended beyond its expiration date at the end of this year.
Any member of Congress who votes to do so is unfit for office. Such a vote would be an assault on the Constitution.
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“One year ago the world finally recognized true horror Putin and the Russian Federation planned for #Ukraine and the Ukrainian people – a complete genocide of the people and culture. However, he miscalculated. Ukraine fought back. Ukraine will triumph.” [1]
– Heather McPherson, Member of Parliament and NDP Foreign Affairs critic
As it stands right now, not a single member of the House of Commons, in government or in opposition, objects to major support by Canada to the Ukrainian government in its war with Russia. Not one![2]
The elected party in opposition historically most likely to oppose the war drive especially as it diverts resources from health care, education, climate policy, housing and other social policies is the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP). Yet today, as indicated by their Foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson, the reigning party, the Liberals, are not hawkish enough![3]
Enter Ethnorama News Winnipeg, a community newspaper in the city of Winnipeg at the centre of Canada. It claims to highlight the views of the new voices from various ethnic groups that is not heard or reflected in the mainline press. In August and September of last year, it ran a two part article entitled Long History of US-Russia Confrontation. Analysis of Ukraine-Russia Relations. It was a reprint of the story written for Global Research about two months after the invasion took place.
Somehow, the story got the attention of the NDP, both provincially and federally in Ottawa. NDP officials or some other authority spoke to two NDP MPs in the city, Leah Gazan and Daniel Blaikie, people who generally support progressive community projects such as this one. After their meeting, they were either coerced, cajoled or outright ordered to remove advertisements from the newspaper, denying them hundreds of dollars for production purposes. The reason was based on them publishing the above article, which they refer to as “disinformation.”
What’s more, the author of the article is a former Geography Professor and Senior Scholar at the University of Winnipeg by the name of John Ryan. He and his work were smeared without actually going over his material point by point. (You think this was war by NATO? You are nuts!)
Since this view tries to expand the picture of the war and get some context which is missing in mainstream media discourse, attacks of this nature are a warning not only to Ethnorama but to any journalistic organ daring to ask daring questions and scrutinize details of a war, expensive in financing and Ukrainian lives!
It seems as if any deviation from the position that “Ukraine is good, Russia is evil” is harmful propaganda!
Can Ethnorama manage to survive and hold up their journalistic principles and be able to survive financially as two members of Parliament, and perhaps other influential people, withdraw sponsorship? Answering these questions goes to the heart of this chapter of the Global Research News Hour.
In the first half hour we speak to the author of the article, Dr John Ryan, about the factual content on which it was based and the problems from his point of view with the NDP for appearing to convince the two individuals to wash their hands of the magazine based on one article.
Then we speak with Ethnorama editorial collective members Marianne Cerilli and Glenn Michalchuk about their defence of the article and their critical view of US-NATO’s role in the war, and also of the fund-raising event scheduled for the 31st of March at the Ukrainian Labour Temple. (Tickets are $20 each and can be purchased by emailing [email protected])
John Ryan, Ph.D. is a Retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar, University of Winnipeg. His two Ukraine war related articles for Ethnorama can be found here and here. Professor Ryan has also written about his journey to Afghanistan in 1978. His write-up in 2006 got.the respectful attention of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh!
Marianne Cerilli is a parent, educator, former member of the Legislative Assembly and community development aficionado. She sits on Ethnorama’s editorial board.
Glenn Michalchuk is chair of Peace Alliance Winnipeg and the president of the Winnipeg branch of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians.
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State Department spokesman Ned Priceanswered a question on North Korea diplomacy today, and his answer unwittingly demonstrated the folly of the U.S. approach:
On your first question, it unfortunately is a purely hypothetical question. It’s an academic question, because we have been clear and consistent in conveying publicly and through all channels available to us that we are prepared and willing to engage in constructive diplomacy with the DPRK towards what is the goal we share with our allies and partners of the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula [bold mine-DL]. And I say it’s hypothetical and academic because at every turn the DPRK has failed to engage meaningfully on these offers. But were that to be the case, were the DPRK to take us up on this, we would look to see if we could devise practical steps that could help to advance what is that longer-term objective of the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
The goal of the complete denuclearization of the peninsula is at odds with engaging in constructive diplomacy with North Korea. As long as this remains the goal of U.S. policy, there is not going to be constructive diplomacy. When “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” means nothing more than North Korea’s unilateral disarmament, North Korea isn’t going to “engage meaningfully” with a demand for its own capitulation. Of course North Korea has “failed to engage,” because they have no incentive to entertain the terms that the U.S. has set.
Their government isn’t going to engage in a process where the end result is the dismantling of an arsenal that they have spent almost two decades building up. The U.S. and its allies can acknowledge this reality and adjust their goals accordingly, or they can sit back and watch as North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and missile program continue to advance and expand. If the U.S. and its allies want a different outcome, they will have to change what they have been doing and modify their demands.
Biden administration officials love to say that “the ball is in their court” when talking about their inability to make any diplomatic progress with other governments. The Biden administration took this line with North Korea early on, and it is not a coincidence that ever since then North Korea has continued building up its forces and testing its missiles in record numbers. Saying that “the ball is in their court” lets the administration pretend that the deteriorating situation is entirely the fault of the other party. It is how they excuse their own lamentable neglect of the issue. This passivity and unwillingness to take the initiative are debilitating for U.S. diplomacy, and it is no wonder that the U.S. has so few major diplomatic achievements in recent years.
The U.S. is the more powerful and secure state, and it has the luxury of taking the first step to revive negotiations if it wishes to negotiate. Because it is much more secure, the U.S. has greater flexibility and freedom of action than North Korea, and that means that the U.S. is in a position to break the current impasse. It cannot do that if it remains wedded to maximalism and coercive tactics.
Van Jackson explained in his new book, Pacific Power Paradox, what is needed to manage the problem with North Korea and its nuclear weapons:
Similarly, the North Korea problem will never be resolved through pressure attached to demands for unilateral disarmament [bold mine-DL]; the only solution lies in living with the Kim regime’s need to gird itself against ingrained perceptions of external threat while making a serious bid to change the relationship of rivalry that fuels that perception.[1]
This solution will be difficult to realize, but at least it has some chance of working and reducing instability in the relationship with North Korea. The current approach is guaranteed to produce more failures and it will almost certainly lead to more North Korean missile and nuclear tests. If the U.S. wants North Korea to engage meaningfully, it has to be willing to offer their government a reasonable compromise instead of issuing an ultimatum and threatening more economic warfare.
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Alberta woman’s COVID-19 vax injury vindicated by federal compensation
Carrie Sakamoto was a healthy woman two years ago. First, she received an AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination, and followed up with Pfizer’s version in July of 2021. She was never well again. (click here)
“I got sick that evening, but it was just like regular flu symptoms…then by day ten, I was in the hospital.” Bell’s Palsy was setting in, causing Sakamoto’s brain to swell, causing “really bad” vomiting. Her 5-ft 4-ins. frame shrunk to 100 lbs.
“I wasn’t able to eat because I had all these flu symptoms. By the time I got to hospital, I was in pretty bad shape. I had to learn how to walk with a walker because my balance was gone. I had to learn to chew and swallow, which I couldn’t do. I had a feeding tube too, because I kept aspirating on the food I was trying to chew.”
Sakamoto was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy that causes her facial paralysis and dizziness. She now has a hearing aid in her right ear due to 35% hearing loss that ensued. She also suffers with trigeminal neuralgia”
On March 1, 2023, she received compensation of “less than $100,000” from Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program.
How common are COVID-19 vaccine audiovestibular injuries?
As of March 16, 2023, WHO’s VigiAccess database recorded 140,995 Adverse Events involving “Ear and labyrinth disorders” following COVID-19 vaccination: (click here)
Most notable are:
Tinnitus: 57,630
Vertigo: 49,824
Ear Pain: 17,731
Deafness: 5,858
Sudden hearing loss: 3,237
Tinnitus
Tinnitus is an otologic symptom characterized by a conscious perception of sound without an external auditory stimulus.
One study that reviewed the VAERS database found: “COVID-19 vaccines were associated with statistically significant increases in the incidence of vertigo, tinnitus, hearing loss and Bell’s palsy of 1877, 50, 12 and 14 cases per 100,000.” (click here)
The cause remains unknown. Another study speculates: “Conceivable that mRNA entered the cochlea via hematogenic spread, thrombosis of a cochlear vein occurred, there was isolated neuronitis of the cochlear nerve, there was focal encephalitis, or thrombosis of cerebral veins had occurred. It is also conceivable that immunologic reactions against the virus secondarily affected cochlear structures or the cochlear nerve (click here).
Although many patients suffer terribly with post COVID-19 mRNA vaccine tinnitus, most published studies downplay it, and doctors offer nothing to treat it.
Tinnitus Treatment
There is a very recent paper from China that offers acupuncture as one option to seek some relief for post COVID-19 vaccine tinnitus (click here).
As for Quercetin and NAC, both have spike protein binding and inhibiting abilities.
“Molecular docking studies have highlighted that quercetin, a natural polyphenol belonging to the flavonol class, inhibits 3CLpro, PLpro and spike (S) proteins.” (click here)
Proteomics data showed that N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), an antioxidant and mucolytic agent been widely in use in clinical medicine, forms covalent conjugates with solvent accessible cysteine residues of spike protein that were disulfide bonded in the native state. In silico analysis indicated that this covalent conjugation perturbed the stereo specific orientations of the interacting key residues of spike protein that resulted in threefold weakening in the binding affinity of spike protein with ACE2 receptor (click here)
Vertigo
Vertigo is the sensation that you, or the environment around you, is moving or spinning.
One study found that the mean time to onset of vertigo/dizziness following vaccination is 10 days (click here)
A Japanese study examined 378 patients who presented at the vertigo clinic, and found that “vestibular neuritis should be recognized as one of the side effects of BNT162b2 (Pfizer) COVID-19 vaccination” (click here)
Hearing Loss
WHO admits: Pfizer vaccine potentially linked to hearing loss (click here)
“What has been heartbreaking about this, as a seasoned physician, are the emails I get from people that, this has affected their life so badly, they have told me they are going to take their own life”
“The WHO reported 367 cases of tinnitus and 164 cases of hearing loss among the 11 billion vaccines administered — with onset ranging from a few minutes to 19 days, but most commonly within a day of the jab.”
“The most reported COVID-19 vaccines in these cases were Pfizer/BioNTech” the WHO bulletin stated, making up approximately 80 per cent of the cases. Researchers noted hearing loss is not included as an adverse reaction on the product labelling for COVID-19 vaccines”
Many of these cases are treated with 2 weeks of oral steroids, sometimes with addition of ASA, and severe cases with local steroid injections (click here)
My Take
There are 10,000s of cases of post COVID-19 vaccine tinnitus, vertigo and hearing loss reported to VAERS, Eudravigilance, Vigiaccess, UK Yellow Card, etc.
The causes are the usual: autoimmune reactions, blood clots (vascular), blood vessel inflammation (vasculitis).
After reading dozens of studies, I was disturbed by what lengths the medical literature has gone to, to minimize these debilitating audio-vestibular side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, which were most prevalent with Pfizer mRNA.
The JAMA hearing loss study by Formeister excluded 75% of the 2170 VAERS reports and concluded that there was no link between COVID-19 vaccines and hearing loss. (click here)
A follow-up JAMA study by Ulrich admitted that Israeli data had shown a higher risk of hearing loss after vaccination compared to expected rates but that this had “minimal impact with regard to public health” (click here)
JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) has been one of the most corrupt journals throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
It appears that some relief from these injuries is possible with Quercetin, NAC or other compounds that bind the spike protein and inhibit its action.
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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.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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On Monday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its latest report of global arms sales, which shows that European states’ imports of major arms over the five years between 2018 and 2022 increased by 47 percent compared with that of the 2013-2017 period, while the global arms transfers decreased by 5.1 percent.
During the stated period, arms imports in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, and the Middle East fell by 40 percent, 21 percent, 7.5 percent and 8.8 percent respectively.
In the meantime, European North Atlantic Treaty Organization states increased their arms imports by 65 percent mainly due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The report also said that the U.S. dominance of the global arms trade increased, as its share of global arms exports surged from 33 percent to 40 percent while Russia’s share fell from 22 percent to 16 percent.
Who were the top 10 exporters of major arms in 2018–22?
In the Asia-Pacific region, South Korea, Japan and Australia’s arms imports soared 61 percent, 171 percent and 23 percent respectively, with the U.S. as the main supplier to the three countries. In the Middle East, the largest arms supplier is also the U.S., providing 54 percent of the region’s arms imports.
As a result of military aid from the U.S. and many European states following the crisis in February 2022, Ukraine became the 3rd biggest importer of major arms during 2022.
“Even as arms transfers have declined globally, those to Europe have risen sharply due to the tensions between Russia and most other European states,” said Pieter D. Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.
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Featured image: Soldier fires a missile. | Photo: Twitter/ @Kyivtodaycom
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The Cuban socialist healthcare system is internationally recognized as one of the best in the world.1 It is innovative, preventative, people-oriented, comprehensive, community-centered, internationalist, and, of course, de-commodified—treating healthcare as a human right, not a profitable commodity. However, in spite of its extraordinary successes, the United States’ sixty-year long blockade has tremendously detrimental effects on Cuban life in general, and their healthcare system in particular. As Amnesty International reported, the US blockade “limits Cuba’s capacity to import medicines, medical equipment, and the latest technologies, some of which are essential for treating life-threatening diseases.”2
The intentions behind the US blockade on Cuba have always been clear. As Lester Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in 1960:
Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy [blockade] is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government . . . the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.3
The blockade is thus aimed at making the material conditions of Cubans as difficult as possible, creating fertile soil for discontent in the Cuban revolutionary process to arise. However, the United States doesn’t leave the arrival of discontent to chance. As Tracy Eaton from the Cuba Money Project has shown, the United States, through regime change fronts like the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S. State Department, has spent more than one billion dollars funding Cuban opposition groups and media within and outside of the country.4 This combination of blockade and opposition funding is a central component of the hybrid warfare against Cuba (as well as other victims of US imperialism).
Notwithstanding the formidable aggression bearing down on Cuba, the island has been able to achieve remarkable success in the fields of medicine, education, sustainable development, sports, etc. In this article, I will briefly highlight how the Cuban healthcare system functions, some of its successes, and how the blockade has affected Cuban medicine and stifled medical development both within Cuba and in the United States.
Cuba’s Socialist Healthcare System
Speaking to Cuban militias a few months after the revolution, Che, himself a physician by training, would say that
Medicine will have to convert itself into a science that serves to prevent disease and orients the public toward carrying out its medical duties. Medicine should only intervene in cases of extreme urgency, to perform surgery or something else which lies outside the skills of the people of the new society we are creating.5
“Such a profound social change demands,” he would argue, “equally profound changes in the mental structure of the people.”6 Socialist society could not limit itself to creating changes in institutions and the material foundations of society, it is equally vital, as he famously says in Socialism and Man in Cuba, “to build the new man and woman.”7 In the field of medicine, this required the formation of a new type of doctor, “a revolutionary doctor, that is to say a [person] who utilizes the technical knowledge of [their] profession in the service of the revolution and the people.”8
In the same year, Fidel Castro would remark that “the future of Cuba will be a future of [people] of science.”9 This visionary statement was uttered on the heels of a massive exodus of professionals, where half of the doctors, as well as many of the teachers, had left the country. For instance, “only 12 of the 250 Cuban teachers at the University of Havana’s Medical School remained.”10 For all the factors pointing otherwise, Fidel’s 1960 proclamation would become true, as today Cuba is the country with the most doctors per capita. This was not a coincidental development. Since 1959, the revolution reorganized the 1909-founded Ministry of Health and Welfare into the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), which created “a single, national, state-run health system that sets short, medium, and long-term policies.”11 With its goal of training generations of humanistic medical professionals dedicated to the revolutionary process, Cuba eliminated university tuition, made textbooks free, developed various scholarship plans, and constructed networks of universities which created dozens of schools capable of educating professionals in every province of the country.12 Universal education and universal healthcare went hand in hand – the development of one was the condition for the development of the other.
Cuba’s emphasis on universal education and healthcare within the socialist model allowed the country which lost half of its medical (and other) professionals to develop a surplus which participates in various internationalist missions, almost half of which are done for free (for the poorest countries of the global south), and the other half at a sliding scale.13 Thanks to these internationalist missions (which have been ongoing since the first years of the revolution), millions of human beings from the poorest corners of the planet can say that “they owe their health, if not their lives, to Cuban professionals and the government which trained and sent them.”14
By the middle of the 1970s, after several generations of doctors had been developed within the revolution, Cuba would institutionalize the polyclinic model, a staple of their innovative, community based, socialist healthcare. As Helen Yaffe writes,
A new model of community-based polyclinics was established in 1974 to deliver comprehensive care to residents in their neighbourhoods. Polyclinics gave Cuban communities local access to primary care specialists such as obstetricians, gynaecologists, paediatricians, internists and dental services. Training and policy emphasised the impact of biological, social, cultural, economic and environmental factors on patients.15
Far from the reductive and deterministic frameworks often found in Western capitalist medicine, Cuban healthcare emphasizes the dialectical relationship of the individual and their community and of the biological and the social. Such an integrative and relational framework allows for a more comprehensive approach to treatment. With the polyclinics and the 1984 “family doctor” programs, the integration of doctors within the individual’s “everyday environment” allowed, as Che hoped, for the preventative and communal dimension of healthcare to thrive.16
The most interesting dimension of Cuban healthcare, in my view, is its emphasis on prevention. The emphasis on prevention stands as a pinnacle of medical practice, one which would seem like lunacy in the US. When profits are in command, why would anyone do something which might prevent more profits from being realized in the future? When people are what matters, like in Cuba, the goal of medical practice is almost self-destructive, in the sense that the aim is to destroy the conditions, i.e., the sicknesses, which make medical treatment necessary in the first place. The opposite is true when health care is subjected to the same logic as everything else under capitalism. Instead of its natural tendency for self-abolition, the tendency here is towards proliferation, i.e., towards developing more conditions for which treatment is required. The more treatment needed, the more profit there is to be made.
This puts the for-profit health care system found in the United States—the only developed country in the world without socialized medicine—in an irreconcilable antagonism with what the essence of medical care entails. It also creates fertile ground, as we saw with regards to the COVID vaccines, for a large portion of the population to develop medical and scientific skepticism. After all, if it is the same pharmaceutical industrial complex that, in collaboration with the US government, proliferated the criminal but profitable opioid crisis which kills seventy thousand Americans yearly, it does not seem irrational for a portion of the population to lack trust in the same pharmaceutical industry’s handling of the pandemic.17 This absence of trust in medical institutions does not exist in Cuba, where people know that medicine′s first and only goal is to serve the people. As Hippocrates (from whom we get the Hippocratic oath that is ingrained in every medical trainee in the United States) argued, “a physician’s aim in dealing with any illness . . . should be to halt the conditions that promote its flourishing.” It shouldn’t be that, as for-profit health care promotes, those conditions are sustained or metamorphized into others so that profitable treatment may continue.18
Cuba’s innovative, preventative, community-centered, and holistic approach to healthcare is the reason why, in spite of the tremendous material difficulties the blockade creates, Cuba is considered to have one of – if not the – most efficient healthcare system in the world. After sixty years of socialism, Cubans are amongst the healthiest and longest-living people in the world, living on average three years longer than Americans.19 Besides the sixteen year increase in life expectancy the revolution has achieved since 1959, it has also had the largest reduction in infant mortality, from 6 to 0.41 percent, the lowest in the whole Western hemisphere.20 “Infectious and contagious diseases like polio, malaria, neonatal tetanus, diphtheria, measles, rubella, mumps, whooping cough and dengue,” which are frequently found in the poorest parts of the world, “have been eradicated.”21
Cuban medical sciences, thanks to the importance and investment the state affords it, has made prodigious inroads in cancer, diabetes, HIV, and other areas of medical study.22 With regards to lung cancer, perhaps the “best-known innovation is the CimaVax vaccine, created by researchers at the Havana’s Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM), which acts on the growth factor of cancer cells to prevent the disease from spreading.”23 The most common cancer death is lung cancer, which killed around 1.8 million people worldwide in 2020.24 With the US blockade in place, thousands of Americans are deprived of the prolongation and enhancement of their lives which the CimaVax vaccine would provide.25 While clinical trials and collaboration had begun during the Cuban thaw, when Obama partially lifted the blockade, the full reinstatement of the blockade with Trump, and its continuation and proliferation with Biden, has once again removed the hope the Cuban vaccine could bring to the hundreds of thousands of Americans with lung cancer.26
Along with CimaVAx, Racotumomab and VSSP are “promising cancer drugs invented by CIM.”27As Cuba Debate reported,
Racotumomab targets a molecule that scientists believe is found in all cancer cells, meaning the drug could one day be effective against leukemia and the tumors that accompany lung, breast, colon and prostate cancers. VSSP, originally designed as a compound to activate the immune response to vaccines, also appears to stimulate the immune response against cancer.28
Recent research into VSSP has shown that it “significantly reduce[s] myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) among people with advanced kidney cancer,” paving “the way for a new treatment” for the disease.29
In addition to its successes in cancer research, “in 2015, the World Health Organization recognized Cuba as the first country to eliminate the transmission of HIV from mother to child.”30This is a feat that Dr. Margaret Chan, at the time the Director-General of the WHO, said was “an important step towards having a generation free of AIDS.”31
Cuban medical sciences have also succeeded in developing what has been called the diabetes miracle treatment, Heberprot-P. As Cuba Debate reports,
When uncontrolled diabetes damages the nerves and blood vessels in a person’s foot, it can cause one of the disease’s most debilitating complications: diabetic foot ulcers, capable of penetrating the bone. These ulcers can even become gangrenous and, in the worst case, cause the amputation of a finger, foot or even a leg. Since 2006, Cuba has had a medicine for ulcers called Heberprot-P, which avoids the need to amputate. Its inventors, scientists from the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana, describe this treatment as “an epidermal growth factor” that is injected next to the affected area and can accelerate the skin’s healing process, closing the wound in about three months.32
Heberprot-P has shown nearly an 80 percent success rate in preventing amputation, an incredible fact considering that up to 60 percent of amputations lead to death within five years, and up to 80 percent within ten years.33 In the United States, diabetes is the seventh most common cause of death, affecting more than one in ten adults, and prediabetes affecting one in three. Each year 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes, and more than one hundred thousand die from the disease.34 Nonetheless, Heberprot-P, a treatment which, according to Manuel Raíces, the Communications Executive at the Cuban Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), could reduce the risk of US amputations in half, saving tens of thousands of lives a year, is prevented from being used in the US because of the blockade.35
Hardships of the Blockade
Image: Cuban doctors and nurses getting ready to travel abroad, Havana, Cuba, April 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @AlmaCubanita
For thirty consecutive years the United Nations General Assembly has voted in favor of lifting the US blockade on Cuba.36 In the recent vote in November 2022, 185 countries voted in favor of lifting the blockade, and only two countries, the United States and Israel, voted in favor of sustaining the blockade.37 It is estimated that the last sixty years of the US blockade has cost Cuba 1.3 trillion dollars.38 It is impossible to overestimate how difficult this has made the construction of socialism in Cuba, and the development of their healthcare system and medical sciences in particular.
As Cuba’s Ministry for Public Health reports,
[Cuba] is denied the right to acquire technologies, raw materials, reagents, diagnostic means, medicines, devices, equipment and spare parts necessary for the best functioning of its National Health System, which must be obtained in geographically distant markets or through a third country, with an increase in costs.
Technologies from the United States or with more than 10 percent of components from that country cannot be acquired by the Island, which has a negative impact on healthcare.
In some cases, it is necessary to send patients abroad at a much higher cost than doing the procedure in national territory, if the technology were available.39
There are a plethora of examples to point to where the blockade prohibits Cuba from accessing medicine, technologies, equipment, etc. that it would need to save or improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Cubans. American companies and manufactures with more than 10 percent of American capital backing it frequently ignore, and sometimes explicitly reject, Cuba’s requests for purchasing their products. For instance, as Cuba reported to the United Nations:
From January to July 2021, the Medical Products Import and Export Company (MEDICUBA S.A.) contacted 65 US companies to inquire about the possibilities of importing medicines, equipment, devices and other supplies necessary for the care of the Cuban people through the national health system. Of these, 56 did not respond to the requests of the Cuban entity, and three responded negatively (OWENS & MINOR, INC., MERCURY MEDICAL and ELI LILLY).
The OHMEDA, GENERAL ELECTRIC and HEWLETT PACKARD Companies were asked for multipurpose mechanical ventilators for newborns and infants, as well as multipurpose cardiomonitors (which include blood pressure monitoring, among other parameters). Its acquisition has yet to be made possible.
In the same way, the ONE-LAMBDA Company was asked for kits for HLA typing, essential to determine the compatibility of a kidney transplant candidate with possible donors; they could not be acquired either.40
“Some 158,800 Cuban patients,” the report argues, “are harmed by the impossibility of accessing technology for the implantation of percutaneous aortic valves (TAVI)” which would, through a “small surgical procedure,” greatly improve people’s quality of lives and prevent more complex surgeries and longer hospitalizations.41 American companies such as EDWARD LIFESCIENCE (Edwards-SAPIEN valve) and MEDTRONIC (CoreValve valve) have control over the TAVI valves and, because of the blockade, prohibit Cuba from access.
Likewise, “if Cuba could access the drug Nusinersen, produced only by the US multinational company BIOGEN,” more than half of its children who struggle with infantile spinal atrophy could survive much longer and attain a better quality of life.42
The IQ 577 Laser System model, produced by the US company IRIDEX CORPORATION, could treat “retinal disorders and glaucoma” for dozens of Cuban babies born with retinopathy from prematurity who are at risk of going blind; because of the blockade, those Cuban babies will not be able to receive that treatment.43
In many instances, additional licenses are required to sell to Cuba, even when the companies are not American and have less than 10 percent of American capital. As the Cuban Ministry for Public Health reports, shortages were caused in blood bags because the usual supplier, UNFAMED, “reported that the company Terumo BCT of Japan had its bank account blocked, since they must have an Additional License that allows them to sell to Cuba products that are not produced in the United States.”44
The “US’s exploitation of the pandemic to increase pressure for regime change” also affords a variety of examples for how the blockade affects Cuban healthcare.45 For instance, at the height of the pandemic, while WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked for countries to put their sanctions “in quarantine” because “thousands of lives are at stake,” the US company Vyaire Medical bought ventilator manufacturers IMTMedical and Acutronic, immediately banning all sale of ventilators to Cuba.46 Around the same time, Jack Ma’s foundation tried to send Cuba one hundred thousand facemasks, ten Covid diagnostic kits, ventilators, and gloves, all of which was stopped by Avianca, a Colombian Airline whose “major shareholder is a U.S.-based company subject to the trade embargo on Cuba.”47 Similarly, the donations from Swiss solidarity organizations MediCuba-Suiza and Asociación Suiza-Cuba to help Cuba fight COVID where refused to be transferred by the Swiss banks UBS, Cler, and Cantonal Bank of Basilea.48
While Cuba was helping the world fight COVID-19 through the Henry Reeve Brigade (for which it was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize), the United States was busy preventing the world from helping Cuba, banking on the pandemic-blockade dual force to fulfill the conditions Lestor Mallory proposed for regime change.49 Despite the difficulties, Cuba was able to develop five viable vaccines, vaccinating over 90 percent of its population, and delivering hundreds of millions of doses to the global south free of charge.50 However, because of the US blockade, the early days of the pandemic saw Cuba lacking access to the syringes needed to effectively vaccinate its population with the vaccines it developed.51
The internationally denounced blockade on Cuba by the United States is a gross violation of human rights, one which affects both Cubans and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who would have better quality of lives, and even their lives saved, had the United States not prevented their people from having access to novel treatments in cancer, diabetes, and advances in other fields of research developed by Cuban scientists. The spirit of science and scientific inquiry is nourished with openness and collaboration. The US blockade prevents this from occurring, stifling scientific progress.
However, if there is something the last sixty years have demonstrated, it is that the Cuban people are committed to their revolutionary process and unwilling to compromise their socialism and sovereignty. Lestor Mallory’s hope for the blockade would not bear fruit. Even in the periods where the US warfare on Cuba has produced the most formidable of challenges in attaining the necessary materials to ensure the subsistence of the Cuban people, the mass of Cubans have brazenly defended the revolutionary process, with the slogan of their Bronze Titan Antonio Maceo engraved on their chest: “Whoever tries to take over Cuba will only collect the dust of their blood-soaked soil, if they do not perish in the fight.”52 With the initial goal of the blockade unable to concretize, the only reason for its proliferation is to perpetuate senseless suffering, both of Cuban and American people. As those who recognize the emancipatory potential of science and believe that science should serve the people, we have a duty to stand in solidarity with the Cuban people and mobilize to #EndtheBlockade on Cuba.
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Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American PhD student and instructor in philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (with an MA in philosophy from the same institution). His research focuses include Marxism, Hegel, early nineteenth century American socialism, and socialism with Chinese characteristics. He is an editor of the Marxist educational project Midwestern Marx and the Journal of American Socialist Studies.
“499. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mallory) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom),” US Department of State, April 6, 1960, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499.
Helen Yaffe, We Are Cuba: How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World (Great Britain: Yale University Press, 2020), 124.
Yaffe, We Are Cuba, 125.
Juan Vela-Valdéz et al., “Formación del capital humano para la salud en Cuba,” Pan American Journal of Public Health 42, no. 33 (2018), https://doi.org/10.26633/RPSP.2018.33.
Valdéz, “Formación del capital humano para la salud en Cuba,” 2.
Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution (West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 50.
Scott E. Hadland et al., “Association of Pharmaceutical Industry Marketing of Opioid Products With Mortality From Opioid-Related Overdoses,” JAMA Network Open 2, no. 1 (2019): e186007, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.6007; Jonathan H. Marks, “Lessons from Corporate Influence in the Opioid Epidemic: Toward a Norm of Separation,” Journal of Bioethical Inquiries 17, no. 2 (2020): 173–189, https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11673-020-09982-x.
Philip Wheelwright, The Presocratics (Indianapolis: The Odyssey Press 1975), 266.
“Cuba Has a Diabetes Treatment That Could Save Tens of Thousands of Lives, But the US Is Blocking It,” Breakthrough News, December 13, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWTzgqRRMAU.
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The US CDC indicates that 92% of adults have taken one or more COVID-19 vaccine injections. Among those, 92% have been with an mRNA product (Pfizer or Moderna). All recipients have been blinded to the complete ingredient list no one knows exactly what has been injected into the human body.
There are some fundamental points known about mRNA. Natural RNA is made of two purines adenine and guanine and two pyrimidines cytosine and uracil. The replacement of uracil with its ribose ring (uridine) with N-1-methyl-pseudouridine, a synthetic product makes the genetic code for the Wuhan Spike protein better stabilized on lipid nanoparticles, long-lasting, and very efficient in terms of evading cellular destruction and able to undergo repeat reading by ribosomes for continued protein synthesis. Morais et al indicate that both Pfizer and Moderna chose development strategies replacing all uridine units with pseudouridine, making the entire strand completely “unnatural” to the human body. Thus vaccine consultants, companies, and patients unfortunately gambled on how long mRNA would be active within the human body. We now understand the quantity and duration of the disease-promoting and potentially lethal Spike protein cannot be known because the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of mRNA were not characterized.
Morais P, Adachi H, Yu YT. The Critical Contribution of Pseudouridine to mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2021 Nov 4;9:789427. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.789427. PMID: 34805188; PMCID: PMC8600071.
Fertig et al found lipid nanoparticles with mRNA were measurable in plasma for—15 days. Recently, Castruita et al demonstrated mRNA in blood out to 28 days. Roltgen et al have found mRNA in lymph nodes 60 days after injection. None of these studies demonstrated complete clearance of mRNA from a group of patients. This is worrisome since injections are recommended in some populations just a few months apart implying there will be stacking of long-lasting mRNA in the body without adequate opportunity for clearance and elimination.
We will look back for many years and ask: how could so many people readily accept injections of heavily modified synthetic genetic code giving the body instructions to manufacture a disease promoting and lethal protein engineered in a biosecurity lab in Wuhan, China? Repeated administrations of mRNA studded with apparently indestructible pseudouridine may have changed the course of lives forever. Done out of fear, and later with pressure, coercion, and threat of reprisal, perceptive recipients must swell with regret everyday with more understanding of what has transpired.
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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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This is one of the more important pieces I have published. I have been given the honor of hosting a letter written by Jews around the world who unequivocally condemn the weaponization of “anti-semite” to character-assassinate people guilty of nothing but questioning approved narratives; exercising free speech; exposing corruption, lies, and harmful policies; and practicing independent, critical thinking.
The reckless abuse of such a pointed term is being done in the name of Jews, and the signatories of this letter are saying, “NOT IN OUR NAME.” They are holding the media, politicians, and ideologically motivated organizations accountable for the destruction of lives resulting from the wielding of this accusation—the gentle Clemens G. Arvay being but the latest tragic example.
We rely on you to share Clemens’s story and the Open Letter in Commemoration of Clemens Arvay that follows. Thank you for your role in helping to prevent more casualties of calumny.
It wasn’t the first time Clemens had written those words. According to his friend Raphael Bonelli, “They’re killing me” was a frequent refrain in his WhatsApp messages.
In a video[2] mourning the death of Clemens, Raphael shares a message Clemens sent him in September 2020 after Wikipedia incorporated the media’s libels into his profile:
“[Wikipedia] deploys malicious press citations in which my work is presented in a wantonly distorted and disfigured way, most recently in Jungle World.… My statements about investors like Bill Gates are massively distorted. Criticism? Gladly, but then please make it criticism of my content and not of untruths and abridgments and distortions of my content. I am also not an opponent of vaccination—that can be proven. Madness, they send their reputation-damaging texts even to editors of my scientific essays to destroy my existence. The doctorate I started is in danger.”
Raphael interjects, “The haters then started calling his university, trying to smear him,” and then resumes reading:
“I am at my wit’s end, Raphael. I continue, but it is nervous madness. The methods are so vile. Will an enraged citizen end up killing me??? With so much hate? Since my ORF [Austrian TV station] appearance, it’s quite massive.”
Later in the video, Raphael states:
“He had the feeling that not only his life but his identity and his whole existence were slipping away from him. He was then massively afraid at the end of his life—there is a suicide note—that much more would be done to him. That even more would be alleged or revealed about him. He couldn’t bear that.”
Raphael concludes:
“A person needs his reputation. A character assassination is something that goes so deep inside. A character assassination is like a social death, they say. Clemens Arvay, rightly or wrongly, felt that way, and, ultimately, it ended tragically for him. And I wish we still had him with us.”
Out of all the name-calling, all the slanders, all the accusations, one word cut the deepest: “anti-semite.”
This word holds the power to torpedo reputations with a single utterance.
In a country described as having “the world’s strictest anti-Nazism laws” and where charges of anti-semitism can carry a weighty prison sentence, this is not a term to be applied lightly—particularly to a kindhearted soul like Clemens, who, according to Raphael, was known for speaking out against anti-semitism:
“Clemens Arvay was very close to nature, was very anti-fascist, and spoke out clearly against anti-semitism—so clearly that he once received a shitstorm from more right-wing people.”
“The whole world is waiting for a vaccine against the coronavirus. But can an agent that was developed within a few months and is based on a barely tested technology save us? How do modern vaccines work? How high is their protection? How strong are the side effects? And can long-term damage be ruled out? Biologist Clemens Arvay takes a differentiated look at the Corona vaccines. He answers all the important questions in a scientifically sound manner. So that in the end everyone can decide for himself: Should I get vaccinated or not?”
It seems Clemens’s heresy scarcely differed from this June 2020 Scientific Americanarticle titled “The Risks of Rushing a COVID-19 Vaccine: Telescoping Testing Time Lines and Approvals May Expose All of us to Unnecessary Dangers” and this September 2020 Forbes article concluding:
“It boggles the mind and defies common sense that the National Institute of Health, the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and the rest would consider the approval of a vaccine that would be distributed to hundreds of millions on such slender threads of success.”
Calling attention to the fact that novel mRNA technology had not undergone human trials before being unleashed on the world’s population and suggesting people should consider the risk-benefit ratio were enough to earn him vitriolic attacks from the press.
Holding a bachelor’s in landscape ecology from Graz University and a master’s in applied plant sciences from the University of Natural Resources & Life Sciences in Vienna, Clemens was downgraded to a mere “landscape gardener” by Wikipedia. The entry also insinuated he was ignorant about the immune system—a topic so close to his heart, he noted that he would be devoting his attention to it in his final Facebook post on January 24, 2023:
“On the occasion of a small report on the immune system, on which I started working, I would like to inform you of a decision. Even if many of you wanted it: I will no longer deal with the topic of ‘vaccines’ and I have no desire to deal with pharmaceutical companies. My life topic is Ecoimmunology – exploring the immune system in the context of environment. I want to spend my time with this again – and with music and personal nature experiences 🙂.
“Corona pandemic is over, on the subject of ‘vaccines’, each and everyone has taken his or her position, who wants to get vaccinated, did and who doesn’t want to, didn’t. I’m just tired of shitstorms, denunciations and attacks of all kinds. I’ve never really been interested in the pharmaceutical industry. What interests me is the immune system.”
In what is believed to be his last video[3], Clemens makes it clear he continues to stand behind his work, despite feeling compelled to pull back due to the media blitzkrieg:
“So we now know in which direction it could go, with possible long-term consequences, complex immunobiological interactions that affect our innate immune system in that case. And what this study shows is simply that we still have a lot of questions, we don’t know possible problem areas yet because these vaccines are so untested.
“And also to this specific question that this study raises, we don’t have a conclusive answer yet. This means that we can only agree with the authors of the study who demand that this question, the possible reprogramming of the innate immune system, should also be taken into account in the application. And this cannot mean that one continues to act in the media and politically as if there were no possible long-term consequences. That has been refuted by this study. And, as I said, it is a preprint, but other preprints have also been quoted in the media, and it is a point we should be looking at, and people should know that.
“I also stand by every word I wrote in my book. We don’t know enough about these vaccines, about potential complex sequelae. And people should just know that. That’s why I continue to stand behind my book, behind my videos—even when it comes with further hostility and defamation. Because science is guided by findings such as these and does not follow a political narrative or a predetermined paradigm—that has nothing to do with science.”
When he coined the term “biophilia” in the 1960s, Erich Fromm described human biophilia as, “The person who fully loves life is attracted by the process of life and growth in all spheres”—a definition that seems to capture Clemens at his essence, at least until the smear merchants sank their rabid fangs into him.
This video shows the true Clemens, the Clemens who wedded his love of nature and music with his desire to help heal others:
If only this Clemens could have reached out to his future Clemens to heal the rotting wounds left by the muckrakers’ jagged needlework.
As the many heartbroken responses to his passing attest, his death has left a painful gauge in the medical freedom community.
Clemens Arvay, one of the most well-known critics of the Covid shots and Covid policies in Austria/Germany, reportedly commited suicide…people who knew him say it likely had to do with Wikipedia authors and media outlets dragging his name and accomplishment through the mud
One of the earliest experts to be interviewed by the Corona Investigative Committee, Clemens appeared in Session 10, which the committee recently rebroadcast (@ 4:30:50) in his honor:
All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man’s evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.
Clemens has completed his “patient willing descent into the grass,” having hastened—regretfully—toward “the sleep of darkness without stars.”
It is now our responsibility to help prevent other tormented souls from falling prey to Clemens’s fate by sharing his story and the following letter. Please help us defuse the most powerful incendiary device in the mudslingers’ arsenal before more innocents are destroyed.
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March 17th, 2023 by Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
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This paper examines the total costs of the war in Iraq and Syria, which are expected to exceed half a million human lives and $2.89 trillion. This budgetary figure includes costs to date, estimated at about $1.79 trillion, and the costs of veterans’ care through 2050. Since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, between 550,000-580,000 people have been killed in Iraq and Syria — the current locations of the United States’ Operation Inherent Resolve — and several times as many may have died due to indirect causes such as preventable diseases. More than 7 million people from Iraq and Syria are currently refugees, and nearly 8 million people are internally displaced in the two countries.
This report also estimates that 98 to 122 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (MMTCO2e) were emitted from U.S. military operations between 2003 and 2021 in the war zone, calculated as 12 to 15 percent of the DOD’s total operational greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.S. war in Iraq began on March 19-20, 2003. Most allied and U.S. forces left Iraq in 2011, but the U.S. returned to significant military operations in Iraq and Syria in late 2014 in fighting that was undertaken to remove Islamic State from territory it had seized in those two countries. The war continues, with a nearly $400 million budget request from the Biden Administration this month to counter ISIS.
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Is 5G actually a greater threat than the bioweapon itself?
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is here to report his latest findings on the dangers of 5G technology.
5G microwave radiation is a far greater threat than the so-called “vaccine” because it effects everyone.
Dr. Barrie Trower is described as a “real life James Bond” and is an expert on the dangers of 5G.
Microwave radiation has been a weapon since the 1930s. We’ve gotten used to using microwave ovens but the radiation is a weapon and can be used to cause almost any symptoms of any disease. It can also be used for geoengineering.
The elites and globalists are using 5G technology to create a “kill switch” that can genocide entire populations. Dead crops and livestock could be a result of 5G radiation.
In 2022, Federal Judge Frederic Block stopped Verizon from putting up cellular antennas in small Connecticut and Vermont towns clarifying that local governments can stop their construction. State and local governments need to ban 5G towers.
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Dear fellow citizens! We see, hear and read a lot about the problems in the world, about the consequences of so-called natural disasters (Turkey and Syria), about the Ukraine war, the many other wars and about pharmaceutical crimes. All events touch our lifeblood. What we tend to overlook in this flood of negative news are signs that the world seems to be changing slowly but surely for the better, despite ongoing problems that remain unsolved. This gives rise to confidence, which inspires faith in a future that is more worth living. Certainly, it will take some patience until the positive changes are also reflected in the personal lives of each individual citizen. But if we believe in the good in people, we will not get lost in the labyrinth of fears for the future.
For example, I recently received the monthly magazine of the German publishing house Kopp-Verlag in the mail with a full-page advertisement for the new book by Robert W. Malone: “Lies My Government Told Me and the Road to a Better Future. With a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” (1)
Because such an advertisement was unimaginable until recently, an occasion was found to report other positive events without euphoria.
Paying tribute to truth
“Whatever they say about him today, Malone will go down in history as a hero.” This quote from the US television presenter Tucker Carlson is already on the cover of the brochure, together with an image of the new book.
The introduction on page 1 then reads:
“As a medical student and doctoral candidate, Robert Malone was the first to invent mRNA vaccine technology in the late 1980s. At the time, he could not begin to imagine that he would one day play a leading role in a movement to expose the dangers of mRNA vaccines. Billions of people were given them – without being informed about the risks.” (2)
The sequel reads:
“Dr Robert Malone was censored by Big Tech and defamed by the media for speaking out against “mainstream” reporting. (…). Dr Malone is the authoritative voice of dissent. He exposes the dark side of the Corona agenda, he exposes the role of the mainstream media, censorship, propaganda and the brave new world of transhumanism promoted by the World Economic Forum and its acolytes. How is it possible that the lies spread by governments persist and our institutions fail to cotigrate them? What has been the impact of Corona politics on lives, livelihoods and democracies?
Dr Malone explores these questions and proves how data, news and emotions were deliberately distorted and manipulated during the pandemic. Governments deliberately used people’s fear as a weapon to control their behaviour. The media vilified anyone who resisted the official position and spoke out. Dr Malone examines the perverse links between the pharmaceutical industry, governments and the media and tells us what we can do about it.” (3)
Humans increasingly realise that they are compelled to reach out to each other in order to survive
Despite many relapses, humanity continues to move forward with instinctive certainty. One day it is “Thou shalt not kill”, another day “Love thy neighbour!” Especially in times of the Ukraine war and the many other wars and injustices, these are important insights.
Thus, not only demonstrating citizens but also realistic politicians worldwide are calling for a diplomatic solution to the current Ukraine war and a replacement of the unipolar world of the hegemon, in which only one can decide, with a multipolar world in which many can decide together (4).
The various forms of the communal ethos of human beings are inexorably striving forward with the goal of creating a united humanity. The instinctive certainty with which this happens seems to be due to the instinct of species preservation.
A change in the world for the better is also evident in the liberation of many African states from the shackles of centuries of murderous colonialism. For example, France’s president has already proclaimed the end of the colonial “France-Afrique Era” (5). Other European and US colonial eras will also soon come to an end.
This includes the Canadian government, under its current prime minister, apologising to the indigenous people for the genocide committed against them (6). An apology is only the beginning of a just reparation for this crime against humanity – but it is a first step. Indians, as Native Americans, will have registered this gesture of the Canadian government closely and will be waiting for a similar signal from Washington (7).
In conclusion, the question arises as to how this positive change of the world for the better will affect the personal lives of individual citizens and why this will awaken the belief in a more liveable future – especially for our children and our children’s children?
What still weighs on people today is the lack of social education. Many still suffer from the fiction of power and the self-importance of the individual. That is why the law under which humanity stands is also misunderstood: that people must stick together and are compelled to reach out to one another. The struggle for the preservation of life as well as the problems of security, progress and adaptation can best be solved through the unity of all and mutual help.
Unfortunately, cultural heritage is always under threat and has to be won anew every day. Cultural development essentially consists in the voice of human conscience making itself heard more and more and in the spirit of responsibility taking the place of violence and wars. There are unmistakable signs of this in the world.
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This article was originally published on NRhZ-ONLINE.
Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educationalist (Dr. paed.) and psychologist (Dipl.-Psych.). After his university studies, he became an academic teacher (professor) in adult education: among other things, he was head of an independent school model experiment and in-service trainer of Bavarian guidance counsellors and school psychologists. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in private practice. He was rapporteur for Germany at a public hearing on juvenile delinquency in the European Parliament. In his books and articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education and an education for public spirit and peace. For his services to Serbia, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 2021.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
(1) www.kopp-verlag.de, Kopp Aktuell. Books that open their eyes. Cover. March 2023
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The US is apparently blackmailing Switzerland to force the country to play a more active role in the Ukrainian conflict. The American embassy in Switzerland suggests that neutrality would no longer be a possible path for the European country, which sounds like a kind of threat if the Swiss government does not adopt an anti-Russian military policy.
In a recent interview, the American ambassador in Switzerland Scott Miller stated that Switzerland was going through a serious crisis, in which the country would need to decide on what “neutrality” means. Miller claims that the US supports Swiss neutrality but does not consider this principle to be “static”, believing in a Swiss obligation to help the West as much as possible to tighten sanctions against Moscow.
There is currently a huge debate among Swiss parliamentarians over whether to allow the shipment of Swiss-made weapons to the Kiev regime. NATO enthusiasts support the measure as a form of military aid to Ukraine against the Russians. On the other hand, more conservative politicians are against changes in legislation as they understand that this would affect the country’s historical neutrality. Under current law, there is a ban on all forms of re-export of Swiss-made weapons. This means that non-neutral countries are not able to buy Swiss weapons and ship them to Kiev. This law deeply irritates the member states of NATO, since, according to Scott Miller, it “benefits the aggressor, who violates all principles of international law.”
However, Ambassador Miller went beyond what was expected in his demands. In addition to banning the anti-re-export law, he openly demanded the freezing of all Russian assets in Swiss financial institutions. According to him, this is a way for Switzerland to endorse the sanctions and help Ukraine more actively.
“Switzerland is in the most serious crisis since the Second World War. It is confronted with what neutrality means (…) We understand and respect it. But it is not a static construct. Switzerland can’t call itself neutral and allow one or both sides to exploit its laws to their own advantage (…) I think we still have a lot of work to do (…) Sanctions are only as strong as the political will behind them. We need to find as many assets as possible, freeze them and, if necessary, confiscate them in order to make them available to Ukraine for reconstruction”, he said.
The spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova understood the words of the American diplomat as a real threat. According to her, there is a parallel between Miller’s suggestions and the recent crisis at Credit Suisse, an important local financial institution that went into deep debt and requested tens of billions in loans from the Central Bank to continue working. Zakharova also recalled the American banking crisis and suggested that Miller could be blackmailing the Swiss into serving US interests – possibly in exchange for some help to prevent local banks from going the same way as the American ones, or, in the worst case, this could even be a direct threat of sabotage.
“Considering that the second-largest Swiss bank plunged right after three American banks went bust, such a statement looks like direct blackmail”, she said, adding that the essence of Miller’s message is: “drop neutrality and start sending weapons to the Kiev regime, and you’ll keep living full-bellied and lavishly; refuse – and bad days are in order”.
Recently, blackmail and threats have become America’s main methods in foreign policy. Furthermore, the country has already demonstrated that it has no respect for its partners and allies, considering that illegal and even terrorist acts have been carried out to force them to meet US interests – such as what was seen in the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in Germany. So, it is possible that Miller’s message consists of a warning that either Switzerland changes its policy of neutrality, or it will be the target of American reprisals – certainly in the banking sector, which is the central part of the Swiss economy.
The Swiss government bears no responsibility for the Ukrainian conflict. As a historically neutral country, it is under no obligation to send weapons to Kiev and would be breaking with its own diplomatic tradition if it bans the anti-export law. Furthermore, as a country with a bank-centered economy, freezing all Russian assets does not sound strategic for Switzerland. Taking the measures demanded by the US would be disastrous for the country, both in terms of economy and defense.
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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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On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron chose to approve his pension reform without waiting for the completion of the parliamentary procedure.
Using the special powers the Constitution grants to the French president, he will put into effect the pension reform even if it is not approved by the Lower House.
Macron decided to do this after a meeting with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and other members of his cabinet, who informed him that votes from the French right were not enough to pass the pension reform.
To justify the change in the French pension system, Macron has argued that the reform seeks to guarantee financial balance in the face of a potential deficit of US$16 billion in 2032.
This financial deficit, which might represent up to 8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), would occur due to the aging of the resident population in France, where the number of retirees will exceed the number of workers contributing to security social.
🔴 A l'annonce du 49.3, la foule rassemblée aux abords de l'Assemblée nationale se met à chanter.
The tweet reads, “After the announcement of article 49.3, the crowd gathered around the National Assembly begins to chant. In response, the Police ask the crowd to disperse.”
Macron’s main measure to compensate the financial deficit until 2030 consists of increasing the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
On the other hand, until 2027, his administration will increase from 42 to 43 years the contribution time necessary to collect a full pension.
French people who started working before the age of 17 may retire early at age 60 if they have 43 years of social security contributions.
Women who have made contributions for 43 years may also retire before turning 64, if they have accumulated quarters for maternity leave.
#France | Trade unions will mobilize on Wednesday as part of a new day of protests against the reform of the pension system promoted by President Emmanuel Macron. pic.twitter.com/HVHD0Mc4e6
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Featured image: The sign reads, “Borne, you are overstepping the limits… Stop being a limited person!!! Listen to us.” | Photo: Twitter/ @leprogreslyon
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The crashes of Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and its related bank insolvencies are much more serious than the 2008-09 crash. The problem at that time was crooked banks making bad mortgage loans. Debtors were unable to pay and were defaulting, and it turned out that the real estate that they had pledged as collateral was fraudulently overvalued, “mark-to-fantasy” junk mortgages made by false valuations of in the property’s actual market price and the borrower’s income. Banks sold these loans to institutional buyers such as pension funds, German savings banks and other gullible buyers who had drunk the neoliberal Kool Aid believing with Alan Greenspan that banks would not cheat them.
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) investments had no such default risk. The Treasury always can pay, simply by printing money, and the prime long-term mortgages whose packages SVP bought also were solvent. The problem is the financial system itself, or rather, the corner into which the post-Obama Fed has painted the banking system. It cannot escape from ts 13 years of Quantitative Easing without reversing the asset-price inflation and causing bonds, stocks and real estate to lower their market value.
In a nutshell, solving the illiquidity crisis of 2009 in a way that saved the banks from losing money (at the cost of burdening the economy with enormous debts), paved away for the deeply systemic illiquidity crisis that is just now becoming clear, although I cannot resist that I pointed out its basic dynamics already in 2007 and in my 2015 book Killing the Host.
Accounting fictions vs. market reality
No risks of loan default existed for the investments in government securities or packaged long-term mortgages that SVB and other banks have bought. The problem is that the market valuation of these mortgages has fallen as a result of interest rates being jacked up. The interest yield on bonds and mortgages bought a few years ago is much lower than is available on new mortgages and new Treasury notes and bonds. When interest rates rise, these “old securities” fall in price so as to bring their yield to new buyers in line with the Fed’s rising interest rates.
A market valuation problem is not a fraud problem this time around.
The public has just discovered that the statistical picture that banks report about their assets and liabilities does not reflect market reality. Bank accountants are allowed to price their assets at “book value” based on the price that was paid to acquire them – without regard for what these investments are worth today. During the 14-year boom in prices for bonds, stocks and real estate this undervalued the actual gain that banks had made as the Fed lowered interest rates to inflate asset prices. But this Quantitative Easing (QE) ended in 2022 when the Fed began to tighten interest rates in order to slow down wage gains.
When interest rates rise, bond prices fall (and stock prices tend to follow). But banks don’t have to mark down the market price of their assets to reflect this decline if they simply hold on to their bonds or packaged mortgages. They only have to reveal the loss in market value if depositors on balance withdraw their money and the bank actually has to sell these assets to raise the cash to pay their depositors.
That is what happened at Silicon Valley Bank. In fact, it has been a problem for the entire U.S. banking system. The following chart comes from Naked Capitalism, which has been following the banking crisis daily:
How SVP’s short-termism failed to see where the financial sector is heading
During the years of low interest rates, the U.S. banking system found that its monopoly power was so strong that it only had to pay depositors 0.1 or 0.2 percent on deposits. That was all that the Treasury was paying on short-term risk-free Treasury bills. So depositors had little alternative, but banks were charging much higher rates for their loans, mortgages and credit cards. And when the Covid crisis hit in 2020, corporations held back on new investments and flooded the banks with money that they were not spending.
The banks were able to make an arbitrage gain – obtaining higher rates from investments than they were paying for deposits – by buying longer-term securities. SVB bought long-term Treasury bonds. The margin wasn’t large – less than 2 percentage points. But it was the only safe “free money” around.
Last year Federal Reserve Chairman Powell announced that the central bank was going to raise interest rates in order to slow the wage growth that developed as the economy began to recover. That led most investors to realize that higher interest rates would lower the price of bonds – most steeply for the longest-term bonds. Most money managers avoided such price declines by moving their money into short-term Treasury bills or money-market funds, while real estate, bond and stock prices fell.
For some reason SVB did not make this obvious move. They kept their assets concentrated in long-term Treasury bonds and similar securities. As long as the bank did not have any net deposit withdrawals, it did not have to report this decline in the market value of its assets.
However, it was left holding the bag when Mr. Powell announced that not enough American workers were unemployed to hold down their wage gains, so he planned to raise interest rates even more than he had expected. He said that a serious recession was needed to keep wages low enough to keep U.S. corporate profits high, and hence their stock price.
This reversed the Obama bailout’s Quantitative Easing that steadily inflated asset prices for real estate, stocks and bonds. But the Fed has painted itself into a corner: If it restores the era of “normal” interest rates, that will reversed the 15-year run-up of asset-price gains for the FIRE sector.
This sudden shift on March 11-12 left SVB “sitting on an unrealized loss of close to $163bn – more than its equity base. Deposit outflows then started to crystallize this into a realized loss.”[1] SVB was not alone. Banks across the country were losing deposits.
This was not a “run on the banks” resulting from fears of insolvency. It was because banks were strong enough monopolies to avoid sharing their rising earnings with their depositors. They were making soaring profits on the rates they charge borrowers, and the rates yielded by their investments, but continued to pay depositors only about 0.2%.
The U.S. Treasury was paying much more, and on Thursday, March 11, the 2-year Treasury note was yielding almost 5 percent. The widening gap between what investors can earn by buying risk-free Treasury securities and the pittance that banks were paying their depositors led the more well-to-do depositors withdraw their money to earn a fairer market return elsewhere.
It would be wrong to think of this as a “bank run” much less as a panic. The depositors were not irrational or falling subject to “the madness of crowds” in withdrawing their money. The banks simply were too selfish. And as they withdrew their deposits, banks had to sell off their portfolio of securities – including the long-term securities held by SVB.
All this is part of the unwinding of the Obama bank bailouts and Quantitative Easing. The result of trying to return to more normal historic interest-rate levels is that on March 14, Moody’s rating agency cut the outlook for the U.S. banking system from stable to negative, citing the “rapidly changing operating environment.” What they are referring to is the plunge in the ability of bank reserves to cover what they owed to their depositors, who were withdrawing their money and forcing the banks to sell securities at a loss.
President Biden’s deceptive cover-up
President Biden is trying to confuse voters by assuring them that the “rescue” of uninsured wealthy SVB depositors is not a bailout. But of course it is a bailout. What he meant was that bank stockholders were not bailed out. But its large uninsured depositors were saved from losing a single penny, despite the fact that they did not qualify for safety, and in fact had jointly talked among themselves and decided to jump ship and cause the bank collapse.
What Biden really meant was that this is not a taxpayer bailout. It does not involve money creation or a budget deficit, any more than the Fed’s $9 trillion in Quantitative Easing for the banks since 2008 has been money creation or increased the budget deficit. It is a balance-sheet exercise – technically a kind of “swap” with offsets of good Federal Reserve credit for “bad” bank securities pledged as collateral – way above current market pricing, to be sure. That is precisely what “rescued” the banks after 2009. Federal credit was created without taxation.
The banking system’s inherent tunnel vision
One may echo Queen Elizabeth II and ask, “Did nobody see this coming?” Where was the Federal Home Loan Bank that was supposed to regulate SVB? Where were the Federal Reserve examiners?
To answer that, one should look at just who the bank regulators and examiners are. They are vetted by the banks themselves, chosen for their denial that there is any inherently structural problem in our financial system. They are “true believers” that financial markets are self-correcting by “automatic stabilizers” and “common sense.”
Deregulatory corruption played a role in carefully selecting such tunnel-visioned regulators and examiners. SVB was overseen by the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB). The FHLB is notorious for regulatory capture by the banks who choose to operate under its supervision. Yet SVB’s business is not home-mortgage lending. It is high-tech private equity entities being prepared for IPOs – to be issued at high prices, talked up, and then often left to fall in a pump and dump game. Bank officials or examiners who recognizes this problem are disqualified from employment by being “over-qualified.”
Another political consideration is that Silicon Valley is a Democratic Party stronghold and rich source of campaign financing. The Biden Administration was not going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs of campaign contributions. Of course it was going to bail out the bank and its private-capital customers. The financial sector is the core of Democratic Party support, and the party leadership is loyal to its supporters. As President Obama told the bankers who worried that he might follow through on his campaign promises to write down mortgage debts to realistic market valuations in order to enable exploited junk-mortgage clients to remain in their homes, “I’m the only one between you [the bankers visiting the White House] and the mob with the pitchforks,” that is, his characterization of voters who believed his “hope and change” patter talk.
The Fed gets frightened and rolls back interest rates
On March 14 stock and bond prices soared. Margin buyers made a killing as they saw that the Administration’s plan is the usual one: to kick the bank problem down the road, flood the economy with bailouts (for the bankers, not for student debtors) until election day in November 2024.
The great question is thus whether interest rates can ever get back to a historic “normal” without turning the entire banking system into something like SVB. If the Fed really raises interest rates back to normal levels to slow wage growth, there must be a financial crash. To avoid this, the Fed must create an exponentially rising flow of Quantitative Easing.
The underlying problem is that interest-bearing debt grows exponentially, but the economy follows an S-curve and then turns down. And when the economy turns down – or is deliberately slowed down when labor’s wage rates tend to catch up with the price inflation caused by monopoly prices and U.S. anti-Russian sanctions that raise energy and food prices, the magnitude of financial claims on the economy exceeds the ability to pay.
That is the real financial crisis that the economy faces. It goes beyond banking. The entire economy is saddled with debt deflation, even in the face of Federal Reserve-backed asset-price inflation. So the great question – literally the “bottom line” – is how can the Fed maneuver its way out of the low-interest Quantitative Easing corner in which it has painted the U.S. economy. The longer it continues to save FIRE sector investors from taking a loss, the more violent the ultimate resolution must be.
The severity has been a policy choice to keep “kicking the can down the road,” bailing out one financial squeeze after another at least until the next election year.
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Note
[1] Huw van Steenis, “History can instruct us on the fallout from SVB’s collapse,” Financial Times, March 13, 2023.
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March 17 is traditionally St Patrick’s Day, a day when ‘Irishness’ is celebrated all over the world. This date is traditionally held to be the date of the death of St Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the patron saint of Ireland. It is marked by parades through the main cities and towns of Ireland, and in recent years it has become popular as a festival around the world with famous buildings being lit up green and major rivers being dyed green.
However, in recent decades the symbolism of St Patrick’s Day has changed dramatically and promotes negative stereotypes (e.g. leprechauns) of the Irish people to a world audience. This is not good for Ireland or the Irish people.
It must also be noted that St Patrick is seen as the patron saint of Ireland because he defeated pagan ideology in favour of Christianity. However, pagan ideology had a strong connection with nature and the cycles of nature that resulted in seasonal festivals such as Beltaine (1 May), Lughnasadh (1 August), Samhain (1 November) and Imbolc (1 February).
St Patrick
Not a lot is known about Saint Patrick except he is believed to have been a Romano-British Christian missionary who was kidnapped by Irish raiders and brought to Ireland as a slave. After six years as a shepherd he went home and became a priest. He then returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. He is famously believed to have driven the snakes out of Ireland despite the fact there is no record that Ireland ever had snakes.
It is more likely that the snakes refer to the pagans themselves:
“Scholars suggest the tale is allegorical. Serpents are symbols of evil in the Judeo-Christian tradition—the Bible, for example, portrays a snake as the hissing agent of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace. The animals were also linked to heathen practices—so St. Patrick’s dramatic act of snake eradication can be seen as a metaphor for his Christianizing influence.”
It is believed that he died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick. It is also believed that the date is suspiciously close to Ostara, a pagan holiday:
“It wasn’t arbitrary that the day honoring Saint Patrick was placed on the 17th of March. The festival was designed to coincide, and, it was hoped, to replace the Pagan holiday known as Ostara; the second spring festival which occurs each year, which celebrates the rebirth of nature, the balance of the universe when the day and night are equal in length, and which takes place at the Spring Equinox (March 22nd this year). In other words, Saint Patrick’s Day is yet another Christian replacement for a much older, ancient Pagan holiday; although generally speaking Ostara was most prominently replaced by the Christian celebration of Easter (the eggs and the bunny come from Ostara traditions, and the name “Easter” comes from the Pagan goddess Eostre).”
St Patrick’s Day Parade
As a child I remember being brought to the parade and seeing a very dignified parade of marching pipe bands and symbols of the Irish state and nation such as the Irish army. By the 1980s it had been reduced to low levels of commercialisation (such as multiple floats advertising a major security firm). Later, the influence of Macnas took over and a kind of Celtic primitivism became very influential.
St Patrick’s Day, Downpatrick, March 2011 (Licensed under Wikimedia Commons)
The commercialism of the St Patrick’s Day Parade also resulted in Irish people dressing up as red-bearded and green-hatted leprechauns:
“Films, television cartoons and advertising have popularised a specific image of leprechauns which bears little resemblance to anything found in the cycles of Irish folklore. It has been argued that the popularised image of a leprechaun is little more than a series of stereotypes based on derogatory 19th-century caricatures.”
Along with this negative stereotype came a change in terminology as St Patrick’s day became known as Paddy’s Day, a derogatory term for Irish people (Paddy). The festival has become an excuse for all-day drinking and riotous behaviour, feeding into the negative stereotypes of ‘drunken paddys’.
St. Patrick Parade, Fifth Ave., New York 1909 (Licensed under the Public Domain)
In a way the St Patrick’s Day parade of recent years does symbolise the Ireland of today just as the content of past parades represented the prevalent ideologies of their day too. The colorful, brash, internationalism of the parade now is similar to other major festivals around the world (such as Brazilian Carnival) and, similarly, has more of a feeling of public catharsis than a celebration of national identity.
The kind of drinking and self-mocking celebrated now on St Patrick’s Day has more in common with the work of the Roman satirical poet, Juvenal (c. 100 CE), who wrote that “the People have abdicated our duties [and] now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.” Public palliatives for societal woes only temporarily cover up the real problems facing Irish people today as the housing, energy and financial crises deepen.
Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal. This is what is really needed now, the rebirth of the politics of social justice, and the renewal of our deep connection with nature and life – a movement away from the theology of death.
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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáinis an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image: Patrick banishing the snakes (Licensed under CC BY 2.5)
History teaches that the greatest threat to peace today is the United States. No other nation creates dangers as great as those emanating from the U.S. commitment to the doctrine of Full Spectrum Dominance.
In conflicts, I know, neither side can be trusted. Both sides twist and distort, magnify and minimize in support of their cause. But the daily, almost hourly pictures from Ukraine—of hardship, suffering, of death, destruction and flight, all too genuine, cause me the despair I have always felt on hearing—and worse seeing, if only on a screen—any pain inflicted on my fellow human beings, no matter what insignia they wear or flag they honor.
If the PT’s base was aware of the military-strategic dynamics that forced Russia to commence its special operation as a last resort for defending the integrity of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them there, then they’d be against Lula’s political support of Kiev.
If 2022 was the year of popular uprisings in Pakistan, raising hope for protesters fed up with a thoroughly corrupt and repressive civil-military regime, 2023 seems to be the year when the government is trying every dirty trick in the book to kill that hope.
IMF Fiscal consolidation is nothing but austerity upon low-income & middle class populations while IMF reforms means cutting social welfare & subsidies. OXFAM says that these measures which cover taxing, wage bill cuts or freezes, pension cuts, subsidy elimination, cuts to public spending have over period of time brought countries to great difficulty as they have to continue taking loans & paying back taken loans with interest while people suffer consequences of IMF recommendations.
The Indonesian rupiah’s 3.2% drop since February 1 demonstrates how quickly Asia has resigned itself to the fact that the US Federal Reserve isn’t done tightening. Another batch of too-strong-for-Fed-comfort US employment figures in February only increased the risk.
In the video below, Hirofumi Yanagase, member of the House of Councillors of Japan, talks about the surge in Japan’s excess deaths that are linked to COVID vaccines.
History has dealt a tough hand to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, who openly confessed his intent to “bring an end” to the Nord Stream pipeline system which delivered Russian natural gas to Europe through four pipelines (Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, consisting of two pipelines each).
I once again find myself in a position where I must comment on the federal NDP’s stance regarding foreign affairs. Only this time, its position on some foreign affairs reverberates in a deplorable reactionary manner in the party’s actions within Canada.
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***
Economist Michael Hudson analyzes the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate, and Signature Bank, explaining the similarities to the 2008 financial crash.
In this discussion with Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton, Hudson also addresses the US government bailout (which it isn’t calling a bailout), the role of the Federal Reserve and Treasury, the factor of cryptocurrency, and the danger of derivatives.
Transcript
BEN NORTON: Hi everyone, I’m Ben Norton. I have the pleasure of being joined by someone I think is one of the most important economists in the world, Michael Hudson.
And I should say that we should wish Professor Hudson a happy birthday. Today is March 14th. It’s his birthday, and he turns eighty-four today. How do you feel Michael?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Just like I feel every other day. I usually feel energetic on my birthday because I’m always working on a new chapter and I tend to write a lot around this period each year.
BEN NORTON: And Michael is extremely prolific. He has so many books. And today we’re going to be talking about a lot of topics that he addressed in one of his classic books, which is Killing The Host. And talking about how the financial sector is parasitic for the real economy.
Today we’re going to be talking about the banking crisis that we see unfolding in the United States.
This March, three banks have collapsed in the span of one week.
It started at first with a California-based cryptocurrency-focused bank, Silvergate, which collapsed on March 8th, and then two days later Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) went down as well. It went down in the largest-ever bank run.
And that was the second biggest ever to fail in US history. And it was also the largest bank to crash since 2008.
Silicon Valley Bank had $209 billion in assets, compared to the largest-ever bank failure which was Washington Mutual, which had $307 billion in assets, and that was in 2008.
So Michael, let’s just start with your basic argument of why you think these banks have been crashing — first Silvergate, then Silicon Valley Bank, and why you think they’re crashing, and what the response of the Federal Reserve (Fed) has been.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well in order to understand why they’re crashing, you have to compare it to what happened in 2008 and 2009.
This crash is much more serious.
In 2008 and 2009, Washington Mutual collapsed because it was a crooked bank. It was writing fraudulent mortgages, junk loan mortgages. It should have been allowed to go under because of the fraud.
The basic subprime fraud and collapse was widespread fraud throughout the whole financial system. Citibank was one of the worst offenders. Countrywide, Bank of America.
These were individual banks that could have been allowed to go under and the mortgages could have done what President Obama had promised to do.
The mortgages could have been written down to the realistic market values that would have cost about as much to service as paying your monthly rent. And you just would have got the crooks out of the system.
My colleague Bill Black at the University of Missouri at Kansas City described all this in The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.
So the problem then under the Obama administration — he made an about-face and reversed everything that he had promised his voters.
He had promised to write down the loans, to keep the subprime mortgage people in their houses, but to write down the loans to the fair value and undo the fraud.
What happened instead was, as soon as he took office, he invited the bankers to the White House and said, “I’m the only guy standing between you and the mob with the pitchforks.”
[By] “the mob with the pitchforks,” he meant mainly Black and Hispanic buyers, mortgagees, who were the main victims of the subprime fraud.
He bailed out the banks and directed the Fed to undertake fifteen years of quantitative easing (QE). And what that was, was the Fed said, “Well the mortgages are worth less than —the value of the property doesn’t suffice to cover all of the bank deposits, because the banks have made bad mortgages.”
“How do we save the banks that have misrepresented the value of what they have?”
“We’re going to slash interest rates to zero. We’re going to spur the largest asset-price inflation in history.”
“We’re going to put nine trillion dollars supporting bank credit — flooding the market with credit — so that instead of real estate prices going back to an affordable level, we can make them even more unaffordable.”
“And that will make the banks much richer. It’ll make the 1% in the financial sector much richer. It’ll make the landlords much richer. We’re going to do that.”
So they spurred — by lowering the interest rates, they created the biggest bond-market boom in American history. From high interest rates in 2008 all the way down to almost zero.
So the result of course was an inflation in stock prices, an inflation of bond prices.
And the result was widening inequality for Americans, because most stocks and bonds are owned by the wealthiest 10%, not by the bottom 90%.
So if you were one of the 10% of the population that owned stocks and bonds, your wealth is going way up.
If you were a part of the 90%, your wages were not going up, and in fact your living standards were being squeezed — not only by the inflation, but by the fact that more and more of your income had to go to paying rent and interest to the FIRE sector — [Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate].
Well finally, a year ago, the Federal Reserve said, “Well there is a problem. Now that COVID is over, wages are beginning to rise.”
“We’ve got to have two million Americans thrown out of work in order to lower wages so that the companies can make larger profits, to pay higher stock prices.”
“Because if we don’t cause unemployment, if we don’t lower the wage levels for America, then profit levels will go down and stock prices will go back down, and our job at the Fed is to increase stock prices, increase bond prices, and increase real estate prices.”
So finally they began to raise [interest] rates to — as they put it — “curb inflation.”
When they say “inflation,” what they mean is “rising wages.”
And even though wages have gone up, they have not gone up as much as consumer prices have gone up.
And the consumer prices have gone up, not because of wage pressures, but for two reasons.
One — the sanctions against Russia have sharply increased the price of energy, because Russian oil can’t be sold to the West anymore, and Russian agriculture can’t be sold to the West anymore.
[Two] — the Democratic party has followed the Republican party in deregulating monopolies. Every monopolized sector of the economy has been raising its prices without its costs going up at all.
And they raise the prices because, they say, “Well, we’re raising them because we expect inflation to go up.”
Well that’s a euphemism for saying, “We’re raising them because we can, and we can make more money by raising them.”
So the prices have gone up, but the Fed is using this as an excuse to try to create unemployment.
Well, what has happened is that, by solving the problem of wages rising, they’ve also created a problem that spilled over into the financial sector. Because what they’ve done is reverse the whole asset-price inflation from 2009 to just last year, [2022].
That’s almost a 13-year, steady asset-price inflation.
By raising the interest rates, all of a sudden they’ve put downward pressure on the bonds. So the bonds that went way up in price when interest rates were falling, now go down in price, because if you have a higher-yielding bond available, the price of your low-yielding bond falls, so that it works out to yield exactly the same.
Also there’s been a withdrawal of money from the banks in the last year, for obvious reasons.
The banks are the most monopolized sector of the American economy. Despite the fact that interest rates were going up, despite the fact that banks were making much more money on their loans, they were paying depositors only 0.2 percent.
And, imagine — if you are a fairly well-to-do person, and you have a retirement income, or a pension plan, or if you’ve just saved a few hundred thousand dollars, you can take your money out of the bank, where you’re getting almost no interest at 0.2 percent, and you can buy a two-year treasury note that yields 4 percent or 4.5 percent.
So bank deposits were being drained by people saying, “I’m going to put my money in safe government securities.”
Many people also were selling stocks because they thought the stock market was as high as it could go, and they bought government bonds.
Well what happened then is that all of a sudden, the banks — especially Silicon Valley Bank — found themselves in a squeeze.
And here’s what happened.
Silicon Valley Bank and banks throughout the country were flooded by deposits ever since the 2020 COVID crisis.
And that’s because people were not borrowing to invest very much. Corporations were not borrowing.
What they were doing was building up their cash.
[SVB’s] deposits were growing very very rapidly, and it was only paying 0.2 percent on the deposits — how is it going to make a profit?
Well it tried to squeeze out every little bit of profit that it could by buying long-term government bonds.
The longer term the bond is, the higher the interest rate is.
And even the long-term government bonds were only yielding let’s say 1.5 percent, maybe 1.75 percent.
They took the deposits that they were paying 0.2 percent on and lent them out at 1.5, 1.75 percent.
And they were getting — it’s called arbitrage — the difference between what they had to pay for their deposits and what they were able to make by investing them.
Well here’s the problem. As the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, that meant the value of these long-term bonds — the market price — steadily fell.
Well most people who saw this coming — every CEO that I know sold out of stocks, sold out of long-term government bonds.
When the Federal Reserve head said that he was going to raise interest rates, that means you don’t want to hold a long-term bond.
You want to keep your money as close to cash as possible. You want to keep it in three-month Treasury bills. That’s very liquid. Because short term treasury bills, money market funds — you don’t lose any capital value in that at all.
But the Silicon Valley Bank thought — well they were still after every little bit of extra they can get, and they held onto their long-term bonds that were plunging in price.
Well, what you had was a miniature of what was happening for the entire American banking system.
I have a chart on that, on the market value of the securities that banks hold:
Now, when Banks report to the Federal Reserve, that’s exactly it. When they report — this shows the actual market value.
If banks valued their assets just what they were worth on the market, they would have plunged just like you see at the bottom there.
But banks don’t have to do that. Banks are allowed to represent their assets according to the book value that they paid for them.
So Silicon Valley Bank, and other banks throughout the system, have been carrying all their long-term mortgage loans, packaged mortgaged, government bonds, at the price they paid for them — not the declining market price.
They figured — “Well, we can ride this out and hold it to maturity in twenty-five years as long as nobody in the next twenty-five years actually withdraws their money from the bank.”
It’s only when bank customers and depositors pull their money out that they decide that, “Wait a minute. Now in order to raise the cash to pay the depositors for the money they’re taking out, we have to sell these bonds and mortgages that we’ve bought. And we have to sell them at a loss.”
And so the bank began to sell the bonds and the packaged mortgages at a huge loss. And they were losing capital.
Well as it happens, Silicon Valley Bank isn’t a normal bank. A normal bank you think of as having mom and pop depositors, individuals, wage earners.
But almost all the deposits — I think over eighty percent of the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank — were by companies. Mainly high-tech companies that were sponsored by private capital — special purpose private capital acquisitions.
And they began to talk amongst each other, and some of them decided, “Well it looks to me like the bank’s being squeezed. Let’s pull our deposits out of the small bank and put them in a big bank like Chase Manhattan or Citibank or any of the big banks that the government says are too big to fail.”
So you know that their money will be safe there. So there was a run on deposits.
So the the problem that Silicon Valley Bank and other banks have is not that they’d made bad loans. It’s not that they had committed any fraud. It’s not that the US government couldn’t pay the bills. It’s not that the mortgagers couldn’t pay the bills.
It was that the market price of these good loans to solvent entities had gone down and left the bank illiquid.
Well, that is what is squeezing the entire financial sector right now.
So just as the quantitative easing was flooding the economy with enough credit to inflate asset prices for real estate, stocks and bonds — the tightening of credit lowered the asset prices for bonds certainly, for real estate too.
For some reason the stock market has not followed through. And people say, “Well, there is an informal government Plunge Protection Team (PPT) that’s artificially keeping the stock market high, but how long can it really be kept high?”
Nobody really knows.
So the problem is that the 2009 crisis wasn’t a systemic crisis, but now, the rising interest rates have created a systemic crisis because the Federal Reserve, by saving the banks’ balance sheets by inflating the prices for capital assets, by saving the wealthiest 10% of the economy from losing any of their money — by solving that problem they’ve boxed themselves into a corner.
They cannot let interest rates rise without making the entire economy look like Silicon Valley Bank. Because that’s the problem. The assets the banks hold are stuck.
Now a number of people have said, “Well why didn’t the banks — if they couldn’t cover their deposits — why didn’t they do what banks did in 2009?”
And in 2009 the banks — Citibank, Chase Manhattan, all the big banks — went to the Federal Reserve and they did repo deals.
They would pledge their securities and the Fed would lend them money against their securities.
This wasn’t a creation of money.
None of this quantitative easing appeared as an increase in the money supply. It was all done by balance sheet manipulation. The banks were able to go to the Fed.
Or instead of selling the bonds, people said, “Why couldn’t Silicon Valley Bank simply borrow short-term money? You want to pay out the depositors? Okay, borrow the money, pay the four percent, but don’t sell — you know, it’s not going to last very long. Once the Fed sees how systemic the problem is, they’ll certainly turn out to be cowards and roll back the interest rates to what they were.”
But there’s a problem. If the the repo market — in other words, the “repo market” is the “repossession market” — it’s the market that banks go to if they want to borrow from larger banks. You want to borrow overnight credit. You want to borrow from the Federal Reserve.
But if you borrow in the repo market, the bankruptcy law was changed in order to protect these sort of non-bank lenders, and it was changed so that if a bank makes a currency swap — if it says, “I’m going to give you a billion dollars worth of packaged the government bonds and you’ll give me a loan” — if the bank then goes under and becomes insolvent, as Silicon Valley did, the bonds that it pledged for repo are not available to be grabbed by the bank itself to make the depositors whole.
The repo banks — the large banks — are made whole.
Because Congress said, “We have a choice. Either we can make the economy rich or we can make the banking sector rich. Who gives us our campaign contributors? The banks.”
“To hell with the economy. We’re going to make sure the banks don’t lose the money, and that the 1% that own the banks don’t lose money. We’d rather the voters lose the money because that’s how democracy works in America.”
So the result is that the — there was a lot of pressure against SVB trying to protect itself in the way that banks were able to do back in 2009. All they did was sell the existing securities they had in order to pay the depositors before they were closed down on Friday afternoon — before closing hours — and that led them to the problem today, before President Biden decided to bail them out and then blatantly lied to the public by claiming it’s not a bailout.
How can it not be a bailout? He bailed out every single uninsured depositor because they were his constituency. Silicon Valley is a Democratic Party stronghold, as most of California is.
There’s no way that Biden and the Democratic Party was going to let any wealthy person in Silicon Valley lose a penny of their deposits, because it knows that it’s going to get huge campaign contributions in gratitude for the 2024 election.
So the result is that of course they bailed out the banks and President Biden weaseled his way out of things by saying, “Well, we didn’t bail out the bank stockholders; we only bailed out the billions of dollars of depositors.”
BEN NORTON: It’s very revealing to see how the financial press treated Silicon Valley Bank.
In fact, just before — on the eve of it imploding — Forbes described SVB as one of “America’s Best Banks” in 2023. And that was for 5 years straight, praising this bank.
And I think it’s important to go look at SVB’s website and to see how it portrayed itself, what it was boasting of.
If you go to the Silicon Valley Bank website, they boast that 88% of “Forbes’ 2020 Next Billion-Dollar Startups” are SVB clients. “Around 50% of all US venture capital-backed tech and life science companies bank with SVB.”
And in fact, just before it imploded, 56% of the loans that SVB had made were to venture capital firms and private equity firms.
And if you go down on their website, they boast “up to 4.5% annual percentage yield on deposits,” which is incredible. I mean most banks offer 0.2% yield.
SVB wrote on their website, “Help make your money last longer with our startup money market account. Like with the savings account you’ll earn up to 4.5% annual percentage yield on deposits.”
MICHAEL HUDSON: “Up to.” I could say, why don’t they say “Up to 50% a year.” — anything you want.
I think in this case they were factoring capital gains into it — that means asset-price gains — this wasn’t an income yield so much. It was an overall yield, making the depositors part of the mutual speculation.
But the depositors — we know that eighty percent were people like Peter Thiel. They were large private-capital firms.
And one of the problems is, if you have a lot of well-connected rich people who are the major depositors that they’re talking to in this case, they talk to each other.
And when they see that there’s no way that the bank can pay anywhere near 4.5% anymore, they jump ship.
And that’s exactly what happened. They talked to each other and there was a run on the bank.
Now, most people think of a run on the bank as being “the madness of crowds.”
This wasn’t the madness of crowds. The crowd was not mad. The bank may have been mad, but the crowd was perfectly rational.
They said, “Look, I think the free lunch is over. Let’s pull our money out. What we want now is not to hope and pray for a 4.5% return — let’s just move for safety.”
If you have a billion dollars, you’re more concerned with keeping that billion dollars safe than actually making an income on it. And I think that’s what happened.
And when you say “up to” — yeah, that’s funny language.
BEN NORTON: And Michael, I know you’re friends with Pam Martens and Russ Martens over at WallStreetOnParade.com that always do great reporting.
MICHAEL HUDSON: They’ve done a wonderful job of following all of this. They say, if there’s anyone who shouldn’t be bailed out, it’s the wealthy billionaire depositors of that bank.
And I just want to read what they wrote here which really summarizes it very well: “SVB was a financial institution deployed to facilitate the goals of powerful venture capital and private equity operators by financing tech and pharmaceutical startups until they could raise millions or billions of dollars in a Wall Street Initial Public Offering (IPO).”
You mentioned, Michael, that the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed that the US government is not going to bail out the depositors — these private equity firms and such and startups at SVB — but in reality only $250,000 of their deposits were actually federally insured, but we were seeing that actually the US government is ensuring that all of their deposits, including above $250,000, is going to be paid to them.
So essentially, what the Federal Reserve — backed by the Treasury with the $25 billion war chest in supporting this operation — what they’re essentially saying is that deposit insurance on commercial banks in the United States, including ones with very high interest interest-bearing deposits — it’s basically infinity.
There is no limit on federally insured accounts. It’s no longer actually $250,000 — which only incentivizes other firms in the future to deposit their earnings into very risky banks that offer very high interest rates they can’t pay out, because they know that the US government will bail them out.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well Janet Yellen also said that Ukraine was going to win the war with Russia. Sort of the reincarnation of Pinocchio.
You’re never going to have a Federal Reserve head say that there’s going to be a problem.
Bankers are not allowed to tell the truth.
That’s why — one of the worst things that can happen to a banker is if they get COVID. Because when you get COVID sometimes, you’re not able to lie quickly, and it’s a surefire way of losing the job.
That’s part of it. But there’s another reason.
If you have a banker be aware of the systemic risk that I just explained — the risk that is for the whole economy if it ever tries to go back to normal, which it can’t again without causing a crisis — then you’re disqualified for the job. Or you’re called overqualified.
In order to be a bank examiner or a bank regulator, you have to believe that every problem can be kicked down the road. That there are automatic stabilizers and the market is going to solve everything thanks to the magic of the marketplace.
And if you don’t believe that, you’re a blackballed and are never going to be promoted.
So the last person you’re ever going to want to explain anything, whether it’s Alan Greenspan or his successors, is the head of the Federal Reserve.
BEN NORTON: Michael, I want to talk about the scheme that the Federal Reserve has created in order to bail out Silicon Valley Bank and its clients without calling it a bailout.
I’m going to look at a very good Twitter thread that was done by the post-Keynesian economist Daniela Gabor.
forget about SBV liabilities for a second, the real bailout story is the regime-change in the Fed's treatment of collateral:
par value goes against every risk management commandment of the past 30 years. it turbocharges the monetary power of collateral pic.twitter.com/7T0M8QUrrn
She’s tweeted that she has spent fifteen years researching central banks collateral, and she has never heard a single central banker contest the common wisdom that there should be “haircuts.”
Instead, what we see is the Fed is paying par value.
So the Fed has this program called the Bank Term Funding Program, and essentially it’s giving extremely favorable loans to Silicon Valley Bank and other banks, which are essentially government subsidies.
And instead of using as collateral the Treasury securities and other assets that are owned by Silicon Valley Bank — or at least that were — instead of using their market value, the Federal Reserve is using the value at par — the face value that was printed on the Treasury securities that are held by SVB and other banks that need to be bailed out.
So essentially what they’re saying is that, only average working people are subject to the discipline of the market.
But banks — they don’t actually have to go along with market value for their securities.
They can be bailed out by using as collateral the values of what they originally bought the security at before the Fed raised interest rates and the price of those bonds decreased.
So in short what it is, is socialism for the rich for big corporations and for the commercial banks, and capitalism for everyone else.
Daniela Gabor said she’s never seen this in fifteen years of research. Have you ever seen something like this?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well this is what I said at the very beginning of our discussion today.
I said, the banks are able to carry their assets at the price they purchased them. That was called the “book value” — not the “current market value.”
For years, in the 1960s and 1970s, if you had banks or a corporation carrying real estate at book value, people were looking over these balance sheets saying, “Aha, they’re going to value their real estate at what they bought it for in the 1950s and now it’s tripled in value. Let’s raid that corporation and take it over, break it up, and sell the real estate.”
That was how money was made in the 1960s and 1970s and even more in the 1980s.
But that’s when asset prices are going up.
But when you mark to “purchase price” — “book value” — instead of the “market value,” you’re going to have this disparity. That’s exactly the problem.
And you’re quite right about the double standard that the government has.
Look at the double standard with the student loan debtors. They are unable to pay their student loans without making a big sacrifice. But Biden has made sure that they’re not going to be bailed out because he’s the man who sponsored the bankruptcy bill saying that student loans are not subject to bankruptcy laws to be written down.
Every other kind of asset, if you go bankrupt, can be written down to the current market failure for what you owe. But not student loans.
They are kept sacrosanct.
There’s a diametric opposite economic philosophy when it comes to what wage earners and consumers owe, and what the financial and real estate sector owes.
The Biden Administration and the Republicans say that no billionaire should lose a single penny. No bank or real estate company should owe anything. We will guarantee that bailout — they are risk-free.
We’ve transferred all of the risk onto the voters who put us in power, because we say that, “Maybe you’ll be a billionaire someday. You don’t want to hurt them, do you?” or whatever their politicking is.
So this double standard is what is squeezing the economy now. By not permitting the financial sector from taking a penny loss, somebody has to lose. And the losers are the non-financial economy — the real economy of production and consumption.
BEN NORTON: Michael, another factor in this is crypto. While all of this is happening, it’s also in the wake of a disastrous collapse in big parts of the cryptocurrency industry.
You yourself have always been very skeptical and have criticized this crypto industry and you can talk about that — I mean I’ve done many interviews with you over the years. Going back on the record people can see that you were proven right about this.
Of course Silicon Valley Bank as its name suggests is definitely involved in the tech sector and Silicon Valley.
But before SVB collapsed we saw Silvergate collapse, and Silvergate was very heavily invested — or at least many of its depositors were companies invested in crypto.
And then on March 12th there was another bank that went down which — unlike SVB and Silvergate, which were in California — the third bank to go down was Signature Bank which is based in New York City. And thirty percent — almost one-third of Signature Bank’s deposits were cryptocurrency businesses.
So maybe you can talk about crypto’s role in all of this. And of course this comes at a time when Sam Bankman-Fried — the fraudster who ran the FDX exchange — he was exposed to the world for committing literal fraud, and losing billions of dollars really overnight.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well the whole mythology and fantasy of crypto has been burst, especially with Bankman-Fried.
Crypto was supposed to be — they called it peer-to-peer lending. The peer-to-peer lending was, the person who bought the crypto took money out of the bank and paid for crypto with a bank transfer fee — was one peer.
Who’s the other peer? The other peer was Bankman-Fried, and he could do whatever he wanted with his money.
The crypto cover story was, “Well, we know that the economy’s messed up and we don’t like big government and we don’t like the bank, so here’s an alternative to the banks, putting your money in that bank and putting your money, depending on government fiat currencies.”
So people would put their money into crypto, thinking, this is something different from the banks. And yet it turns out — what did the crypto companies do?
If you get a billion dollars of inflow by people who want an alternative, what are you going to do with a billion dollars?
Well Bankman-Fried simply bought luxury real estate and gave money to the Democratic Part and a few Republicans for campaign contributions to buy influence.
But most of the crypto was put in Silvergate Bank or other banks, or government securities. I mean, where else are you going to put a billion dollars inflow?
You get a bank transfer from a bank. It goes into your bank account — you have to have a bank account somewhere to hold it. And what do you do?
The money that goes into crypto ends up in the very banks or the government securities that crypto’s supposed to be an escape from.
So all that crypto is, is a disguised bank or a mutual fund that has its money in banks and government securities.
Except it has secrecy, so that if you’re a criminal or a tax evader or a crook and you don’t want the government to know what you have, you’re willing to give a premium.
Just like the cocaine cartel who will pay ten percent or twenty percent for money laundering.
Crypto was a vast money laundering operation wrapped in an idealization — a fantasy — that it was an alternative to banks and government money, when of course the backing for the crypto was banks and government money.
Obviously when people begin to realize this, and saying, “Wait a minute, who is running the cryptocurrency that we’re holding? We don’t know what it is.” Because it’s crypto — that’s why it’s called crypto. And it can’t be regulated, because the government can’t know what’s in it or who’s paying what, because it’s crypto.
So there’s no way of regulating crypto, and needless to say, every mafiosi — every sort of financial crook — finds it’s like taking a candy from a baby. All you have to do is say that we have a an idealistic libertarian answer to socialism.
So crypto was the libertarian answer to socialism. And we’ve seen — I think socialism won that particular fight.
The banks of course — when people were selling the crypto, the cryptocurrency had to draw on its bank account. And when it drew on its bank account, the banks were left without money.
The banks that had to pay the crypto company to pay the crypto seller had to sell their bonds and packaged mortgages and take a capital loss on assets that they were carrying at original book value or purchase price, but that they were only getting the market price for.
So, the whole unraveling of all of this — reality raised its ugly head.
And I just want to go over this briefly again just these numbers here.
The biggest bank to ever fail in US history was Washington Mutual and I was in 2008 during the financial crash and it had $307 billion in assets.
The second biggest bank ever to collapse in US history was Silicon Valley Bank with $209 billion in assets. So pretty close to Washington Mutual.
And Signature Bank was the third biggest bank to collapse, which had $118 billion in assets.
So clearly there are parallels to the 2008 crash.
But in your article you also pointed out that there are parallels to the Savings and Loan (S&L) Crisis of the 1980s. So what can we learn from the 1980s S&L crash and also the 2008 crash?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well I want to first of all challenge what you said about Washington Mutual being the biggest bank to go under.
This is not at all the right way to look at it.
What is important to look at is, what banks were insolvent.
Sheila Bair wrote in her autobiography that there was one bank that was worse than all the others. It was totally insolvent — not only incompetently managed but crooked. That bank was Citibank.
But Citibank was looked over by Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — who had worked with Bob Rubin, who was the protector of Citibank — so the fact is that not only Citibank — Citigroup— but all the big banks — Sheila Bair, who was head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said, the banks are insolvent.
She was pressing. She said, “Look, Citibank should go under. Let’s clean it up. Let’s take it under and clean out the crooks.”
And Geithner said, “No, the crooks are us. That’s our game.”
So the key to look at isn’t what banks actually were permitted to go under — the really crooked banks like Washington Mutual — but what banks are insolvent. Citibank and Wells Fargo, she mentioned. These were the banks that had the junk mortgages. Bank of America. The banks were insolvent.
And when I say that the problem is just beginning, it’s just beginning because the problem that the financial sector and the banking sector has today is endemic to finance capitalism.
The charts that I’ve made in Killing The Host and also in The Destiny of Civilization — the financial sector grows by interest-bearing debt, and that’s an exponential system. Any interest rate has a doubling time. Any interest rate goes exponentially.
But the economy doesn’t keep track. It goes on an S-curve, and it goes slower and slower, and then it turns down. That’s the business cycle. And it’s depicted as a kind of sine curve, up and down.
The problem is that the economy can’t keep pace with the ability with the debts that it owes — the ability to pay the exponentially rising debt does not keep pace with this growth of debt.
That makes a collapse inevitable.
This disparity between the growth curves of debt and the growth curve of the economy has been known for 5,000 years. It was already documented in Babylonia in 1800 BC.
We have the textbooks — the mathematical textbooks — that scribes were trained in. Antiquity knew this. Aristotle talked about it.
Everybody knows about this, but it’s not taught as part of the financial curriculum.
The financial sector grows by different mathematical laws then the economy grows in. And that’s what makes it inevitable.
The Savings and Loan Crisis was somewhat different. It is worth mentioning, because much of it was the result of a fraud — again as Bill Black has explained.
But here is the problem in the Savings and Loans and savings banks. I discussed this in the article that you just cited.
The savings banks and S&Ls lent mortgage money, and they would — basically, when I was working in the 1960s, interest rates were going up from about 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent for mortgages.
And the banks would take deposits and they’d pay maybe a 2.5 percent interest and they’d make loans at maybe 3.5 percent for a thirty-year mortgage.
So of all of this sort of happened normally until the late 1970s. And in the late 1970s — because of the Vietnam War — the interest rates steadily rose because the US balance of payments was getting squeezed.
And finally you had inflation because of the war-induced shortages — “Pentagon capitalism” — and so Paul Volcker raised the interest rates to 20 percent.
Well imagine what happened? Even though they came down from 20 percent, after 1980, they were still very high.
Well here’s the situation — the SNL’s were in much the same situation that bank depositors were in the last few years.
You could get a very low rate of interest from the banks or a high rate of interest by putting your money in government securities or corporate bonds or even hunk bonds that were paying a lot of money.
So people took the money out of the banks and a bought higher yielding financial securities.
Well the banks were squeezed, because the banks could not pay. When interest rates went up to 6 percent, 7 percent for mortgages — banks couldn’t simply charge their mortgage customers more because the mortgage customer had a thirty-year loan at a fixed rate of interest.
So there was no way the banks could earn enough money to pay the high interest rates that were in the rest of the economy. And as a result they were pushed under, and the commercial banks had a field day.
Sheila bear told me that the banks raped the — she didn’t that used that word — the savings banks.
She said, “They said they were going to provide more money for savings bank depositors, and what they did was empty it all out and just pay themselves higher salaries.”
So there are I think no more savings banks, hardly — no more S&Ls. They were all cannibalized by the large Wall Street Banks emptied out as a result and that transformed the financial structure and the banking structure of the American economy.
Well that transformation, and that squeeze, of getting rid of a whole class of banks is now threatening the smaller banks in the United States, the smaller commercial banks.
Because they’re in the situation of being sort of left behind. In the sense that, if only the largest banks are too big to fail — in other words, they’re such big campaign contributors and they have so many of their ex officials running the Treasury or serving as Treasury officials or going into Congress or buying Congressman — that they’re safe.
And people who have their money in smaller banks — like a Silicon Valley Bank and the others you’ve mentioned — are nowhere near as safe as the Too Big to Fail banks.
And if a bank’s not too big to fail, then it’s small enough to fail, and you really don’t want to keep more than $250,000 there because that’s not insured, and you don’t know how long Biden can get away without bailing out the wealthy depositors and just sticking it to the rest of the economy.
At some point, he just can’t be a crook anymore.
BEN NORTON: Michael, you’ve emphasized that, after the 2008 crash, in addition to bailing out the big banks and all this and the idea of Too Big to Fail — one of the ways that the US had a so-called recovery — although you pointed out it wasn’t really a recovery — is through quantitative easing.
And you can see quantitative easing really is a kind of drug for the economy, where money was so cheap, interest rates were so low — I mean, now that interest rates are rising — the federal funds rate is going up — it makes it more expensive to get money and this bubble that was created by the Fed is is beginning to burst.
And you’ve argued that this is maybe going to push them back toward quantitative easing, although Jerome Powell has insisted that he’s potentially going to continue increasing the federal funds rate.
MICHAEL HUDSON: That was on Friday [March 10] he said that. Yesterday he withdrew. He said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We crashed the banks. Never mind. Never mind. Now that I realized that I’m not only hurting labor, but I’m hurting our constituency, the 1%, of course we’re going to roll it back. We’re not going to — don’t worry 1%, give your money to the party. We’re going to make everything okay for you.”
BEN NORTON: If you look at a graph of asset price inflation, we see that it seems like the economy in the US is at a point where it’s so financialized, and it relies so much on these bubbles, that it doesn’t seem like it can survive without low interest rates and without quantitative easing.
So you’ve argued that this crisis is here to stay. There needs to be fundamental systemic change.
It’s going to either be stagflation, with the continuation of these policies of QE and low interest rates, or it’s going to be economic crisis like we’re seeing now.
MICHAEL HUDSON: This is the corner into which the Fed has painted itself.
We’re in the culminating part of the “Obama depression.” This is what Obama set in motion by bailing out the banks and supporting the banks instead of the economy as a whole.
Obama and Geithner and Obama’s cabinet declared war on the economy by the 1%.
And the amazing thing is that the economy doesn’t see how dangerous what he did was, and how consciously he sold out the voters that have put trust in them — to do everything he could to hurt them, because the degree to which he could hurt the economy was the degree to which the 1% or the 10% was able to make a killing.
So this is not the class interest that Marx talked about. It’s not the class interest of employers versus wage earners.
It’s the finance class allied with the real estate and insurance class — the FIRE section — against the economy at large — the real economy of production and consumption.
That is what we’re seeing, and something has to give.
And in every case both the Republicans and the Democrats say, “If something has to give, we’re willing to shrink the economy in order to protect the the financial, insurance, and real estate sector from taking a loss, because that’s where the 10% have it’s assets.”
We’re not in industrial capitalism anymore —we’re in finance capitalism. And the way that finance capitalism works is very different from the dynamics of industrial capitalism as was forecast in the nineteenth century.
BEN NORTON: Michael, as we start to wrap up here I want to ask you about corruption. This is something that you mentioned in your articles analyzing the SVB crash and other banks crashing.
You talk about campaign financing, which you address, but also regulatory capture is I think an important point.
And you wrote that, “To understand this, we should look at who the bank regulators and examiners are. They are vetted by the banks themselves, chosen for their denial that there is any inherent structural problem in our financial system. They are True Believers that financial markets are self-correcting by automatic stabilizers.”
Talk about the concept of regulatory capture and how really it’s just corruption, but we don’t call it that. Because the US acts as if other countries are corrupt but the US isn’t corrupt.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well the center of this corruption — again my colleague Bill Black has explained this — if you notice, who were the bank regulators over the Silicon Valley Bank and the others?
These banks that have gone under are all regulated by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. If there’s any bank board that is totally run by the banks that it regulates, it’s the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.
And they look at themselves as “protecting” the banks under their authority. Instead of regulating them, they say, “How can we help you make more money?”
Before that the most corrupt regulator was the [Office of the] Comptroller of the Currency group.
Now, banks have a choice. The banks are able to choose what regulator is going to regulate them.
If you’re a banker and you want to be a crook, you know just who to go to.
“I want to be regulated by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board because I know that they’ll always let me do anything I want.”
“They owe their job to the fact that I can get them fired at any time if they do something that will not let me do whatever I want.”
“If they try to say that what I’m doing is fraudulent, I’ll say, ‘This is socialism! You’re regulating the market! This is market regulation, come on! Theft is part of the market, don’t you get that?’ ”
And the regulator later said, “Oh yes, you’re right — the free market under the libertarian Federal Home Loan Bank Board — fraud is part of the free market. Theft is part of the free market. Anything else is socialism, so of course we’re not socialists..”
Of course you can do whatever you want and as long as you have bank regulators like that who believe that, as Alan Greenspan put it, “Why would a banker ever cheat somebody? If he cheated somebody he wouldn’t have them as customers anymore.”
Well, if you ever have been pickpocketed in Times Square anywhere else in New York, you notice that the pickpocket doesn’t say, “Gee, I better not steal the wallet of this guy because then he’ll never trust me again.”
You’re never going to meet the guy again — it’s a hit and run. And that’s how the financial sector has worked for the last century, and already for the early twentieth century.
There were critics of how banks were structured, and the British critics especially. During World War I the argument came out, “Maybe Germany is going to win the war because they have a much more industrially-organized banking system.” Banks had been industrialized.
But the British banks — and stockbrokers especially — are hit-and-run and just want a quick payout and leave the company emptied out.
Well the way to make money most quickly, if you’re a financier in America, is asset stripping — you borrow money, you buy out a corporation, you load it down with debt, and empty it out, and leave it as a bankrupt shell.
That’s finance capitalism. That is what you’re taught to do in business schools. That’s how the market economy works.
Raid a company, take it over, sell off the wealthy assets, pay yourself a management fee, pay yourself a huge dividend — this is why I think Bed Bath & Beyond is going under. It’s why a whole bunch of companies are going under.
You borrow money, you take over a company, you let the company borrow money, you pay it to yourself as the new owner as a special dividend, and then you leave the company owing a debt with no current income able to cover the debt, and it goes bankrupt. And you say, “Whelp, that’s the market.”
And of course it doesn’t have to be the market. It doesn’t have to be this way, but that’s the way in which the market is structured.
And you’d think that this is the kind of thing that academic economics courses would teach about. But instead of teaching people how to make an alternative to this, and how to avoid this kind of a ripoff economy and smash and grab economy, they show you how to do it.
So, given the way in which public consciousness is taught and the skill of financial lobbyists and telling people that they’re getting rich to borrow more money to buy a house whose price is going to go up and up if only they take on more and more debt.
If people imagine that the economy’s recovering by taking on debt to make housing more expensive and stocks and bonds and hence retirement income more expensive, then you’re living in an inside-out world that turns out to be a nightmare.
BEN NORTON: Well to conclude here, Michael my last question is: Where you think we should be keeping an eye on the US economy? What other financial institutions could be next?
You wrote in your analysis that the Biden administration is simply kicking the can down the road until the 2024 election. That these are fundamental systemic problems and there may very well be more banks that crash in the next weeks, months, years.
So, where should we be looking, and what’s the final word you want to leave us with?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The word is: “derivatives.”
There are $80 trillion of derivatives — that is, bets — casino bets — on whether interest rates will go up or down — whether bond prices will go up or down.
And there’s been a gigantic increase in the volume of bets that banks have made — maybe a hundred times as large as it was back in 2008-2009.
And one of the reasons it could grow so much is, with interest rates of almost zero, people could borrow from the bank and essentially go to the races and make bets on currencies, exchange rates, interest rates.
But now that interest rates are beginning to go up, it costs more to make the bets, and even if you bet right on a derivative — you can put down a penny and buy a $100 bond and bet that this bond is going to go up one penny.
And if it goes up one penny, you’ve doubled your money. But if it goes down one penny then you’ve lost it all.
This is what happens when you have a highly leveraged bet on derivatives or something else.
The derivatives are what everybody’s worried about, because there’s no real accounting for them. We just know that — I think JP Morgan Chase has maybe [$55 trillion] in derivatives.
Ellen Brown has just written a wonderful article on derivatives that’s all over the internet, and she’s a lawyer as well as a bank reformer.
The next big crash is going to be some bank that’s made a wrong bet in derivatives and the wrong bet has just wiped out all the bank capital. What is going to happen then? That’s the —as they say, the next shoe that is going to fall.
BEN NORTON: Well Michael, I want to thank you so much for joining us to explain these important topics.
Not only I’m just for joining us, but for joining us specifically on your birthday. Happy birthday, it’s a real pleasure. Thank you so much for spending your time with us.
I want to invite everyone to go check out Michael’s website at michael-hudson.com.
There you can find links to his articles, to his books, and I will link in the description below to the articles that he’s written specifically about the crash of Silicon Valley Bank and other financial institutions.
Finally what I’ll say is that I will also invite everyone to check out a show that Michael hosts every two weeks with friend of the show Radhika Desai — they have a show together called Geopolitical Economy Hour, and it’s hosted here at Geopolitical Economy Report.
In the description below I will include a link to include a playlist where people can find all of their episodes there explaining the intricacies of economics and geopolitics.
Michael, thank you so much, it’s a real pleasure.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well I’m glad we discussed this in a timely fashion, because all of this is unfolding so rapidly that who knows what the story will be next week.
BEN NORTON: Absolutely. We always benefit from this very timely analysis from you. Thanks a lot.
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Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of Killing the Host (published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by Islet). His new book is J is For Junk Economics.
Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
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***
History teaches that the greatest threat to peace today is the United States. No other nation creates dangers as great as those emanating from the U.S. commitment to the doctrine of Full Spectrum Dominance.
As anti-imperialist and Anti-war activists are preparing to mobilize in Washington D.C. on the 20th anniversary of the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and its Western colonial allies, it is imperative that authentic anti-imperialist forces and those earnestly committed to an Anti-war principle recognize two things: the U.S. based transnational ruling class is fully invested in the doctrine of U.S. “Full Spectrum Dominance,” and as a consequence the U.S. state has become an existential threat to collective humanity on our planet.
The recognition of these two “facts” are the only basis of a politics that can unite Anti-war and anti-imperialists and mitigate the ideological and political confusion that permeates progressive politics in the U.S. that has resulted in progressives and even self-defined radicals supporting pro-imperial policies under the guise of humanitarianism and anti-authoritarianism. The Eurocentric and social-imperialist left has played a nefarious role also providing left ideological and moral cover for those same politics under the guise of opposing “authoritarianism,” usually in the global South, and in Russian or Chinese imperialism.
There is a discussion among left forces in the West that poses as a debate point the question of whether or not Western colonial/imperialist powers represent the main global contradiction or should an equal moral and political focus be on all “imperialisms,” meaning great powers such as Russia and China and nations seen as “sub-imperialist.”
This debate has an abstract character to it that reflects the kinds of speculations that petit-bourgeois forces engage in that are completely divorced from the terrible realities that one force – the Pan European Colonial/capitalist White Supremacist Patriarchy – has unleashed on global humanity, beginning in 1492 when European barbarians started to spill out of Europe into what became the Americas.
The invasion and conquering of the peoples of the Americas and the international slave trade shifting to the Americas, which resulted in millions of Africans providing free labor on indigenous lands, literally created Europe, as Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. Dubois, Gerald Horne and other anti-colonial scholars have pointed out.
The material consolidation of European rule in the form of colonial and settler-colonial imperialism was consolidated in major parts of the world, though not all, by the latter part of the 19th century. The “internal” competition among those colonial powers and confrontations with the other existing empires created the competitive redivision of the world that after two horrendous wars in the first half of the 20th century that cost the lives of millions, produced a relative global equilibrium between the colonial/capitalist camp now under the hegemonic leadership of the United States settler state and the Soviet Union. The bipolar world constituted the main configuration of power relationships for most of the 20th century, even with the de-colonizing non-aligned movement of the global South and the entry of China with the Chinese revolution of 1949.
The Chinese project of national development and the successful right-wing counter-revolution in the Soviet Union shaped the politics of last decade of the 20th century and the context of this century, including the absence of a countervailing restraint on the U.S., and an arrogant triumphalism represented in the delusional positions of Francis Fukuyama and the “Project for a New American Century.” It is the unrestrained colonial hubris of the U.S. that drove its disastrous belief that it could conduct two simultaneous wars that led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq with an operational defeat in both theaters.
Yet, the expansion of NATO across Eastern Europe continued and its use as an expansionary force for Western imperialism was normalized. The U.S. military budget expanded to obscene levels that exceeded its military spending at the height of the Vietnam war. The U.S. basing system expanded and was strengthened with the creation of the U.S. African Command and the Obama Administration’s initiation of the “pivot to Asia” that generated significant support for the reorganized Indo-Pacific Command. Coups were executed and/or supported over the last two decades, and especially under the Obama Administration, in Honduras, Egypt, and Ukraine. Attempted and constitutional coups were carried out against Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Iran. Wars were initiated with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen with a greenlight given to slaughter Palestinians and for Rwanda and Uganda to wage war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and against political dissidents in Mozambique. More than forty nations are under crippling economic sanctions by the U.S. and the Western powers.
With over 800 to perhaps 1,000 military installations, depending on how one defines bases and installations, a military budget of over $800 billion that exceeds the next nine nations combined, and a national security strategy that openly declares that its strategic objective is “Full Spectrum Dominance,” we are supposed to be debating the primary contradiction and principal threat to humanity?
For the African working classes and other colonized and exploited peoples, the “debate” is one that only the comfortable petit-bourgeois, Eurocentric, national chauvinist, social imperialist left engages in. The rest of us do not have that luxury. That is not to say that there are not serious questions that have been produced by the specific geo/political and economic realities of this conjuncture. We say that despite the complexities of the moment, what is consistent is the hegemony of U.S. criminality on a global scale. Instigating a war in Europe, carrying out a terrorist attack on Nord Stream pipelines, antagonizing the Chinese on Taiwan and engaging in the reckless talk of winning a nuclear war reflect the dangerous psychopathology of decision makers in the U.S. that make them a threat to everyone.
As we come off a National Day of Action Against Police Terror in the settler-colonial state of the U.S., conscious Africans understand our relationship to the colonial state domestically and abroad. We understand that the war being waged against the Palestinians, the subversion against the revolutionary nations of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, Cop City in Atlanta and the militarization of the domestic army known as the police, the strengthening of AFRICOM, the proxy war in Ukraine, are all part of the commitment to Full Spectrum Dominance. We are clear.
This is what we are reminded of on this anniversary of the U.S. war against the people of Iraq. As we said in the Black Alliance for Peace when the second stage of the manufactured war in Ukraine that began in 2014 was launched last February, to understand Ukraine we should de-center Ukraine and focus on the geo-strategic interests of imperialism, U.S. and Western imperialism!
Can this approach be the basis of a possible strategic and tactical unity between the Anti-war peace movement and the anti-imperialist movement? Perhaps. We say the Black radical peace tradition offers a way.
“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the achievement by popular struggle and self-defense of a world liberated from the interlocking issues of global conflict, nuclear armament and proliferation, unjust war, and subversion through the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.”
Today, that is still the call and must be the commitment. We want peace, but we understand there will be no peace without justice and justice means altering the international balance of forces away from the hegemony of the European colonial/imperialist states and their ruling classes.
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Ajamu Baraka is Chairman of the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace and an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S. based United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) and the Steering Committee of the Black is Back Coalition.
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
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***
In conflicts, I know, neither side can be trusted. Both sides twist and distort, magnify and minimize in support of their cause. But the daily, almost hourly pictures from Ukraine—of hardship, suffering, of death, destruction and flight, all too genuine, cause me the despair I have always felt on hearing—and worse seeing, if only on a screen—any pain inflicted on my fellow human beings, no matter what insignia they wear or flag they honor.
But I must also recoil at the hypocrisy and dishonesty which so often go unnoticed. The propaganda producers who feign despair but seek more conflict, more medals, more billions, always praise a noble cause: freedom, democracy, rule of order, and always warn of despicable enemies; Bolsheviks, anarchists, Stalinists, communist aggressors and, when these are eliminated, terrorism. When that, too, erodes, authoritarianism must serve, or “imperialism” turned upside down. A nasty “villain” is always effective, justly or not, an Iago: Lenin, Stalin, Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Putin.
Is hypocrisy involved? Double standards? Chinese sources, like all others, must be met with caution. But can all the charges in their Foreign Affairs Department memorandum be completely denied?
“The history of the USA is characterized by violence and expansion… After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War…
In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined.
The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries…The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war… massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution… Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the USA in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions.”
Did none of this deserve the opprobrium now directed at Putin? Were any flags of sympathy displayed when the people of Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan were bombed? When drones exploded on hospitals and wedding processions—were there also calls for tribunals against Bush—or Obama?
My despair grew far more intense when I felt the menace of escalating demands, after Leopard tanks, for powerful artillery, fighter planes and boats, and not just to win back Crimea; when I read the editorials insisting on “fighting on to victory,” no matter what it costs, above all to the people of Ukraine. Or when I read the following:
“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”
Adm. Richard’s threat came after the U.S. released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms the U.S. doctrine on first use of nuclear weapons. The review says that the purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to “deter strategic attacks, assure allies and partners, and achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence fails.” What are then the U.S. objectives in Europe, Asia—or Africa and Latin America?
Only a few lonely voices questioned them and their likely cost, but were quickly muzzled. Peace rallies, rarely attracting more than 2-3000 faithful leftists even in Berlin, were mentioned, if at all, superciliously and dismissed as ragged little remnants of the huge rallies of the 1980’s. The media kept up its routine of repeated scenes of death, flight and destruction in Ukraine (not in Yemen), combined with rousing calls for more and deadlier instruments of war—until Ukraine was fully restored and Putin defeated, humbled, possibly deposed and preferably tried and sentenced.
How then, could I find any cause for joy, any reason to smile?
Almost surprisingly, two of the best-known women in Germany overcame past differences and joined hands. Alice Schwarzer, now 80, had once, with her magazine “Emma,” been the main founder and expounder of the women’s rights movement in West Germany, including abortion rights, but had later drifted politically rightwards. Sahra Wagenknecht, 52, with an East German background, was alongside party founder Gregor Gysi the most prominent, media-wise and popular spokesperson of the LINKE, the Left, a truly brilliant orator, but who has been disavowed by most of the present reformist leaders of her party, with some of them even demanding her ouster.
This unusual duo joined to publish a manifesto calling for a cease-fire in Ukraine and urging—not tanks and armaments for the Zelenskiy government in Kyiv but pressure on both sides for peace negotiations. It warned of the consequences of more weapons—and more active participation by Germany, basically in the wake of Washington.
But what could these two women achieve against such high tidal waves? Their position, in today’s Germany, was considered purest heresy, which must quickly be exorcized.
Suddenly, the witch-doctors found this far tougher than expected—after 69 prominent Germans signed the manifesto, people originally from all the parties, popular, respected people: a former female church leader, singers, actors, the son of one-time Chancellor Willy Brandt. And then the numbers of signers grew, and grew, and grew! 50,000, 100,000—by Saturday it had topped 650,000 and was aiming at a million!
The alarm bells rose to a deafening cacophony! The media, the politicians, sadly including many of the LINKE, they all joined in a wild attack against the manifesto and especially against Sahra.
Their attempts to disprove its arguments were less and less convincing. Could more weapons really bring Russia to its knees, forcing it to give up claims it deemed necessary to its independence—if not its survival, like keeping NATO missiles at least a minimal distance from Moscow’s doorsteps and preserving safe, unmonitored warm-water Black Sea routes to the world’s oceans? Or might bigger attacks by Ukraine-USA lead instead to desperation? All such questions are publicly taboo—like questions about who really blasted the German-Russian underwater gas pipelines, who was really throwing dangerous missiles at atomic energy plants controlled by Russian troops, or what the USA-Ukrainian biological laboratories were really researching. There were too many such questions to permit discussion; it was like opening Pandora’s box. The lid must be kept sealed!
Common lid sealers were the usual accusations of Putin-endearment, of blindness to death and destruction, denial of Kyiv’s right to territorial sovereignty and free choice of its alignments, awarding Putin territorial seizures without a fight. But none of this applied; the Manifesto made no demands on anyone—except to sit down and end the slaughter before it exploded further and irreparably.
When Sahra and Alice called for a big rally in Berlin on February 25th the fears multiplied. A counter-demonstration was organized for the 24th, the anniversary of open warfare, mostly with Ukrainians (66,000 now live in Berlin) but aimed at convincing Germans who sympathize with Ukraine and its suffering to reject any blame on the preceding NATO provocation and blame Putin alone. One effort was to transport a wrecked Russian tank to a spot next to the Russian embassy, with its big gun aimed directly at its entrance.
But the main argument against Sahra and Alice stressed the support by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose anti-European Union, pro-Russian positioning led its leaders to add their names to the manifesto and announce their intention to join the peace rally. Sahra answered: “We can have nothing to do with fascists or racists, we must not permit them to raise their banners or posters. But we simply do not wish, nor or we able to exclude anyone from singly signing or attending whose heart is honestly devoted toward ending further bloodshed—or worse.”
Many in eastern Germany vote for the AfD because of anger and disappointment at hardships caused by unification and their treatment as second-class citizens. Too many are fooled into blaming “privileged foreigners.” Many are just against “those on top,” somewhat like many simpler Trump voters, they want (affordable) butter not guns, therefore distrust further involvement in the Ukraine war. Since some LINKE leaders gratefully joined in state governments they were seen, not always falsely, as “part of the Establishment,” so many LINKE voters switched to the AfD or didn’t vote at all. Such support is certainly embarrassing to Sahra and Alice, but they hope a Manifesto for Peace movement can become a healthy antidote to fascists and their deceitful initiatives.
Yet it was this issue which was played upon by both media and politicians—trying to depict the Manifesto movement as a unity: right-wing nationalists with leftist “Putin-lovers”. This method of attack has been utilized in the past to split and wreck attempts at building a broad peace movement. One might suspect that powerful groups grasp this function of the far right all too well and apply it whenever required.
Would such constant media hammering succeed? Would this peace rally end up as a pathetic flop, with a meager crowd like the Zelenskiy-friendly Ukrainian rally the evening before? Waiting for the subway, I feared to find, once again, that same small bunch of the faithful, many of them old friends.
And what did I find? On this icy-cold Saturday afternoon, with snowflakes beginning to flutter down, the subway was jammed! There was hardly room to even stand properly! And at the next station more tried to push into the car! Where were they all going?
There was no doubt about it! When I arrived at the station near the Brandenburg Gate, the site of the rally, thousands and thousands climbed out of the jammed cars, ascended and merged into the crowded streets, all headed in one direction! I too moved through the famous arch towards the big speakers’ stage—but never got to a place where I could see them. I had just barely enough room to squeeze in to a free spot. And only later did I learn from my sons that the crowd had been huge on all sides, jammed, chilly, but friendly, polite, in wonderfully high spirits at the giant turn-out, and determined in their applause, cheers, occasional boos (when war-hungry politicians were named), with occasional shouts like “No Weapons! Negotiations!”- “Make Peace not War”.
Image: Attack on Kremenchuk Mall (Source: Sky News)
Many, perhaps most of those present, on or below the speakers’ stage, deplored and condemned the Russian invasion. But many also insisted that Kyiv’s big planned attack on the Donbas, the numerous maneuvers all around Russian ports and borders, a secret CIA intensive training program in 2015 for elite Ukrainian special operations forces, had made it unavoidable, that these were part of a trap—which Russia either fell into or was forced to fall into, as in Afghanistan in 1979.
I, too, knew of an MSNBC report on March 4, saying:
Russia’s Ukraine invasion may have been preventable: The U.S. refused to reconsider Ukraine’s NATO status as Putin threatened war. Experts say that was a huge mistake…The abundance of evidence that NATO was a sustained source of anxiety for Moscow raises the question of whether the United States’ strategic posture was not just imprudent but negligent…Senator Joe Biden knew as far back as 1997 that NATO expansion, which he supported, could eventually lead to a hostile Russian reaction.
Views on the war were far distant from those in the media!
People discussed and debated, but all I spoke to agreed that further conflict would only continue the terrible afflictions for the Ukrainians, could achieve no victories but only create giant dangers—also atomic dangers threatening the entire world.
And the neo-fascists? In media reports afterwards they were very much present, with an interview with one of their leaders somewhere on the periphery. We heard later that a few known far-rightists had indeed shown up with a banner, but a “left-wing Linke” group, at the ready, had quickly covered it over with a bigger anti-war banner and pushed the rightists—non-violently—away from the rally. I saw a few Russian and pro-Russian flags, carried, I think, by Russian-speakers, perhaps adult children of the many Russians who have moved here in recent decades. One of my sons did see a small group with nationalist flags, which could not easily be banned in that giant but always peaceful crowd, but can hardly have reached anywhere near 1%. And as for me, in all the time I spent there, or getting there and back, I saw not one rightist sign, but rather many hundreds carrying peace dove depictions or self-made anti-war slogans, happily ignoring the organizers’ request to carry no signs at all.
As Sahra and Alice commented: the Manifesto, now being signed by additional tens of thousands, and especially the rally, have frightened all those who want to continue the war, who want no negotiations, who are determined, as some say openly, ”to ruin Russia” and unseat anyone like Putin who, love him or hate him, refuses, unlike Yeltsin, to take orders from abroad. Policy-makers in the American seats of power clearly want to prevent even the weak but potentially growing cooperation between Germany with its European allies and Russia or China, which had been supported by some sectors in Germany—but had now been suffocated, with the current near-total domination by those German Herren, now in modern dress, but who recall all too frighteningly the stiffly monocled, heel-clicking warriors of past generations.
Of course, détente between Western Europe, Russia and China could mean fewer billions for U.S. frackers and fuel providers, could cut profits for weapon-makers and other hungry expanders, from Amazon, Coca-Cola and Disney to Facebook, Unilever and the other queen bees in the honeyed hives of the pharmaceutical, movie, herbicide, food and other empires. Above all, the CEOs at Lockheed, Northrup, Raytheon, at Rheinmetall, Exxon Mobil and Chevron could then no longer rub their hands quite so gleefully or buy quite so many yachts, jets or mansions.
In her speech, Sahra reiterated: “We want no German tanks firing at those Russian women and men whose great-grandparents, in millions, were inhumanly slaughtered by the German Wehrmacht.” She condemned as cynical the signing of agreements to provide armaments for years in advance and said that true solidarity meant getting engaged for peace, not war.
Of course Vladimir Putin must also be willing to make compromises, she said, Ukraine must not be turned into a Russian protectorate. But as we have since learned, negotiations were not stymied by the Russian side. Several speakers recalled that Blinken, like his predecessors, had continued to push eastward, rejecting Russian appeals and offers and a final red-line warning in December 2021 to agree on security guarantees for all sides. New revelations by Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel, indicate that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine were moving ahead in March until Boris Johnson from London and his prompters in Washington made clear that an agreement was not desired. Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, though he succeeded in achieving grain shipments, prisoner exchanges and even a safe travel guarantee for Biden’s trip to Kyiv, felt the same outside pressure against further agreement.
Sahra and Alice got cheers when they stressed that agreements are not impossible, but must be fought for—and must be wanted! There is no need for tanks but rather for diplomacy, for a readiness to find compromises. A broad new peace movement is urgently necessary—and this rally must provide an impetus.
The media and the politicians, now more frightened than ever, were unsurprisingly quick, later, to dig up a solitary rightist they could use as Exhibit A, and then to lie about the figures. After the pro-Zelenskiy rally the night before, with about 7,000, they estimated 10,000; in our peace rally they could only count up to the same 10,000 figure, when everyone else saw 30,000, 50,000, perhaps even more. Since too many had taken part who would not swallow such a nonsense figure, TV reporters shame-facedly revised it to 13,000 or, vaguely, “thousands.” These were the least nasty, distorting even insulting examples of the immense efforts—even within a fracturing LINKE—to strangle this baby in its cradle before it emulates Hercules’ swift growth in muscle!
It was in fact the biggest peace rally in many, many years, good cause for them to fear—and for me and so many I have spoken to a source of great, unaccustomed joy! So close can despair and joy occupy one’s heart!
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Victor Grossman, born in NYC, fled McCarthy-era menaces as a young draftee, landed in East Germany where he observed the rise and fall of its German Democratic Republic (GDR). He has described his own life in his autobiography Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), and analyzed the GDR and questions of capitalism and socialism in Germany and the USA, with his provocative conclusions, along with humor, irony and occasional sarcasm in all directions, in A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee (New York: Monthly Review Press). His address is wechsler_grossman [at] yahoo.de (also for a free sub to the Berlin Bulletins sent out by MR Online).
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***
Increasingly, blackmail and direct threat become the main mechanisms in Western foreign policy towards Russia. Recently, Canada’s Foreign Minister said that her country hopes to overthrow the Russian government, suggesting that Canadian intelligence would be planning some kind of maneuver to destabilize Moscow through a regime change operation. The case is further evidence that on the part of NATO’s powers there is no sign of respect in bilateral relations with Moscow.
The threat was made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Mélanie Joly. According to Joly, only “isolating” Russia would not be enough for the West to achieve its goals, which is why she expects something more disabling to be launched against Moscow. Joly believes Russia should be attacked economically, politically, and diplomatically, so that it becomes unable to continue its operation in Ukraine. In this sense, she also hopes that, as a consequence, the Putin government will be overthrown, and he and his allies will be considered guilty of war in the future.
“We’re able to see how much we’re isolating the Russian regime right now — because we need to do so economically, politically and diplomatically — and what are the impacts also on society and how much we’re seeing potential regime change in Russia (…) The goal is definitely… to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account (…) I always make a difference between the regime and the people of a given country, which is fundamental”, she said.
As expected, Canadian animosity was praised by Volodymyr Zelensky who came to media to express his support for Joly’s statement and ensure that Kiev is working in the same direction, seeking to encourage international society to further sanction Russia, especially concerning aluminum and steel – sectors in which Canada recently imposed new sanctions. The goal is to increase coercive measures until Moscow eventually becomes unable to continue fighting.
“We are also working to add new sanctions against Russia (…) Recently, Canada took a significant step by expanding sanctions on imports of Russian aluminum and steel. I thank Canada for this decision – for this signal to the international community”, Zelensky said.
Obviously, the Russian reaction to the Canadian minister’s words were severe. On social networks, Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokespersons commented the following:
“Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly declared regime change in Russia foreign policy goal of Canada… officially (…) Sorry to see the ruling liberal clique having subdued Canada with decadent anti-family, pro-drug & support for Ukrainian Neo-Nazis agenda”, spokespersons published on the Ministry’s official Twitter account.
In the same vein, the Russian Ambassador in Canada responded to the Minister’s words by stating that he was “perplexed” with her speech, and asking for clarification on whether she guides the Canadian embassy in Moscow to work for a regime change in the country.
“Quite perplexed to hear from Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly that her goal is ‘regime change’ in Russia. Is this how she instructs the Canadian Embassy in Moscow? (…) And by the way, what reaction would we expect if, for example, someone in Moscow had said that Russia’s goal is ‘regime change’ in Ottawa?”, he said.
In another occasion, he also emphasized the popularity of Russia’s government, saying:
“What Joly or other decision-makers in Ottawa don’t want to recognize is that the current Russian policy is supported by the ultimate majority of the nation” – the goal apparently was to respond to Joly’s statement that she makes “a difference between the regime and the people of a given country”.
It is not surprising that the Canadian state acts this way. In practice, Canada works much more as a 51st American state than as an independent country. The case shows how relations between Russia and the West are deeply broken, close to a point of no return.
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Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas o Twitter and Telegram.
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***
If the PT’s base was aware of the military-strategic dynamics that forced Russia to commence its special operation as a last resort for defending the integrity of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them there, then they’d be against Lula’s political support of Kiev. It would thus be self-evident to them that he’s placing Brazil on a US-aligned grand strategic trajectory in the New Cold War, which could lead to them publicly pressuring him en masse to change his policy.
Brazilian President Lula proved that his recalibrated worldview in recent years is a lot more closely aligned with the US’ than ever after downplaying the causes of the NATO-Russian proxy war. According to him, “In the 21st century, it shouldn’t be possible that we have war over small things”, which he uttered after declaring that he won’t visit either Russia or Ukraine due to the special operation. This position serves as further proof that he endorses the US’ narrative about the conflict.
Lula previously condemned Russia in a joint statement with Biden during his trip to DC in early February, after which Brazil voted in support of a fiercely anti-Russian UN Resolution demanding Moscow’s full and immediate withdrawal without any preconditions from all the territory that Kiev claims as its own, which includes Crimea. Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzia reacted to the passing of that motion by describing it as pushing a “militaristic Russophobic line”.
Removing any ambiguity about his government’s stance, Lula then called Zelensky shortly afterwards to reaffirm that “Brazil defends Ukraine’s territorial integrity”. Despite these objectively existing and easily verifiable pieces of evidence documenting his political support of Russia’s nemeses in Kiev, an intense information warfare campaign has been waged by forces allied with the ruling party to gaslight its base into falsely thinking that Lula isn’t aligned with the US on this issue or others like Nicaragua.
Elite members of the Workers’ Party (PT) fear that the rank and file might revolt upon becoming aware that their leader is moving Brazil closer to the US-led West’s GoldenBillion than the Sino-Russo Entente or even the GlobalSouth of which it’s apart amidst the impending trifurcation of International Relations. With a view towards preemptively averting the scenario of them publicly pressuring him en masse to change this grand strategic trajectory, they sought to manipulate their perceptions about Lula’s policies.
This explains the intense information warfare campaign that’s being waged against their minds at this pivotal point in the global systemic transition, which he himself is directly participating in upon downplaying the causes of the NATO-Russian proxy war in an attempt to justify his political support of Kiev. Lula wants his supporters to discount the evidence before their eyes and ears in favor of agreeing with the US’ narrative that Russia supposedly “invaded” Ukraine for purely “imperialistic” purposes.
If the PT’s base was aware of the military-strategic dynamics that forced Russia to commence its special operation as a last resort for defending the integrity of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them there, then they’d be against his political support of Kiev. It would thus be self-evident to them that Lula is placing Brazil on a US-aligned grand strategic trajectory in the New Cold War, which could lead to them publicly pressuring him en masse to change his policy.
The following analyses explain the larger context within which the special operation is being waged:
A summary of the abovementioned insight will now follow for the reader’s convenience.
In brief, the US spent the preceding eight years between its successful Color Revolution in early 2014 and the start of the special operation in 2022 turning Ukraine into an anti-Russian bastion, the purpose of which was to degrade that targeted Great Power’s strategic capabilities to defend itself from the US. This was to be done through a combination of HybridWar means related to Kiev’s support of information warfare- and terrorist-driven separatism as well as conventional ones connected to NATO.
The first half of this policy aimed to destabilize Russia from within through the cultivation of forces that could advance its “Balkanization” while the second intended to eventually employ biological weapons, clandestine NATO bases, and “missile defense” infrastructure to place it in a position of blackmail. The US envisaged forcing Russia into a never-ending series of unilateral concessions that would ultimately result in its geostrategic neutralization and thus facilitate the successful “containment” of China.
This plot to restore its declining unipolar hegemony was to begin with Kiev’s NATO-supported reconquest of Donbass, which threatened to genocide that region’s indigenous Russian population and ethically cleanse the survivors. That sequence of events was foiled by the special operation that was launched after President Putin realized that the West had no interest in discussing his country’s security guarantee requests from December 2021 for politically resolving their security dilemma.
While the US prepared for the possibility of some kinetic response to its support of Kiev’s imminent reconquest of Donbass, American policymakers hadn’t calculated that President Putin would launch a preventive campaign across all of Ukraine to avert the impending scenario of Russia’s strategic neutralization simultaneously with the preemptive one to stop the Donbass genocide. Had it been otherwise, then they’d have retooled the West’s military-industrial complex well in advance.
This major miscalculation explains why the NATO chief admitted last month that his bloc is in a “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia, which wouldn’t be the case if it truly expected a protracted conflict of this scale, nor would Kiev’s forces be faring as badly as the Washington Post just revealed. President Putin regularly reminds everyone of the existential nature of this conflict, which places his decision to commence an interconnected preemptive-preventive campaign into context.
Returning to Lula’s latest remarks that inspired this analysis, there’s no doubt that he’s well aware of these military-strategic dynamics that forced President Putin’s hand, which thus means that he’s deliberately downplaying them in order to manipulate his base. He can’t claim ignorance after over a year of Russia explaining this at length, hence why it can now confidently be concluded that Lula politically aligned Brazil with the US in the most geostrategically significant conflict since World War II.
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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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***
If 2022 was the year of popular uprisings in Pakistan, raising hope for protesters fed up with a thoroughly corrupt and repressive civil-military regime, 2023 seems to be the year when the government is trying every dirty trick in the book to kill that hope.
After a US-backed regime-change operation removed elected Prime Minister Imran Khan from power in April 2022, Pakistan witnessed an unprecedented phenomenon in the nation’s history: For the first time, a civilian politician who was ousted from power didn’t simply end up in the dustbin of history, alongside interchangeable corrupt politicians who for decades played musical chairs, competing to plunder the country.
On the contrary, what occurred were massive outpourings of support for Khan and widespread opposition to the ancien régime put in power by Washington’s mercenaries in the military high command.
The enormous popular rejection of the current “imported government”, as Khan calls it, has made Pakistan’s elites increasingly desperate. They want him eliminated.
Assassination was their first method of choice – but they fumbled. At a rally in November, a gunman shot Khan in the leg, injuring but failing to kill him.
In the meantime, Plan B is being implemented: Arrest Khan on bogus charges and disqualify him from politics forever.
The former prime minister has been relentlessly holding peaceful demonstrations, demanding elections. The government knows that Khan would easily win, so it wants to prevent him from running.
A Gallup poll in March found that Khan is by far the most popular politician in Pakistan, with a 61% approval rating, compared to 37% disapproval.
The current, unelected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has the complete opposite: a 32% approval rating, compared to 65% disapproval.
The figures are clear: Nearly two-thirds of Pakistanis support Khan and oppose the unelected government.
Nearly 61 per cent of Pakistanis have a "positive impression" of PTI chief Imran Khan, while just 36 per cent do so of PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif and foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardarihttps://t.co/6j41OU5WZu
Pakistan’s “imported government” orders the arrest of Imran Khan
Faced with its deep unpopularity, on March 8, Pakistan’s regime initiated Plan B.
Khan was leading a peaceful protest – one of the countless rallies he has organized since the April 2022 regime-change operation.
This time, massive state security forces went on a rampage and tried to arrest Khan. But they could not do it. Standing between them and Khan were tens of thousands of his supporters.
The only way to get to Khan would have been a bloodbath. This was avoided – although one Khan supporter was killed.
We are heartbroken & outraged that PTI political worker Ali Bilal (Zille Shah), a person with disability, was murdered by the state in Lahore yesterday. He was only exercising his right to peaceful assembly (which he often turned festive) & 🗣 protest! #StopThisFascismpic.twitter.com/3AutOvTW32
— Aurat March – عورت مارچ (@AuratMarchKHI) March 8, 2023
Then again, on March 13, Khan called for a rally in the city considered to be the heart of Pakistan: Lahore.
Despite the entire state security machinery targeting him and his supporters, the rally in Lahore was one of the biggest the city has seen.
Khan and the protesters marched confidently and peacefully in every corner of the city, where they seemed unstoppable, greeted with joy by ordinary Pakistanis of all walks of life.
Pakistan's former PM Imran Khan stages a rally with thousands of supporters in Lahore as courts in Islamabad issue two more arrest warrants against him pic.twitter.com/fTKg2OW4t2
The former prime minister was undeterred, committed to holding demonstrations in the provinces of the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), in the lead-up to what he hopes will be national elections.
In response, thousands of supporters gathered at Khan’s home, protecting him.
Current situation of Zaman Park Lahore now at 10:15pm. Massive rallies across the country are gathering there for the protection of Imran Khan.#زمان_پارک_پہنچوpic.twitter.com/Lyx6X0JdZO
Khan’s determination to relentlessly participate in mass mobilizations has led the regime to try to ban him from public life.
Even Western organizations that are often biased, such as Amnesty International, have condemned the unelected Pakistani government’s authoritarian tactics, which have included prohibiting all speeches and rallies by Khan, as well arresting people who criticize the military on Twitter.
Authorities in Pakistan has placed a blanket ban on protests in Lahore. The authorities have used a draconian colonial-era law to crush dissent hours before several protests, including the #AuratMarch.#IWD2023 📢https://t.co/G4Z6Lz7Ujt
There are two main factors preventing an all-out assault to arrest Khan: the wrath of the population that would ensue, and fear that significant ranks within the armed forces would revolt and turn their guns on their superiors, à la Vietnam.
Indeed, it has been because of Khan’s popularity not just among ordinary Pakistani civilians but within the military ranks as well that the former prime minister has survived so far.
Khan’s popularity among some parts of the army is easy to explain. Rank-and-file soldiers and the majority of the junior and mid-rank officer corps are not keen on Washington dictating a War on Terror 2.0. They have always appreciated Khan’s principled opposition, since day one, to any military solution to the militancy in Afghanistan and the northwest of Pakistan.
Throughout 2022, Khan’s political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, the “Movement for Justice”), exponentially rose in popularity, in contrast to the all-too-visible political shenanigans of the coalition of feudal family dynasties and other corrupt forces in power.
If it is true that Khan mismanaged both political and economic governance while in power, then the current lot has engendered a virtual implosion and collapse in the country.
Khan challenges Pakistan’s pro-Western elites
It is difficult to overstate how incensed ordinary Pakistanis are with the political mafias, significant sections of the military top brass, and the chief mafia don: Washington.
One of the most disturbing aspects of what has been happening is the virtual connivance of liberal-left forces and the Pakistani deep state in attempting to eliminate Khan from the Pakistani political scene.
The visceral hatred of Khan by Pakistan’s comprador elites cannot be explained by simply having differences with Khan on various policies – something that Khan’s own critical supporters have as well.
No, for this elite class of the liberal, pro-Western Pakistani intelligentsia, Khan has committed the ultimate crime: socio-cultural class betrayal.
Khan lived abroad for so long during his impressive cricket career. He studied at Oxford, and speaks perfect English. Thus Pakistan’s Westoxicated elites thought that Khan would behave just like them.
Instead, Khan has rejected the condescending attitude that the country’s Western-educated elites show toward ordinary Pakistanis.
Khan has mobilized tens of millions because of his sincerity to reimagine a new Pakistan, prioritizing social justice and an independent foreign policy.
The fact that one small, sectarian leftist party or the other is not being given the credit of leading the revolt against the unpopular regime has made them neurotically envious of Khan.
It is clear for all to see: Khan and the critical supporters both in and outside of his political party have become the most dangerous threat to Pakistan’s status quo.
That is why we have seen very unusual and fast-paced meetings between US officials and Pakistan’s generals and regime officials: Washington’s “friends again”.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of relations between the U.S. and 🇵🇰 Pakistan. It was my pleasure to host Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, to the Pentagon where we discussed our long-standing defense partnership and areas of mutual interest. pic.twitter.com/ptiZDiqc8I
— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) October 5, 2022
Elimination of Khan is absolutely necessary for the troika of these power centers: local comprador political elites, the military high command, and Washington.
Why? Because they know that Khan and his party will sweep any elections that are held.
US encourages Pakistan to “continue working with the IMF”
In the meantime, Pakistan is enduring a deep economic crisis. The country has nearly exhausted its foreign exchange reserves.
The regime is in talks with the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) to save itself from bankruptcy. All of the corresponding policies of austerity and taxing the poor – “structural adjustment” – are to be expected.
CIA officer turned US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a press briefing on March 8 that Washington wants Pakistan to “continue working with the IMF” to impose “reforms that will improve Pakistan’s business environment”, in order to “make Pakistani businesses more attractive and competitive”.
In other words, the US State Department wants Pakistan to double down on neoliberal economic policies, such as lowering wages and cutting social spending.
If hated before, the current “imported government” is now despised more than ever.
Imran Khan’s independent foreign policy angers the mafia don in Washington
Khan’s foreign policy was anathema to Washington.
He refused to recognize apartheid Israel as a legitimate state.
He improved ties with Russia for straightforward reasons of economic necessity (as well as promoting the geostrategic stability in the broader Central Asian region).
At the same time, Khan repeatedly said he desired friendly relations with Washington, proposing that they work together in peacebuilding in Afghanistan and the wider region.
But these other foreign policy aims were utterly unacceptable to the mafia don, which seems to be set on a war path with Beijing (and others).
Pakistan has been a close ally of China since the 1960s. But Islamabad’s intense obsession with pleasing Washington is a flagrant slap in the face of Beijing.
The meetings that top Pakistani military officials, including the powerful Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, have held with officials in Washington and London are not being missed upon by Beijing or Moscow.
Though Pakistan is suffering through some of the worst economic woes in its history – thanks to the robber barons in power – the US still knows that the South Asian nation has one of the most formidable militaries in the world, and is a nuclear-powered country of 230 million.
Washington also knows that it can easily woo the military top brass by reminding them of how only the US and its weapons and fighter jets can allow Pakistan to stay apace with arch-rival India, trying to match its military supremacy in the region.
This is why the US is so keen on Pakistan participating in Joe Biden’s second “Summit for Democracy” in March 2023. (Despite the fact that Pakistan’s current government was not elected, and repeatedly resisted calls for holding a vote.)
As prime minister, Khan respectfully declined the invitation to the first summit in 2021, because he knew exactly what the intention was: A declining empire seeking to muster as many nations as it can to be a part of its “coalition of the willing” against official enemies like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.
According to leaks by Pakistan’s own ambassador to the US (who has a soft spot for Khan), Washington wants to reestablish its old military base in Pakistan, which was closed down in 2011.
The US is also reportedly dictating to Pakistan which militant groups to go after and which ones should be left alone – such as the anti-China East Turkestan independence movement or the ISIS elements giving trouble to Beijing and the Taliban government in Kabul.
Most importantly, Washington wants to compel Islamabad to do everything possible to significantly reduce or halt any progress on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Moreover, Washington and the Persian Gulf monarchies are having a splendid time in convincing the new favorable military-civilian regime in Islamabad to undertake an political 180 that Khan would never agree to: gradually normalizing relations with Tel Aviv.
Nevertheless, what all of these power centers conspiring against Khan overlook is that they are dealing with a different Pakistani population now. The people’s political consciousness has exponentially risen with the ouster of Khan from power.
Hence, whether Khan is assassinated or somehow arrested or disqualified from politics, the powers-that-be might get a rude awakening, and be surprised that they are dealing with a new Pakistan, with or without Khan – one that will have zero tolerance for their venality, corruption, and subordination to Washington.
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Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion and World Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan gives a speech from his home on March 15, with tear gas cannisters that had been fired at protesters by the police trying to arrest him (Source: GER)
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***
China’s rise as a global power has had profound effects on world politics, economics, and security. Its growing influence and strategic interests have led to increasing involvement in the Middle East, a region that is of critical importance to the world’s energy supply and has long been plagued by conflicts and instability. One area where China can play a significant role is as an honest broker between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two of the region’s most powerful countries. China’s brokering a deal between longtime Gulf rivals is a broader sign of a changing global order. During talks in Beijing on Friday, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations and reopen their embassies within two months. The agreement also stipulated affirming “the respect for the sovereignty of states and the non-interference in internal affairs of states”. Iran and Saudi Arabia have a long history of rivalry and tension. The two countries have competing interests and geopolitical ambitions, and their competition has led to numerous proxy conflicts in the region, particularly in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.
The Chinese as an honest broker bring together Saudi Arabia and Iran. On the other hand, the United States’ aim has been to bring Saudis to join with Israel in a military block against Iran. We need to look at who is really trying to create a zone of peace for our time. Incredible that China was able to broker resumption of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Chinese style is to embrace diplomatic and political resolutions to conflict rather than the military one that Americans prefer. The grand entry of China in both diplomatic and strategic terms displaces more than 70 years of American domination in the region. China’s win-win approach to all of its bilateral relationships is the central factor motivating the majority of the nations of Eurasia to welcome China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) project. As opposed to the American engineered destabilization efforts and interventions in the Middle East, China on the other hand desires stability and peaceful cooperation amongst regional powers particularly between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Iran like many countries now has been continuously suffering under American sanctions which attempt to isolate Iran from the international community. Hence, it makes perfect sense why a country like Iran would look East in order to escape the pariah status that Washington wants to give it. KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is acting pragmatically according to realpolitik in its recognition of the obvious changing global geopolitical dynamics. Tehran-Riyadh rivalry has been the cause of deep instability, conflicts and violence in the region and beyond for several decades now. Considering this, sensible minds in Beijing, Tehran and Riyadh foresee a future of common prosperity once these tensions are managed and reduced. Regional countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen that have been horribly affected by the Saudi-Iranian rivalry could now look forward to more peace, stability and prosperity. The geo-sectarianism that has violently consumed the region finally has the potential to be mitigated in favor of geopolitical cooperation. Also, China sees Eurasian Integration through BRI and the Middle Eastern region is the centre of it and which acts as a bridge between Asia and Europe. The US has always wanted complete domination and hegemony of Middle Eastern oil reserves and the military supremacy of the state of Israel.
China’s role as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia can help ease tensions and promote stability in the region. China has traditionally maintained good relations with both countries, and its non-interference policy in the internal affairs of other countries has earned it the trust and respect of many countries in the Middle East. Moreover, China’s economic and strategic interests in the region give it a stake in promoting stability and preventing conflicts. China has also sought to increase economic ties with both countries, particularly through its Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to create a network of infrastructure projects across Eurasia. In some ways, Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia was the culmination of a breakthrough of peace talks that China had been meditating on for some time. This deal was brokered under the guidance of the new superpower of the Middle East, China which is the potential game changer not only in Middle Eastern politics but also globally. The geopolitical ramifications of these new developments for countries like Pakistan can be the improved relations with Iran since historically Pakistan remained firmly within the Saudi camp.
The US is less interested in bringing about peace in the Middle East and more interested in stoking divisions and selling arms to one side and trying to contain the other. Hence, what’s happening actually is the shadow of the US and its footprints in the Middle East is reducing but the footprint of China is expanding. However, the main difference here is that when the US was dominant in the Middle East it was a confrontation between the two most important countries in the region, Saudi Arabia and Iran, while China is interested in bringing about peace in the Middle East. While no one expects all of the disagreements between the Saudis and the Iranian to disappear overnight, this still is a huge step in the pursuit of peaceful and mutually respectful negotiations over long-standing differences. However, the Palestinian question remains as a case study for the both countries to stand against inhumanities and violence committed by the colonial settler Israel.
The clear shift in Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy in terms of more cooperation and commitment with China, Russia and recent engagement with Iran it appears that the divide between the West and the Rest is going to become stronger and deeper. As Martin Jacques predicts in his book “When China Rules the World ” it could quite possibly and dramatically change the rules based international order. Iran and Saudi Arabia can build on this partnership and if they bring peace to Syria, Lebanon and Yemen as a result of this new dialogue then perhaps there is a new dawn in the Middle East but if they just mean they exchange ambassadors and nothing more beyond that then things will be business as usual.
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Aqib Sattar is a Lecturer of Politics and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Policy Studies, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Featured image: Rubble aftermath of a Saudi airstrike on a Yemeni neighborhood in 2015. (Source: Almigdad Mojalli/Voice of America)
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***
In a report covering covid-19 period from March 2020 to March 2021 OXFAM’s research bring home some hard facts that are camouflaged by words & terms. IMF Fiscal consolidation is nothing but austerity upon low-income & middle class populations while IMF reforms means cutting social welfare & subsidies. OXFAM says that these measures which cover taxing, wage bill cuts or freezes, pension cuts, subsidy elimination, cuts to public spending have over period of time brought countries to great difficulty as they have to continue taking loans & paying back taken loans with interest while people suffer consequences of IMF recommendations. OXFAM claims IMF austerity increases income of the wealthiest 10% at the expense of the bottom 80% which include the middle class who face the most burdens.
IMF Consolidation = austerity
IMF reforms = elimination of subsidies/cuts/freezes etc.
How does the wealthiest 10% increase their income.
IMF while recommending to slash state subsidies to the people, also promote privatization & when state entities are privatized while state increases prices/taxes which have to be borne by the poor – the private owners naturally gain more income as they hold most avenues of revenue.
Within 9 months in 2020, 1000 billionaires wealth had increased by $3.9trillion but workers had lost $3.7trillion in labor income. This showed the gap between top 10% & bottom 80% widening.
When the covid-pandemic struck, Governments had no choice but to impose lockdown which impacted every sphere of society. OXFAM says that neglected health, education by the State as a result of IMF agreed initiatives, countries were ill-prepared to deal with the pandemic & their self-sustainence apparatus had been compromised.
According to OXFAM only 1 in 6 countries were spending enough on health, only 1/3 the global workforce had adequate social protection and 1 in 3 workers across 100 countries had no labor protection.
OXFAM accuses IMF of not promoting “people centred just & equal recovery to fight inequality not fuel it”. IMF should encourage governments to increase social spending not cut it. Then only quality of the people improve. OXFAM asks why IMF doesn’t focus on people-centred recovery through policy that redistributes free quality universal – healthcare, education & social protection.
OXFAM says that IMF is well aware of the burden of austerity unevenly distributed across society, globally.
OXFAM says that IMF is also aware that imposing austerity will only worsen the pre-pandemic situation of low income families. IMF loan interest may be cheaper, but look at the cost to the people burdened by IMF conditions.
Why does IMF always targets the poorer segments of society & never the corrupt rich, the corrupt corporates or the corrupt politicians.
Why doesn’t IMF impose wealth tax, capital gains tax, removal of tax exemptions that favor rich, demanding governments tackle illicit financial flows (tax evasion).
OXFAM research covered 1 March 2020 – 15 March 2021
85% IMF’s 107 loans with 85 governments involved austerity demands (as per loan documents of 73 of the 85 countries)
IMF conditions targets low income/middle classes only
IMF imposed VAT introduction/increases on 41 countries
IMF imposed wage bills cuts/wage freezes on 31 countries
IMF imposed subsidy cuts on 11 countries
IMF imposed pension cuts on 6 countries
IMF imposed reduction to public spending on 55 countries
IMF imposed targeted social protection programs on 8 countries (this meant that only a segment was covered while others who were also vulnerable was omitted)
26 governments in Africa & Latin America /Caribbean planned to resume fiscal consolidation in 2020 & 2021as per IMF requirements.
107 IMF loans with 85 countries between 1 March 2020 & 15 March 2021 worth $107billion.
Austerity Measures in IMF Loans During and in the Aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia
Asia and Pacific
Latin America & Caribbean
Europe
When IMF was aware of the impact of covid, why did IMF impose conditions to covid-19 loans while also demanding countries adopt austerity after pandemic?
Why does IMF demand countries that face high deficits & debt to adopt fiscal consolidation (austerity) knowing the dire outcome? IMF’s own research reveals this outcome.
OXFAM refers to 500 organizations issuing a letter to IMF regarding conditions imposed by IMF for pandemic-hit countries. OXFAM says IMF should be promoting redistribution policies to make society more equal & shield people from severe economic hardships, instead of fueling inequality with IMF conditions.
IMF’s argument is that fiscal adjustments(austerity) reduces budget deficits & sovereignt debt. But what has this cost the people who have to face the austerity measures? IMF influences govts through lending, technical assistance & surveillance to adopt austerity measures but the same IMF teams do not offer any solutions when inequality & poverty prevails which developing nations have to face but cannot because IMF will be blowing hot & cold.
IMF forces countries to
Cut wages/freeze wages
Impose consumption taxes (VAT) without taxing rich/corporates
Increase prices of essential goods & services
Cut public spending/ration social welfare
Cut subsidies
Slash pensions
Countries impacted with IMF austerity have seen rise in unemployment, job cuts, youth depression, HIV infections soaring, high suicide rates & a very angry general public. Thus, these IMF austerity are all counter-productive because the middle class & poor have to survive with what they have but are unable to survive because what they have cannot meet the price hikes & tax increases. There is no growth in a country. A country will only witness inequality, anger & social calamity.
Eventually the State has nothing left to tax or gain revenue to even repay debts because IMF forces countries to sell their resources & assets and with people in dire straits without jobs, income & in poverty, how can a government provide relief when it has to pay IMF loans, while taking more loans to live but having no assets to generate income/revenue as these have all been privatized or sold off. When there is no internal growth wagon under the state, the state cannot function. What happens then?
IMF requires countries to scale down on social welfare to its citizens, sudden pandemic situation like covid-19 has shown the adverse effects of neglecting health making people vulnerable & the outcome is nothing countries can be proud of.
OXFAM accuses IMF of contributing to cutting down on a states health investment which affected covid pandemic & highlights the importance of govts supporting social structures. OXFAM criticizes IMF’s proposal of “targeted social assistance programs” as they only cover low-income and excludes middle-income earners who also require assistance as given by universal healthcare.
IMF will refuse to take accountability
Similarly, IMF has also required countries to scale down on improving public sector productivity and this has resulted in a lethargic yet ballooning politicized workforce. The scenario is used by IMF to demand wage cuts/job freezes none of which overall help improve/increase the productivity of a country & impedes the growth apparatus. With job cuts the result is unemployment, social ills, public outrage & social disorder – all of which further impedes growth & every time such happens, governments have no choice but to take more debt which IMF is happy to give by making more demands that ultimately hit the people. IMF loans are only creating, widening the inequality gap.This vicious cycle needs to stop.
OXFAM recommends
IMF helps countries restructure debt & cancels all middle-low-income debt payments owed during pandemic & after pandemic
IMF must work with donors to maximize aid flows & secure balance payments
IMF should encourage & support countries to increase social spending as a permanent measure & create basis for securing quality, universal free public services.
IMF should support countries to create necessary fiscal space through $650b Special Drawing Rights allocation & transfer SDRs from reserve accounts & channeling SDRs from rich countries to middle & low income countries
In addition to the OXFAM critique of IMF, the Boston University Global Development Policy Centre looks at IMF from 2001-2018 & key findings are
IMF has not departed from austerity inspite of 2008/2009 financial crisis
To face less austerity measures, countries have to align to Western European trade/diplomatic goals.
IMF austerity results in increasing income share of top 10% at the expense of bottom 80%
Research reveal that IMF-austerity was not evenly distributed to borrowers or those facing similar economic issues. IMF’s decisions were based on foreign, economic & diplomatic relationships. In short, IMF had no equal stand applied for loans.
IMF austerity specifically targets a nations poorest & the biggest losers are the middle class earners
It is unfortunate that “learned” think tanks & “economists” are busy promoting IMF loans & even IMF conditionalities & they are blind to the ground realities that prevail.
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Shenali D Waduge is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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***
Back in 2021, we had the revelation of emails from the German Interior Ministry which showed that it enlisted scientists to scare the population.
Last year it was revealed that the Covid statistics had been falsified by Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge by inflating the numbers.
And now we have the revelation of over 100,000 WhatsApp messages from former British Health Minister, Matt Hancock. The British “Daily Telegraph” has put them online as “The Lockdown Files”.
From all these revelations, it has been shown time and again that the coronavirus was no more deadly than other cold and flu viruses. As we know from flu and colds, these can be fatal to vulnerable, very old people. For anyone under 80, these viruses are almost never fatal. So it was with Covid-19. It was a common cold virus.
Minister Matt Hancock had a discussion with then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, via WhatsApp about this low mortality rate. He wrote that this was a problem because it meant that vaccination targets would not be met.
The Lockdown Files also show that in addition to the vaccines, other Covid measures were mainly intended to instil fear of the virus into the population.
The revelations in Germany, the Netherlands and now especially in the United Kingdom show that the same Covid policy was deliberately followed in all these countries – policy which had nothing to do with the nature of the coronavirus. The Lockdown Files show that no special measures were needed, given the low mortality of the virus. The British government switched from publishing mortality rates to publishing the number of infections. The entire EU then switched and reported on Covid in the same way.
Pushing through the vaccines and introducing the corresponding digital Covid pass was the real goal. For this, no means were shunned.
Unvaccinated people were not simply portrayed as irresponsible but as anti-social, dangerous enemies of the state. There were threats of incarceration and forced vaccination. Unvaccinated people were fired. People were locked in their homes via curfews. Hospitals and nursing homes prohibited partners and children from visiting their sick spouses or parents, even when they were dying.
From the beginning, there were medical experts who scientifically argued that the imposed measures were futile and warned against the vaccinations.
Doctors who protested were silenced on social media. Doctors who prescribed effective drugs were punished with heavy fines and the revocation of their license.
The Lockdown Files show that the unvaccinated and Covid-critical doctors were right – and that there was absolutely nothing right about government policy.
What also emerges from the Lockdown Files is the involvement of Bill Gates. Matt Hancock literally messages about Bill Gates, “He owes me one.” In other words, Bill Gates owes me one because Hancock had millions of his vaccines injected.
This so-called philanthropist bought shares in Big Pharma for $50 million and after the Covid hype was over-sold those same shares for $500 million.
The contracts with huge sums of money signed by governments with the pharmaceutical multinationals are still not public. The correspondence between Pfizer and EU President Ursula von der Leyen is still secret. The messages between Dutch minister Hugo de Jonge and Prime Minister Mark Rutte about Covid have supposedly been erased.
It looks like the European Commission and the governments of EU member states were as aware of Covid’s low mortality as the British government. Their policies were almost identical, the flawed PCR test was accepted EU-wide, the Digital Covid pass became an international travel document, even the wording was almost identical. Several countries started using the same phrases at the same time: “from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, from house to house, from arm to arm.”
The measures lacked any reasonable ground yet they violated basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. Physical and mental integrity were violated without justification.
There must be government accountability for this in every state. As a Member of the European Parliament, I demand that the European Commission come to Parliament to account for this.
Therefore, I ask the President of the European Parliament urgently to put on the agenda for the next Strasbourg session a debate on the Lockdown Files with Ursula von der Leyen.
We will see whether the European Parliament wants to take up its controlling task or whether it is complicit in the biggest scandal of the century.
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***
I once again find myself in a position where I must comment on the federal NDP’s stance regarding foreign affairs. Only this time, its position on some foreign affairs reverberates in a deplorable reactionary manner in the party’s actions within Canada.
Before I deal with the current situation, I would like to briefly alert the readers of Ethnorama to a time when I felt compelled to take the federal NDP to task over its foreign affairs policies in the past.
Shortly after Jagmeet Singh took over as leader of the NDP in the fall of 2017, I wrote an article entitled: “Open Letter to Jagmeet Singh: NDP’s reactionary foreign policy positions must be changed.” In this article I denounced the NDP’s policies that were totally aligned with US policies to undermine Venezuela, the NDP’s support for Ottawa’s adoption of the Magnitsky Act and sanctions on Russia, its support for the White Helmets in Syria, its partisan support for Israel, its support for the 2014 US-inspired reactionary coup d’état in Ukraine, and other matters. I sent the article to all federal NDP members – without a single response. Moreover, the NDP since then has not changed its position on any of these reactionary policies.
Earlier still, in 2015 I published an article entitled, “Lament for a Party that has lost its way.” As the 2015 election approached, consistent public opinion polls indicated that the NDP was headed to form the government. But then because of plainly stupid reactionary policies, the NDP was dealt a devastating blow, reducing it from the 103 seats it won 2011 to 44 and relegated it once more to third party status. I started my article saying:
“I write this with sadness and dismay. . . the NDP must do some serious soul-searching to find its true raison d’être. From my perspective, it is fundamentally wrong for the party to abandon its basic social democratic principles in a misguided attempt to veer to the centre-right and try to become “electable” as a supposedly non-threatening capitalist party, not much different from the Liberals or the Conservatives.”
I then pointed out that columnist Thomas Walkom commented after the election:
“What is the point of a social democratic party that is afraid of democratic socialism? What is the point of running as faux Liberals when the real Liberals are already there? . . . If a left- wing party’s only chance at power is to move rightward, why bother?”
But enough with the past; let’s take a look at the present. In mid-October Winnipeg MPs Leah Gazan and Daniel Blaikie contacted Ethnorama and stated that they had been instructed by the Ottawa NDP to cancel their advertisements in Ethnorama because of the article they had published by John Ryan on the Ukraine-Russia issue.
There is some confusion about why the federal NDP took such a course of action. Initially, it appears that Ethnorama was informed by Leah Gazan that the Ukrainian Canadian Congress had disapproved of my article and reported this to some federal NDP caucus members. As a result, these two Winnipeg NDP MPs were instructed to withdraw their advertisements in Ethnorama because Ethnorama had the audacity to publish my article.
Confusion then sets in because Leah Gazan now apparently says that the Ukrainian Canadian Congress wasn’t involved in this matter. If that’s the case, who was it that was instrumental in getting these two MPs to withdraw their advertisements from Ethnorama? Was it pro-NATO federal NDP members? If so, based in Ottawa, how did they discover my article in Ethnorama?
As the current Ethnorama editorial states:
“The concern of Ethnorama is not merely the loss of support in ads from these two MPs but rather the fact that the federal NDP would capitulate and succumb to such censorship and infringement on journalistic freedom, and commitment to finding the truth in this military conflict.”
I would like to note that my article had been originally published by Global Research on April 27, then reposted the same day by The Unz Review, and later reposted in two parts in August and September by Ethnorama. In the Unz Review there were 149 comments devoted to my article, with very few who added more to what I had to say.
As with all my publications, this article is fully and properly documented. Despite this, it appears that in my article I revealed information that challenged the views of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. It seems highly likely that this was made known to the federal NDP who then instructed the two Winnipeg MPs to withdraw their advertisements from Ethnorama. The federal NDP did not cite any specific objections to my article, except for where I had it published. For some bizarre reason they wanted to punish Ethnorama for simply re-publishing my article.
In present day Ukraine, all political parties, aside from the party now in power, have been banished and nowhere is there a publication that challenges the party in power. And nowhere is this reported in our media. I pointed this out in my article, and this is probably one of the reasons why this is verboten in the “freedom loving West.”
As for the federal NDP, to its further discredit, it appears highly likely that on the basis of pressure from a politically biased organization, they would “capitulate and succumb to such censorship and infringement on journalistic freedom,” as so eloquently stated in the Ethnorama editorial.
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***
U.S. President Joe Biden, Western politicians and their media partners agree that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked.” The president of the country notorious for its numerous unprovoked wars of aggression called Putin a “criminal” for doing so.
That the war could have any connection to NATO expansion, which led to the deployment of nuclear-capable missiles in Poland and Romania with a flight time of less than 10 minutes to Moscow, is not even remotely addressed.
Neither is the Obama/Biden administration’s push to annex Ukraine into NATO, with a 2,000-kilometer (1,243 miles) shared border with Russia and even more missile bases in the future. If Cuba deployed a single Russian missile, that would be grounds for Washington to go to war against the island; Russia, on the other hand, is expected to be surrounded by countless NATO missiles on its borders and in its vicinity without fighting back.
Russia allowed Germany to reunite peacefully after the West had promised diplomatically not to move NATO an inch to the east. Moreover, in 1999, Western countries had agreed to the principle in the Charter for European Security that “the obligation of each State not to strengthen its security at the expense of the security of other States.”
Russian Limits Ridiculed
The oh-so-trustworthy values West, however, did not give a damn about keeping promises and agreements with Russia. Moscow swallowed the big toad when NATO ballooned into a serious threat on Russia’s borders, not only in Poland and Romania, but for years held unabated to its demand that Georgia and Ukraine not be allowed to become NATO members under any circumstances. Western politicians and media have never taken this Russian “red line” seriously and have even ridiculed it.
Russia is well aware that NATO is not just a self-defense organization, as it claims, but an aggressive war alliance, at least since NATO’s wars of aggression in Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Afghanistan.
It is therefore probably no coincidence that mainstream media consumers never learned that the same Joe Biden, when he was the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, assessed NATO expansion as a dangerous Western provocation of Russia and warned that it would provoke “a vigorous and hostile response from Russia.”
Were you able to read anything about all this in your newspaper or learn about it from your TV channels? Exactly. So you can assume that a well-lubricated senator who wants to become president at least does not stand in the way of the expansionist urge of the all-powerful military-industrial complex and therefore adjusts his opinion: So it was Russia that provoked! Politicians and media loyal to Washington immediately added the reason for the NATO expansion: There is an imperialist tsar in the Kremlin who has turned into a dangerous new Hitler, and that is why a highly armed NATO is needed on as many of Russia’s borders as possible. Truly, the devil in the Kremlin provoked the NATO expansion!
It took 32 years from the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact to the almost complete NATOization of Europe—compare the state of affairs in 1990 with that of 2022, the year of the “unprovoked war of aggression.”
The illustration above shows that in 1990—year 1 after the fall of the Berlin Wall—the Russian-dominated Soviet Union included Ukraine, the Baltic States and several other now independent countries. The Warsaw Pact, an alliance also dominated by Russia, included six states, all of which are also independent today.
And in the chart below, you can see that in 2022—32 years since Germany reunified—all the former Warsaw Pact countries have joined NATO in the meantime. Three countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—have also become NATO members.
Until now, the official and constantly repeated mantra of Washington, its European vassals and media partners has been that Russia was responsible for the crime of a completely “unprovoked” war of aggression, which it started in February 2022. Now NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has corrected the date of the start of the war—confirming what consumers of alternative media have known for years:
“…the war didn’t start in February last year.It started in 2014.” -NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on February 14, 2023
The war began eight years earlier, in 2014, when the democratically elected Yanukovych government in Kyiv was forcibly deposed in a U.S.-backed coup and replaced by an anti-Russian government that subsequently cracked down on Russian minorities.
By the way, it is not entirely coincidental that eight years after the coup in Kyiv, the year of Russia’s “unprovoked” war of aggression, the smoking gun for U.S. involvement in the overthrow of the government in Kyiv was removed from YouTube.
NATO began training and arming Ukrainian forces after the coup. The new, Banderist and Russophobic regime in Kyiv took advantage of the military buildup starting in 2014 and began bombing Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas that same year, causing death and devastation. You could not learn about all this from your newspapers or TV channels either.
Reporting on Ukrainian terrorism in the Donbas is censored
Alina Lipp moved to Donetsk in 2021, a year before Russia invaded Ukraine to live there for a while and find out for herself what was actually happening in the Donbas. At that time, the freelance journalist from Germany was still comparatively unknown.
Germany wanted to punish her for this with three years in prison, although Berlin paradoxically proclaims to defend democracy and thus freedom of speech in Ukraine (nota bene with heavy German weapons, including German tanks rolling against Russia again)! Here is the first part of her new documentary about her time in Donbas. Watch it and form your own opinion about it. In a forthcoming piece I will add more examples.
Valued minorities versus criminally neglected minorities
When it comes to the rights of a minority like LGBTQ, the megaphones of the “values West” loudly demand support. But when it comes to minorities in Ukraine, they are silent. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto lamented on his Facebook page that minority rights, including language rights, of the more than 150,000 ethnic Hungarian Ukrainians have been severely curtailed by the Kyiv regime.
For example, Hungarian-speaking children were denied the right to be taught in their language. Unlike the case of the Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province, where a wave of international protests erupted against what was alleged to be a similar cultural genocide (although Uyghur children are taught in both Uyghur and Mandarin), there has, of course, been no outcry here.
In addition, at least 19 million Russian-language books were taken out of circulation, denying the Russian-speaking minority access to literature in their native language. NBC correspondent Richard Engel witnessed the burning of Russian-language books at a checkpoint in Kyiv, including, for example, the war-important book Fire Resistance of Burning Structures.
The political party, which had come in first behind Zelensky in the presidential election, was banned by the latter along with other opposition parties representing mainly Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Critical media, especially those close to minorities, have also been banned or put on a state leash.
Several Russian-speaking Ukrainians, including a democratically elected former president, have had their Ukrainian citizenship revoked, and others have had their property confiscated. The list is not exhaustive, as the Kyiv regime is in the process of eliminating as much “Russian influence” as possible. It seems to want to fulfill the wish of its national hero, Nazi Bandera, who is buried in Germany, to create a “pure” Ukraine.
Was Russia provoked into invading Ukraine?
NATO’s claim that “Russia wants to conquer Europe” to justify its omnipresence in Europe is nonsensical. Russia precisely doesnot want to trigger Article 5 (mutual assistance clause in case of attack) of the NATO treaty: First, it invaded Ukrainebefore Ukraine could officially join NATO to militarily resolve the Donbas issue—where the majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians live, threatened by the Russophobic Kyiv regime.
The West and Kyiv had not been ready for a diplomatic solution before; while Russia was accused by Western politicians and media of not wanting to comply with the Minsk agreements to resolve the conflict in the Donbas, the fact is that, according to main protagonistsAngela Merkel, François Hollande, Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky, these agreements were not meant to be complied with at all, but only had the purpose of buying time so that the Ukrainian Army could be rearmed by NATO and prepared for war with Russia. And secondly, precisely because of NATO Article 5, one can assume that Russia does not want to and will not intentionally invade a NATO country.
To answer the question of whether Russia felt provoked to invade, one must consider the situation before the actual invasion, which was as follows: By mid-February 2022, the civil war waged by Kyiv in an inhumane manner—with aircraft, artillery and tanks—against the Russian-speaking civilian population in eastern Ukraine had resulted in more than 13,000 deaths, about a million people forced to flee, and countless destroyed towns and villages.
No concession could be expected from a Ukraine equipped with state-of-the-art U.S. weapons in the Donbas autonomy efforts; instead, there was Zelensky’s threat toward Russia to acquire nuclear weapons. The West’s refusal to negotiate legitimate security guarantees for Russia and the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine also played a role in Russia’s calculations.
And despite the genocide caused by years of bombardment of Russian-speaking civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk by the Ukrainian Army, irregular volunteer units, and the “fascists who overran the country” (Jerusalem Post), the Western-dominated UN Security Council has not intervened—even though it was obligated to do so under the following paragraph 6 of the International Criminal Code a.k.a “Völkerstrafgesetzbuch”:
“Whoever, with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group as such, kills a member of the group, inflicts serious bodily or mental harm on a member of the group, particularly of the kind specified in section 226 of the Criminal Code, places the group in conditions of life likely to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part … shall be punished by life imprisonment.”
In his book “Ausnahme Zustand: Geopolitische Einsichten und Analysen unter Berücksichtigung des Ukraine-Konflikts” (State of Emergency: Geopolitical Insights and Analyses Taking the Ukraine Conflict into Account), German lawyer Wolfgang Bittner explains that Russia can invoke its Responsibility to Protect (“R2P”) vis-à-vis the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine—a generally recognized requirement under international law to prevent serious human rights violations. R2P, however, is a problematic doctrine that was originally introduced into international law by the United States and NATO—primarily to justify the war of aggression against Yugoslavia.
Whether provoked or unprovoked—one war is not enough!
However, NATO expansion in Eastern and Northern Europe is not the end of the story. Now this war-time alliance is working hard to expand in Asia as well, because a rising China is perceived as a threat to U.S. world domination.
So China is not only being subjected to a fierce Washington-led economic and propaganda war to contain the new “yellow peril.” Western armies, which together already spend many times more on “defense” than China, are now to be upgraded even more massively. And if the money is not enough, one can always cut the budgets for education, research, health, social services, and infrastructure and incur more debt.
It is not surprising that the media do not call attention to the fact that China is clearly acting defensively in response to these aggressions, while the United States is acting aggressively. The following chart shows how tightly the United States has encircled China, not the other way around:
If Beijing suddenly started acting as Western politicians and media accuse it of doing or wanting to do, China’s behavior would resemble that of the United States in some ways: Chinese warships would have to participate in the same aggressive “freedom of navigation” exercises that U.S. warships frequently carry out in waters close to China to Beijing’s dismay, for instance, in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and off the coasts of California and Hawaii.
A network of military bases that the United States has built up around China and is still expanding would need to be replicated by China in Central and South America. The American empire, which has more than 800 military installations worldwide, indeed seems to be expanding militarily without end: In the Philippines, for example, four new American military bases are currently being built, targeting China, as shown in the chart below:
How real is the “China threat” conjured up in the U.S. and echoed in Europe?
Allow me a brief digression here: The actual name of China is Zhongguo (中国), which means Middle Kingdom. It dates back to a time when its citizens prided themselves on being the most civilized nation in their own universe, where the territory they controlled was at the center of a world surrounded by less developed foreign cultures and alien civilizations.
The fact that China is now preparing to re-emerge as the leading economic power, and this after a century of humiliation by today’s G7 countries in the 19th and 20th centuries and decades of internal turmoil, is frightening in the West, especially since it comes from a foreign culture that is capable of generating fear. After all, what one does not know, does not understand and cannot assess is often perceived as threatening.
The goal of the Chinese Communist Party is not to turn the world into a “communist paradise,” not even its own country, but to promote the renewal of the country. Chinese politicians speak of the “Chinese dream,” by which they mean national renewal and renaissance (i.e., not communism). The party, which can be described as patriotic or perhaps nationalist rather than communist, and which merely derives its claim to sole representation and leadership for the country’s modernization from Marxism, also advocates the millennia-old concept of tianxia (“all under one heaven”). This is understood to mean an inclusive world with harmony for all. To put it casually, “We leave you in peace, and you leave us in peace.” That is why the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries is so important to them.
So the Chinese do not want to conquer the world. If they had wanted to, they could have done it with ease in the 13th, 14th or 15th centuries. They had the chance when they were the undisputed and only economic superpower. At that time, when China was far superior to other countries.
Chinese Admiral Zheng He led the world’s largest and most sophisticated fleet (with 317 ships and 27,800 sailors) on several excursions from China to Kenya, Somalia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Instead of pursuing a gunboat policy, the Chinese wanted to trade. Unlike the Europeans, they did not take the opportunity to conquer and subjugate other countries because they simply had no interest in doing so.
It is no different today: Their goal is to regain their historic top position in the world in a peaceful, stable international order (in peaceful coexistence with other powers). Stability is the key to realizing their dream. This is where the U.S., a fundamentally unpeaceful empire, pulls the lever and creates the instability that the Chinese so fear, through decoupling, deglobalization, or tensions in Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula.
The Chinese are not trying to convert us to their model. Unlike the Americans, they lack a sense of mission and proselytizing spirit, and besides, the Chinese system would be unsuitable for export because it is so specific and inextricably interwoven with the country’s millennia-old tradition and culture.
It was the U.S. and the rest of the self-proclaimed “value-oriented West” that tried for a long time to get the Chinese to adopt their ruthless version of capitalism and move them away from their social model of state-controlled capitalism (pioneering planning goals and research investment, breaking up and banning cartels and monopolies and ensuring fair competition, requiring the rich to pay their fair share of taxes to reduce social inequalities, etc.).
But why would the Chinese have allowed themselves to be talked out of a model of success that enabled China to achieve in 30 years a level of development (including the liberation of 800 million of its citizens from poverty) that took the West 200 years? The West also ignores the fact that the thoroughly pragmatic Chinese government uses the market as a competitive tool to drive innovation and modernization, and ultimately to achieve the Chinese dream.
Unlike politicians, scientists and journalists of the “value West,” they are not ideologues, but pragmatists with a strong sense of reality. The joy of experimentation and the many breathtaking changes that are taking place every day throughout the country are proof of this.
Once again, the Chinese are not missionaries, they do not feel called to be world policemen, and they have no desire for expansion. In this respect, they are fundamentally different from the Americans. When American politicians, academics, media and their European parrots waffle about the imperialist danger and the threat from China, it is merely an expression of their ignorance and projection. It is no wonder that imperialism and colonialism are concepts coined and lived by the West, not by Chinese.
Taiwan—America’s new conflict case à la Ukraine?
After Ukraine, the next pawn is Taiwan; at least that seems to be the goal. Can China prevent a new century of humiliation—including a war that will be more brutal than the Opium Wars—by the West?
Taiwan is, in a sense, the “Ukrainian” pretext for a possible direct or proxy war with China. Taiwan’s ruling party, which in Zelensky fashion pandered to U.S. interests and sought to arm the island with American weapons against China, suffered a resounding defeat in the last election, which was reported rather casually, if at all, in the Western media.
The election winner, the opposition Kuomintang, advocates rapprochement with China, which must displease the war hawks in Washington.
The Taiwanese president then resigned from her post as leader of the ruling party [though she remained as Taiwanese President]. Just a few months earlier, she had received Nancy Pelosi and many other anti-China and warmongering politicians from Western countries with great pomp.
Recently, however, she meekly announced that war with China was “not an option”—a bitter disappointment not only for the Western war industry but also for its political and media groupies who are in favor and determined to “take a stand against China.”
Well, at least they are left with the hope that the CIA will discreetly solve this vexing political problem on the unreliable island for the belligerent West.
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Felix Abt is the author of “A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom” and of “A Land of Prison Camps, Starving Slaves and Nuclear Bombs?” He can be reached via his Twitter account.
Featured image: A scene like something out of a third-rate mafia movie: producer, screenwriter and director (left) leaves this Orthodox church in Kyiv with his leading actor (right)—neither is Orthodox—taking leisurely steps, while sirens wail warning of an imminent Russian bombing. Although Moscow was briefed by Washington before this visit to avoid a dangerous incident, The Independent, representing the bellicose mainstream media, enthusiastically cheered: “Biden defies safety warnings and air raid sirens for moment of history in Kyiv.” [Source: img.buzzfeed.com]
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“I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”—Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975
If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile.
This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts.
Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all, a warning issued in response to the threat posed by Nazi Germany’s fascist regime, still applies.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
This particular slippery slope has to do with the government’s use of geofence technology, which uses cell phone location data to identify people who are in a particular area at any given time.
First, police began using geofence warrants to carry out dragnet sweeps of individuals near a crime scene.
If we’ve already reached the point where people praying and gathering on church grounds merits this level of government scrutiny and sanctions, we’re not too far from free-falling into a total surveillance state.
Dragnet geofence surveillance sweeps can and eventually will be used to target as a suspect every person in any given place at any given time and sweep them up into a never-ending virtual line-up in the hopes of matching a criminal to every crime.
There really can be no overstating the danger.
The government’s efforts to round up those who took part in the Jan. 6 Capitol protests provided a glimpse of exactly how vulnerable we all are to the menace of a surveillance state that aspires to a God-like awareness of our lives.
Relying on selfies, social media posts, location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing, government agents compiled a massive data trove on anyone and everyone who may have been anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Included in that data roundup were individuals who may have had nothing to do with the protests but whose cell phone location data identified them as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You didn’t even have to be involved in the Capitol protests to qualify for a visit from the FBI: investigators reportedly tracked—and questioned—anyone whose cell phones connected to wi-fi or pinged cell phone towers near the Capitol.
One man, who had gone out for a walk with his daughters only to end up stranded near the Capitol crowds, actually had FBI agents show up at his door days later. Using Google Maps, agents were able to pinpoint exactly where they were standing and for how long.
The massive amount of surveillance data available to the government is staggering.
In such a surveillance ecosystem, we’re all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted.
Forget about being innocent until proven guilty.
Although the Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty, the government has turned that fundamental assurance of due process on its head.
Now, thanks to the digital trails and digital footprints we all leave behind, you start off guilty and have to prove your innocence.
In an age of overcriminalization, when the average American unknowingly commits at least three crimes a day, there is no one who would be spared.
The ramifications of empowering the government to sidestep fundamental due process safeguards are so chilling and so far-reaching as to put a target on the back of anyone who happens to be in the same place where a crime takes place.
“To think that the information will be used against individuals only if they’ve broken the law is naïve; such data is collected and remains vulnerable to use and abuse whether people gather in support of an insurrection or they justly protest police violence… This collection will only grow more sophisticated… It gets easier by the day… it does not discriminate. It harvests from the phones of MAGA rioters, police officers, lawmakers and passers-by. There is no evidence, from the past or current day, that the power this data collection offers will be used only to good ends. There is no evidence that if we allow it to continue to happen, the country will be safer or fairer.”
Saint or sinner, it doesn’t matter because we’re all being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.
Government officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., issued a shelter-in-place order in March 2020, dictating whom residents could see, where they could go, what they could do, and under what circumstances.
County officials imposed even harsher restrictions on churches, accompanied by the threat of crippling fines for those that did not comply with the lockdown orders.
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that similar restrictions unconstitutionally singled out houses of worship for especially harsh treatment and “struck “at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty,” county officials have sought to collect millions of dollars in fines levied against churches, including Calvary Chapel, for violating the county’s mandates.
At a minimum, the use of geofence surveillance to monitor church attendees constitutes an egregious violation of the churchgoers’ Fourth Amendment rights and an attempt to undermine protected First Amendment activities relating to the freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble.
Still, the government’s use of geofence surveillance goes way beyond its impact on church members and anyone in the vicinity of the Jan. 6 protests.
The ramifications for all of us are far-reaching.
Mass surveillance has been shown to chill lawful First Amendment activities, and historically has been used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, and harass marginalized communities.
A study conducted by Roger Clarke, the famed Australian specialist in data surveillance and privacy, indicates that the costs resulting from the erosion of personal privacy are so significant that they essentially threaten the very foundation of a democratic society.
A prevailing climate of suspicion and adversarial relationships
Inequitable application of the law
Stultification of originality
Weakening of society’s moral fiber and cohesion
Repressive potential for a totalitarian government
Blacklisting
Ex-ante discrimination and guilt prediction
Inversion of the onus of proof.
In other words, the chilling effects of pervasive surveillance give rise to a constant, justifiable fear in even the most compliant, law-abiding citizen.
Of course, that’s the point.
The government wants us muzzled, complacent and compliant.
So far, it’s working.
Americans are increasingly self-censoring and marching in lockstep with the government’s (and corporate America’s) dictates, whether out of fear or indoctrination, or a combination.
No matter how the courts rule, however, one thing is clear: these dragnet geofence searches are well on their way to becoming the eyes and ears of a police state that views each and every one of us as a potential suspect, terrorist and lawbreaker.
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***
Kristina Berster got out of the brown Mercury and began to say her goodbyes. It wasn’t what she’d hoped for, but she thanked them anyway for bringing her this far. Mostly, she spoke to Ray, who looked pretty gloomy in the back seat.
“Are you sure about this?” he grumbled. He doubted that the idea would work. But indecision was a hopeful sign. After previous refusals, the Americans might wait for her on the other side of the border after all, and then drive her to Plattsburgh.
She would have to be shrewd. The driver didn’t know much about the real situation, only that she wanted to enter the US secretly — in other words, illegally — and needed a lift to Noyan, near the border, to check things out. Ray’s girlfriend Maria probably knew more, and she was nervous. She’d helped rent a room at the Noyan Inn. But now she wanted to move on to sightseeing. And she wasn’t at all eager to take unnecessary risks for a stranger.
Persuading Ray, appealing to his sense of chivalry, seemed like a viable strategy. It was certainly preferable to hitchhiking at night to someplace she had never seen.
Or maybe guilt would work. “The least you can do is wait on the US side,” she pleaded, and grabbed the roadmap she had been using to direct the driver, Michael, since they left Montreal. She pointed to a spot on the US side where, according to some friends back in France, there was a gas station called the Alburg Truck Stop. They could pick her up there after she made her way around the Customs station.
“It’s crazy, not a good plan,” said Ray. She had made up her mind, but he continued to discourage her. He wasn’t even sure why she was running. What had provoked such a desperate move? In the end, however, he knew it was her decision and the only humane thing was to try to make sure she made it safely.
She’d decided. No more refusals. And no more time to argue. Her Canadian visa ran out in August and there was no telling when she could get a ride this far again. Better to try now. It was as good as any other option. There was a good chance that Ray and the others would wait for her.
“Thank you for helping,” she said, giving Maria a kiss. Then the car headed back as she watched from the roadside, surrounded by trees and pastures. Her route was in the opposite direction. To her right, sometimes through the branches, she could see the setting sun. It was cloudy, interrupting an orange glimmer of the puddles in her path. She didn’t notice much, instead reviewing the choices she had made since flying from Lyon to Mirabel airport. As usual, she was preoccupied with her shortcomings and mistakes.
She knew one thing. If she couldn’t make it to Plattsburgh today her chances wouldn’t improve by returning to the Inn. The room had been a security measure at best, in case someone questioned her presence near the border. “Just a student,” she could say, “visiting wonderful Canada and staying in the countryside.” They might just believe her. But the prospect of another night at the Inn, alone, without a ride or her luggage, wasn’t appealing.
Leaving her bags back in Montreal was probably one of those mistakes. It would take weeks to get them back. They might even be lost or seized if Ray didn’t return to pick them up. On the other hand, they had been useful as collateral to get this far. When Ray balked at providing a ride to Noyan, she said, “Here, I’ll leave my clothing in Montreal to prove I’m not planning to cross today.” The small lie had worked.
She was 90 percent certain that Ray would convince the others to make the pick up in Alburg. Still, he was skeptical about the whole idea, and Maria’s presence limited her ability to persuade him. It had been different back in France, where they first met. Last year he seemed suave, independent, and eager to help. But she wasn’t ready to leave Europe. Since then Ray had turned cautious, although she still sensed his underlying generosity.
Many things had changed — friendships, the political scene, the intelligence dragnet descending over the continent. It was harder to find a helping hand, especially from someone like Ray, a boutique owner in Greenwich Village who avoided intrigue and had something to lose.
She was walking along an unmarked road. It felt like this was taking longer than necessary. On their map of Canada and Vermont, the Chileans had noted that the walk from Noyan to Alburg was no more than a few miles. But she’d been walking for an hour without a sign of the border. Maybe she was headed in the wrong direction. The last thing she needed was to get lost in the dark.
On the farmland beside the road she noticed someone, probably the owner or a worker. She waved and walked across the grass, greeting the Canadian in French. She was visiting the area, she said, and had become lost. She asked for directions back to the Inn and the location of a river to the west.
The farmer’s advice took her to the corner she had been looking for since about eight o’clock. The map called it Line Road. She assumed the name came from its location parallel to the border. But she wasn’t sure which side she was on. There was no sign of a Customs station in either direction. She decided to stay on the road. It couldn’t be far from the truckstop and the likelihood of being noticed in the dark was slim.
But she was afraid now. There was a chance of being stopped for “routine” questioning. In Europe it happened too often. Questions that led to detention while the authorities checked out her story and her passport. And detention would mean fingerprints, detection, identification, and questions she couldn’t afford to answer. If they used a computer they might discover who she really was.
For the moment she was Shahrzad S. Nobari, a 19-year-old citizen of Iran with German ancestry. A student with a five-week visa to visit Canada. To friends like Ray and others she knew abroad, she was Rita. That was usually enough, Rita Mueller. At the youth hostel in Montreal she had signed in as Nobari and told people to call her Rita. It was painful to remember when she had been herself, a 27 years old West German. A fugitive, moving from place to place, country to country, for more than five years.
While she walked west along Line Road, Customs Agent John Ryan was heading east in his patrol car with the headlights off. He had covered this zone for about four years, normally on the lookout for drug smugglers. He had been parked at the corner of Line Road and South Shore Drive, sitting out his shift, when he decided that something was up.
What he had noticed through the rear view mirror was a brown car, with three passengers, moving slowly along the road, then turning back in the opposite direction. It was just enough to arouse his suspicions.
Kristina noticed the car heading in her direction. The fact that its headlights were off nudged her fear up another notch. When the car reached her it stopped, and the man in the driver’s seat called her over to talk. Refusing would be suspicious, but speaking to a stranger could be risky.
While she weighed the alternatives Ryan stepped out of the car. Then she caught a glimpse of his badge, pinned to the shirt of his blue uniform. He asked where she’d been and where she was heading.
“I am out for a walk,” she said.
“Anything to declare?”
“No.” Then he asked to see her purse.
She handed it over and the agent examined its contents on the hood of his car. Aside from the beam of his flashlight, the road was dark. He found some notes, a wallet, a candybar, and a passport. Paging through it, he noticed the Canadian visa and Iranian citizenship. But there was no US visa.
“Would you step inside the car?” He said. It wasn’t a request.
To be continued…
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Comments Off on False Narrative: How the Vermont Trial of an Alleged “Terrorist” Revealed the Danger of Guilt by Association, and the Way Disinformation Creates a False Narrative.
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***
In the video below, Hirofumi Yanagase, member of the House of Councillors of Japan, talks about the surge in Japan’s excess deaths that are linked to COVID vaccines.
Michel Chossudovsky’s book entitled
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity, was published in Japanese in April 2022. The English version released in August 2022 is available in E-Book format. Free of Charge. Click Here
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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
Japanese lawmaker Mr. Hirofumi, Yanagase speaks out: "Just in the reported cases alone, there have been as many as 2001 cases of suspected vaccine-induced deaths. There are 52 cases where a pathologist has performed an autopsy and reported that there is a link between the… https://t.co/mOjaG00ZPmpic.twitter.com/dapwQ4RpyZ
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***
He was standing before a lectern at Downing Street. The words on the support looked eerily similar to those used by the politicians of another country. According to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Stop the Boats was the way to go. It harked back to the same approach used by Australia’s Tony Abbott, who won the 2013 election on precisely that platform.
The UK Illegal Migration Bill is fabulously own-goaled, bankrupt and unprincipled. For one thing, it certainly is a labour of love in terms of the illegal, as the title suggests. In time, the courts may well also find fault with this ghastly bit of proposed legislation, which has already sailed through two readings in the Commons and resting in the Committee stage.
On Good Morning Britain, Home Secretary Suella Bravermanhad to concede she was running “novel arguments” about dealing with such irregular migration, not making mention of Australia’s own novel experiment which did, and still continues, to besmirch and taint international refugee law.
In her statement on whether the bill would be consistent with the European Convention of Human Rights, enshrined by the UK Human Rights Act, Braverman was brazen to the point of being quixotic:
“I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”
The long title of the bill does not even bother to conceal its purposes. It makes “provision for and in connection with the removal from the United Kingdom of persons who have entered or arrived in breach of immigration control”. It furnishes a detention regime, deals with unaccompanied children, makes some remarks about “victims of slavery or human trafficking” and, more to the point makes “provision about the inadmissibility of certain protection and certain human rights claims relating to immigration”.
The central purpose of the bill is to destroy the very basis of seeking asylum in Britain, along with the process that accompanies it. Much of this is inspired by the fact that the United Kingdom does not do the business of processing asylums particularly well. Glorious Britannia now receives fewer applications for asylum than Germany, France or Spain. Despite having fewer numbers, its backlog remains heftier than any of those three states.
The proposed instrument essentially declares illegal in advance any unauthorised arrival, an absurd proposition given that most asylum seekers arriving by boat will not, obviously, have the paperwork handy. (This is a nice trick borrowed from Fortress Australia.) Those seeking asylum by boat will be automatically detained for 28 days. During this time, those detained will be unable to make a legal challenge nor seek bail. After the expiration of time, a claim for bail can be made, or the Home Secretary can release them.
In truth, the authorities can refuse to process the claim, thereby deferring responsibility to some other source or agency. Dark, gloomy detention centres are promised, as are third countries such as Rwanda or a return across the English Channel back to France or another European state. Then comes the issue of return to the country of origin, a state of affairs in gross breach of the non-refoulement obligation of international refugee law. It is fantastically crude, a declaration of savage intent.
Even with these provisions, chaos is likely to ensue, given that the options are, as Ian Dunt points out, essentially off the table. The Rwandan solution has so far failed to materialise, bogged down in litigation. Were there to be any sent, these would amount to a few hundred at best and hardly arrest the tide of boat arrivals. The UK has also failed to secure return agreements with other European states. The most likely scenario: a large, incarcerated, miserable population housed in a burgeoning concentration camp system, a nodding acknowledgement to Australia’s own version used in the Pacific on Manus Island and Nauru.
Even some conservative voices have expressed worry about the nature of it. Former Tory PM Theresa Mayhas questioned the breakneck speed with which the Bill is being debated, wondering if Sunak and company are acting in undue haste to supersede fresh and as yet untested legislation.
“I am concerned that the government have acted on Albania and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, when neither has been in place long enough to be able to assess their impact. I do not expect government to introduce legislation to supersede legislation recently made, the impact of which is not yet known.”
Sadly, the entire issue of discussing the critical aspects of the bill were lost in the media firestorm caused by an innocuous tweet from England’s football darling and veteran commentator Gary Lineker. “There is no huge influx,” went the tweet. “We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”
According to the BBC, fast becoming a fiefdom of Tory regulation, he was. Suspension from the Match of the Day followed. Within a few days, a humiliated management had to concede defeat and accept his return to the program. Solidarity for Lineker had been vast and vocal, though much of it seemed to be focused on his shabby treatment rather than the asylum seeker issue. In terms of defeating this bill, such debates will do little to box the demons that are about to be unleashed.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
Featured image: PM Rishi Sunak (Licensed under OGL 3)
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***
Back in 2000, the television series “Andromeda” premiered, based upon unused material from Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series and franchise. The plot is premised on the notion of a spaceship, “Andromeda,” frozen in time, which is given the opportunity to reverse the clock and undo history.
The series ran five years.
Fast forward to the present.
History has dealt a tough hand to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, who openly confessed his intent to “bring an end” to the Nord Stream pipeline system which delivered Russian natural gas to Europe through four pipelines (Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, consisting of two pipelines each).
Since then, the Biden White House was compelled to deny the president’s stated intent after an explosive report by Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh detailed damning information which, if true (and there is no reason to suspect it’s not) casts the responsibility for a series of underwater explosions that took place on Sept. 26, 2022, on Biden himself.
Hersh’s report was ignored by the mainstream media in the United States, with neither The New York Times, for whom Seymour Hersh wrote on national security issues for many years, nor TheWashington Post even hinting that the greatest living investigative journalist had broken a blockbuster story.
Enter the “Andromeda” — not the spaceship of the eponymous television series, but rather a Bavaria C50 15-meter (49-foot) yacht based out of the German Baltic port city of Rostock. On March 7 — nearly a month after Hersh self-published his article on Substack — a team of German reporters from the ARD capital studio, Kontraste, Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and Die Zeitcollaboratively reported that they had uncovered the existence of “the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation.”
The boat was “a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians.” According to the story, “the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people.”
According to the German reporting, the team — five men, consisting of a ship captain, two primary divers, two supporting divers and a female doctor — used the Andromeda to transport the team, along with the explosives used to destroy the pipelines, to the scene of the crime. The boat was returned to Rostock in “an uncleaned condition,” allowing German law enforcement officials, who carried out a search of the vessel between Jan. 8-11, to detect “traces of explosives” on a table in the ship’s cabin.
The same day the German reporting on the new Nord Stream attack narrative broke, TheNew York Timesran a front-page story entitled “Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, US Officials Say.”
For the first time, TheNew York Times referred to Hersh’s reporting, writing, “Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of Mr. Biden,” before closing with “U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.”
Map of the explosions caused at the Nord Stream pipelines on Sept. 26, 2022. (FactsWithoutBias1, CC-By-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
As if echoing the Biden White House denials, TheNew York Times led off with this:
“New intelligence reporting amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe” (emphasis added.)
TheNew York Times, it seems, was more than happy about proceeding with its own anonymous intelligence sources, while dismissing Hersh’s.
The problem with both the German reporting and that of The New York Times (whose source was clearly referring to the same data reported by the German reporters) is that the Andromeda narrative doesn’t hold water.
Take, for instance, the Tom Clancy-like tale of derring-do that has four allegedly Ukraine-affiliated divers defy physiology by conducting dives that would require the use of a decompression chamber for them to survive an ascent of 240 feet (the depth of the Nord Stream pipelines that were destroyed). A rule of thumb is that decompression takes approximately one day per 100 feet of seawater plus a day.
Marina in Rostock, Germany. (Beauwell, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)
This means that the team of divers would have required three days of decompression per dive. But to decompress, one needs a decompression chamber. For a dive involving two divers, the Andromeda would have to have been outfitted with either a two-person Class A decompression chamber, or two single-person Class B chambers, as well as the number of large oxygen bottles needed to operate these chambers over time. \
A simple examination of the interior cabin space of the Bavarian C50 yacht would quickly dispossess one of any notion that either option was viable.
Simply put — no decompression chamber, no dive, no story.
‘Traces’ of High Explosives
There is another aspect of the story to probe. According to the German reporting, law enforcement officials detected “traces” of high explosives on the tables in the cabin of the Andromeda.
According to the Swedish Prosecution Authority, in a statement released on Nov. 19, 2022, Swedish investigators discovered “traces of explosives on several of the foreign objects that were found” at the site of the explosions.
These explosives, according to a Nov. 22, 2022, report issued by Nord Stream AG, the Swiss-based parent company that owned the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, produced “technogenic [i.e., “of or pertaining to a process or substance created by human technology”] craters with a depth of 3 to 5 meters” separated “by a distance of about 248 meters.”
“The section of the pipe between the craters is destroyed, the radius of pipe fragments dispersion is at least 250 meters,” the report noted.
Nord Stream AG head office in Zug, Switzerland. (Alexey M, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In a report to the United Nations, both Denmark and Sweden said that the damage done to the Nord Stream pipelines was caused by blasts equivalent to the power of “several hundred kilograms of explosive.”
It should be noted that underwater pipelines like those used in Nord Stream are designed to withstand proximal explosions from devices up to several hundred kilograms in size. Indeed, in locations such as the Baltic Sea, where unexploded military ordnance from multiple world wars abounds, the threat of a drifting device striking a pipeline and detonating is quite real.
Computer modeling shows that a 600-kilogram high explosive charge detonated approximately 5 meters from a 34mm-thick steel pipeline filled with gas would not compromise the structural integrity of the pipeline.
A piece of Nord Stream pipe on public display in Kotka, Finland in 2017. (Vuo, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
At the location of the explosions, the Nord Stream pipelines consisted of 26.8 mm steel pipes with an addition 33.2 mm of concrete coating, for a total thickness of 60 mm. The weight of a single pipe section was over 11 tons.
In short, a standard high-explosive charge of several hundred kilograms would not be sufficient to cause the destruction that occurred on the Nord Stream pipeline.
Enter Hersh, who reported that the explosives used were “shaped charges.”
With a shaped charge, the energy of the explosion is focused in one direction, usually by creating a concave shape in the explosive that is them lined with a metal sheet, so that it usually achieves an armor- and/or concrete-penetrating effect.
Without getting too technical, the design of an underwater shaped charge that would be sufficient to penetrate concrete-lined steel pipe at a depth of 240 feet is not common knowledge. The charge would have to be prepared by qualified explosives experts and ideally tested prior to being employed operationally to validate the design and functionality of the device.
These are not tasks undertaken by a small ad hoc team of Ukrainian underwater saboteurs, but rather state-sponsored actors with access to military grade explosives and testing facilities.
Strike two for the German reporting.
But the most glaring deficiency in the German reporting deals with the detection of “trace explosive” onboard the Andromeda. This information would identify the precise explosive used. Moreover, when compared and contrasted with the “trace explosive” found by the Swedes at the location of the Nord Stream attacks, it could provide a clear linkage between the Andromeda and the attacks.
But Sweden has sealed the files of its investigation into the Nord Stream attack on national security grounds, meaning that it will not cooperate with Germany to see if the explosive traces found at the scene of the Nord Stream crime match those onboard the Andromeda.
The obvious reason behind this decision: because the two traces won’t match. One — the Swedish sample — points to the culprit. The other — the Andromeda sample — is evidence of a cover up.
Strike three, and you’re out.
The German government’s crude effort to manufacture an alternative narrative regarding who attacked the Nord Stream pipeline fails the smell test — in short, it stinks. The holes in this story are such that even the most gifted screenwriters could not turn this Andromeda tale of changing history into something remotely believable. In short, Gene Roddenberry would not be impressed.
Moreover, the fact that the U.S. intelligence community was quick to leak information about the German investigation to TheNew York Times appears to be de facto evidence of U.S. complicity in this cover up.
And the reason for this cover up is quite clear: the Germans and Americans both fear the reporting being done by Hersh.
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Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.
Featured image: Divers taking a safety stop at 5 metres. (Oetzipopoetzi, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The disinformation service, Bloomberg, takes the lead. Bloomberg points its finger at Donald Trump and “Trump era deregulation.” In Bloomberg’s rewriting of history, Trump is responsible because he signed a bill passed by Democrats and Republicans that allowed mid-sized banks to “skirt some of the strictest post-financial crisis regulations.”
This eBook by Graeme MacQueen contains a collection of his articles and essays on the attacks of September 11, 2001, the subsequent anthrax attacks, and analyses of other false flag operations. They are profoundly important and shatter the official versions of those events. No one reading this book can come away from it not convinced that the U.S. government is a terrorist state.
The elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act in November 1999 was essential to the process of dramatically cutting back the government’s role as a protector of the public interest on the financial services sector. The Glass-Steagall Act was an essential measure in US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
This article reveals how the US and its allies facilitated the incursion of the Islamic State (ISIS) Toyota truck convoys into Iraq in June 2014 prior to the onset of the counter-terrorism bombing campaign launched by Obama in August 2014.
Beijing accused the AUKUS alliance (US, UK, and Australia) of embarking on a “path of error and danger” when responding to the announcement that Australia will be supplied with nuclear-powered submarines.
In spite of the arguments and debates on various important global issues involving China and Russia, however, the South China Morning Post said that Russia’s special military operation has harmed China’s national interests. What is of the most common interest and concern relates the emerging new configuration, multipolar system which should necessarily work to find suitable solution to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis. China has called for cooperation while Russia adopts more confrontation approach.
The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and the following spectacle in which the media blares out about a massive bank crisis (without any hard figures for us to assess for ourselves) suggests that the parasite class is preparing for its war on money, the next step after COVID-19 of its war on citizens.
The images are the same: then Ukraine, now Georgia. At that time, Yanukovych also wanted to bring Ukraine under the umbrella of the European Union. But he also wanted to maintain good relations with Russia. But that’s what the western NATO-fellows don’t want for the hell of it.
Concurrent to rumblings of a color revolution in Georgia earlier this month, a plot attributed to Ukraine’s notorious SBU “national security service” against officials of the “breakaway” republic of Transnistria unfolded in central Tiraspol, according to prosecutors. The foiled assassination attempt targeted Transnistria’s leader, Vadim Krasnoselsky.
The levels of wealth inequality we are currently witnessing in this country are unprecedented and alarming. The very richest among us have succeeded in grabbing ever more of the proverbial pie, and the trend is only worsening. Wealth inequality is proving disastrous for America.
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***
Last Friday, March 10, we had the honor to participate in a medical and constitutional freedom convention in Rochester, New York with attorney and Brownstone Institute Fellow, Bobbie Anne Cox, who was the lead plaintiff attorney in challenging New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s Third Reich style “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures.”
The case (Borrello v Hochul) went to the NY State Supreme Court, and on July 8, 2022, Judge Ronald Ploetz ruled that the “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures” regulation is unconstitutional and “violative of New York State law as promulgated and enacted, and therefore null, void and unenforceable as a matter of law.”
At the event last Friday in Rochester, we applauded Ms. Cox for her victory against Governor Hochul and New York Attorney General, Letitia James. She graciously thanked us, but also reminded us that her adversaries had a few days left to appeal. As Ms. Cox just reported, appeal they did.
For some time, the governments of New York and California have been vying with each other to demonstrate the greatest contempt for the United States Constitution and the rights of the people it protects. With Governor Hochul’s “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures,” she has conclusively won the title.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul is the Worst Tyrant in the United States.
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Featured image: Chinese COVID-19 Quarantine Camp: An inspiration and dream for New York Governor Kathy Hochul. (Source: CD)
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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***
Hirofumi Yanagase is a Japanese politician who is a member of the House of Councillors of Japan.
Japanese lawmaker Mr. Hirofumi, Yanagase speaks out: "Just in the reported cases alone, there have been as many as 2001 cases of suspected vaccine-induced deaths. There are 52 cases where a pathologist has performed an autopsy and reported that there is a link between the… https://t.co/mOjaG00ZPmpic.twitter.com/dapwQ4RpyZ
“Compared to 2021, the number of deaths has increased by more than 140,000. Compared to 2020, the number of deaths has increased by 210,000…the highest number since World War II”
“Japan has been flooded with people complaining of feeling ill after receiving the COVID vaccine”
“Amazingly, even though more than 2000 people have died after vaccination, more than 99% of these deaths cannot be evaluated”
“According to our calculations, the percentage of reported deaths after COVID vaccine is more than 38 times higher in comparison with the flu vaccine”
Japan reports first death directly linked to COVID-19 vaccine
Out of more than 2000 deaths after COVID-19 vaccination, on March 10, 2023 a Japanese Ministry of Health panel made the first of a causal link between the death of a 42 year old woman and the COVID-19 vaccine (click here)
The woman received a Pfizer shot (bivalent) on Nov. 5, 2022 at a mass vaccination center. She felt sick seven minutes later, and her breathing stopped after about 15 minutes.
The woman was taken to a hospital but died of acute heart failure an hour and 40 minutes after receiving the COVID-19 shot. A postmortem CT scan showed that she had experienced acute pulmonary edema, a sudden buildup of fluid in the lungs, the report said.
“From the data obtained from (CT) images, no abnormalities were found that could have caused the death other than the vaccine. All things considered, the direct causal link between the vaccination and the death cannot be denied,” the report said.
Doctor sues Japanese Government over COVID-19 vaccine cover-ups
“Today, we filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government” announced Dr. Masanori Fukushima during a press conference on February 2, 2023. Because the Japanese Health Ministry refuses to acknowledge the causal link between vaccines and deaths, Professor Fukushima and a team of researchers said they “had no choice but to dare to take legal action.” (click here)
Dr. Masanori Fukushima is an infectious disease expert and Professor Emeritus at Kyoto University — with over 25 years of oncology experience. He has been hammering at the cracks in the vaccine narrative and publicly condemned Japan’s Ministry of Health late last year.
“Today, it is a matter of fundamental importance for the Japanese government to continuously collect and disclose accurate data,” Professor Fukushima expressed. “However, I have witnessed the recent fraud scandal committed by the Health Ministry.”
COVID-19 vaccine demand crashes – Japan cancels 142 million dose order for Novavax COVID-19 vaccine
“Japan cancels 140M dose order for Novavax Covid vaccine amid ‘lower than expected’ demand” (click here)
The country initially agreed in 2021 to purchase 150 million doses of the vaccine from Takeda, which has been producing Novavax’s vaccine at its Hikari-based facility. But after only purchasing 8.24 million doses, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has canceled the remaining 141.76 million doses.
“We are seeing low market demand for Nuvaxovid, lower than expected given the current situation of vaccination in Japan and prevalence of Omicron,” Costa Saroukos, CFO at Takeda, said during the company’s Q3 call last week.
COVID-19 mRNA vaccine uptake in Japan
COVID-19 vaccine uptake in Japan is very high. Almost 69% of the population have had at least 3 doses. (click here)
The split is about 78% Pfizer and 22% Moderna (click here):
My take…
Japan has effectively mRNA poisoned most of its population with 382 million doses of mRNA administered. Consequently, it now has the highest excess deaths since World War II.
Thousands of Japanese citizens have died shortly after taking a COVID-19 vaccine but Japan’s Ministry of Health continues to conduct cover-ups of these deaths, even when pathologists have determined a causal link between the death and the vaccine.
However, brave individuals are pushing back in a big way. Leading the charge is Dr.Fukushima who is suing the Japanese government over COVID-19 vaccine adverse event cover-ups, as well as politician Hirofumi Yanagase who is openly calling out the Ministry of Health and paid government lackeys who are conducting cover-ups.
Someone must always make the first move. The first doctor. The first politician. Once these first steps are taken, a house build on a foundation of fraud and deceit cannot remain standing for long.
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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.
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 Japan Sees Major Push Back Against Big Pharma and Corrupt Japanese Health Officials Who Are Covering Up COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Injuries and Deaths – Highest Excess Deaths Now Since WWII
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***
This eBook (at the top left, click Next) by Graeme MacQueen contains a collection of his articles and essays on the attacks of September 11, 2001, the subsequent anthrax attacks, and analyses of other false flag operations. They are profoundly important and shatter the official versions of those events. No one reading this book can come away from it not convinced that the U.S. government is a terrorist state. MacQueen’s conclusions are not based on rhetoric but on a deep empirical analyses, facts not propaganda. With this volume, Graeme MacQueen takes his place alongside David Ray Griffin as a prophet without honor in his own time. History will declare him a hero. To write the following introduction is a great honor, for my esteem for Graeme and his work is immense.
Introduction
by Edward Curtin
Graeme MacQueen’s work is a testament to a man devoted to the search for truth and the freedom and peace that ensue from its discovery. I think it is surely not an accident that he is a Buddhist scholar and a former professor of religious and peace studies. In this regard, he reminds me of two other inspired theologians who carry the message of love and peace into the political realm where their extraordinary writing has given great hope to those yearning for truth and justice: James W. Douglass and David Ray Griffin, the former the great JFK scholar and the latter the author of a dozen or so groundbreaking books on the events of September 11, 2001.
In this book, which is a primer on government propaganda, Graeme continues to teach how illusions must be punctured and the veil of government secrecy parted, lessons gleaned from the core of the world’s religions. That the truth will set us free is the essence of these teachings. Yet truth is a hard taskmaster and requires great courage, fortitude, and determination, which Graeme possesses in abundance, both in his person and in his writing.
Exposing the lies of the official versions of September 11, 2001, the anthrax attacks, etc. takes guts, for it causes conflict with family, friends, and authorities. It brands one a ”conspiracy theorist” who has lost his reason. In Graeme’s case this is hilarious, for you will nowhere find a writer who is less doctrinaire and who sticks more closely to evidence. In fact, I, an impetuous type, have sometimes found his approach a bit too cautious, but I have always come around to see the value in it and to trust that his conclusions are based on rigorous logic and evidence.
Sometimes a photograph can reveal a person’s soul. I think the photo of Graeme that precedes his preface, taken in 2006 when he first embarked on his writing about the official lies of September 11, 2001, truly shows his spirit. Although in his late fifties, he looks very boyish, a bit of a rake, but with the countenance of a man deeply disturbed by what he is seeing through the eidola of official propaganda. There is a trace of both sorrow and determination in his eyes. His behatted head suggests a man ready to fish for truth in the deepest depths of an ocean of lies.
As a Buddhist scholar who has long known that creative writing and speech come freely from a state of mind different from, and higher than, the normal, I think it is self-evident that his inspired writing in this book is the result of a mind clarified by the realization that the inner and outer cannot be divorced, that life and death are one, and that looking out involves looking in.
For it seems to me self-evident, that those who oppose the consensus realty of a cruel and violent social order are also trying to redeem themselves from the profound tricks the ego plays on us all, while they probe the deceptions of official propaganda. And while Graeme does not explicitly state the connections between his religious writing and research and the political analyses in this book, it is evident that his work makes manifest that “Reality” is one whole, and that the isolated individual self that separates the personal from the political has led to a badly broken world.
About a decade ago, I had the privilege of being asked to review his brilliant book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, that forms the basis for a few of the chapters in this collection. We became great friends. And if I have yet to say anything about the content of The Pentagon’s B-Movie, it is because while it is obvious that books are written by human beings (although this is changing with AI), who those authors really are is often elided.
“Great men do not play stage tricks with the doctrines of life and death: only little men do that,” wrote John Ruskin. As a compelling exposer of official stage tricks, Graeme is great, but you would never hear it from him.
He is humble and self-deprecating in the extreme. His laugh and sense of humor is contagious, although his writing only reflects this in a sentence here or there. But I have learned that those without a sense of humor or the ability to laugh at themselves are not to be trusted. Egos block the door to truth. And even as he has battled very serious illness over recent years, Graeme’s laughter on the subject of death is to me a sign of a man pure of heart and grateful for his life in all its complexity.
The articles in this collection were written over a span of sixteen years. Divided into three sections, they intersect to form a devastating critique of multiple matters, such as the government assassinations of JFK and MLK, various false flag events, but most especially September 11, 2001 and the subsequent anthrax attacks. It is impossible to read them sequentially and not be convinced of their truths. Each in its turn, reinforces the adage that “the emperor has no clothes.” More so, by stripping away every claim of the official narratives step-by-step, we see the emperor skinless as well, a skeleton caught dead to rights with its lethal lies conclusively exposed.
In many ways, the opening chapter, “9/11: The Pentagon’s B-Movie,” a tour-de-force, serves to foreshadow many of the themes that follow, concluding with “The Triumph of the Official Narrative: How the TV Networks Hid the Twin Towers Explosive Demolition on 9/11” with co-author Ted Walter.
Graeme makes clear from the start that it is the moving images of television and film that are central to the official propaganda. This is Plato’s allegory of the cave updated where shadows on the wall are used to delude people into not seeing what obviously happened if they turned toward the light. As he writes:
This “9/11 movie” reveals itself to careful investigators as scripted, directed and produced by the U.S. national security state. The movie does not represent the real world. It violates the rules operative in the real world, including the laws of physics. Audiences will remain in thrall to the spectacle and violence of the War on Terror only as long as they remain mesmerized by the B-movie of 9/11.
But as he knows, B-movies are often popular, especially when they are of the horror genre with their ability to traumatize the viewers, even when they might suspect they are being taken for a ride. One enters a monster film with belief suspended and often leaves it forgetting it was an illusion, for the movie has penetrated deep into one’s psyche. “Only when people sense the genuine danger,” he tells us, “and leave behind fiction and special effects will they be in a position to deal with the real monster that confronts us.” This demands seeing the evil and pitiless oligarchy responsible for 9/11 as the monsters they are.
Such truth can only be distinguished from the shadows when the audience leaves the theater of the absurd, exits into the light, and snaps out of the hypnotic state. Many never do, especially because the movies are not confined to movie theaters anymore. They are integral to modern day-to-day screen life. The moving images in people’s heads often supplant reality, as Graeme makes clear:
But imagine what would happen if audiences remained convinced by the suspension of the laws of physics after they left the theatre? This, it seems to me, is what has happened with the events of September 11, 2001. Many people are still deceived by the special effects. They are still captured by the movie of 9/11.
And since the only way to exit from such horrors is mental, one often needs a wise guide. Graeme is that guide.
This book will jolt you back to reality with its concluding chapters where TV video news reports are used to show how the official narrative was quickly fashioned after initial television reports clearly showed that the buildings were blown up from within. MacQueen again:
Our conclusion was that evidence-free claims, combined with repetition and a dramatic yarn, were the major mechanisms used. We also found that the evident precision and coordination demonstrate the existence of—yes, we should acknowledge it—an extremely ambitious and detailed conspiracy.[my emphasis]
In conclusion, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how Graeme uses the concept of imagination as a probe to understand how it can be used to manipulate images by propagandists, particularly through moving images, but also how it can be used as a first step in undermining those official narratives. In this regard his castigation of leftists — Noam Chomsky Alexander Cockburn, Chris Hedges, et al. – and leftist media for their acceptance of the official lies of the JFK assassination and September 11, is significant. These people, by their overt or covert support of the government’s propaganda, have been key cogs in its success. Graeme writes:
Indeed, much of the Western left leadership and associated media not only trusted the FBI while ignoring Furtado, Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly and Fidel Castro; they also, through silence and ridicule, worked to prevent serious public discussion of the 9/11 controversy.
Among the U.S. left media that kept the silence, partially or wholly, are:
Monthly Review
Common Dreams
Huffington Post
Counterpunch
The Nation
The Real News
Democracy Now!
Z Magazine
The Progressive
Mother Jones
Alternet.org
MoveOn.org
Thus all these leftists, no matter what they say in their defense, bear great moral responsibility for the so-called War on Terror, the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, the deaths of Muslims, etc., all of which emanate from the insider attacks of September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks. With leftists like these, the CIA’s courting of “the compatible left” (a term coined by the CIA’s Cord Meyer), begun in the 1950s, has achieved its greatest success. The pacification of the liberal/left bourgeoise has been extremely successful and continues to the present day.
There is no need for me to tell you more about the material in this great book. Just read it. As an adjunct to Graeme’s fundamental book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, this work tears off the veil of lies that has become the normative order for so many over the past few decades.
Whether this work frees many from the official lies or not, it is clear that Graeme has fulfilled his destiny to set us all free, if we so choose.
He pulls no punches and shows how September 11, 2001 and the anthrax attacks are an integrated inside job, serving to reinforce each other. You can ask no more of anyone.
He is an exemplar of a beautiful human being and a writer of profound importance.
This collection confirms that.
*
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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).
Prof. Graeme MacQueen, author and distinguished professor of religious studies, Hamilton, Ont. Canada. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Graeme MacQueen received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University and taught in the Religious Studies Department of McMaster University for 30 years. While at McMaster he became founding Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster, after which he helped developed the B.A. program in Peace Studies and oversaw the development of peace-building projects in Sri Lanka, Gaza, Croatia and Afghanistan. He was a member of the organizing committee of the Toronto Hearings held on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, was a member of the international 9/11 Consensus Panel, and was co-editor of The Journal of 9/11 Studies.
Reviews:
We have been told that the truth will set us free. Less emphasized is how the truth will stalk, haunt and disquiet us along the way. Few of us really have the tenacity to dwell for any length of time with those sorts of truths. Doing so is like dwelling in deep waters where it’s dark, cold, and the temptation to surface too quickly threatens us with a kind of spiritual bends. Fewer of us still try to give elusive truths their full account under the scrutiny of peers and public. Among these fewest of few, Graeme MacQueen stands out, making this remarkable collection of essays, spanning 15 years of epochal shifts in world affairs, one for the bookshelf of the ages. – Matthew Witt has a Ph.D. in urban studies from Portland State University and since 2001 has been Professor of Public Administration, University of La Verne, California.
As I reflect on how I managed to penetrate the multi-layered shield of propaganda concealing the crimes of 9/11, I realize that two things were most important for me. On the one hand, there was the physical evidence, such as the free fall of Building 7, and, on the other hand, there were the writings and lectures of Graeme MacQueen. Graeme MacQueen clothed the skeleton of physical evidence with a living body. His rigorous approach to evaluating available evidence is an outstanding example of the overwhelming power of science. – Ansgar Schneider, physicist and mathematician, Dr. rer. nat. Universität Göttingen, author of Stigmatisierung statt Aufklärung (Eng) and Generation 9/11(Eng).
Of relevance to the ongoing bank failures and financial crisis (2020-2023). First published on August 26, 2020
The Role of Bailouts and Speculative trade
The elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act in November 1999 was essential to the process of dramatically cutting back the government’s role as a protector of the public interest on the financial services sector. The Glass-Steagall Act was an essential measure in US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Some view the New Deal as a strategy for saving capitalism by moderating ts most sharp-edged features. Instituted in 1933 in response to the onset of the Great Depression, the Glass-Steagall Act separated the operations of deposit-accepting banks from the more speculative activity of investment brokers.
The termination of the regulatory framework put in place by the Glass Steagall Act opened much new space for all kinds of experiments in the manipulation of money in financial markets. The changes began with the merger of different sorts of financial institutions including some in the insurance field. Those overseeing the reconstituted entities headquartered on Wall Street took advantage of their widened latitudes of operation. They developed all sorts of ways of elaborating their financial services and presenting them in new packages.
The word, “derivative” is often associated with many applications of the new possibilities in the reconstituted financial services sector. The word, derivative, can be applied to many kinds of transactions involving speculative bets of various sorts. As the word suggests, a derivative is derived from a fixed asset such as currency, bonds, stocks, and commodities. Alterations in the values of fixed assets affect the value of derivatives that often take the form of contracts between two or more parties.
One of the most famous derivatives in the era of the financial crash of 2007-2010 was described as mortgaged-backed securities. On the surface these bundles of debt-burdened properties might seem easy to understand. But that would be a delusion. The value of these products was affected, for instance, by unpredictable shifts in interest rates, liar loans extended to homebuyers who lacked the capacity to make regular mortgage payments, and significant shifts in the value of real estate.
President Bill Clinton Laughs It Up as He Signs the Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. November 12 1999. Financial Services Modernization Act
Mortgage-backed securities were just one type of a huge array of derivatives invented on the run in the heady atmosphere of secret and unregulated transactions between counterparties. Derivatives could involve contracts formalizing bets between rivals gambling on the outcome of competitive efforts to shape the future. An array of derivative bets was built around transactions often placed behind the veil of esoteric nomenclature like “collateralized debt obligations” or “credit default swaps.”
The variables in derivative bets might include competing national security agendas involving, for instance, pipeline constructions, regime change, weapons development and sales, false flag terror events, or money laundering. Since derivative bets involve confidential transactions with secret outcomes, they can be derived from all sorts of criteria. Derivative bets can, for instance, involve all manner of computerized calculations that in some cases are constructed much like war game scenarios.
The complexity of derivatives became greater when the American Insurance Group, AIG, began selling insurance programs to protect all sides in derivative bets from suffering too drastically from the consequences of being on the losing side of transactions.
The derivative frenzy, sometimes involving bets being made by parties unable to cover potential losses, overwhelmed the scale of the day-to-day economy. The “real economy” embodies exchanges of goods, services, wages and such that supply the basic necessities for human survival with some margin for recreation, travel, cultural engagement and such.
The Swiss-based Bank of International Settlements (image right) calculated in 2008 that the size of the all forms of derivative products had a monetary value of $1.14 quadrillion. A quadrillion is a thousand trillions. By comparison, the estimated value of all the real estate in the world was $75 trillion in 2008.
[Bank for International Settlements, Semiannual OTC derivative statistics at end-December, 2008. See this]
As the enticements of derivative betting preoccupied the leading directors of Wall Street institutions, their more traditional way of relating to one another began to falter. It was in this atmosphere that the Repo Market became problematic in December of 2007 just as it showed similar signs of breakdown in September of 2019.
In both instances the level of distrust between those in charge of financial institutions began to falter because they all had good reason to believe that their fellow bankers were overextended. All had reason to believe their counterparts were mired by too much speculative activity enabled by all sorts of novel experiments including various forms of derivative dealing.
In December of 2007 as in the autumn of 2019, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was forced to enter the picture to keep the financial pumps on Wall Street primed. The New York Fed kept the liquidity cycles flowing by invoking its power to create new money with the interest charged to tax payers.
As the financial crisis unfolded in 2008 and 2009 the Federal Reserve, but especially the privately-owned New York Federal Reserve bank, stepped forward to bail out many financial institutions that had become insolvent or near insolvent. In the process precedents and patterns were established that are being re-enacted with some modifications in 2020.
One of the innovations that took place in 2008 was the decision by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to hire a large Wall Street financial institution, BlackRock, to administer the bailouts. These transfers of money went through three specially created companies now being replicated as Special Purpose Vehicles in the course of the payouts of 2020.
In 2008-09 BlackRock administered the three companies named after the address of the New York Federal Reserve Bank on Maiden Lane. BlackRock emerged from an older Wall Street firm called Blackstone. Its former chair, Peter C. Peterson, was a former Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The original Maiden Lane company paid Bear Stearns Corp $30 billion. This amount from the New York Fed covered the debt of Bear Stearns, a condition negotiated to clear the way for the purchase of the old Wall Street institution by JP Morgan Chase. Maiden Lane II was a vehicle for payouts to companies that had purchased “mortgage-backed securities” before these derivative products turned soar.
Maiden Lane III was to pay off “multi-sector collateralized debt obligations.” Among these bailouts were payoffs to the counterparties of the insurance giant, AIG. As noted, AIG had developed an insurance product to be sold to those engaged in derivative bets. When the bottom fell out of markets, AIG lacked the means to pay off the large number of insurance claims made against it. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York stepped in to bail out the counterparties of AIG, many of them deemed to be “too big to fail.”
Among the counterparties of AIG was Goldman Sachs. It received of $13 billion from the Federal Reserve. Other bailouts to AIG’s counterparties were $12 billion to Deutsche Bank, $6.8 billion to Merrill Lynch, $5 billion to Switzerland’s UBS, $7.9 billion to Barclays, and $5.2 billion to Bank of America. Some of these banks received additional funds from other parts of the overall bailout transaction. Many dozens of other counterparties to AIG also received payouts in 2008-2009. Among them were the Bank of Montreal and Bank of Scotland.
The entire amount of the bailouts was subsequently calculated to be a whopping $29 trillion with a “t.” The lion’s share of these funds went to prop up US financial institutions and the many foreign banks with which they conducted business. (See this)
Much of this money went to the firms that were shareholders in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or partners of the big Wall Street firms. Citigroup, the recipient of the largest amount, received about $2.5 trillion in the federal bailouts. Merrill Lynch received $2 trillion.
The Federal Reserve Bank was established by Congressional statute in 1913. The Federal Reserve headquarters is situated in Washington DC. The Central Bank was composed of twelve constituent regional banks. Each one of these regional banks is owned by private banks.
The private ownership of the banks that are the proprietors of the Federal Reserve system has been highly contentious from its inception. The creation of the Federal Reserve continues to be perceived by many of its critics as an unjustifiable giveaway whereby the US government ceded to private interests its vital capacity to issue its own currency and to direct monetary policy like the setting of interest rates.
Pam Martens and Russ Martens at Wall Street on Parade explain the controversial Federal Reserve structure as follows
While the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. is deemed an “independent federal agency,” with its Chair and Governors appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the 12 regional Fed banks are private corporations owned by the member banks in their region. The settled law under John L. Lewis v. the United States confirms: “Each Federal Reserve Bank is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region.”
In the case of the New York Fed, which is located in the Wall Street area of Manhattan, its largest shareowners are behemoth multinational banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
There was no genuine effort after the financial debacle of 2007-2010 to correct the main structural problems and weaknesses of the Wall Street-based US financial sector. The Dodd-Frank Bill signed into law by US President Barack Obama in 2010 did make some cosmetic changes. But the main features of the regulatory capture that has taken place with the elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act remained with only minor alterations. In particular the framework was held in place for speculative excess in derivative bets.
In the summer edition of the The Atlantic, Frank Partnoy outlined a gloomy assessment of the continuity leading from the events of 2007-2010 to the current situation. This current situation draws a strange contrast between the lockdown-shattered quality of the economy and the propped-up value of the stock market whose future value will in all probability prove unsustainable. Partnoy writes,
It is a distasteful fact that the present situation is so dire in part because the banks fell right back into bad behavior after the last crash—taking too many risks, hiding debt in complex instruments and off-balance-sheet entities, and generally exploiting loopholes in laws intended to rein in their greed. Sparing them for a second time this century will be that much harder. (See this)
Wall Street Criminality on Display
The frauds and felonies of the Wall Street banks have continued after the future earnings of US taxpayers returned them to solvency after 2010. The record of infamy is comparable to that of the pharmaceutical industry.
The criminal behaviour in both sectors is very relevant to the overlapping crises that are underway in both the public health and financial sectors. In 2012 the crime spree in the financial sector began with astounding revelations about the role of many major banks in the LIBOR, the London Interbank Offered Rate. The LIBOR rates create the basis of interest rates involved in the borrowing and lending of money in the international arena.
When the scandal broke there were 35 different LIBOR rates involving various types of currency and various time frames for loans between banks. The rates were calculated every day based on information forwarded from 16 different banks to a panel on London. The reporting banks included Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, and Deutsche Bank. The influence of the LIBOR rate extended beyond banks to affect the price of credit in many types of transactions.
The emergence of information that the banks were working together to rig the interest rate created the basis for a huge economic scandal. Fines extending from hundreds of millions into more than a billion dollars were placed on each of the offending banks. But in this instance and many others to follow, criminality was attached to the financial entities but not to top officials responsible for the decisions that put their corporations on the wrong side of the law.
One of the factors in the banking frauds comprising the LIBOR scandal was the temptation to improve the chance for financial gains in derivative bets. The biggest failure of the federal response to the financial meltdown of 2007-210 was that little was done to curb the excesses of transactions in the realm of derivatives.
Derivatives involved a form of gambling that exists in a kind of twilight zone. This twilight zone fills a space somewhere between the realm of the real economy and the realm of notional value. Notional values find expression in unrealized speculation about what might or might not come to fruition; what might or might not happen; who might win and who might lose in derivative speculations.
The addiction of Wall Street firms to derivative betting remains unchecked to this day.
The bankers’ continuing fixation with unregulated gambling, often with other people’s money, is deeply menacing for the future of the global economy…. indeed for the future of everyone on earth.
According to the Office of the Controller of Currency, in 2019 JP Morgan Chase had $59 trillion in derivative bets. In July of 2020 it emerged that Citigroup held $62 trillion in derivative contracts, about $30 trillion more than it held before it was bailed out in 2008. In 2019 Goldman Sachs held $47 trillion and Bank of America held $20.4 trillion in derivate bets. (See this)
A big part of the scandal embodied in these figures is embedded in the reality that all of these banks carry their most risky derivative bets in units of their corporate networks that are protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This peril played a significant part in deepening the crisis engendered by financial meltdown that began in 2007.
One of the most redeeming feature of the Dodd-Frank Act as originally drafted was a provision preventing financial institutions from keeping their derivative portfolios in banks whose deposits and depositors were backed up by federal insurance. (See this)
Citigroup led the push in Congress in 2014 to allow Wall Street institutions to revert back to a more deregulated and danger-prone economic environment. The notoriously inept decisions and actions of Citigroup had played a significant role in the lead up to the financial debacle of 2007 to 2010. Since 2016 Citigroup has become once again the biggest risk taker by loading itself up with more derivative speculations than any other financial institution in the world.
By returning derivative speculations to the protections of federal financial backstops, taxpayers are once again forced to assume responsibility for the most outlandish risks of Wall Street’s high rollers. It is taxpayers who are the backers of the federal government when it comes to their commitment to compensate banks for losses, even when these losses come about from derivative bets.
How much more Wall Street risk and public debt can be loaded onto taxpayers and even onto generations of taxpayers yet unborn? How is national debt to be understood when it plunders working people to guarantee and augment the wealth of the most privileged branches of society? Why should those most responsible for creating the most excessive risks to the financial wellbeing of our societies be protected from bearing the consequences of the very risks they themselves created?
Along with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase stands out among a group of financial sector reprobates most deeply involved in sketchy activities that extend deep into the realm of criminality. In a simmering scandal six of JP Morgan Chase’s traders have been accused of breaking laws in conducting the bank’s futures trading in the value of precious metals. They have been accused of violating the RICO statute, a law meant for people suspected of being part of organized crime. (See this)
In the charges pressed by the Justice Department on JP Morgan Chase’s traders it is alleged that they “conducted the affairs of the [minerals] desk through a pattern of racketeering activity, specifically, wire fraud affecting a financial institution and bank fraud.” (See this)
In 2012 JP Morgan Chase faced a $1 billion fine for its role in the “London Wale” series of derivative bets described as follows by the Chair of the US Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. Senator Carl Levin explained,“Our findings open a window into the hidden world of high stakes derivatives trading by big banks. It exposes a derivatives trading culture at JPMorgan that piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public.” (See this)
Traders at Goldman Sachs appear to have been part of the Wall Street crime spree. The tentacles of corruption in the Goldman Sachs case apparently extend deep into the US Justice Department. The case involves allegations of embezzlement, money laundering and missing billions. These manifestations of malfeasance all spin out of a scandal-prone Malaysian sovereign wealth fund administered by Goldman Sachs.
A big part of the scandal reported in Wall Street on Parade in July of 2020 involves the fact that the Justice Department’s prosecutors seem to be dragging their feet in this possible criminal felony case against Goldman Sachs. The prosecutors, including the US Attorney-General, William Barr, worked previously for the law firm, Kirkland and Ellis. Kirkland and Ellis was retained to defend Goldman Sachs in this matter. (See this)
Pam Martens and Russ Martens express dismay at the failure of US officialdom to hold Wall Street institutions accountable for the crime spree of some of its biggest firms. They write, “Congress and the executive branch of the government seem determined to protect Wall Street criminals, which simply assures their proliferation.” (See this)
Even racketeering charges against officials at JP Morgan Chase, where Jamie Dimon presides as CEO, failed to receive any attention from the professional deceivers that these days dominate MSM. The star reporters of Wall Street on Paradewrite, “Crime and fraud are so de rigueurat the bank led by Dimon that not one major newspaper ran the headline [of the racketeering charge] on the front page or anywhere else in the paper. (See this)
While federal charges that JP Morgan Chase’s Wall Street operation engaged in criminal racketeering was not of interest to the press, Jamie Dimon’s surprise visit in early June to a Chase branch in Mt. Kisco New York aroused considerable media attention. Dimon was photographed with staff wearing a mask and taking the knee. By participating in this ritual Dimon signalled that his Wall Street operation is in league with the sometimes violent cancel culture pushed into prominence by the Democratic Party in partnership with Black Lives Matter and Antifa. (See this)
In an article on 21 July marking ten years since the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the Martens duo conclude, “So here we are today, watching the Fed conduct another secret multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street while the voices of Congress and mainstream media are nowhere to be heard.” (See this)
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Prof. Anthony James Hall is Professor emeritus of Globalization Studies and Liberal Education at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta. The focus of Dr. Hall’s teaching, research, and community service came to highlight the conditions of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in imperial globalization since 1492. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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While advocates of peace and a multipolar world order welcomed Friday’s China-brokered agreement reestablishing diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, U.S. press, pundits, and politicians expressed what one observer called “imperial anxieties” over the deal and growing Chinese influence in a region dominated by the United States for decades.
The deal struck between the two countries—which are fighting a proxy war in Yemen—to normalize relations after seven years of severance was hailed by Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, as “a victory of dialogue and peace.”
The three nations said in a joint statement that the agreement is an “affirmation of the respect for the sovereignty of states and non-interference in internal affairs.”
Iran and Saudi Arabia “also expressed their appreciation and gratitude to the leadership and government of the People’s Republic of China for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success,” the statement said.
United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric thanked China for its role in the deal, asserting in a statement that “good neighborly relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are essential for the stability of the Gulf region.”
“Saudi and Iranian officials announced the agreement after talks hosted this week in China” https://t.co/0yWdZkLaSd
shows where the future of diplomacy is at, the US encourages war while China pushes the opposite
Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, toldThe New York Times that “China’s prestigious accomplishment vaults it into a new league diplomatically and outshines anything the U.S. has been able to achieve in the region since [President Joe] Biden came to office.”
Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., called the deal a sign of “a battle of narratives for the future of the international order.”
CNN‘s Tamara Qiblawi called the agreement “the start of a new era, with China front and center.”
Meanwhile, Ahmed Aboudouh, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, another D.C. think tank, wrote that “China just left the U.S. with a bloody nose in the Gulf.”
At the Carnegie Endowment, yet another think tank located in the nation’s capital, senior fellow Aaron David Miller tweeted that the deal “boosts Beijing and legitimizes Tehran. It’s a middle finger to Biden and a practical calculation of Saudi interests”
Some observers compared U.S. and Chinese policies and actions in the Middle East.
“The U.S. is supporting one side and suppressing the other, while China is trying to make both parties move closer,” Wu Xinbo, dean of international studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Times. “It is a different diplomatic paradigm.”
Murtaza Hussein, a reporter for The Intercept, tweeted that the fact that the agreement “was mediated by China as a trusted outside party shows shortcomings of belligerent U.S. approach to the region.”
While cautiously welcoming the agreement, Biden administration officials expressed skepticism that Iran would live up to its end of the bargain.
“This is not a regime that typically does honor its word, so we hope that they do,” White House National Security Council Strategic Coordinator John Kirby told reporters on Friday—apparently without any sense of irony over the fact that the United States unilaterally abrogated the Iran nuclear deal during the Trump administration.
Kirby added that the Biden administration would “like to see this war in Yemen end,” but he did not acknowledge U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in a civil war that’s directly or indirectly killed nearly 400,000 people since 2014, according to United Nations humanitarian officials.
WARNING: China Threatens to make Peace around the world
— Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA) (@masspeaceaction) March 11, 2023
U.S relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained during the tenure of President Joe Biden. While Biden—who once vowed to make the repressive kingdom a “pariah” over the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—has been willing to tolerate Saudi human rights abuses and war crimes, the president has expressed anger and frustration over the monarchy’s decision to reduce oil production amid soaring U.S. gasoline prices and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration is currently trying to broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel following the Trump administration’s mediation of the Abraham Accords, a series of diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and erstwhile enemies the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The United States, which played a key role in overthrowing Iran’s progressive government in a 1953 coup, has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since shortly after the current Islamist regime overthrew the U.S.-backed monarchy that ruled with a brutal hand for 25 years following the coup.
Seeing chatter on Twitter how the China-brokered Iran / Saudi Arabia rapprochement is bad for the US. Okay but maybe what was bad for the US was choosing to be allies with an autocratic theocracy with one of the worst human rights and anti-women records on earth to begin with?
Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Middle East Programs for the Atlantic Council, urged the U.S. to maintain friendly relations with brutal dictatorships in the region in order to prevent Chinese hegemony there.
We may now be seeing the emergence of China’s political role in the region and it should be a warning to U.S. policymakers: Leave the Middle East and abandon ties with sometimes frustrating, even barbarous, but long-standing allies, and you’ll simply be leaving a vacuum for China to fill. And make no mistake, a China-dominated Middle East would fundamentally undermine U.S. commercial, energy, and national security.
Other observers also worried about China’s rising power in the Middle East and beyond.
First two articles at NYT this morning highlight US imperial anxieties about China brokering a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. pic.twitter.com/iBfqF0ntUA
New York Times China correspondent David Pierson wrote Saturday that China’s role in the Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement shows Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “ambition of offering an alternative to a U.S.-led world order.”
According to Pierson:
The vision Mr. Xi has laid out is one that wrests power from Washington in favor of multilateralism and so-called noninterference, a word that China uses to argue that nations should not meddle in each other’s internal affairs, by criticizing human rights abuses, for example.
The Saudi-Iran agreement reflects this vision. China’s engagement in the region has for years been rooted in delivering mutual economic benefits and shunning Western ideals of liberalism that have complicated Washington’s ability to expand its presence in the Gulf.
Pierson noted Xi’s Global Security Initiative, which seeks to promote “peaceful coexistence” in a multipolar world that eschews “unilateralism, bloc confrontation, and hegemonism” like U.S. invasions and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“Some analysts say the initiative is essentially a bid to advance Chinese interests by displacing Washington as the world’s policeman,” wrote Pierson. “The plan calls for respect of countries’ ‘indivisible security,’ a Soviet term used to argue against U.S.-led alliances on China’s periphery.”
The U.S. has attacked, invaded, or occupied more than 20 countries since 1950. During that same period, China has invaded two countries—India and Vietnam.
New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker also published an article Saturday about how the “China-brokered deal upends Mideast diplomacy and challenges [the] U.S.”
“The Americans, who have been the central actors in the Middle East for the past three-quarters of a century, almost always the ones in the room where it happened, now find themselves on the sidelines during a moment of significant change,” fretted Baker. “The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, have suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player.”
Some experts asserted that more peace in the Middle East would be a good thing, no matter who brokers it.
Highlighting this point by @mattduss in the Post. All the “sky is falling” sentiment over China’s mediation role is a bit silly for a number of reasons, chief among them being that better ties between Saudi and Iran is something the U.S. publicly supports. pic.twitter.com/f3pWuE8kJl
“While many in Washington will view China’s emerging role as mediator in the Middle East as a threat, the reality is that a more stable Middle East where the Iranians and Saudis aren’t at each other’s throats also benefits the United States,” tweeted Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
“Unfortunately, the U.S. has adopted an approach to the region that has disabled it from becoming a credible mediator,” he lamented. “Too often, Washington takes sides in conflicts and becomes a co-belligerent—as in Yemen—which then reduces its ability to play the role of peacemaker.”
🧵 Saudi-Iran normalization is a BIG DEAL, not just because of the positive repercussions it can have in the region – from Lebanon to Yemen – but also because of mediated it (China) and who didn't (US) >>https://t.co/tibIJxzegJ
“Washington should avoid a scenario where regional players view America as an entrenched warmaker and China as a flexible peacemaker,” Parsi cautioned.
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Featured image: Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, stands between Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and Saudi Arabia’s minister of state and national security adviser, Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban, on Friday in Beijing. (Photo: Chinese Foreign Ministry)
The War on Iraq was launched 20 years ago on March 20, 2003. (Baghdad time)
The US-NATO led invasion of Iraq started on 20 March 2003 on the pretext that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
The 1991 Gulf War on Iraq began on the 17th January 1991. That was 32 Years ago.
However, after the 28th February ceasefire was agreed and signed – following the Basra Road massacre of withdrawing soldiers and fleeing civilians on 26th/27th February –
The US 24th Mechanised Infantry Division slaughtered thousands on 2nd March 1991.
Thirty-two years ago. The so-called “Gulf War” (Iraq War I) was launched against Iraq on January 17, 1991.
Of relevance to the Ukraine Crisis, extensive crimes against humanity have been committed by the US and its NATO allies under the banner of “peace making operations”.
On January 16, 1919 President George H. Walker Bush announced the start of what was called “Operation Desert Storm”, which was portrayed as “a peace-making operation” allegedly “to expel occupying Iraqi forces from Kuwait”.
There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.
Those extensive crimes against humanity were the beginning of a long and unending war against the people of Iraq.
Historians often refer to the One hundred years war between England and France which in fact lasted more than One Hundred years. (1337-1453).
They also refer to devastation and destruction underlying The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) which led to the Westphalia Peace Treaty in 1648.
The WAR AGAINST IRAQ IS ONGOING
The Thirty-two Years Wars against Iraq was launched on January 17, 1991. It was called “The Gulf War”. It was heralded as a humanitarian intervention. A no fly zone was established. The Northern Republic of Kurdistan gained de facto “autonomy”, it became a US sponsored proxy state.
It was the onslaught of what should be identified by historians as:
The 32 years criminal war of the US against the people of Iraq. (1991- )
Reviewing the history of US aggression against Iraq, we can distinguish three distinct stages:
Iraq War I (January 1991),
Iraq War II (March 2003),
Iraq War III (August 2014-), over several US presidencies, all of which are characterized by extensive crimes against humanity:
Iraq War I: The Gulf War (January 1991 launched under George H. W. Bush), invoking Iraq’s military occupation of Kuwait;
Iraq War II: The War on Iraq (March 2003 under President George W. Bush), invoking Saddam’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction”
Iraq War III: The August 2014 War on the Islamic State (ISIS) under president Obama, consisting of a massive carpet bombing endeavour which was casually described by the media as an anti-terrorist operation.
These three so-called wars were part of a Thirty Year War which is still ongoing. It is a never-ending war.
The war on Afghanistan did not start in October 2001.
The US declared war on Afghanistan in 1979 under the label of the Soviet-Afghan War, which was sustained by US support to Al Qaeda’s Mujahideen referred to by President Ronald Reagan as “Freedom Fighters”.
President Reagan Meets leaders of Afghanistan’s Mujahideen at the White House (1980s)
The US has been at war with Afghanistan for over forty years.
Reflecting on Joe Biden. Firm Supporter of Never Ending Wars
In 2003, Joe Biden as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee firmly endorsed the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”.
“The American People were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.
“Sen. Joe Biden is running a sham hearing. It is clear that Biden and most of the Congressional leadership have pre-ordained a conclusion that seeks to remove Saddam Hussein from power regardless of the facts, and are using these hearings to provide political cover for a massive military attack on Iraq. These hearings have nothing to do with an objective search for the truth, but rather seek to line up like-minded witnesses who will buttress this pre-determined result…. This isn’t American democracy in action, it’s the failure of American democracy.
Without Joe Biden’s endorsement of the WMD narrative, would the Democrats have endorsed the invasion of Iraq?
See the video above.
Obama’s “Operation Resolve” directed against ISIL-ISIS-Daesh (August 2014)
I should mention that during his tenure as Vice President, Joe Biden was firmly supportive of the carpet bombing of Iraq ordered by President Obama starting in August 2014 under a “Fake” anti-terrorist operation against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL-ISIS-Daesh).
On August 7, 2014: “President Obama authorises the first air strikes to protect US diplomats and aid Iraqi government forces”.
What shear nonsense. Why is this anti-terrorist operation “Fake”? ISIL-ISIS-Daesh is an al Qaeda affiliate, a creation of US intelligence.
The operation was directed against Iraqi and Syrian civilians. It resulted in extensive destruction of the civilian infrastructure of both countries. ISIS was the pretext which was heralded by the media.
And in September 2014, Obama announced the formation of “an anti-ISIS coalition” with the participation of NATO member states as well as US allies in Middle East (including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc).
The incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades from Syria into Iraq starting in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and Israel.
The counter-terrorism mandate was a fiction.
The Islamic State was protected by the US and its allies. If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June.
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The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map below). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, CF-18) it would have been -from a military standpoint- a rapid and expedient surgical operation
The Obama administration’s carpet bombing operation against Iraq and Syria entitled Operation Resolve was carried out over several years. In many regards, it is still ongoing.
America’s Long War
During the period described by historians as The Post War Era” extending from 1945 to the present, the US has embarked upon the ultimate war crime, a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity.
The US and its allies have been involved in countless wars, military coups, “color revolutions”, so-called “civil wars”, “anti-terrorist” operations, etc. Among the major operations are the Korean War (1950-53), The Indonesia Massacre of Communists (1963), The Vietnam War (1965- 1975), the ongoing wars on Afghanistan (1979- ), Iraq (1991- ), Syria (2011- ), Libya (2011- ), Yemen (2016- ), numerous US sponsored military coups: Guatemala, The Congo, Egypt, Salvador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile… The list is long.
The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously, resulting in millions of civilian deaths and countless atrocities.
After hours of deliberation, the tribunal, in the verdict that was read out by the president of the tribunal Tan Sri Dato Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus Lamin, found that the prosecution had established beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused persons, former President George Bush and his co-conspirators engaged in a web of instructions, memos, directives, legal advice and action that established a common plan and purpose, joint enterprise and/or conspiracy to commit the crimes of Torture and War Crimes, including and not limited to a common plan and purpose to commit the following crimes in relation to the “War on Terror” and the wars launched by the U.S. and others in Afghanistan and Iraq:
(a) Torture; (b) Creating, authorizing and implementing a regime of Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment; (c) Violating Customary International Law; (d) Violating the Convention Against Torture 1984; (e) Violating the Geneva Convention III and IV 1949; (f) Violating the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention of 1949. (g) Violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter.
The Tribunal finds that the prosecution has established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Accused persons are individually and jointly liable for all crimes committed in pursuit of their common plan and purpose under principles established by Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (the Nuremberg Charter), which states, inter alia, “Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit war crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such plan.”
Video: Michel Chossudovsky’s Presentation, Kuala Lumpur, March 2015
Starts at 8’30”
Michel Chossudovsky, January 17, 2021.
From 2005 to 2016, under the helm of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad former Prime Minster of Malaysia, I served as member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) which coordinated the prosecution and led the indictments against:
Bush, Cheney, Blair et al (May 2012) (see report above)
Former Israeli army general Amos Yaron and the State of Israel (November 2013): crimes against humanity and genocide stemming from the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982.
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Beijing accused the AUKUS alliance (US, UK, and Australia) of embarking on a “path of error and danger” when responding to the announcement that Australia will be supplied with nuclear-powered submarines. The multibillion-dollar deal, seen as a step to counter China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific region, was announced during a trilateral meeting between US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in San Diego on March 13.
Although Albanese did not mention China explicitly in his announcement of the AUKUS program, Australian Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead did directly mention China’s actions when speaking about the submarine deal.
“We recognise that there has been reclamation of land in the South China Sea and the military modernization of islands there,” Vice Admiral Mead said. “A whole bunch of factors have played into this.”
However, even if there was no acknowledgement of China by AUKUS leaders, it is beyond obvious that the AUKUS alliance and the nuclear-powered submarines deal is with the intent of limiting Beijing’s soft and hard power in the region.
“The latest joint statement from the US, UK and Australia demonstrates that the three countries, for the sake of their own geopolitical interests, completely disregard the concerns of the international communities and are walking further and further down the path of error and danger,” Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a regular press briefing on March 14.
The spokesperson’s comment came after the Chinese delegation to the UN tweeted a statement which accused the three countries of fuelling an arms race. The tweet said the deal was a “textbook case of double standard.”
Biden rejected the accusation, saying the submarines would be “nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed.” For her part, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Chinese criticism was “not grounded in fact.”
Despite Beijing’s retaliatory response, the US president said he was expecting to speak with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping soon but declined to elaborate. Perhaps he did not do it because the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said his country did not want to “communicate for the sake of communicating” and that “the US side should come forward sincerely, with practical actions to promote China-US relations.”
Unsurprisingly, the foreign ministry of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a rebel province, said it “welcomes the continued advancement of the AUKUS partnership,” adding that Taiwan is “at the forefront of the fight against authoritarian expansion.” Although no announcements have been made, it is also likely that South Korea and Japan will welcome the latest deal as it is part of their collective effort to contain China.
Therefore, it is undeniable that Australia’s attainment of such a weapon is an example of the Anglo Alliance pursuing an anti-China policy. Washington has been conducting this policy in an aggressive manner since the Donald Trump presidency, with Biden only escalating it. The US and Britain for the better part of two centuries have dominated world affairs, and although the Soviets failed to dislodge this arrangement, today, it is China posing the greatest threat to their hegemony.
For this reason, they are empowering Australia as a junior partner in the Anglo alliance. New Zealand, another Anglo country that is even more isolated than Australia, warned Canberra that it will not tolerate Australian nuclear submarines in its territorial waters.
Both New Zealand’s ruling government and the opposition announced that Australia’s increasing nuclearization will not change their longstanding ban on nuclear-propelled vessels from entering New Zealand’s waters. The New Zealand government also reminded Australia of a 1980s treaty it signed to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone in the South Pacific.
According to Biden, the submarines “will not have any nuclear weapons of any kind of them.”
This of course cannot be fully trusted as Washington has a long and distinguished history of breaking agreements, such as not expanding NATO any further towards Russia, a key promise broken that eventually led to the current conflict in Ukraine.
Australia’s partnership with the US and UK in the AUKUS format began in September 2021. Under the recently signed AUKUS agreement, the Virginia-class submarines will be ready in the 2030s, meaning that US and UK submarines will be based in Australia on a rotating basis until then.
However, it is recalled that the AUKUS deal was brokered in secret and led to the 2021 cancellation of a $106 billion contract for a French-built fleet of conventional submarines. The cancellation sparked a diplomatic row within the Western alliance and re-imposed Anglo dominance over Europe, just as the EU’s self-destructive policies against Russia demonstrate.
Beijing argues that the AUKUS deal violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and says that the transfer of nuclear weapons materials from a nuclear-weapon state to a non-nuclear-weapon state is a “blatant” violation of the spirit of the pact.
Now that outrage has been expressed, the question is how Beijing chooses to respond because Australia will certainly not back away from the AUKUS deal like it did with the French one. China would have once considered Australia as a mid-country that regarded its economic interests as a priority; however, the consistent actions of Canberra demonstrates that it is fully integrated into the Anglo alliance.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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***
As geopolitical confrontation intensifies between the United States and Europe on one side and China and Russia on the other, it has increasingly become tight for offering much information publicly. And of course, that would be the case especially with Russia facing criticisms for its ‘special military operation’ in the neighbouring Ukraine. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Kremlin administration have been extremely cautious the least on leaders visiting Moscow.
Local Russian media have reported that the Kremlin would not comment on the agenda of possible talks between Presidents Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping until their meeting is officially announced. “I don’t know. Once we make an announcement, we will be able to say something,” Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS this March 14, when asked if Putin and Xi could discuss China’s plan to resolve the situation in Ukraine.
“We haven’t made any announcements (about the Chinese president’s visit). Every contact between the two leaders is an additional impetus for stepping up cooperation on a variety of tracks,” Peskov pointed out, adding that the two sides usually announced such visits simultaneously.
Moscow and Beijing have established friendly relations based on partnership and intend to develop them further collaboratively against the collective West.
“The Russian-Chinese dialogue continues. It is of a friendly, partnership-based, strategic nature. It will remain on course. The relationship is multidimensional, and it is important for both sides. And both sides devote significant attention to the theme of developing this relationship further,” Peskov said.
Nevertheless, the main news-stream are all awash with the forthcoming visit, various analysis and presumptive expections. The Chinese media have earlier followed up to splash the news over their media space and global foreign media, and that Xi Jinping intended to visit Moscow for a meeting with Putin as early as next week.
Our media monitoring, for instance, shows that the two leaders last met in person on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand in September 2022. In late December, Putin held a video conference call with Xi Jinping, inviting him to make a state visit to Moscow in the spring of 2023.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that China’s Xi expected to make symbolic visit to Russia, and that comes off, soon after he was awarded a third term to lead China during the 14th National People’s Congress. Over the years, Xi Jinping has performed excellently, transforming the internal economy and prominently put his Asian country on the global stage. In addition, he consolidated the Chinese economic presence or footprints around the world. China is considered as an emerging global leader.
However, just like in any other country, authorities in China do not discuss everything openly and they sometimes allow leaks. These include a Reuters report saying that Xi will visit Russia next week. His visit will take place sooner than expected, and the news is important, for it is China who proposed a peace plan for Ukraine. Since Beijing has been providing diplomatic support to Moscow, the West was skeptical about the peace plan.
Scientific Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of China and Contemporary Asia Alexander Lukin told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that visits are paid every year, but that they were postponed during the pandemic. “Now, it’s the Chinese leader’s turn to visit Russia. This is fine. Of course, the international situation has changed. I think, they will discuss this as well as the political and economic cooperation which has been growing by leaps and bounds in price terms. Often, new contracts get signed and new gas or oil pipeline projects are approved during such visits,” Lukin said.
“Over the past decade, China has seen a significant consolidation of power in the hands of Xi Jinping, and the Communist Party’s supremacy over the state and society has also become more apparent,” Deputy Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations Alexander Lomanov told Kommersant. According to him, the next decade will be a difficult one for China, given that the old economic development model is exhausted, with cheap labor and free resources no longer available, while the external environment – relations with the US and its allies – is getting more and more toxic.
“In this situation, the old structure of power, which involved fighting factions and looked like collective leadership from the outside, has lost its usefulness as it does not allow decisions to be made quickly when responding to threats and challenges. In contrast, Xi Jinping’s current model of government is aimed at ensuring stability amid internal and external difficulties. Hopes for the liberalization of this model may emerge only when China is confident that the hardest times are behind it,” Lomanov concluded.
The likelihood that the United States and China will continue consistently engaging in a direct confrontation is quite high, political scientist Vladimir Kireyev told Izvestia. According to him, some predicted back in the early 2000s that as China’s economic and hence political influence in the world increased, the country would “inevitably start collapsing the US-centric system” by the simple fact of its existence.
“These forecasts were made in the US political, expert and military communities. In the mid-2010s, this understanding drove (44th US President Barack) Obama and then (45th US President Donald) Trump to adopt a policy to contain China, which reflects real US interests aimed at preserving its global dominance,” the political scientist pointed out, added that economic tensions were invariably pushing political elites in both countries towards a confrontation, in one form or another.
According to the analyst, Washington has started to realize that it “wasted too much time,” because the best moment to contain China was ten years ago. However, the Americans’ focus was on Russia back then, Kireyev stressed.
“Now, the probability that the US and China will come to a direct conflict is quite high. It is the US that is provoking the situation as the window of opportunities to cause serious damage to China is closing. China is trying to postpone the conflict as much as possible and even avoid it altogether. The reason is that taking into consideration economic development, in 10 to 15 years, China will be much stronger than the US and the Chinese won’t need to engage in a conflict to protect their interests,” the expert concluded.
In spite of the arguments and debates on various important global issues involving China and Russia, however, the South China Morning Post said that Russia’s special military operation has harmed China’s national interests. What is of the most common interest and concern relates the emerging new configuration, multipolar system which should necessarily work to find suitable solution to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis. China has called for cooperation while Russia adopts more confrontation approach.
Our monitor shows that majority of global leaders, researchers and analysts has already lifted their up for China’s expected muscular role, efforts to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. Under its headline “White House hails possibility of Xi Jinping speaking with Ukrainian president Zelensky” published March 14, South China Morning Post wrote that a senior White House official has praised a reported plan by Chinese President Xi Jinping to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and confirmed US President Joe Biden’s “willingness” to schedule a talk with the Chinese leader.
“We have been encouraging President Xi to reach out to President Zelensky because we believe that the PRC and President Xi himself should hear directly the Ukrainian perspective and not just the Russian perspective on this,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Sullivan was referring to a Wall Street Journal report which, citing people familiar with the plan, said that Xi would make the call after visiting Moscow next week. Beijing’s recent engagements with Moscow, including a trip there by its top diplomat√last month, have prompted US and other Western governments to accuse the Chinese government of siding with Russia in the war, which has dragged on for more than a year.
A 12-point peace proposal Beijing offered on the war’s one-year anniversary did little to change that assessment, partly because it did not call on the Kremlin to withdraw its forces. Reports that Xi would visit Moscow soon have thrown more doubt on Beijing’s claims to be impartial. Sullivan cast some doubt on the Xi-Zelensky call plan when he added that Kyiv officials were not able to confirm the report.
For the discussions here, it is necessary to consider carefully here, in the context the China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI) that could play important role in resolving he Russia-Ukraine crisis and many others around the world. In the first place, China prominently places “cooperation” as the key component in its foreign policy, as oppose to Russia that is confrontational and yet talk about multipolar – in fact ‘multipolar’ in its basic sense means inclusive and integrated approach to global developments including conflict resolutions.
According to the concept, the Global Security Initiative aims at eliminating the root causes of international conflicts, improve global security governance, encourage joint international efforts to bring more stability and certainty to a volatile and changing era, and promote durable peace and development in the world.
The concept is guided by six commitments or pillars, which are
(i) pursuing common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security;
(ii) respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries;
(iii) adhering to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter;
(iv) taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously;
(v) peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation; and
(vi) maintaining security in both traditional and non-traditional domains.
Gleaning from these core principles, it’s safe to say that the GSI could and probably would become a catalyst for the world to chart a new path to building sustainable peace, stability and development. The Global Security Initiative (GSI) was first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference on April 21, 2022.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS) and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.
Comments Off on China-Russia Dichotomy: Cooperation or Confrontation on Global Issues? Forthcoming Talks between Putin and Xi regarding Ukraine Peace Plan?
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The disinformation service, Bloomberg, takes the lead. Bloomberg points its finger at Donald Trump and “Trump era deregulation.” In Bloomberg’s rewriting of history, Trump is responsible because he signed a bill passed by Democrats and Republicans that allowed mid-sized banks to “skirt some of the strictest post-financial crisis regulations.” So, where was the federal reserve? Where were the bank regulators? Bloomberg doesn’t say.
Presidents don’t write financial legislation. Financial legislation that the Federal Reserve and the SEC don’t approve doesn’t get passed. A third world immigrant-invader, Ro Khanna, who somehow represents in Congress Silicon Valley says: “Congress must come together to reverse the deregulation policies that were put in place under Trump.”
What utter total BS.
Silicon Valley Bank failed because in 1999 the Clinton regime signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act and because the Dodd-Frank Act allows failing banks to seize the deposits of depositors in order to have a bail-in instead of a bail-out. The foolish legislation causes depositors to withdraw their deposits on any sign of bank trouble.
The utterly mindless Dodd-Frank Act set up the mechanism for modern-day bank runs. If you have more money on deposit than the $250,000 insured amount, Dodd-Frank allows the bank to bail itself out by seizing your deposits. Many companies and corporations have payroll deposits in excess of $250,000. If deposits are seized, business can’t pay their workers or their bills. Thus Dodd-Frank is an excellent way of initiating bank runs and collapsing businesses and employment and city and state tax revenues.
But don’t expect Bloomberg to ever tell you any truth. I have never read a correct report on Bloomberg.
Silicon Valley Bank got in trouble because the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and reduced the value of the bank’s bond portfolio which made the bank insolvent. Large depositors, seeing their money at risk, quickly withdrew it. Silicon Valley Bank had to sell its depreciating bond portfolio, thus depreciating its value more, to meet withdrawals, thus driving down the value of its bonds, with the consequence that the bank’s liabilities exceeded its assets leaving the bank bankrupt.
The Democratic Party is an anti-American political party. It does not represent anything envisioned by our Founding Fathers. It has no respect for a rule of law, the US Constitution, truth, and White Americans, who are racist and domestic terrorists by definition.
Trump was a challenge to Democrat woke hegemony. Consequently, everything wrong in America is blamed on Trump by Democrats and presstitutes.
The crazed woke politics that Democrats, presstitutes, and universities have inflicted on America precludes intelligence analysis. Everything that would save existing society from failure is dismissed as “white supremacy.”
Apparently, banks themselves are affected by this ideology. They hired not competence but diversity in support of the rainbow. If the Federal Reserve also has this problem, there is no hope of avoiding financial collapse.
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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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The supposed “spring counteroffensive”, which would be being prepared by Kiev’s forces is already starting to be discredited before it even starts. Local sources claim that Ukrainian troops are too weak to launch a major attack against the Russians in the near future, contradicting the optimistic expectations of pro-Kiev journalists and NATO’s authorities. Even the American press is beginning to admit the improbability of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, which in practice means that the West no longer believes in a Kiev’s victory.
In an article published by the Washington Post, it was said that the Ukrainian armed forces would be so “degraded” over this first year of Russian special military operation that the attempt to launch a counteroffensive after the winter will probably end up unsuccessful. According to the media outlet’s informants, many of the most experienced Ukrainian troops have already been killed or wounded during the intense battles that have taken place since February last year, leaving now only a few forces qualified enough to carry out a major offensive, as the one that is currently being planned by the Ukrainian government and the NATO strategists.
One of the sources heard by journalists was a Ukrainian official identified by the alias “Kupol”. Linked to Ukraine’s 46th Air Assault Brigade, Kupol stated that “unfortunately, they (skilled Ukrainian military) are all already dead or wounded”, adding that the new recruits are unprepared, inexperienced, inadequately trained, and that “(they) just drop everything and run” as soon as the battle begins.
Kupol also mentioned the seriousness of the current lack of ammunition on the part of the Ukrainian armed forces. Apparently, most of Kiev’s stocks have already been spent, with soldiers suffering from the absence of equipment to counterattack the Russians during the fighting. Kupol also comments that during offensive operations the attacking side loses two or three times more than the defending side, which is why he does not believe it will be possible for Kiev to start something like a great counteroffensive now, as so many losses have already been suffered.
“We can’t afford to lose that many people (…) You’re on the front line. They’re coming toward you, and there’s nothing to shoot with (…) We don’t have the people or weapons (…) If you have more resources, you more actively attack. If you have fewer resources, you defend more. We’re going to defend. That’s why if you ask me personally, I don’t believe in a big counteroffensive for us. I’d like to believe in it, but I’m looking at the resources and asking, ‘With what?’ Maybe we’ll have some localized breakthroughs”, he said.
At another point in the interview, the Ukrainian official also stated that the number of tanks promised by NATO to Kiev would be “symbolic”, contradicting all the allegations of Western authorities and propagandist journalists, whose discourse is based on the rhetoric that the aid with tanks will be a kind of “game changer” on the battlefield. In this sense, this report is important in showing how Western narrative is discredited among Ukrainian officials themselves, who are gradually beginning to admit that Kiev’s chances of victory are unlikely.
Currently, there is great expectation in Western public opinion that Ukrainians will advance and retake ground during this spring. There are many reports saying that Kiev is keeping its main reserves of fighters, including seniors and special forces, outside of the risk zone, perhaps even in Poland and other NATO countries. In these regions, they would be being trained to be sent on an anti-Russian offensive.
Indeed, this appears to be true. It is not by chance that Kiev is sending teenagers and poorly trained recruits to Bakhmut’s “meat grinder”. The objective is to avoid losing even more experienced soldiers, which would end any possibility of a counteroffensive. So, it is very likely that these skilled troops are currently being trained to prepare for a future attack.
The problem is the combat power of these troops. As Kupol said, there are few experienced soldiers left, with troop numbers being a key factor in such combat situations. Most likely, Kiev’s plans will fail if such large-scale attacks are actually implemented. The Russians have a much greater mobilization power and could easily replace any losses, while the Ukrainian reserve is already destroyed. So, in order to prepare public opinion for the certain failure of the counteroffensive, the western media has already begun to publish journalistic articles showing the difficulties of the Ukrainian troops, as seen in the Washington Post.
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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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Who is behind the movement against racism and poverty in America.
We are dealing with a network of corporate funding of so-called “progressive” organizations.
This networking of funding dissent is a powerful instrument. It constitutes the basis whereby the financial elites retain control over the protest movement.
You cannot organize a meaningful mass movement against Wall Street and then ask the billionaire foundations to pay for your expenses.
While Black Lives Matter has taken stance in leading the campaign against Racism and Social Inequality, it has been generously funded by “racist” corporate charities and foundations which are firmly committed to neoliberalism.
What this carefully documented article reveals is that the leaders of the BLM movement have betrayed their Grassroots by accepting money from “White Supremacist” billionaire foundations, banking institutions and powerful corporations.
It’s called “Manufactured Dissent”.
Michel Chossudovsky, March 15, 2023
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The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and related causes received an astonishing $82.9 billion from corporations, a new funding database from the Claremont Institute has found.
The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life explained the necessity of their report in an article published in Newsweek, where the Center asserted that the 2020 BLM movement was about more than just “rioting and destruction.”
The Center explained that “The BLM pressure campaigns, harassment, and moral blackmail also amounted to possibly the most lucrative shakedown of corporate America in its history.”
“As a point of reference, $82.9 billion is more than the GDP of 46 African countries. In 2022, the Ford Motor Company’s profits were $23 billion,” they also noted. The sum of $82.9 million includes “more than $123 million to the BLM parent organizations directly,” as well as much more to other organizations supporting BLM’s agenda.
The list reveals that several popular corporations from a wide range of different industries supplied the movement with large sums of cash. Walmart, for example, which is based in Arkansas, gave a whopping $100 million in support of BLM and related causes focusing on “racial equity.” Amazon gave even more, supplying the movement with an astonishing $169.5 million. Silicon Valley Bank gave the movement $73.45 million.
Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical company Abbvie gave the movement over $62 million in funding. Allstate gave $7.7 million to the cause and American Express gave $50 million. Apple gave $100 million while AT&T gave $21.5 million. The movement and its causes received another $90 million from Nike.
United Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, and Delta Airlines all gave money to BLM and related causes as well.
Bank of America, meanwhile, provided $18.25 million to BLM and related causes while Wells Fargo diverted $210 million towards BLM and related causes. Deloitte gave $85 million to BLM and related causes.
Asset management giant BlackRock put a shocking $810 million towards BLM and related causes, while other powerful financial institutions also bankrolled the movement, with Capital One Financial giving $10 million, Morgan Stanley giving $30 million, US Bank giving $160 million, and Goldman Sachs giving $10.1 million.
Meanwhile, Prudential Financial supplied the movement and its related causes with a sum of $450 million but was outdone by Mastercard, which gave $500 million.
The database found that Boeing gave $15.6 million, while Northrop Grumman gave $2 million and Raytheon gave $25 million.
The Walt Disney Company gave $8.8 million to BLM and related causes while the Pokémon Company gave $200,000.
The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life also explained how the funds have been used, remarking that
“The Global Network is investing tens of millions of dollars to support future operations, purchasing luxury real estate, engaging in nepotism, disbursing grants to dozens of BLM chapters and revolutionary organizations, and operating a PAC to “elect progressive community leaders, activists, and working-class candidates fighting for Black liberation.”
Meanwhile, “Local BLM chapters are spending millions on activism and initiatives to defund police departments” and “BLM At School is indoctrinating children around the country in critical race theory and queer theory, teaching them to hate themselves, their peers, and their country.”
“Left-wing nonprofits are effecting wholescale societal change too radical for normal legislative avenues, constituting a form of shadow governance,” they went on to note.
The agenda has also seeped into the financial industry’s loan operations, the Center explains, pointing out that “banks are issuing billions of dollars in subprime loans ‘to help end systemic racism,’” all while “corporations are funding leftist bail funds that release violent rioters and criminals onto our streets and collaborating to create racialized, anti-meritocratic hiring schemes.”
The shakedown “may be viewed as a form of reparations made to self-declared enemies of the American nation and way of life,” they added.
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Spencer Lindquist is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach out at [email protected].
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***
I’ve been rantingallweek about the shocking war-with-China propaganda escalation in Australian mainstream media, and I feel like I could easily scream about it for another month without running out of vitriol for the disgusting freaks who are pushing this filth into the consciousness of my countrymen. One really really can’t say enough unkind things about people who are openly trying to pave the way toward an Atomic Age world war; in a remotely sane world such monsters would be driven from human civilization and die cold and alone in the wilderness with nothing but their bloodlust to keep them company.
One of the most obnoxious things said during this latest propaganda push appeared in the joint statement provided by the five “experts” (read: empire-funded China hawks) recruited by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age to share their obscenely hawkish opinions in an official-looking media presentation. This paragraph has been rattling around in my head since I first read it:
“Australia must prepare itself. Most important of all is a psychological shift. Urgency must replace complacency. The recent decades of tranquillity were not the norm in human affairs but an aberration. Australia’s holiday from history is over. Australians should not feel afraid but be alert to the threats we face, the tough decisions we must make and know that they have agency. This mobilisation of mindset is the essential prerequisite to any successful confrontation of China.”
Do you see what they’re doing there? These professional China hawks are explicitly trying to frame peace as a strange “aberration”, and war as the status quo norm. They’re saying Australians require a “psychological shift” and a “mobilisation of mindset” from thinking peace is normal and healthy to thinking war is normal and healthy.
Returning to Australia is a shock. The elite salivates for a deeply racist war against China. Australia has no enemies but is led and influenced by little Americans and echoes of spooks who fill the papers with a deranged, almost satirical hysteria. Sad.https://t.co/s723vk8Zv8
Every normal, healthy person regards peace as the default position and violence as a rare and alarming aberration which must be avoided whenever possible.
We know this is true from our normal human experience of our own personal lives. None of us spend the majority of our time getting into fist fights, for example; anyone who spends most of their waking life physically assaulting people has probably been locked up a long time ago. If you have ever been in a fist fight you will recall that it was experienced as a rare and alarming occurrence, and everything in your body was screaming at you that this was a freakish and unnatural thing which must end as quickly as possible the entire time. In healthy people violence is experienced as abnormal, and its absence is experienced as normal.
This normal, baseline position is what imperial narrative managers spend their time trying to “psychologically shift” everyone away from, propagandizing us instead into accepting continuous conflict and danger as the norm. Such a shift is beneficial to the empire, to war profiteers, and to professional war propagandists, and is entirely destructive to everyone else. It causes us to accept material conditions which directly harm our own interests, and it makes us crazy and neurotic as a civilization.
You see it all the time though, like whenever there’s a push to withdraw imperial troops from some part of the Middle East they’ve been in for years, or the slightest discussion of maybe not raising the military budget this year, or skepticism that pouring weapons into a violence-ravaged part of the world is the wisest and most helpful thing to do.
Any time we see the slightest beginnings of the tiniest movement toward stepping away from the path of nonstop warmongering and militarism, pundits and politicians begin bleating words like “isolationism” and “appeasement” in an attempt to make calls for de-escalation, demilitarization, diplomacy and detente look freakish and abnormal in contrast to the sane, responsible status quo of hurtling toward nuclear armageddon at full tilt.
Their job is to abnormalize peace and normalize war, which means our job as healthy human beings is to do the exact opposite. We must help everyone understand the horrors of war and the unfathomable nightmares that can be unleashed by reckless brinkmanship, and help people to understand that peace is what’s healthy and to imagine a future where it is the norm.
The bad news is that we are pushing against a narrative-manufacturing apparatus that is backed by the might of a globe-spanning empire. The good news is that our vision is the one that’s based on truth, and deep down everyone can sense it. All we need to do to get people viewing peace as normal and war as abnormal is to remind people of what they already know inside.
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***
The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and the following spectacle in which the media blares out about a massive bank crisis (without any hard figures for us to assess for ourselves) suggests that the parasite class is preparing for its war on money, the next step after COVID-19 of its war on citizens. After their destruction of the immune systems of Americans, and the dumbing down of the minds of Americans, they are ready to take over money completely.
Most likely, once all the banks are bankrupt, it will be easy to force-feed us a digital currency. But there may be other possible scenarios in store as well.
I wanted to share, in one place, my five lectures on the topic “Money is no mystery” to use the title of Charles E. Coughlin’s famous speech of 1934 which I recite as the final speech here.
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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.
Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.
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***
“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.” -Mark Twain, or Benjamin Disraeli, or anonymous (attribution disputed)
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“Hate crime” is a made up legal category meant to prop up the systemic racism mythology.
Next to Russiagate neo-Mccarthyism, MSNBC loves nothing more than crowing about the supposed prevalence of “hate crimes” in an America captured by the specter of “White Supremacy™.
Exhibit A: the MSNBC clip below in which news actor Alex Wagner and guest, Rep. Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, lament a Congressional investigation into Dominic Ng.
Ng was appointed to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s Business Advisory Council but is currently under investigation for ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The relevant portion we’re discussing here — the race-baiting over “hate crimes” — begins at the 3-minute mark.
First of all, the government’s categories are all wrong to start with. The “AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community,” as the Congresswoman on MSNBC terms it, is an entirely synthetic, stupid conjoining of ethnicities across Asia.
“AAPI communities consist of approximately 50 distinct ethnic groups speaking over 100 languages, with connections to Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Hawaiian, and other Asian and Pacific Islander ancestries.”
The identities included under the AAPI umbrella have as much in common with each other culturally and genetically as Norwegians and Rwandans.
There is no “AAPI community,” and the suggestion that there is is itself, ironically, racist. Ask a Korean if he’s interchangeable with a Japanese and brace yourself for his rage.
Furthermore, what is a hate crime? Is not any interpersonal violence by definition an act of hate?
The Justice Department defines a hate crime as “a violent crime, such as assault, murder, arson, vandalism, or threats to commit such crimes. It may also cover conspiring or asking another person to commit such crimes, even if the crime was never carried out.”
So, not only does the government grant itself license to divine motive from a perpetrator of a violent crime to determine whether it qualifies as a “hate crime” – it’s also now including Minority Report-style “pre-crime” in the category.
But let’s take the dubious “hate crime” label at face value for the sake of argument. How common is it in the context of this MSNBC clip?
The MSNBC host Alex Wagner (Rachel Maddow’s failing replacement) cites 247 anti-Asian “hate crimes” in 2021 in California, the state that the Congresswoman represents.
So here’s some math: There were allegedly 247 “hate crimes” against Asians in California in 2021, according to her. That’s out of 39.24 million Californians in the overall population, of which 6,669,737 are counted as “AAPI.”
247 hatecrimed Asians divided by 6,669,737 AAPIs in California = 0.0037% of Asian-Americans hatecrimed – an astonishingly , vanishingly tiny figure that begs the question: why even devote precious airtime to covering it when there are so many more statistically relevant phenomena?
We’re just talking about Asians in this context, but similarly low numbers of “hate crimes” affect all protected classes.
In contrast, the overall rate of violent crime in the United States is 361.6 per 100,000 U.S. inhabitants. That’s .36% of Americans that are victims of violent crime on an annual basis — nearly 100 times higher than hate crimes against Asians.
The only obvious answer is that inciting racial hatred is MSNBC’s agenda, not objectively reporting the news.
And, assuming the “hate crime” statistics are correct, the next question is: who is committing all of these “hate crimes”? Is it MAGA domestic terrorists perpetrating White Supremacy™, as the Congresswoman on MSNBC claims, or perhaps another, less fashionable culprit?
Here’s a challenge: scour the web archives and try to find a single clip of an Asian attacked by a White Supremacist™, then compare it to the volumes of similar attacks perpetrated by Persons of Color™.
Note that, curiously, none of these headlines mention the racial identities of the attackers, which they most certainly would were they white.
You can be certain these are not cherry-picked; the corporate media would immediately latch on to such a video like catnip if it showed a white assailant. They’d play it on repeat for a month. Headlines would blare “White supremacist anti-Asian attack caught on video.” Joe Biden’s handlers would put out press releases condemning it. Vice would make a feature-length documentary on it.
The category of “hate crime” is an absurd hallucination. It does not describe any appreciable phenomenon in American society. Instead, it’s a wedge the ruling classes use to drive racial hatred, which it exploits via classic “divide-and-conquer” tactics perfected by the Roman and British Empires.
A divided people — along class or gender or whatever else — are a controllable people.
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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Locals, Gab, and Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
It is rattling again in the box.
In Tbilisi, the capital of the small Caucasus republic of Georgia, crowds gather on the streets. They carry oversized EU flags and flags of Ukraine through the avenues and project “Slava Ukraina!” on the buildings. Anti-Russian slogans everywhere. In the Georgian parliament, there are scuffles between the government and the opposition. The stumbling block is a bill that has just been discussed in Parliament and is still a long way from being able to come into force. The ruling party alliance “Georgian Dream” only wants donations from abroad to Georgian political parties and foundations to be reported to the authorities at the moment if they exceed one fifth of the total donations of these parties and foundations. Transparency is actually an integral part of any true democracy. However, some interested circles in Georgia are artificially upset about it. The protesters point to similar laws in Russia or Azerbaijan, which supposedly would give free rein to autocratic rule. Giga Bokeria from the European Georgian Party is among the protesters:
“This law, which targets civil society, is just part of the bigger picture, bigger anatomy of the treason, when we have a regime which sees the West and the Free World as our enemy, and tries to cultivate this Putinist idea in our society and betrays the future of Georgia.” [1]
The hatred and aggressiveness of the young rioters is disproportionate to the declared cause. It’s not about a drastic increase in electricity and gas prices. Not about the destruction of the livelihoods of the middle class, farmers or workers. Incidentally, the law is fairly closely modeled on the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which was enacted in 1938 and was only used again in 2017 against the broadcaster Russia Today [2]. With Putin’s money, Russia Today influenced the elections in such a way that the wrong man became President of the USA [3]. But as the ancient Romans said: what is permitted to the god Jupiter is far from being permitted to cattle. If the Georgian government does the same as the US government – that’s not possible!
In any case, the Georgian government was now so intimidated by the violence of the protest that the draft law was quickly withdrawn. But that in no way mitigates the aggressiveness of this street protest. The street fighters announced: we’ll keep going, no matter what ever will happen [4]! So it’s definitely not about preventing a law that you don’t see the point of. Here, the classic screenplay of a regime change theater staged by the West is unfolding before our eyes. The current events in Tbilisi are strikingly similar to the fateful events on Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014. Here the notorious travel circus of the pro-American regime change network is mercilessly striking.
These service providers of ongoing pro-American hegemony. These include private public relations agencies, management consulting firms, strategy departments of large banks, as well as the networks of transatlantic foundations and think tanks such as the European Council on Foreign Relations, the German Marshall Fund of the US. Closely followed by the Carnegie Foundation, Freedom House and Soros Foundation. Just all those cliques that were meant by the recently failed transparency law, and who then flexed their muscles mightily.
There is plenty of money for changing governments. We know from the intercepted phone call between Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine. There is talk of five billion dollars to oust the hated Ukrainian President Yanukovych and from this the US government derives the right to determine that “Klitsch” Klitschko should not hand over the new Ukrainian head of government as a western puppet , but Poroshenko[5] Everywhere in the late capitalist chaos economies there is a broad segment of unemployed proles who can be provided with earnest money at any hour of the day or night, in order to then organize riots under every imaginable and unimaginable slogan.
State flag of Ukraine behind a wall of anonymous protesters in Kyiv, Ukraine. Events of February 18, 2014 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
The images are the same: then Ukraine, now Georgia. At that time, Yanukovych also wanted to bring Ukraine under the umbrella of the European Union. But he also wanted to maintain good relations with Russia. But that’s what the western NATO-fellows don’t want for the hell of it. So Yanukovych had to be ousted with a dirty coup. The same now in Georgia. The Georgian Dream government also wanted to bring the country into the European Union and even into NATO. While maintaining good relations with Russia. According to a pro-American reading, this is not possible at all, as we heard from a transatlantic Georgian politician at the beginning of this article.
Georgia also has problems with two breakaway republics. First, there is the Republic of South Ossetia in the interior. The Ossetians are culturally related to the Iranians and feel alien in the Georgian community. And then Abkhazia. A country on the beautiful coast of the Black Sea, with beautiful beaches to relax.
Both republics became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2008, the then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a staunch ally of the West, wanted to use military raids to bring these two republics home to the Reich. To everyone’s surprise, Russia did not remain passive this time and so not allowed the NATO border to be moved further east. Russia countered this attack and after five days had driven the Georgian troops out of the two republics.
This embarrassment was to severely damage Saakashvili’s political reputation. But the opposition couldn’t do much against Saakashvili at the time. It was divided, at odds and condemned to political impotence. At that moment Bidzina Ivanishvili appeared. Ivanishvili is Georgian, but made a lot of money in Russia during the Yeltsin era and is now ranked 153rd among the richest people in the world by Fortune magazine, with personal wealth estimated at $6.4 billion. However, Ivanishvili did not become a billionaire in Russia by stealing the national wealth of the Russians like the other oligarchs, but relatively respectably by importing electronics from the West and then selling them back in Russia. Ivanishvili had returned to Georgia and donated a significant part of his wealth to the common good. Now the billionaire, with an awareness of the social commitment of his property, had the necessary money and also the necessary strategic intelligence to bring together the divided opposition to the party alliance Georgian Dream. This alliance was now able to replace the NATO man Saakashvili in democratic elections. Twice Ivanishvili was head of government for a short time, but only to put the new government on the right track. When that was done, he resigned and left government to other people.
The Georgian Dream government has now reformed some of the worst pro-market excesses of the Saakashvili era. Financial help is available for those in need. The privatized health care system is now backed up by state measures so that the poor can once again afford medical care. As with Yanukovych, not that much has changed in foreign policy. Membership in the European Union and even in NATO is also sought under the government of the Georgian Dream. At the same time, the government makes it clear that Georgia is interested in good economic, cultural and political relations with Russia.
And that is exactly what cannot be conveyed to the Western community of values. There can only be one way for Georgia now: unconditional total war against Russia. The more difficult the military situation in Ukraine becomes for the Zelensky regime, the more important it becomes for the West to carry out a military pincer attack on Russia, carried out by Ukraine in cooperation with Georgia. We now understand all the better the rush and doggedness with which the downfall of the Georgian dream is now being pursued. Time is running out for the ambitions of NATO in that region [6]. And while in other countries the oligarchs are just gross and corrupt and nobody sheds a tear for them, Ivanishvili is a multi-billionaire with personal decency and enormous strategic intelligence.
So it’s no wonder that the full extent of the transatlantic hatred is not sparked off at the Georgian government, but against the person of Ivanishvili. The European Parliament in Strasbourg didn’t shy away from publishing a six-page resolution on June 9 of last year against the Georgian government and against Ivanishvili in particular. There is talk again of “eroding freedom of the press”. A phenomenon that, as is well known, we do not have in the West, right? Ivanishvili would maintain “personal and business ties with the Kremlin.” That was coupled, squire-style, with twelve “recommendations” on what Georgia must do in order to be graciously admitted to the European Union. A Lithuanian MEP said that by calling for de-oligarchization one explicitly means “de-Ivanishvilization”. And on December 14 last year, the European Parliament went one step further and called for Ivanishvili to be sanctioned for obstructing “political progress” in Georgia and for helping Russia bypass anti-Russian sanctions.
But that’s not all. Ivanishvili had deposited a significant part of his assets with the now compromised major Swiss bank Credit Suisse. First, Ivanishvili is massively deprived of funds by a criminal investment advisor. But that was not aimed at Ivanishvili. The criminal investment advisor was responsible for the investment advice of oligarchs living in Russia at Credit Suisse. The investment advisor has now been convicted and committed suicide two years ago [7]. While this is more of a “shit happens!” department, further amounts in the three-digit million range have not been paid back to Ivanisschvili by the fund consulting firms of the Credit Suisse Group for flimsy reasons to this day. This happened partly in connection with the European Parliament’s demands for sanctions, which, however, have not yet been implemented by the European Commission [8]. Ivanishvili is now suing Credit Suisse for $800 million in damages for lost investment opportunities. He has announced that if the lawsuit is successful, this money will be given to the solidarity community of Georgians for social purposes [9].
Another event is hotly debated in Georgia. Rumor has it that US Ambassador Kelly Degnan invited billionaire Ivanishvili to a three-hour talk on March 29 last year. During this conversation, Ms. Degnan is said to have offered to help Mr. Iwanischwili to return the money he had been holding at Credit Suisse. The condition, however, is that Georgia should enter the war against Russia on the side of Ukraine and use a considerable contingent of soldiers for this purpose. Rumors speak of 200,000 Georgian soldiers. But Ivanishvili politely but firmly refused. To this day we don’t know what is behind these rumours. Ivanishvili published a letter to the Georgian people on July 27 last year, in which he comments on the conversation with Ms. Degnan [10]. As is his custom, Ivanishvili puts it very cautiously and diplomatically. The above deal is not directly mentioned. Ivanishvili stressed all the more emphatically in the letter that it was important to him to keep Georgia out of “the war”.
Clearly, anyone who wants to keep his country out of NATO’s war against Russia has to leave.
The alliance party Georgian Dream emerged from a real grassroots movement. In recent years, the Georgian Dream has failed miserably to keep in touch with the grassroots and to translate their wishes into compact politics that everyone can understand. Apparently, it is now not possible to bring its own clientele onto the streets.
The other serious mistake is that the Georgian Dream alliance has made the non-party diplomat Salome Zurabashvili president. Mrs. Surabashvili grew up in France as a French citizen and started a diplomatic career. She completed her political studies with none other than former presidential adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski at Columbia University in New York. Surabashvili became a Georgian citizen, and the people from the Georgian Dream were probably happy to have elected a politician with profound knowledge of foreign policy and international connections as president. However, the lady now has nothing better to do than to expressly support the regime change rioters in a video message from New York.
What should we do? We must now reconstruct and uncover the anatomy of the recurring regime change maneuvers and develop instructions on how to recognize such attacks on a country’s national integrity in good time and then take countermeasures. The long overdue transparency law that has just been blocked in Georgia would have been a long overdue step in this direction.
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He is, of course, right on all fronts, and has given us this clue already more than 40 years ago. But nobody has really seriously taken it to heart and acted upon these edicts.
My Take
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
The Covid “Killer Vaccine”. People Are Dying All Over the World. It’s A Criminal Undertaking
Bankrupt Banks, Food Crisis, Mandatory Vaccine and Our Grim Future. “This Time, the Virus has Infected Money Itself”
The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami
Financial Failure in America: The Cover-up Begins
Geoengineering: Romanian General Emil Strainu on the Terrifying Possibilities of Geo-warfare
Why the US Banking System Is Breaking Up. Michael Hudson
Video: “It is not a Case of Pandemic, This is a Case of Murder”: Dr. David E. Martin
The Military Situation In The Ukraine. Jacques Baud
Dr. Michael Yeadon on the Covid Crisis: The Most Important Single Message I’ve Ever Written
Short List of USAID Subversion Operations
Showdown in Ukraine. Hobbled US Turns to War to Preserve Its Waning Primacy
“Deconstructing the Obvious” – From My Lai to Nord Stream. Interview with Legendary Muckraker Sy Hersh
Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) and the Turkey-Syria Earthquake: An Expert Investigation is Required
COVID-19 Vaccinated High School Children Are Having Cardiac Arrests, Heart Attacks While Playing Sports — Plus 31 Shocking VAERS Reports, Some of Them Fatal
Lies, Damned Lies, and Elephants
Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts
Warning! Silicon Valley Bank Collapse – A Prelude of Much Worse to Come? Derivatives: “Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction”.
Italy 2020: Inside COVID’s ‘Ground Zero’ in Europe
The Dark Origins of the Davos Great Reset
The CO2 Narrative: The Truth About ‘Net Zero’: A Diabolical Agenda Sold as a Saviour Formula
仕組まれたコロナ危機:「世界の初期化」を目論む者たち
The Pentagon’s B-Movie
